Kirtland remembers effects of Holocaust

  • Published
  • By Tanya Wilk
  • Kirtland AFB Chief's Group
Kirtland Air Force Base, NM --  The Holocaust, for mankind, is one of the most shameful periods in history. Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. While Jews were the primary victims, the Polish, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and people with disabilities were targeted. Millions more, including political dissidents, Soviet POWs, homosexuals and Jehovah's suffered grievous oppression and death under Hilter's Germany.

On April 12, 1951, the Knesset (Israel's parliament) proclaimed Yom Hashoah U'Mered HaGetaot (Holocaust and Ghetto Revolt Remembrance Day) to be the 27th of Nissan. The name later became known as Yom Hashoah Ve Hagevurah (Devastation and Heroism Day), later shortened to Yom Hashoah.

This year, Yom Hashoah is May 1. With the approval of Col. Robert Maness, 377th Air Base Wing commander, and sponsorship by the Kirtland Air Force Base Rising 6 and the Chiefs' Group, Kirtland AFB is observing Holocaust Remembrance during the month of May.

On May 6, we will host a guest speaker for Holocaust Remembrance at the Base Chapel at 3 p.m. Wolfgang Elston was born in Berlin, escaped Nazi Germany in 1939 and later became a professor at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico.

On May 5, 12 and 20, from 10 a.m. through 2 p.m., the Kirtland Rising 6 and Chiefs' Group will arrange a display at the Base Exchange to commemorate the Holocaust.

"... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again." -- Anne Frank