Holocaust Remembrance Day

I am going to vent for just a moment. I saw a tweet this morning under the heading of "Holocaust Remembrance Day" where some unfeeling jerk  wrote (and POSTED) "It's Holocaust Remembrance Day and I've got gas!" Even if what this day stands for means nothing to you, even if you really just don't care, how could ANYONE tweet something so offensive? And no, I am not Jewish. But I do pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust every year. Much of my professional career has been dedicated to teaching Facing History and Ourselves' Holocaust and Human Behavior course. I have twice been honored to recieve their Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award. I have tried my best to make The Holocaust real to my students, and it became real to me. It became real by seeing the images and reading the books, but especially by meeting the people who lived through it. By hearing them tell their stories in their own words. In shaking their hands, or giving them a hug, in seeing in their eyes the sadness and the memories and the loss. He might be able to argue that I was tweeting because I wanted to tie my book When The Butterflies Flew Away to YamHaShoah as well as honring some friends who were survivors. Of that I am guilty. But unlike him I am not today or ever making a joke of one the greatest human tragedies in history. To this man I would say, watch Night In Fog, read The Sunflower, or Night, or I Promised I Would Tell, or even my book. Spend a few moments in the presence of someone like Max Notawitz or the late Sonia Weitz. Understand what happened before you make a callous, stupid joke about the murder of six million Jews, and several million others. Or better yet, if you really don't care, why not just keep your tweet to yourself?