The millions killed during the Holocaust will never be forgotten if Soldiers from Fort Jackson and religious leaders from Columbia, South Carolina have anything to say about it.
The post commemorated the acts of courage of Holocaust victims and survivors during a Days of Remembrance event May 5 at the Officer's Club on post.
The Jewish observance of Yom Hashoah, or Day of Remembrance, started the evening of May 4 and ended the following evening.
"Today as the number of Shoah survivors sadly decline, the duty of remembrance falls upon our generation and future generations not yet born," said Rabbi Hesh Epstein, from the Chabad of South Carolina during the invocation. "That is why this Yom Hashoah remembrance day here at Fort Jackson is a great asset and partnership to commemorate the value of this very special day."
The Holocaust Remembrance Day is a vital part of the Jewish calendar, Epstein added, because it is a "focal point to our remembrance."
"We cannot bring the dead back to life, but what we can bring back is their memories and be sure they are never forgotten."
Six candles were lit during the somber event each carrying a special meaning. The candles symbolized:
n The silence of death, silence of life and silence of destruction
n This child, by now gone, for dreams that ended before they started
n The old and the young, for countless goodbyes filled with emotion
n For a mother in pain clutching a child on selection day
n The Jewish culture that lived and flourished in Warsaw, Poland, for long
n For the six million Jews who vanished in smoke without a trace.
Remembering the Holocaust allows people to learn and reflect on what happens ensuring it never happens again, said Command Sgt. Maj. Charles Gilmer, commandant of the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant Academy.
The Nazis systematically murdered so many people that "to put it in context," he said, it would be as if "you killed the entire state of South Carolina, every man, woman and child -- twice."
Dr. Henry Miller, a member of the Columbia Jewish Federation, and special guest speaker, said the luncheon not only commemorates the millions murdered but the "relentless instinct" of those
who survived.
"What is worth noting is the stories of the many European righteous gentiles who tried to hide Jewish families while putting their own families at risk. These acts are examples of truly courageous
acts of selflessness."
Miller is the son of Holocaust survivors Cela and David Miller. His father was 18 years old and his mother 15 when the Nazis came to take them away.
David Miller lived in the Warsaw Ghetto along with the "1,000 poorly-equipped" Jews who retaliated against their German oppressors.
When the Nazis crushed the Warsaw Uprising, David Miller was able to sneak out through the sewer system. He would eventually be caught and sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp before
escaping weeks before the Red Army liberated the camp.
Cela Miller spent the war working as slave labor in munitions factories before being liberated by Allies.
His parents had managed to survive being a Jew in Central Europe when being of that religion meant "you were likely to die."
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that by 1945 the Nazis and their collaborators had killed roughly two out of every three European Jews.
Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled persons, and those Germans thought as ethnically inferior were also targets of the Nazi genocidal behavior.
After the war, Dr. Miller's parents would meet and be brought to America as refugees sponsored by the Beth Shalom Synagogue in Columbia.
Dr. Miller ended by calling on everyone to never allow forces of intolerance "to have a place in our world."
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