something completely different: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today I had to attend Holocaust Remembrance Day in Berkeley for my work. There were many eloquent speakers but the star was Dora Sorell, 79 years old, Holocaust survivor. After a stifling trip of four days in the cattle cars she, her parents and two brothers arrived in Auschwitz. I quote: "We were pushed out of the cars. It was pitch dark. Blows were falling on us, dogs were barking, shots were heard. The chimneys were spewing flames and soot and smoke, and the air was filled with a strange smell of burned flesh. Then the loudspeakers said the men should leave the families and form another column on the left. When Mother heard this, she fainted in my arms. Father and my two brothers disappeared in the crowd, and I never saw them again. Mother [came to but] was crying. I tried comforting her, telling her we would continue to be together and help each other. We followed the crowd of women and children all being pushed ahead. As we got closer I saw an SS officer facing the crowd, pointing with his fingers who to go right and who to the left. I cried out: 'Mother, they are separating us!' Mother started crying, 'Don't leave me!' I promised her, but as I got closer I realized that only young girls were sent to the right-- mothers, children, elderly-- were sent to the left. Mother was pushed to the left, and I was dragged to the right. She was screaming, and as I looked back, I saw an image that will haunt me forever: a desperate mother crying and extending her hands toward her daughter, a marble statue of pain and suffering. This was on May 17th, 1944, the saddest day of my life, when all my family and thousands others were sent to the left-- were taken to the gas chamber." END QUOTE.
People were crying in the audience, as was I. Growing up in Holland I know the stories second-hand but hearing them from actual survivors brought home the terror so much more. Afterward I heard one woman talk to a local reporter, catching but a mere fragment of the conversation: "And then I was smuggled into Holland and people hid me." These stories I know, too, growing up in the country of Anne Frank but hearing them out of the mouths of actual survivors made the urge to remember and never forget all the greater.

There's a genocide going on in Sudan. After the event, people lined up to sign the Sudan petition and write checks. The US President is in Europe the coming few days. His army, that liberated Europe, is now in Iraq-- his army should be in the Sudan. Apparently we cannot remember enough because some people, including our President, have forgotten already...