Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a day we should all remember … a day we should hope never EVER happens again. The lessons of this history have never been more relevant than they are today as we see many nations leaning away from democratic principles and toward authoritarianism, and as we see a rise in hate crimes, rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Those lessons of history should be the focus of this solemn International Holocaust Remembrance Day—designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, on January 27th, marking the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, in 1945.
The victims of the Holocaust were an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 200,000 Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. We must … MUST take time to remember these victims and take note of how it all came about, else we risk repeating the mistakes, the horrors, of the past.
From the moment he was born, Arye Ephrath was in danger. His mother gave birth to him with the help of a housemaid in spring 1942 while hiding from the first wave of deportations of Jews from their hometown in Slovakia. Later, a shepherd and his wife took in Arye on the condition they could disguise him as a girl so that he would blend in with their daughters…
Pictured above are the Margules children wearing Jewish Star of David badges. Originally from Warsaw, the Margules family settled in Paris in the 1930s. Three of the children were deported and killed in 1942. Only one daughter (pictured at the bottom right) survived the war. Paris, France, 1941. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Mirka MargulesSource: Remember … | Filosofa’s Word
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