75: Survivors

Today is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day.) 2020 is the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of the German Concentration and Death Camps by the Allies and the end of the Holocaust.

While we remember the 6 million men, women and children murdered by the Germans from 1933-1945 it is also important to remember that there are 400,000 Holocaust Survivors still living around the world: 189,500 Survivors live in Israel and 100,000 Survivors live in the United States. 

92% of all Holocaust Survivors worldwide live below the poverty line and every day more and more are dying (14,800 died in 2019.)

So when people ask why they should care about something that happened 75 years ago you can say:

- Because the elderly man or woman you see sitting alone outside could be a Holocaust Survivor (someone's Grandparent and Great-Grandparent) and that despite all the horrors they experienced when they were younger (torture, starvation, watching their friends and family all killed) they have tried to create a new life even when they continue to struggle for basic things like food and medicine.

- It's also equally important to continue to find and bring to justice those that committed these crimes. It doesn't matter if they are in their 80s, 90s or 100s. For decades they were allowed to live out in the open (in Germany, in Austria, in the rest of Europe, in South America, etc.) and still receive government pensions today for their "work" - killing innocent men, women and children. 

These murderers (who crushed newborn babies against buildings with their bare hands, who tortured the disabled, who beat the elderly in their final moments before being gassed) should not be allowed to spend the remainder of their days in peace and happiness.