Never Forget Them

I believe in the words of the Holocaust survivors. I believe their tears, scars, and painful losses all have a meaning. I believe the 11 million deaths of Jewish people, POW’s, gypsies, disabled people, homosexuals, and others should have a meaning to the world. I believe it’s important to never forget what happened to them. Never forget how they were tortured, starved, worked, and killed for no real reason. Their scars, emotional and physical, will never fully heal.

In the 6th grade my class took a field trip to Terre Haute, Indiana. We visited the Holocaust survivor, Eva Kor. She showed us the identification number that had been tattooed on her arm at her arrival at Auschwitz, the ink had faded a bit, but it was still visible. She had a twin sister, Miriam. The Nazi’s were fond of twins, we were told. Doctor Mengele preformed many experiments on Eva and Miriam. He did experiments on all the twins that entered Auschwitz. She told us that she became deathly ill from them, but her will to survive kept her alive.

Our minds were boggled at her story. All of us were moved. Everything she went through, and she still had the will to survive after everything. There were 1500 sets of twins, 3000 children. Out of those 3000, only about 200 survived Auschwitz. Eva and Miriam were amongst those 200.

Her words moved us. For that day, all 75 of us in our 6th grade class felt grateful for our lives, no matter how rough they may have been at the time. There was no doubt in our minds what she was saying, her words were true. Her emotions told the story, it made us believe. We hated the Nazi’s just on that account. I started to hate them even more when I got into the 8th grade. Our English class started learning about Anne Frank, and the Holocaust. We then had a better understanding of what happened during the Holocaust at that point. We read about all the unknown people who died in the Holocaust. We read their stories and were devastated. We wondered how could a group of people discriminate against another group. We also wondered how the Nazi’s could hate Jewish people. What did the Jewish people ever do to them? Not a single thing.

I believe that the Jewish and everyone in the Holocaust who died, didn’t deserve it. They did nothing wrong. They were just being themselves and believing in their religion. I believe that the Holocaust did happen. I believe that many innocent lives were lost. I believe that the Holocaust was wrong.