International Holocaust Remembrance Day

 

Always Remember,  Never Forget.

Jewish children survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp.
Photograph courtesy Alexander Voroncov
USHMM/State Archives of the Russian Federation
 via Wikimedia Commons

Today is International Holocaust Day which commemorates the liberation 
 of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland
 by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.  

Prior to the advance of the Russians, at least 60,000 inmates were taken
on a forced death march from Auschwitz by the retreating Germans.
About 7,000 people were left behind.  These included many who were 
 sick and dying and children under the age of 15.

After entering the camp, Russian soldiers discovered at least six
 hundred corpses,  thousands of men's suits and articles of women's
 clothing, and at least seven tons of collected human hair.

Many of the battle-scarred men who liberated the camp that day 
 found themselves both shocked and horrified by the ghastly
mistreatment of those imprisoned there.

 Vasily Petrenko, Commander-General of the 107th Infantry Division
of the Russian Army would later recount:

"I, who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis' 
indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons.
I read about the Nazis' treatment of the Jews in various leaflets, but there was
nothing about the Nazis' treatment of women, children, and old men.
It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews."

Adolf Hitler and the forces of the Third Reich set out to annihilate the
 Jewish people from the earth.  Yet, like the many generations of Amalekites
 who have waged war against God and His people Israel over the centuries, the
 Nazis were soundly defeated and their evil regime was swept into the dustbin of history.

Within three years of the end of World War II, the newly reborn nation
of  Israel rose up like a beacon of hope from the ashes of the Holocaust, 
to take her place among the nations of the world, thus fulfilling God's
promise of restoration as spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

"Who has ever heard of such a thing?  Who has ever seen such things?
Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment?
Yet, no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children."
(Isaiah 66:8)

Since that day, May 14, 1948 , the Lord has been calling His people back to 
 their homeland.  He promised through the words of the prophet Amos
 that He would never allow them to be removed from the land again.

"Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, "when the plowman
will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes, the sower of seed.
The mountains will drip with sweet wine, with which all hills will flow.
I will restore My people Israel from captivity; they will rebuild and
inhabit the ruined cities.  They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;
they will make gardens and eat their fruit.  I will firmly plant them in
their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land that
I have given them," says the Lord your God.

Galil Mountain Winery

Upper Galilee

Israel

Photograph courtesy/Galil Mountain Winery