Remembering the Holocaust and World War II

I received this e-mail today from a friend. It was very poignant to me, because my very first landlady…waaaaay long ago in New Orleans when I rented a little efficiency apartment in the back of her house….was a holocaust survivor. After I rented from her I was in her living room filling out the lease, etc. and noticed some blue numbers on her arm, just barely visible before the cuff of her blouse hid the rest. I'll never know where such boldness came from in me, but I actually asked her if that was a concentration camp tattoo! Back then I was REALLY REALLY quiet and shy. My folks nearly fainted when I told them that, because they had felt like they had to force me to even say hello to strangers up to that time, or even to make a phone call to people I KNEW.

 

But my landlady was very gracious about it. She told me yes, and asked if I wanted to see it. I did. I wanted to know all about the whole thing. So for the 6 months I rented from her, about once a week or so she would sit with me and any of my friends that came over and show us the tattoo and tell us about what had happened. Her parents and brother were killed. She was sent to an aunt when the allied forces released her camp.

 

I had been fortunate to have an excellent theology teacher in High School who spent probably about a month on the Holocaust and showed us films, etc. But nothing – not even those awful films, which were the actual footage taken by allied troops as they went into the camps – was as poignant and chillingly real than seeing that tattoo on this little lady sitting there with her fragile-looking, tiny hands wrapped around a delicate china tea cup. And to hear her tell the stories. L I remember her saying many times "I'm so glad you young people want to know about this. It's important." I was 20 or so. It makes me livid to hear people claim now that the Holocaust never happened, and I truly fear losing the lessons of that war and that time.

 

We were just recently talking about how the last of the Greatest Generation are going to be lost to us soon. And then what? We hope we don't find ourselves in an America that has forgotten the great sacrifices made by ALL of those people – and WHY they made that sacrifice, willingly. In this world of glaring and blaring and the loudest one wins, it's hard to hear any more those people who were so quiet about what they did and went through…even though it was likely the single most important time and events in modern history. My landlady was SO grateful to Americans, specifically to American soldiers who, she felt, she owed her very life to.

 

And last year, before my Dad died, we spent many days talking about how many WWII vets were there in that retirement village they lived in, and how many of those men and their wives were silent until Tom Brokaw's book came out. I asked Dad to tell me every story he knew from every man there in the village so I could take notes and absorb as much as I could before they are all gone. Those people did the most amazingly heroic, and IMPORTANT things I can possibly imagine. And I always wonder…was one of these men there in the village one of the soldiers who released my landlady as a little girl?

 

It is a very frightening thing indeed to see the possibility of sliding into such extremist politics anywhere in the world again…and even more terrifying to think of being in a country turning a blind eye to that extremism… yet, I fear that's exactly where we are headed.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
In MEMORIAM - 63 YEARS LATER

Please read the little cartoon carefully, it's powerful. Then read the comments at the end.

I'm doing my small part by forwarding this message. I hope you'll consider doing the same. 
In Memoriam




It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War inEurope ended This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 milli on Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian Peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iraq, Iran, and others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it's imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.