April 12, 2018: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
April 12, 2018: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
This day in 2018 is designated as Yom Hashoah--Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day--a day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel at 10AM, an air raid siren sounds throughout the country and everyone stops what they are doing, including motorists who stop their cars in the middle of the road, standing beside their vehicles in silence as the siren is sounded. Thousands in Jerusalem visit Yad Vashem--Israel’s official memorial to the victims of Holocaust. Meanwhile in Auschwitz, Poland, people march the 3-kilometer path leading from concentration camps of Auschwitz to Birkenau as a tribute to all victims of the Holocaust.
I have visited both Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Auschwitz/Birkenau in Poland. As I walked through the gate of Auschwitz and throughout the Birkenau camp, I realized I was standing on hallowed ground where the innocent lives of so many Jewish people were lost at the hands of evil men. There are no words to describe the emotions that arose in me.
On his visit to Auschwitz, Pope Benedict XVI said, “To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany. In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? In silence, then, we bow our heads before the endless line of those who suffered and were put to death here; yet our silence becomes in turn a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, a plea to the living God never to let this happen again.”
Even though it is a place of unspeakable, evil crimes, evil did not triumph. As the visits by tens of millions visitors to this hallowed ground since the Holocaust attest, the sacrifice of so many have awakened the conscience and compassion in the hearts of modern men and women. On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, we implore our Heavenly Father to have mercy on us and on the whole world. -Fr. Paul Yi
I have visited both Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Auschwitz/Birkenau in Poland. As I walked through the gate of Auschwitz and throughout the Birkenau camp, I realized I was standing on hallowed ground where the innocent lives of so many Jewish people were lost at the hands of evil men. There are no words to describe the emotions that arose in me.
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| Yad Vashem: memorial to Holocaust victims - Jerusalem |
Even though it is a place of unspeakable, evil crimes, evil did not triumph. As the visits by tens of millions visitors to this hallowed ground since the Holocaust attest, the sacrifice of so many have awakened the conscience and compassion in the hearts of modern men and women. On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, we implore our Heavenly Father to have mercy on us and on the whole world. -Fr. Paul Yi
