27.01.2023
A Reflection for Holocaust Memorial Day
Archbishop Michael Jackson offers a reflection for International Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place today, January 27.
Holocaust Memorial Day reminds us every year of the importance of remembering.
We remember individuals, each of whom had a life for living; we remember communities, all of whom had a culture, a dignity and a vibrancy to share; we remember a people chosen by God whose place in history brought to the pinnacle of achievement the dynamic of individual and community everywhere on earth they lived.
We remember how such people were cruelly and cynically cut down – women and children and men, young and old – tortured and killed in the cause of an ideology that could not, nor would it, make room for The Other in the open space of existence.
Many of our ways of understanding human motivation have changed. Nothing can cause us to un–remember The Holocaust. Hatred of Jewish people is on the rise worldwide. We all must remain careful and caring, exercizing the voice of vigilance in the face of anti–Semitism. Such anti–Semitism is a very specific and historic hate crime that takes to itself an entitlement to obliterate those whose existence it cannot tolerate and whose flourishing it cannot endure.
It is for this reason that Holocaust Memorial Day is a day for all to pause, to remember and to change our ways and our attitudes.