Fran Morris 7-5-2023
When reading or hearing about the stories of people who were murdered, escaped, or hid during the Holocaust, it is hard to even imagine how the ones who lived through those years or months were able to cope. Jews have had to be resilient throughout their history with periods of being killed or captured and becoming slaves.
But, that couldn’t possibly have prepared them for facing extermination in the gas chambers of Nazi death camps. The Holocaust Remembrance Garden of Hope in Kingwood, Texas, will not let that history be erased.
Recently, as I drove down a street, I saw beside the road a small white cross with flowers around it as a memorial to someone who had died in a car wreck at that spot, and I felt a sadness about that tragedy and for the family and friends of that person. It was seeing this marker, and others like it that have flowers, balloons, or pictures that convey this was a human being whose life was senselessly snuffed out by someone who was negligent. The sadness I felt is the human spirit reaching out to other human spirits in their pain. God placed this spirit in His humans because He loves us, and He made us so we could have a relationship with Him, and with each other.
The Holocaust was a planned, insidious event borne out of hatred, greed, and control of power by evil intent, and communicated with passion of deceit and manipulation of the people of the world. Granted, many people turned blind eyes or deaf ears, or refused to believe such atrocities could actually happen in a civilized society. Others didn’t want to get involved. Even so, stories abound about brave citizens who opened their hearts and homes to protect Jews fleeing for their lives. Most people have heard about Anne Frank and how she and her family lived undetected in an upstairs floor in a Holland family home. Another family in Belgium saved the life of David Rossler, born Daniel Langa, after the Mother Superior of a Catholic convent helped David’s family escape when the convent was raided (this account was written by Jack Beresford in NewsWeek). And countless other stories of human kindness.
In spite of efforts of some groups to deny that the Holocaust ever occurred, truth always comes out. People are beginning to declare that such monumental events should not be ignored, even if it means that we human beings are forced to come face to face with the reality of the failure to recognize or accept someone could callously brutalize and ravish an entire population, and without a twinge of remorse. Hitler must have known that society as a whole would have condemned his actions, because he tried to keep them secret from the rest of the world. This, by the way, still occurs in the world today. It is the infection of the evil spirit of domination, hatred, and mortal sin of envy.
It is that human connection spirit that binds humans together that he was fighting against, and that if it were widely known and believed he would be stopped. Once it was in the open, millions of Jews had already been murdered.
This is why more emphasis is placed on the Holocaust: it must not be repeated! Anywhere. That is why we are seeing more publicized accounts, books, movies, documentaries, and educational efforts to make people aware: knowledge and wisdom
This is why the Holocaust Remembrance Garden of Hope is being developed and under construction as we speak. It is a walk-through trip that that brings you a hands-on reality when you pick up a little decorated rock and turn it over and read the name of a child and the age and which Nazi concentration camp he or she was in when taking the last breath. These children will be remembered as well as their families because we human beings are connected in spirit, compassion, personalizing experiences others go through.
