The Holocaust became more than a series of unimaginable atrocities that happened long ago when I met Dr.Viktor Frankl in Vienna. As his student, I heard the story of his captivity and others by the Nazis. These firsthand accounts were so incredible, they remain with me to this day.

Their pain was without end, and their words and memories should never be lost.  Their stories enabled me to sense the horror of the atrocities done to the Jewish people, and I realized in order to be a witness it is not necessary to be Jewish.  Imagine the blood of those innocents slaughtered by the beast, and ask yourself “is it not a human obligation to feel the repulsion for what they suffered” ?  Stand in the middle of the terrified children, can you not be overwhelmed at the terror that was resident in those eyes?  Gaze upon the face of your parents and sense the awe and reverence you feel for them, and then see what was done to the elderly Jews.  Savor the harvest of your blessings, and the generations that have lived and will live in your families, and then see the empty fields barren without the sounds of those that were and would have been.  Do you not hear the restless winds that carry their shrieks to the four corners of the earth?  This epic of butchery must be cast into the light so that we can understand the pain that has no time limit.  It is the solemn duty of the living to open the graves that were filled in such a hurry, and pause at the altar of the lives that might have been.  We are the light that has to honor them.  We are the candles that must end the darkness of racism and genocide that was allowed to swallow them.  It is our heritage to answer the anti-Semites and bigots long before they build their gallows.  There will be no shattering of glass and no stars to be worn so that the targets of hatred may be identified.  It is the responsibility of those that believe in the value of every human to shine light on the insidious hatreds that are still resident in those that believe that the Jews are responsible for all of the evils of society.  There must be no more silence when the stereotypes are rolled out.  This is where we will find those that have perished in the struggle to rid our world of the blind hatred that spawned a period of pain that has never before been seen.  It is our mantle to wear the cloaks of brotherhood and sisterhood and to teach the diversity that will shine on the belief that only as children of the light can we save ourselves from the darkness.