Remember the past so you can face the future

Jews around the world, and particularly in Israel, will commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as those who were able to fight back, beginning Wednesday evening, April 30th at 8 PM.
Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins with a public ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

The date of Yom HaShoah was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although the day became official by an act of Knesset, it has been traditionally commemorated by Jewish communities around the world. Some religious communities prefer not to commemorate the Holocaust on this day, which falls in the generally happy month of Nissan, but rather on Tisha B'Av or on the Tenth of Tevet, which the Chief Rabbinate of Israel fixed as the day for the recital of the Kaddish prayer for those murdered during the Holocaust whose date of death is not known.

Yad Vashem, the world's largest repository of information on the Holocaust, launched two YouTube channels in advance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The English channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/YadVashem) contains testimonies from Holocaust survivors, as well as archival footage, historians’ lectures on key issues related to the Holocaust, footage from world leaders' visits to Yad Vashem, and human interest stories such as family reunions. The Arabic channel has testimonies and archival footage about the Holocaust with Arabic subtitles.

Roughly 60 years after the end of World War II and the Nurnberg trials which exposed the magnitude of the genocide, Holocaust denial is going "mainstream". No more just the realm of extreme, obscure Neo Nazi groups or other cooks on the fringe of society, Holocaust denial is taking the main stage in some parts of the world. Iran recently organized an international "congress" to discuss the "myth" of the Holocaust, the Arab press is filled with cartoons reminiscent of "Der Sturmer" and politicians from Ahmadinejad to Abu Mazen (so-called "moderate") proclaim publicly their "doubts" about the Holocaust, denying its very existence and trashing the memory of the 6 million (of which 1.5 millions were children!) victims.

Olmert doesn't care that Abu Mazen thinks the Holocaust is a Jewish invention and Carter couldn't care less if Hizballah or Hamas, while denying the Holocaust, dream to end what Hitler had started. For every Holocaust denier there are enough "respectable" politicians that would do business with them, so Holocaust denial became "an acceptable" form of political belief!...Only 65 years since Ghetto Warsaw uprising....35 more years and Jean-Marie Le Penn's words ("the Holocaust was but a minor detail of World War II") will become reality, proving once again, that those who chose not to remember the past cannot face the future.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi visited the Warsaw Ghetto and a Jewish cemetery in Poland ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ashkenazi reportedly stood silent for a few moments and then said: "The answer to what we see here is us, the State of Israel, the IDF and victory."