John Mark Young
Holidays are very special days that we remember and celebrate.
Christmas is probably the favorite holiday for most of us when we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus-and the visit by Santa Claus also helps us to celebrate.
Easter is a holiday where we remember and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. We also remember—and thank Him—for His sacrificial death by crucifixion on the cross to save us from our own sins, but we don’t celebrate the day of His crucifixion as a holiday.
On Thanksgiving, we remember and share in the Pilgrims’ celebration and thanksgiving to God for His help in overcoming the challenges of establishing their families and homes in the New World.
On the Fourth of July we remember and celebrate the declaration of our Founding Fathers to form our new beloved America.
On November 2, 1983 President Reagen recognized a new holiday to honor, celebrate, and remember the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose dream helped make the equality that our country was founded on to be a reality for all of our citizens.
Last week we had another important day—only we don’t call it a holiday to celebrate, but it is a day to remember. January 27th was the day the United Nations General Assembly designated as Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that day in 1945 the Soviet Army liberated the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp in the closing days of World War II.
The liberation was certainly something that the prisoners themselves in the death camps would celebrate, but it’s not something the rest of us want to celebrate like our other holidays. We don’t want to forget it, though, either. After all, it’s often said, with some truth to it, that “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Today it’s hard to believe that one of our key allies, West Germany, which was then united with East Germany, was the principal instigator of both World War I and World War II and was the home base of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich. They orchestrated what they called the “Final Solution” to eradicate the Jewish race as well as other large groups of people that they deemed as undesirable.
Many Germans at the time did not accept that their country had been defeated in World War I and insinuated that disloyal politicians, mainly Jews and communists (and many Jews were considered to be communists), had orchestrated Germany’s surrender. In January of 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed to be the Chancellor of Germany and orchestrated the Nazi Party’s rise to power. One of his first acts was to sign a “Euthanasia Decree” to authorize the medical termination of the lives of undesirables and their offspring.
Over time, he secured passage of the “Nuremburg Laws” which said that only those of “German or kindred blood” could be citizens. That excluded Jews.
Another program on November 9-10,, 1938 which became known as “Kristallnacht” (“Night of the Broken Glass”) resulted in over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) being attacked and looted and over 1,000 synagogues being damaged or destroyed. That year Jews also began to be sent to concentration camps.
With the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, when Germany started the war by invading Poland, the persecution of Jews became even more intense as Hitler blamed them for the hardships of the war. That’s when Hitler ordered the extermination of all European Jews.
On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the next day Congress declared war on Japan. The following day Germany declared war on us and then we declared war on them, and World War II was then in full swing for the next four years.
Eventually, Germany set up ten concentration camps where they sent Jews and other undesirables, including those mentally and physically disabled, gypsies, Romas, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet Prisoners of War, and many others. Camps were set up where the undesirables were sent on death marches for torture and extermination. The details of their torture and murders do not bear repeating in a family newspaper, and the total number will never be known, but it was at least 6 million people.
The tide began to turn when the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on January 27, 1945. Shortly thereafter American troops liberated three other concentration camps and our other allies liberated the rest.
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27th as “Holocaust Remembrance Day.” It’s not exactly a day to celebrate something, but the Holocaust of World War II is certainly something worth remembering because “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”
