Holocaust Memorial Day

[Mel]

Article featured in Avatar - Volume 3, Issue 7 (January 2010).

Holocaust Memorial Day
By Casey (Cas*)

We see it even today, over sixty years later, in diaries, in newspaper articles, in memorials, and in novels. We see references to it in plays, in Broadway shows, in dances, and in songs. We talk to our grandparents and great-grandparents to hear their take on the situation happening at large in their own youth. Whether or not this terrifying situation, this Holocaust, as it is now referred to by a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire," actually happened has been debated since it's terrible prime in the 1940s. Unfortunately, it did happen, and over 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and many others, lost their lives in concentration camps. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as the annual international Holocaust remembrance day. Though this group of countries were not collectively directly related to the Holocaust, the United Nations felt obligated to honour the Holocaust victims in hopes to restore even a piece of the hope taken away by many in the era of the Holocaust. Furthermore, this group recognized the importance of educating our own generation around the world in order to take extreme measures to ensure that the Holocaust will never repeat itself.

What's the significance of January 27th, exactly, and why was this day chosen? On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz, three of the largest concentration camps (areas in which mass amounts of mistreated minorities were kept and often killed), were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet Union, or so it seemed. Although Auschwitz is the most well known concentration camp and by far the one that held the most prisoners, it was not the first camp to be liberated. On January 18th, the Germans marched from those three camps, and gave the prisoners the option of marching to the border of the the German Reich, going to camps in Germany, or staying where they were and waiting for the Soviets to arrive. After 'liberating' the camps, the Soviets left the prisoners to care for themselves, and to find their own way home. It was even said that the people liberated themselves, and that the Soviets just marched through.

As we approach this day in 2010, it is extremely important for our generation, truly the leaders of tomorrow, to be mindful of the horrible events that took places in the lives of our own parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents and to take steps to make sure that this will never happen again. Though this task may seem daunting, we can start by being tolerant of other religions, ethnicities, sexualities, and races, and keeping an open mind and an open heart about the positive differences we, as individuals, have the capacity and capability of making on the world.

Sources:
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/...mment_post.php
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Auschw...iberation.html