NEVER AGAIN

          IN MEMORY OF THE 11 MILLION HOLOCAUST VICTIMS
 
         Mound of bodies at Buchenwald concentration camp
                                      

On the walls of Auschwitz, the traces of nails of thousands of people.Those who, during the 3 to 10 minutes that gas would give them to live , tried desperately to delay their agony in gripping where the air was still respirable.

Today January 27 2015  is the 70th year of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time to remember, honor the millions killed in the Holocaust and mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.

A lot of people don't want to look at these kinds of pictures, but instead try to ignore the horrible, inhuman realities of the Holocaust. To not view these photos is to sanitize the truth of what actually happened.

"We never forget" and "Never Again" have to be more than simple words, they need to show that we feel some small sense of the horrors that were experienced by 11 million murdered people, including 6 million Jews.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) states: "The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.

Let us never forget the children, infants to teenagers who were murdered before they really had a chance to live.

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED.
 
Let us never forget the mothers and fathers. Powerless to protect their children they died in with the agony of seeing their children murdered with them. 

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED.

In memory of the teachers, scholars and Rabbis. The greatest centers of learning in all Jewish history perished with them. 

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED. 

In memory of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters and all the Underground Resistors. Their efforts helped quicken the defeat of the Nazi rule. 

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED.

In memory of the martyrs who voluntarily gave their lives in an effort to save their captured brothers and sisters. 

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED.

In memory of the Romani (Gypsies of whom 1.5 million approximately were killed), the targeted groups also included communists Ukrainians (of whom 3 million approximately were killed), Poles (2.5 million) and other Slavic peoples; Soviets (particularly prisoners of war) and others who did not belong to the Aryan Herrenvolk (Master Race) such as people with mental disorders, the deaf, the physically disabled, those with learning disabilities; gay men (and occasionally lesbians), transgender people; political opponents (such as communists, trade unionists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists and others with left-wing political views); and religious dissidents such as the Jehovah's Witnesses.

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED.  

The Nazi concentration camps are the largest Jewish graveyard, the Holocaust is the largest organized mass murder in human history.
 
The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, one of the largest resources of its kind, centralizes information from the Museum’s collections about individual survivors and victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution. 

The database includes millions of personal records from the Museum’s extensive collections of archival and library materials, oral histories, artifacts, photographs, film and videos and other materials that could assist in researching the fates of individuals during the Holocaust.

SEARCH HERE FOR NAMES AND INFORMATION IN THEIR DATA BASE for Holocaust Victims and Survivors.

In spite of all the unimaginable but horrifically real mass murders during the Holocaust, the world seems to have learned very little from this tragedy.

Sadly, anti-Semitic hatred of Jews, numerous acts of genocide based on ethnic mass murders, religious and beliefs intolerance grow each day as our current world spins increasingly out of control. 

The existence of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people and the horrors of our past truly mean "NEVER AGAIN" for us. 
  
These words represent a promise to past and future generations that we will do everything we can to ensure the horrors of the Holocaust are not repeated.

It has been a long journey for the Jewish people who have survived for so many centuries in spite of all the attempts to eradicate us. 

Do not underestimate the strength of the Jewish people both as a culture and a religion to persevere. 

Being a Jew is not just about religion, it is also the responsibility that each of us feels to bear witness to the suffering of our people and the sacrifices made by others that have enabled us to be who we are as individuals today. 
 
We do not forget.
  
NEVER AGAIN!