lest we forget

Last week, supermom Susan G. recounted a conversation with her high-school age daughter, triggered by an MTV special on the Holocaust. Here are the lessons of the Holocaust as they apply to us today, distilled from that conversation with Dom:
1.) Bigotry is alive and well.
2.) Beware of leaders who seek to take away your freedom.

The "March of the Living" (part of Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations) also admonishes us all to be mindful of what can happen when citizens hand over their freedoms.

Just months after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, over 20,000 walked three kilometres (two miles) from the camp to Birkenau where prime ministers of Israel and Poland urged the world not to forget the death of 6 million Jews.

"We are saying - we are alive, we are a nation. There are so many people from around the world here, it is a guarantee this will not happen again. We have all survived the Holocaust," said Jenya Sonts, a Russian student walking with three Indian Jews.

Survivors, some of whom returned for the first time to their place of anguish after losing parents and siblings, came to the march with their own families.

"After the survivors die, this will become history. When it does, someone has to say, I was here, I spoke to a survivor, I touched one. This is the torch passed from the survivors to the next generations," the march's founder, Abraham Hirchson said.

Via MSNBC