"To build your future, you have to know your past" - International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The above mentioned Otto Frank quote is just one of the thousands of precious paraphrases we cherish today. But remembering through other's memories and words is apparently not enough. 


The history of the genocide perpetrated during the Second World War does not belong to the past only. It is a ‘living history’ that concerns us all, regardless of our background, culture, or religion. Other genocides have occurred after the Holocaust, on several continents. How can we draw better lessons from the past?   

 - says Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General. How could we learn from past mistake smore efficiently? Education needs to concentrate on the Holocaust and through that, explain how genocide is still an issue today. Noone would have thought that after the determination of 6 million Jews today, 70 years later genocide could be a reemerging problem!

I chose this well-known image because I always thought it  was a perfect representation of the terror. I think that tt is clear that the men in this picture have given up on their lives and this is what broke most of them. The mentality where the captured were ashamed of being alive and were ready to great death as a friend was what the Nazis wanted to achieve. This picture has been in all my history books since high school and has always struck me, no matter how many times I saw it. I just found out recently that Elie Wiesel,a Romanian born Nobel Peace Prize winner was in the picture. Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left. He is still alive today, still delivering his powerful message about peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity.


The whole world remembers the Holocaust today. Click here
to see more about how the UN plans to remember the 70th anniversary of the Auschwitz camp liberation.