Mark, my husband, was 24 and asked, “So are you an American first or a Jew?” I was 18 years old and not yet prepared to answer this question of identity. Mark argued that we had to consider ourselves Jews before anything else because our future safety was precarious. I told him that he was ridiculous to think that anything like the Holocaust could ever happen again. But given my age and limited experience, I had little understanding of intolerance or my role in educating future generations.

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and attended Sunday School at the synagogue my family belonged to... In sixth grade, my Sunday School teacher taught us about the Holocaust. She told us that six million Jews had perished. In order to grasp just how much that was, she asked us to make tally marks on loose-leaf paper. Each mark represented a Jewish life. The class filled sheet after sheet with tally marks and she lined the classroom walls with these papers. I think we reached about100,000 marks, and then we were asked to stretch our imaginations to ten times that amount, and then six times that number. As far as I was concerned, nothing this horrible could ever occur again.

The above is an exerpt from my essay, titled, Mommy, When Did You Turn Jewish? published in the North American Review in 2008.

What I learned from my Sunday School class experience was never, ever, forget. We were taught that if we remembered the crimes of the past, and held close to our hearts the stories of those who had perished, we could stop a Holocaust from ever happening again.

And yet last week was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I didn’t know it. The day came and went like any other.

When I found out I’d let the day pass without acknowledgement, I was upset and frightened by what it could mean if I forgot again next year.

And what the consequences might be if you forgot too.

This past December, I visited Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum in Israel). I must admit, I didn’t want to go. I’d been there  twice before, and it’s so depressing.

But I went once I realized that this was becoming a habit, that for the last few years, I’d been avoiding Holocaust museums, movies and books.

The experience I had at the museum is one I hope to remember for as long as I live.

There was a multitude of disheartening information at the museum but the thing that shocked me most was footage of Hitler addressing German Parliament. He spoke about the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe and received enthusiastic clapping from hundreds. Seeing this hatred with my own eyes was terrifying. Take a minute to view this short clip.

I’d been carrying around Man’s Search for Meaning for a couple of weeks, avoiding, procrastinating. But after missing Yom Hashoah, I finally started to read it. And yes, it’s painful but poignant too.

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.- Frankl

In Why Should We Watch Movies Like Still Alice? I discuss empathy and how according to Roger Ebert it is the most essential quality of civilization.

That is why, even though it is difficult, we must go back and read Anne Frank.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500.0"] BLOG-ANNE FRANK CANDLE [/caption]

We must visit her house in Amsterdam and go to Holocaust Museums around the world.

We must see, yet again, Schindler’s List, The Pianist, Sophie’s Choice and Life is Beautiful.

We need to do these things in order to remember, because if we don’t keep in mind the horror stories that took place, and pass on what we’ve learned, what inconceivable atrocities might happen in time?

I’m not 18, or so innocent anymore, but my youngest daughter is; and that’s why she will travel to Poland next week. She will visit Auschwitz, and other neighboring concentration camps. This will be a grueling, eye-opening, trip for her; and I am pleased she is doing her part.

We must all do our part:

We must remember to never, ever, ever, forget.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400.0"] BLOG-HOLOCAUST TRACKS [/caption]