Yom HaShoah

Beginning at sunset tonight, Israel keeps Yom Hashoah, Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day (full name: Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah.) Many Jewish communities around the world hold special services, although some communities keep different days to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

It is a day that recognizes both the approximately six million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust and the resistance to that horror.

There is an International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

Tom and I have connections to the victims of the Holocaust through family members and through members of my religious community.

We also remember other victims who died because of their ethnicity, nationality or sexuality.

I am always reminded on these occasions of an insight that occurred to me years ago: There is no them. There is only us. 

This is a truth that must be proclaimed in every generation because we so easily forget.