Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoa.

"Never Again" does have special meaning for us. My middle name, Neach, is for my grandfather's brother, principal of the Jewish "college" in their area of Belarus, who was beaten over the head with a shovel and thrown in the ditch, along with almost all from the schtetl of Horaduc, except for some teens who escaped and fought as partisans, often being attacked by locals as well.

Judith Klinghoffer posts the song of courage, “Never Say”, from her uncle Mordechai who fought as a partisan:

Never say there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow,
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe.
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth,
Shall our bravery, our vigor blossom forth!

We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.

This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It’s not a song that birds sing overhead,
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and
grenades.

So never say that there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

NEXT time you meet someone with a stomach for appeasement, have them see this.