10:00 am

Air raid sirens begin to wail furiously from every hilltop in Israel. As they wind up to an alarming scream every man, woman and child stands in silence, unwilling to move. It is holocaust remembrance day.

As the sirens started I slowly lowered my head to the ground. The unseen images of horror began to run through my mind and the chills ran up my spine.

The Hasidic boy on a Warsaw street stands in silence. He too looks painfully at the ground as his Nazi tormentors mock him, sacrilegiously cutting his long locks of hair that trail from under the sides of his tall black hat. My eyes move up to the street to the old man that could have been my father, his legs too weak to hold him up. He is beaten down and spit upon. His subhuman punishment holds no merit to him. He looks up to heaven, whispers, with bleeding mouth "Shema Yisrael, Adonai elohinu, Adoni ehad." He forcefully breathes his last breath with an unwarranted kick to the stomach.

They all line up in front of me at Auschwitz. Their frail bodies sickingly jaundiced, their eyes large and fearful, look up at me and I hesitantly look back into them. They are deep and they speak silently to me. I can't seem to remember, but I have seen the look before. I soon remember as my own eyes filled with tears. Their eyes are filled with more than just the hopelessness of death that awaits them, they are filled with unanswered questions as to why them? Why for so many years have they been tormented? I watch them as they are led away to the showers, they are not fooled, they have not showered in months. Their tormentors mock, and yet the silence of the Jew is deafening.

As the siren ends I raise my head and relief comes over me in waves. They were not my friends being led away. It was not my family being beaten and shot. It was not my neighbor out there on the street being humiliated. It is easy to disconnect myself from this grim reality.

We must take time to remember so that we never forget. One day it may be our family that is persecuted. You say it could never happen? It already did, twelve years ago, and the world ignored it.