Tuesday, January 27th, was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year is also the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. On Monday night, HBO aired the documentary "Night Will Fall," a movie within an movie, telling the story of British filmmakers documenting the horrors the Allied forces discovered as they liberated German concentration camps across Europe. The burying of that film footage since the end of World War II is another story, but the scenes of seemingly endless emaciated dead bodies, the exhaustion, joy, and bewilderment on the faces of the freed prisoners, and the almost utter complacency of the German soldiers and local townspeople, all made for a chilling juxtaposition.

At almost every agency across the AJFCA network, every day is Holocaust Remembrance Day. We provide the essential services that allow those who survived Nazi terror to live out their remaining years in dignity. We remember and honor the 6 million who perished by respecting and caring for those who hold the deepest memories of those horrific years. We hope the rest of the Jewish community, and all communities around the world, continue to work with us as we pursue this sacred obligation.

As you are reading this, I will have landed in Israel, just before the beginning of Shabbat. Nothing can ever make us forgive the Nazi atrocities against the Jews and others, and we, and our children for future generations, will never forget. But, knowing we have a Jewish homeland, not only connects us to over 3000 years of loss and triumph, but marks our resilience and continuing hope for the future.

Shabbat Shalom.   

Around 300 survivors of the Auschwitz death camp were gathering on Tuesday to mark 70 years since its liberation by Soviet troops, joined by world leaders for a commemoration held in the shadow of war in Ukraine and a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. Tuesday's gathering in southern Poland marks perhaps the last major anniversary that survivors of the Nazi German camp will be able to attend in numbers, given the youngest are now in their 70s. Some 1,500 attended the 60th anniversary.