International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 65 years ago today, the Soviet Army liberated the Jewish prisoners who remained at Auschwitz-Berkenau which combined were the largest of the Holocaust death camps.

A CBS news story gives details of the elderly survivors who revisited the camps today. That story said "By the end of World War II, at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and others, had died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. Some 6 million Jews overall were killed in the Holocaust." This makes me shudder. I grew up in a St. Paul neighborhood that was home to many Jewish families. One of my high school and college jobs was in a clothing store owned by a Jewish family. Today, my interest in family history makes me wonder how many of those friends and neighbors suffered the loss of family members in the horrific camps.

I read another news story today -- about the desecration of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in France. How sad at anytime, but today it seems especially cruel.