Opelika Observer Staff Editorial - 4/1: Never forget

Last Friday, Henry Stern, one of our owners and a longtime Opelika resident, spoke to a group of Opelika Middle School students about his experiences and reflections as a Holocaust survivor.
For those lucky kids, it was a chance to see the pages of their history books take human form before their eyes, a living, breathing example of the past here in the present.
For the rest of us, it’s a reminder of a past we seem to rapidly be forgetting, as members of the “Greatest Generation” start to dwindle in number.
Stern is the last living Holocaust survivor in East Alabama. Only 21 remain in the entire state of Alabama.
Most of us can not say we’ve ever met a Holocaust survivor; sadly, this is how rare they’ve become.
The survivors of that horrible genocide carry with them the scars and emotional baggage of having family members, friends and loved ones taken from them and swiftly and brutally murdered.
Some have searched for decades for remaining relatives, holding out hope that there were others out there, more who made it through.
Stern was lucky enough to find family still alive. Others were not so blessed.
Six million Jews were killed by Hitler’s Nazi regime and countless scores of lives were never the same again.
Nor should they be.
In the case of atrocities so horrible as this, no flowery prose or emphatic words can adequately or accurately reflect upon it.
What sort of hatred lies within our souls that allows something like to happen?
How can man turn so swiftly against his fellow man?
We don’t know.
What we do know, what we must know, is that remembrance of the horrors that happened are the best preventive measure for them never happening again.
Human history is well-known for repeating itself in cycles, but the level of violence, bloodshed and hatred that accompanied the Holocaust should never and must never be allowed to repeat again.
As Stern was leaving the OMS class Friday, he signed small cards with the Star of David and two words, “Never Forget,” printed on them for the children to take home as a keepsake, a reminder for the children that the Holocaust happened and that they had met a survivor.
We may not all have a card, but we, too, must remember the message.
Never forget: two small words that carry with them an enormous amount of weight.
Each of us must accept the challenge to bear the weight and remember the words.
Never forget.
Never again.