Remembering the Holocaust

Remembering the Holocaust

January 27th is not a normal day. It is the day in which the world stops and remembers all the victims of the Holocaust: International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

During the World War more than 12 million people, between Jewish, homosexuals, communists and innocent citizens were killed by the Nazis in the concentration camps.

I personally think that a day to remember this huge amount of people has to be honored by everyone. Back in Italy every year we stop and we do a minute of silence and after that we usually watch a movie about the Shoah (the Holocaust) or we have a conference with one of the survivors. We always try to not forget what happened because we can always learn from the past and try not to make the same mistakes.

Senior Paula Vaquero says, “I think this event should be always remembered because events like this should not happen again.”

I agree, but a lot of people still try to hide this catastrophic event and don’t deal with it, maybe because they think is too far from them and that it doesn’t touch them personally. Well, as my teacher back home used to say, “It doesn’t matter how far something is from us, we cannot be blind, we cannot let these events slip through our fingers. You guys are young and you can step up and make a change!”

I realized in the United States media are not so focused on it and also in school I haven’t heard anyone talking about it. Erica Culbert explained that with the sophomore class read the book Night by Elie Wiesel. “It is important because it affected so many people, and it’s good to talk about it in school because it’s something interesting that we can learn from.” I wish we could talk about it a little more in school, so everyone can really understand how brutal and cruel it was.

In the end I think that no matter from where you are or when you were born, the Holocaust and all the innocents that died under the Nazi dictatorship should be remembered, otherwise they died in vain and we cannot allow it.