Never Forget

Yesterday much of the world honored the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the memory of the 6,000,000 Jews who perished in the Holocaust. This is a reminder that we must NEVER FORGET the atrocities that some are capable of, and how cruelly murder of the innocent can get out of control. Both my cousin Cary and I were named after our great-great-grandfather, Chaim Hersch Klein.  He died in Auschwitz. My cousin Nina was named after our great-grandmother, Nina Klein. She died in Auschwitz. I could go through my Klein family tree that goes back to the late 1800’s and identify my many Klein cousins who were named for Auschwitz victims, but you get the point. The Kleins lived in Muncacz Hungary, where they were en masse put into boxcars by the Nazi’s, and shipped off to their death in Auschwitz.  

My maternal grandmother, Dorothy Klein, lived only because she and one sister and two brothers came to America ten or so years earlier. It is the same story with each of my other three grandparents. Dorothy and my parents told me the story of the Holocaust over and over. All total, I understand that counting aunts, uncles and cousins, over 500 of my Hungarian family members, were murdered in Auschwitz. Only one survived, my Uncle Oscar whose life was a mirror image of the story of Exodus and he lives in Israel to this day. 

I have the original 8 mm. movies that my grandfather Alex took when he brought Dorothy and my five year old mother to Hungary to visit the family shortly before WWII.  Those movies were copied and can be viewed at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. So does the testimony of Oscar, given at Yad Vashem. I will never forget. My family, including all of my Klein cousins, will never forget. And we are not alone. So many of my friends, including people I know who will be reading this, have stories similar to what I just shared.  

But there are those out there who deny the Holocaust even existed. We know they are anti-Semitic and in most instances, hate not just Jews, but also African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Gays or pretty much anyone who doesn’t look, talk or think like they do. They just hate for the sake of it. I am not angry with these people, nor do I fear them.  They are plainly ignorant, uninformed bigots. They are incapable of opening their eyes and crawling out from under their rocks and getting to know all the people they hate. They are the ones who are afraid. Afraid of us! If they did open their eyes and hearts, however, they just might see and realize that all of those people who they hate without knowing why, are good and solid people.  But THEY’RE afraid. 

We now collectively live in a Tower of Babel where people come from everywhere, but unlike the biblical story, we speak the same language, and I don’t literally mean English.  And because ALL of us are in the majority and the bigots and White Nationalists are in the minority, and they always will be, the story of the Holocaust will not be forgotten and we will continue to make progress protecting the rights and liberties of all people. That’s because we know it is the right thing to do.   I genuinely believe that virtually all of you out there, when it comes right down to it, and that’s regardless of political party, oppose discrimination against a person for race, creed, color, sexual orientation or country of origin. And that is what makes America great. Nonetheless, we will never forget. And not forgetting will make us even better.