Holocaust Victims of Auschwitz And Elsewhere Mourned Today

Today is the day of the annual March of the Living when a ceremony is held at the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland — a meticulously preserved symbol of genocidal murder, racial demonization and utter dehumanization.

Look at the photos to your left. Just look what they did to those children. And there are worse ones. We won’t show them here.

Talk to people you know. Chances are you’ll find someone who had a relative, or who knows someone who had a relative, impacted by the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children in the 30s and 40s because of their religion.

Go to your libraries. Find some books about what happened. I did a few years ago. And it impacted me physically. The documents about Nazis lining up two kids, sitting in front of each other, than shooting one to see how the bullet went through the two of them haunted me. I still think about the account of Nazis hurling screaming kids off a cliff, covering them all with dirt, even if they survived then listening to their screams and cries until the sounds of agony or terror mercifully ended.

Auschwitz was a sign of assembly line murder. The Nazis first tried bullets to wipe out people but when that didn’t seem the way to go (took too long and cost too much) they designed a more efficient system — gassing prisoners in gas chambers such as Auschwitz, after telling the prisoners it was just a shower. Eventually word spread.

My late grandfather Abraham Ravinsky would periodically show me a photo album book of his relatives in Russia and Poland. “See Joey,” he say, pointing to smiling family with seniors, middle aged adults and little kids. “Hitler killed them.” He show page after page. Each time he’d look at my face as he pointed to a picture. And I just recently learned from my sister that he did the same thing with her.

He didn’t want anyone to forget. And today:

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, addressing a Holocaust memorial gathering Thursday at the site of a Nazi concentration camp, said people should remember that the world stood silent while 6 million Jews were murdered.

“Remember the victims and remember the murderers, ” he said at a March of the Living ceremony at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex. “Remember how millions of Jews were led to their deaths and the world remained silent.”

The March of the Living also commemorates the death marches that took place when the Germans began emptying camps and forcing the inmates to walk hundreds of miles in freezing weather with little food. Thousands died

“I was here 61 years ago and I am remembering everything,” said 75-year-old Pery, who was accompanied by his 20-year-old grandson Shahar, an Israeli paratrooper. “I never wanted to come back. I came because of my grandson.”…

Pery, who was 14 when he came to Auschwitz, told his captors that he was 19 considered a good working age in order to survive. But his mother and sister were sent to their deaths, their bodies disposed of in the camp’s crematorium.

“There were guards who pointed at the smokestack and said, ‘There is your mother,’” he said.

Look at those pictures above. And remember there are worse ones out there.

But whatever you do, remember.



MORE RESOURCES:

CHRONOLOGY-Key events at Nazi Auschwitz death camp

Key facts on the Nazi Auschwitz death camp

United State Holocaust History Museum

The Holocaust History Project

Holocaust Timeline

Holocaust Survivors

Holocaust Remembrance Project

The Nizkor Project (Holocaust Education)

A Teachers Guide To The Holocaust

Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims