Kirtland community remembers the Holocaust

  • Published
  • By Ryan Stark
  • Nucleus writer
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  Members of the Kirtland community came together at the Base Chapel on April 23 for an event held to reflect upon the Holocaust and observe the National Days of Remembrance.

Somber music set the atmosphere as people viewed the historical items on loan from the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum, including strips of cloth from the meager clothing issued to prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.

Insignia from those uniforms -- including Stars of David marking Jewish prisoners and pink triangles for homosexuals -- were also on display.

Tech. Sgt. Michael Brown of Kirtland's 415th Special Operations Squadron headed the committee that produced the remembrance event.

"The most important thing is that we provide an opportunity for people to honor and pay respect to, not only those who died, but their families as well," Brown said. "Hopefully we can impart the lessons of what happened in the Holocaust to our Airmen."

The committee set out jars of rice grains as a visual representation of those who died. There was one jar for each Nazi death camp and each grain of rice represented three people who died there.

The Nazi regime and its collaborators killed approximately 6 million Jews.

During the ceremony, Lt. Col. Thomas Elbert, chaplain for the 377th Air Base Wing, told the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was German Lutheran pastor who participated in the resistance to the Nazis. He was imprisoned and sent to the concentration camps. He was executed just two weeks before the camp he was in was liberated.

Elbert said that Bonhoeffer's choice to return to Germany and fight, leaving the safety of the United States where he was living at the war's start, demonstrated Bonhoeffer's character, which embodies an Air Force Core Value, "service above self."

The main speaker was Juliana Astrachan, a protocol assistant for the 377th Air Base Wing. She talked about how her grandmother grew up in the Netherlands. Astrachan's said her grandmother's family endured the German invasion and occupation and helped their Jewish neighbors hide from Hitler's agents.

"The Dutch people, especially, never hesitate to help people," she said. "They put their lives at risk every day."

A German bomb killed Astrachan's great aunt, who was six. The rest of the family was harassed and beaten by the occupiers. Yet despite the danger it posed to them, the family still took it upon themselves to save two young Jewish girls by hiding them from the Nazis. Astrachan said she hadn't intended on being the main speaker for the event, but simply wanted to tell her family's story.

"I just speak from the heart and try to tell a story of resistance and resilience," she said. "Resilience is one of our key programs in the Air Force, and I think talking about this is just being a good wingman."