HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY, APRIL 12, 2018

On PBS, April 11, 2018, a program aired honoring the Holocaust of WWII, its Jewish survivors and the 6 million others killed by the Nazis.  Of course, thousands of emaciated bodies left in open graves were found by American and other Allied soldiers as they advanced across Europe.  (The Germans had contests to see which death camp could kill the most Jews in the last days before they were invaded and knew their time of dominance was short.)  Those open graves didn't include the Jews who were killed in the bestial ovens--all because one man thought he was better than another race and taught and led a nation to hate.

After the Battle of the Bulge, fought from December 6, 1944-January 25, 1945  (VE Day was May 8, 1945), a rabbi held a Jewish service in which he honored all the war dead.  Other services were held for the Catholic and one for the protestant dead.  (Some 610,000 Americans fought in the battle that racked up 89,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed--the largest and most deadly battle of  WWII.  The rabbi admonished everyone to remember why the war was fought and that all the men in those graves had the same red blood; no race was better than another and that we all have a lot in common.  Elsewhere, another rabbi said, as he and other soldiers peered into the open graves at a death camp, that some might not know what we fought the war for, but that sight certainly represented what we fought against.  Those dead Jews, naked, skin and bones, stacked on top of one another, literally thrown in mammoth graves as a piece of trash should bring to remembrance what the ultimate state of man is when he is deceived and greedy to take another's right to exist as a human being because he thinks he is superior to another human being.

The Germans took captive 300 American Jews among the thousands of service men at the Battle of the Bulge.  Jews were separated from other races and taken to the Nazi death camps; only 63 survived until the Allied Forces set them free.  One company of Allied Forces captured by the Nazis included some Jews and their commander, who was not a Jew, was ordered to point out which of them were Jews and the commander said they were all Jews whereupon the Nazi Col. put a Luger in his face and demanded to know.  The answer was, "You can kill me but you only have a few days and the Allies will be here and you will be charged with war crimes."  The Nazi strode off and left them alone.  Oh, to love a fellow human like that and not hate.