We Must Not Forget

Yom Hashoah

We Must Not Forget

Today we remember. It is Yom Hashoah, a day that honors the memory of the six million Jewish lives that were taken during the Holocaust. These were mothers and fathers, children and babies, people who lived peaceful lives in towns and villages across Europe. They were not soldiers. They were not criminals. They were simply Jewish, and that was enough for the Nazis to mark them for death. The world watched, and for too long, said nothing.

When I was a little boy, I would walk with my grandmother to the local shops. There was the bakery with the smell of fresh bread, the butcher with sawdust on the floor, the grocery with its shelves lined with canned goods. The men who worked in these shops had numbers on their arms. They did not talk about those numbers, but I saw them. They were tattooed there when those men were prisoners in concentration camps. I did not know the full meaning then, but I do now. They were survivors. They had come through horror and somehow made it here, to our neighborhood, where they lived quietly and served others.

Years later, I visited Israel. I walked through Yad Vashem, the memorial to those who were lost in the Holocaust. The photographs on the walls were haunting. Families smiling before the war. Children playing in the streets. Mothers holding their babies. These were everyday people whose lives were destroyed by hatred. Toward the end of the exhibit, I looked up and saw the faces above me. They could have been my family. My mother. My father. My grandparents. They were familiar, and the sight of them brought tears to my eyes. They were part of me. They were part of all of us.

We say never again, but hatred has not gone away. We see it everywhere. We see it in war. We see it in racism. We see it when people are judged for how they look or where they come from. There is still hatred of Jews. There is hatred of Black people. There is hatred of Indigenous people. There is hatred of anyone who is seen as different.

Years ago, the United Nations was a place where nations met to talk. It gave people hope that the world might become more peaceful. Now it seems like just a building in New York. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am wrong. But I miss the idea that the world could come together to solve its problems.

So I write this as a plea. Let us put down the anger and the blame. Let us stop dividing the world into us and them. Let us be kind. Let us listen. Let us remember that we are all part of the same human family.

The world has seen enough suffering. It is time to turn to one another with kindness, with care, with understanding. That is how we honor the past. That is how we protect the future.

We must not forget.