{"id":1202,"date":"2023-01-27T11:48:07","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T00:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjaa.org.au\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2023-01-28T11:33:37","modified_gmt":"2023-01-28T00:33:37","slug":"holocaust-remembrance-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjaa.org.au\/he\/holocaust-remembrance-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust Remembrance Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The United Nations General Assembly, in\u00a0 2005, designated January 27\u2014the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau<\/a>\u2014as International Holocaust Remembrance Day<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The purpose of this day is two-fold:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. to serve as a date for official commemoration of the victims of the Nazi regime and<\/li>\n
  2. to promote Holocaust education throughout the world.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For those of us brought up within the Jewish community, this is a bitter-sweet occasion. Sweet as we are alive to commemorate this event but bitter to recall its significance.<\/p>\n

    Since my early childhood I was taught by my parents about the Holocaust, we watched films of the camps, saw photos of the horror and these were explained to me. For some reading this, this may seem very confronting. It was and it is. Our people were united in the view summarized in the statement “Never Again!”(1)<\/sup><\/a>The phrase\u00a0 “Never Again!” may have originated from a 1927 poem by Yitzhak Lamdan which stated “Never again shall Masada fall!” The phrase has\u00a0 been used by the Jewish people since the Holocaust but has been adapted for other genocides such as Cambodia, Ethiopia and today aspects of the war in the Ukraine. As such, is more an expression of hope than reality. A fallen world continues to practice these evils.<\/span><\/span>