Why A Holocaust Remembrance Day?

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I don’t need to be reminded about the Holocaust. My father was sent to a forced labor camp. My mother was in Auschwitz. She remembers. I remember.

But today, there are fewer and fewer elderly survivors of the Holocaust who remain to tell the story. And there are monsters like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the little Hitler, who would not only rewrite history but repeat that history.

Those who would destroy us have an agenda. Those who would survive have an obligation. As George Santayana warned us, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

So we have to remember the Shoah. It’s our obligation. There were too many “good people” who closed their eyes and turned their heads when it was occurring and we must learn our lessons from what is really very recent history.

May the memory of the six million martyrs always remind us that we need to be there for each other and to protect each other—now and always.