Today January 27 marks the day in history when hell on earth was discovered. The Nazi death camp Auschwitz was liberated by the Allies on this day in 1945 and the full extent of a Holocaust became evident.
The reason why this day is so significant, and why it is marked as Holocaust Remembrance Day, is because up until the point of Auschwitz's liberation the allies knew that the Jews were being murdered, but the full extent of the crime was not really evident until Auschwitz was discovered, after which humanity realised that hell was indeed a place, not so much under ground, but up here on earth.
The term "Hell on earth" suddenly became reality.
At its height Auschwitz death camp was murdering in excess of 20,000 people a day; that's men, women and children. Tiny babies were gassed.
Auschwitz was not a concentration camp, it was an extermination camp. It's was the biggest murder factory in the history of human kind.
The task of the camp was to contribute to the mass extermination of the Jewish people. Because this was Hitlers and the Nazis plan.
It wasn't just murder, it was mass murder, the mass murder of a people, of innocents, innocents whose only crime was to be born Jewish.
Today visitors to the camp can still feel the presence that evil has been done there. The silence at the site of the gas chambers is still eerie and the whole feel to the place is one of awe and sadness, sadness at the memory of the innocent souls that were put to death there.
Today we remember those lost souls, millions of whom were young and who never got to grow old and enjoy life.
They are blessed and their memories are blessed and their suffering must always be a reminder of what we must in future avoid.
The words NEVER AGAIN should not or ever be just words, but a statement of fact and a commitment from all of the good of humanity.
G-d Bless the victims of the Holocaust.
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