We Remember the Holocaust Victims

    Today my wife and child listened to a survivor of World War II, from Slovakia. They were blessed and survived. A kind priest and a shepherd family took them in and saved them. This two-year-old baby made it. Almost killed for his religion. But gracefully lived. Millions did not. Over six million (I am always amazed and horrified that I read an article in the newspaper in the mid-1980s that an additional 250,000 Jewish victims were accounted for that until then, forty years later, had not been counted properly. A quarter of a million people!). The German nationalists under Adolph Hitler targeted and killed Gypsies, Catholics, special needs people, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others. Many were tortured, forced to labor, starved and left to die of awful diseases.

    It was bad. The worst. The Soviet Union took on the Germans, and thankfully withstood the onslaught.

    We remember the victims and the survivors. We look to never repeat such horrific atrocities. But as we speak there are the forced labor and concentration camps in China, there is the egregious war aged by Russia in the Ukraine, and millions suffer around the world.

    In our homeland we have thousands who die yearly from violence and neglect; but we keep the memories of this sad and tragic period of Europe alive. We cannot let this hatred and focused, systematic injustice happen again. We see China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and others repressively deal with their populations. 

    As bad as life can be in the United States, it is much worse elsewhere. We have to stay strong and cognizant, to ever be vigilant to avoid such travesties and dangerous outcomes.

    We will fight for all rights to believe or not believe in God as we choose, to have freedom of religion, assembly, speech, and the rights to life and property.