International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27)

On November 1, 2005 The United Nations instituted the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on January 27.

Adolf Hitler who led the Nazi Party of Germany killed almost 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of them children.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, states, “Bystanders were the rule, rescuers were the exception.”^[1]

History books are not quick to tell if the Allied forces fighting World War II knew about the ongoing genocide of the Jewish people but it is hard to believe they didn’t. However, rather than judging the past and pointing the fingers to the possible bystanders, I would like to bring up one of the exceptions that rose as a rescuer.

Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) was a businessman who saved some 1200 Jewish people from death. His actions didn’t come easy and he paid a high price. Three trips to jail, being charged with too much familiarity with the Jews, the loss of his fortune by trading it for Jewish lives; and a postwar period of failed business ventures and near poverty.^[2]

Steven Spielberg’s 1993 movie “Schindler’s list” is a must.

We might believe that education will make our society avoid future outbreaks of anti-Semitism, racism or religious warfare but lets remember that Nazi Germany was a highly educated and cultured society. Additionally, non religious governments have caused hundreds of million more deaths in the 20th century alone that in all of the previous ones combined (Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin are two examples).

I would like to extend an invitation to remember this horrible event and to resolve to not just be a bystander in the future…​

20th and 21st century genocides: