In Remembrance and Preservation

I believe I am the Holocaust, not because my ancestors are Jewish, not because they were German, but because I am part of the people and we the people as an entirety are the Holocaust. It was a collective hatred of other peoples, enough hate to destroy their world, their everything. And I believe that we, as the future, are to remember.

As an eighth grader we took at trip and one of the stops was at The United States Holocaust Memorial. This is the exhibit that changed things for me. I stepped off of an uneven cobble path into a dim railcar and stood quietly letting the images of the past dance across my memory. A lone shard of light flits in and out of the single small window, bringing imprints of bodies pressed together, arms clutching at the rays of sunlight outside the car –no escape- and all to soon I couldn’t take anymore. Sorrow flooded my sense’s, filled me with regret, remorse, and horror, but then, as odd as it may seem, thankfulness followed. Thankful that there was escape for some. Thankful that there are those today who remember, but then, it dawned on me that there are those who refuse to remember, refuse to believe, or share, in the travesty that was the Holocaust. Fear griped my heart at the notion of six million lives being lost in vain, murdered only to be forgotten generations later.

Words on a page, bodies on a black and white film reel, and the echoes of camps littered across the eastern European countryside. They stir no emotions to the people of tomorrow; no hope, no fear, no pain. The connections, the solidity of the past come from the people who are willing to share and from those willing to listen. Eli Wiesel once said, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories”. And I can say I believe that if not for the dead than what of the living, what of tomorrow, what of our future if this world chooses to forget the stories of those lost souls.