Holocaust Remembrance Day: A 3G Recap

Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. –Edmund Burke

Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day inspired many strong images this year.
These especially spoke to me.

I am the grandchild of survivors. We’re called ‘3Gs,’ third-generation survivors. My grandparents’ heroic stories live on in me.

My grandmother survived the death camps of Auschwitz & Bergen-Belsen.

My grandfather was a partisan, that means he was part of the resistance movement. The Partisans fought back, sabotaged the Nazis, and rescued Jews. Yes, we fought back.

Can you count to 6,000,000? It’s a big number. 6 million people. 6 million names. 6 million souls lost.

In Israel, Yom HaShoah Memorial Candles bear the names of
victims to humanize the 6 million.
This candle is dedicated to Gerard, a student from Algeria who was killed at 8 years old.

But we’re still here. We survived.

No, forget survived…thrived. From the doorstep of death, we returned with passion. We are innovation, technology, humor, culture, philanthropy, medicine, agriculture, humanity—we are life.

A 2-minute siren blares on Yom HaShoah in Israel. Everyone stops, no matter where they are, and stands to honor the 6 million murdered. Watch here.

I am the granddaughter of survivors. My existence is a miracle, my Joyish life a triumph.  In awe, I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Lazlo and Magda Mittelman, my grandparents, my heroes.

If you are a Jew today, congratulations, you beat the odds.

We survived to deliver the promise, Never Again.

March of this year marked 70 years since the accelerated extermination of Hungarian Jews like my family in 1944, spearheaded by Adolf Eichmann. In this “March of the Living,” 12,000 people from numerous countries walked from Auschwitz to Birkenau dressed in blue rain jackets and Israeli flags.