May we never forget

20th of January 1942 was the day when a group of people, that had turned into animals, established the final solution. The solution how they would get rid of anyone of jewish heritage for no other reason than that they were jewish. 50 years later, on the day, I was born. I am far from the only one that can claim to be a living proof that their solution didn't succeed and even if I was the only one I would have exactly the same responsibility to make sure that this horrible part of our history will never be forgotten. When I talk about the holocaust I do not only talk about the jewish people, I talk about my own history, my family and a part of who I am. As a 3rd generation survivor I cannot say that I understood what the victims went through, doing that would be disrespectful and nonchalant. It is impossible to imagine hell on earth if you never experienced it and thank G-D I haven't. However, as a 3rd generation survivor I can be a witness of my grandparents stories. I have the responsibility to keep their memory alive even when they are gone because if I don't tell my children, how will they know to prevent it from happening again?

 I consider myself lucky. I had the possibility to get to know my grandparents. My parents didn't know theirs. They were murdered by tyrants. Some people say it was an act of humans only following order but no human can become that cruel without losing his right to call himself a person. I wish I could share the stories of my grandparents in detail, because every story is unique, but I was always too scared to ask and my grandparents were most likely to traumatised to share but I know that both my grandfather and my grandmother survived Auschwitz. They had to suffer through hell whilst their family was taken away from them. I may not know the full story but I know enough from small comments to the nightmares they had that what happened in the Holocaust should never happen again and should never be forgotten. Many of us take it for granted that we have grandparents or even great-grandparents but I never taken my family tree for granted because there are many branches that were cut off and never recovered again. My parents named me after my grandmother's sister who was murdered in the Holocaust. This very often reminds me that I have the responsibility to build up our broken tree.

 We now live in a world where there is cruelty wherever we go. There is terror, criminality, war and other horrible things and it is easy for us to only look at our own history without learning anything from it. To me Yom HaShua is not only about remembering, it is to remind us that we need to take care of each other regardless race, gender and social status. We can't keep saying "Never Again" and let it happen to other people. I am only one person but as we know only one person could do a lot of harm but one person can also do a lot of good. Let us take this opportunity to maybe change one thing in our lives to become better people, not only for ourselves but for the 6 million jews and 1 million other innocent people that never got the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest and contribute with goodness to the world.

50 years after the establishment of the final solution a Jewish girl was born. That jewish girl now lives in Israel, the jewish state, together with millions of jews. All of us proof that these people's memory will still live on.

 May their memory be a blessing and may we never ever forget.