Holocaust Remembrance Day

According to my Franklin Covey day planner, today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I wasn't alive during the Holocaust, so I don't have my own memories of that event. Much like I wasn't alive the day of JFK's assassination or the moment the first American set foot on the moon. But I do believe they all happened.

I don't have any idea if Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or if there was some huge conspiracy behind it. But I don't think there's any question that John F. Kennedy was assassinated and that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved. I guess I sometimes wonder IF the conspiracies surrounding this death are true and why there need for such a cover-up if there is. But it doesn't change the fact that President Kennedy was killed.

I know there are conspiracy theorists that think that mankind has never been in space or stepped down on the moon and that it was all filmed in a movie studio. But I choose to believe that Neil Armstrong was actually there and that there is a fundamental purpose to NASA.

And there are certain people, a few countries, and various cultures that refuse to believe that the Holocaust ever occurred. Whereas I'd love to believe that we as a people aren't evil enough to do something so gruesome and hideous, that doesn't make it true. I believe that hundreds of thousands of people, primarily Jews, were sent to concentration camps, used as slave labor, treated horribly, separated from their loved ones and their possessions, and were ultimately exterminated. It's a very sad chapter in the history of humanity. But I believe it happened.

Have you ever read the book, "Night" by Elie (Eliezer) Wiesel? I read it at my son's suggestion. He checked it out of the school library as one of those books he could read for their reading program. He found it so moving, he suggested I read it as well.

"Night" was not the first book to detail the experiences of a Holocaust survivor, but it has become one of the most widely read, if not the most read book on the Holocaust.

The main character and narrator of the story, Elie Wiesel is fifteen years old when he is taken to the Nazi concentration camps. Elie and his father support each other throughout their internment. Elie's father dies before the liberation, but Elie becomes a survivor and witness of the death camps. Elie's narrative recounts the horrors of his nightmarish Holocaust experience.

Elie was born in 1928, was moved to a concentration camp in 1943, and wrote the book ten years after being freed, at the impressionable age of 28.

Just to give you an idea, here are a couple of quotes from the book:

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." Chapter 3, page 32

"'I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.'" Chapter 5, page 77