Why we must remember the Holocaust
The memory of the Holocaust always fills me with a great sadness at the thought of the immense cruelty and grave injustice from one nation to another over many years. I feel sadder still for the children and grandchildren of the victims of the Holocaust because of the memories of such injustice that they have to live with.
The question I often ask, and it has been asked before is: “Lord, where were you when your children were suffering?” The only answer I receive is that God was there suffering with them.
As a member of the Bristol HMD Steering Group who has attended many meetings in preparation for the annual civic commemoration on Holocaust Memorial Day, this passage expresses the way I feel about what happened:
“The Holocaust showed the depths that humanity can descend to, the power of evil to rule the world and the degree of hatred against the Jews. Hitler had a plan and his plan was to eliminate all Jews in the ‘Final Solution.’ ”
The best estimate is that between 15 to 20 million people were imprisoned and died in sites controlled by the German State throughout the European Continent; these people were tortured and waiting to be killed in the most atrocious way. It is so sad that there was not much help from other countries. Auschwitz survivor and Nobel peace prize winner Elie Wiesel* once said: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
We will never be able to understand fully and feel the horror and cruelty of the Holocaust but we must put all our efforts into keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and pray for a better world.
* When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind,” stating that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel had delivered a powerful message “of peace, atonement and human dignity” to humanity.
This article was kindly submitted by Marie Hackett