Holocaust Memorial Day 2014

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is in memory of the journey that thousands of people have taken and are still taking. It’s day where we step back and take a moment to remember those who lost their lives due to genocide. This year, we take a moment to look back and remember the journeys people have taken during this time. Whether it be their journey to camps, to refuge or to freedom. 

Today has been playing a lot on my mind lately. There’s a lot to think about and sometimes we get so caught up in our own journeys in life that we forget the journeys of others. So, lately I’ve taken a real step back to remember these things. 

I’ve been alive for around about 134,420 hours, and I have been lucky in quite a few ways when I look at that number. I have been lucky enough to have that many hours in my life and as well as that, I am lucky enough to say that those thousands of hours that I have been living have been filled with demons that I have beaten and with memories that I love looking back at. But there are people that were my age who didn’t have the chance to say that.

I was in an RE lesson last year when we were learning about Anne Frank and the Holocaust and it really made me think. When we think of mass genocide, we look at it as a whole. By learning individual stories, we start to really understand the matter at hand. We start to see genocide, not as just a group of people being murdered but as an individual being murdered. You see this one person, who has a family, friends, people that they love and are about and that’s when it really hit home for me. I really did start to think of these people as individuals. People who were about the same age as me, older and younger than me, they were all a part of this genocide. These people all had dreams of their own, things that they wanted to do with their lives. They were aspiring to be teachers, doctors, scientists and so much more. They were looking forward to starting a new school, to having a child, to having grandchildren. They had a life with dreams that they were chasing that got torn away from them. 

A lot of the time I find that the hardest part to deal with. I’m in a part of my life at the moment where I’m starting to really focus on what I want to do in the future, where I’m personally finding I’ve kick started everything that I want to do with my life right now and it’s scary but still exciting. I would hate for that to be ripped away for myself, I would hate for that to be ripped away from anyone because they never got the chance to carry on that journey. They never get the chance to live through all their dreams and that’s what I’ve been taking my time out to remember. 

So, whether you light a candle or take some time out to remember those who had suffered in the holocaust, I hope that this Holocaust Memorial Day we can all just take a small moment to remember the journeys millions of people had no choice but to take.