Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe entirely.
This is a depressing event in the history of mankind and one must learn from the past and not repeat such heinous act in future.
“The message of love and peace can be spread by constant dialogue and interaction between scholar of various religions” – Dalai Lama
At the International Political Forum we have formulated a list of all the things you can do starting this International Day Of Commemoration In Memory Of The Victims Of The Holocaust:
Pick up your pen and starting writing a letter addressed to a German street. Say something nice. The mere fact that somebody would even just sit down, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through, with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up and the iPhone is pinging and we’ve got six conversations rolling in at once, that is an art form that does not fall down to the Goliath of “get faster,” no matter how many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters to our chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages into palettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we have needed to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far too long.Try to know more of the history. The people killed in the war, they all had a story. Who knows you might be able to find a hidden tale of hope and dreams and carry it forward for the world to know.
If there is one lesson you can take from a life of a volunteer firefighter is that don’t wait to be a hero. Yo can be in any part of the world, speak any language but actions are universally understandable. Where ever you go, whom ever you meet always help and make sure you leave a happy memory for people to recall.Don’t wait until you make your first million to make a difference in somebody’s life. If you have something to give, give it now. Serve food at a soup kitchen. Clean up a neighbourhood park. Be a mentor. Not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody’s life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one. So get in the game.
3. Dangers Of Silence. Speak Up!
Don’t stay silent against injustice. Not mentioning about the wrong doing is a crime in itself. Martin Luther King once said .”In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Silence is the residue of fear. It is feeling your flaws gut-wrench guillotine your tongue. It is the air retreating from your chest because it doesn’t feel safe in your lungs. Silence is Rwandan genocide. Silence is Holocaust. It is what you hear when there aren’t enough body bags left. It is the sound after the noose is already tied. It is charring. It is chains. It is privilege. It is pain. There is no time to pick your battles when your battles have already picked you. Live everyday like you have a microphone in your mouth. Speak up against wrong and speak for the right!
4. Tragic Tales of Everyday Objects
These are simple objects: clocks, keys, combs, glasses. They are the things the victims of genocide carried with them on their final journey. We are all familiar with these mundane, everyday objects. The fact that some of the victims carried personal items such as toothpaste and a toothbrush is a clear sign they had no idea what was about to happen to them. Usually, they were told that they were going to be exchanged for prisoners of war.
These items are recovered from numerous mass graves, and the main goal of this collection of the items is a unique process of identifying those who disappeared in the killings, the first act of genocide on European soil since the Holocaust. Not a single body should remain undiscovered or unidentified. Once recovered, these items that the victims carried with them on their way to execution are carefully cleaned, analyzed, catalogued and stored.
Many of them get destroyed, believe it or not, or they get simply shelved, out of sight and out of mind. Once all the missing persons are identified, only decaying bodies in their graves and these everyday items will remain. In all their simplicity, these items are the last testament to the identity of the victims, the last permanent reminder that these people ever existed. Let us try to preserve them, save the identity of a community and preserve the traditions.
We all must have seen an abandoned space in a community but what if we turn it to a productive entity and try to bring a subtle change to the mindset of people and make them introspective of their life using it?
Candy Cheng turned the side of this abandoned house into a giant chalkboard and stencilled it with a fill-in-the-blank sentence: “Before I die, I want to … “ So anyone walking by can pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space.
So this neglected space became a constructive one, and people’s hopes and dreams made me laugh out loud, tear up, and they consoled me during my own tough times. It’s about knowing you’re not alone. It’s about understanding our neighbours in new and enlightening ways. It’s about making space for reflection and contemplation, and remembering what really matters most to us as we grow and change.Two of the most valuable things we have are time and our relationships with other people. In our age of increasing distractions, it’s more important than ever to find ways to maintain perspective and remember that life is brief and tender. Death is something that we’re often discouraged to talk about or even think about, but I’ve realized that preparing for death is one of the most empowering things you can do. Thinking about death clarifies your life. Our shared spaces can better reflect what matters to us as individuals and as a community, and with more ways to share our hopes, fears and stories, the people around us can not only help us make better places, they can help us lead better lives.
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