Never again

It will be sundown, officially, at 7:31 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time today, April 11, 2018, in New York City.

By then, the sun will already have set elsewhere in the world.

At 7:05 p.m. in Jerusalem.

At 7:12 p.m. in Belzec, Poland.

At 7:16 p.m. in Sobibor, Poland.

At 7:24 PM in Treblinka, Poland.

At 7:30 p.m. in what is today Brzezinka, Poland.

At 7:58 p.m. in Dachau, Germany.

And in all of those places, as the sun sets, and for the 24 hours until the next sunset, we will remember.

We will remember those who perished merely because they were Jews.

Look in their faces. The faces of these members of two German Jewish families, gathering together in 1928.

Image courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

I count 23 faces in this photograph.

Two survived.

Those who perished because they were homosexuals.

Like this man, whose identification picture shows that he arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp on June 6, 1941, accused of homosexuality. He died there a year later.

Image courtesy of the National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau

Or because they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Image courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Like Helene Gotthold, pictured here with her children in 1936, a Jehovah’s Witness who was beheaded for her religious beliefs in Berlin in December 1944.

Or because they were Romani (Gypsy).

Image courtesy of Archiwum Dokumentocji Mechanizney

Like these Romani (Gypsy) families at the Belzec labor camp in Poland, 1940. A camp where 434,508 men, women and children were exterminated.

Or because they were disabled.

Or Poles.

Or Slavs.

Or Communists, or Social Democrats, or trade unionists, or authors, or artists, or…

Or just because.

Starting at sunset today we remember.

On this Holocaust Remebrance Day, Yom Hashoah, starting at sunset, we remember them all.

And to their memory we pledge this:

Never again.