Holocaust Remembrance: What the Holocaust Means to Me Published April 15, 2009 By SSgt Tamara Potier 349th AMW Equal Opportunity Office TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- While researching for this article, I couldn't help but ask myself, "What does the Holocaust mean to me?" In reflecting on this, I came to realize the Holocaust has meant different things to me at different periods within my life. My first memory of the Holocaust is reading the story of Anne Frank during middle school. I remember feeling great compassion for their deaths, but more discomfort in the small living area. This was a period in my youth when I wanted independence and a special place of my own. I couldn't imagine eating, sleeping, and doing personal things in such a public manner. The Holocaust meant a loss of independence. As an undergraduate student, I read Night, by Elie Wiesel for a critical thinking course. I was well beyond my teenage years and a mother. My son was a toddler and my daughter was a newborn. When Wiesel wrote, "Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky" (p. 32), I wept as a mother for the deaths of so many children. I was paralyzed with fear and deep sadness by the brutality of the Third Reich. The Holocaust meant a loss of innocence. When I transitioned into the Equal Opportunity Office, I attended a conference in southern California. I had the opportunity to visit the Museum of Tolerance. The Holocaust Exhibit included a re-creation of a 1930's pre-war Berlin Street outdoor café. It highlighted various conversations of people concerning the impending Nazi occupation of Germany. Some people were hopeful and jubilant. Some people were skeptical and apprehensive. For me, the most frightening were those who were apathetic. It was in that moment my own meaning of the Holocaust had come full circle. The loss of independence, the loss of innocence, and the loss of compassion are deficits the Holocaust revealed in humanity. Of all the special observances throughout the year, the Holocaust Days of Remembrance has impacted me the most. In remembering the victims, survivors, aggressors, and rescuers, we transcend the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, and national origin. The Holocaust Days of Remembrance is acknowledging that we all share the strengths and frailty of being human. During a speech to the German Bundestag, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Yehuda Bauer, said, "I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strengthen them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander". Professor Bauer captured so well what I could not articulate and truly feel what the Holocaust means to me. The Holocaust is the persecution and genocide of people primarily within the European Jewish, Roma, Sinti (Gypsies), Polish, and mental and physical disability communities. The systematic annihilation of over six million people was sanctioned by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Holocaust Remembrance Day is April 21, 2009 and the Days of Remembrance are April 19-26, 2009. As we remember the victims of this horrific atrocity, may we all be encouraged as we serve our great nation and preserve freedom throughout the world. References: Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. (1993). New York: Bantam Books. Wiesel, Elie. Night. (1986). New York: Bantam Books. Museum of Tolerance. www.museumoftolerance.com