We Must Bear Witness

Why do we remember this day? Why do we continue to teach about the Holocaust? How can we possibly expect people to understand what happened in this organized genocide, seeking to "purify" the world and wipe Jews off the face of the Earth?

We remember the anniversaries of the Holocaust and we teach about it because the Holocaust is the possible. How can we expect people to learn from history if we don't teach it? How can we ensure such evil never again rears its head if we don't know about it?

Text excerpted from Why We Must Remember Kristallnacht by Hannah Rosenthal

Forever Night

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as god himself. Never."

Het Achterhuis

"Not being able to go outside upsets me more than I can say, and I'm terrified our hiding place will be discovered and that we'll be shot. That, of course, is a fairly dismal prospect."

Seventy years ago today was the beginning of the end for a young girl who just wanted to live and express herself through her writing, with aspirations of being a journalist; a girl who somehow saw beauty in the world despite the unrelenting ugliness just outside her window ("In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world"). Anne Frank was captured and arrested by the Nazis on the morning of August 4th, 1944 and sent to Huis Van Bewaring, then on to Auschwitz, and finally to Bergen-Belsen where she died at age 15.

Action Is The Only Remedy

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe." -Elie Wiesel

Quote excerpted from Wiesel's 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

"When tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of people are murdered, they become a kind of faceless blur, a numbing statistic in the public's mind. By contrast, the specific images of famous Rembrandt or Picasso paintings were personally familiar to many Americans — and that familiarity engendered the sympathy needed to bring about intervention." -Rafael Medoff, The Monuments Men Shows How America Saved Paintings While Letting Jews Die