International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Eighty years ago, on January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was finally liberated. It was a place of unspeakable horror. This is a day to never forget the millions who were killed and be sure their lives are remembered.

Both of my maternal grandparents left their Hungarian homeland as teenagers in the early 1900s, settling in New York City, where they met and married in 1911. Both lost relatives and in-laws to the Holocaust. Both had relatives who survived the Holocaust. 

A photo from Yad Vashem Photo Archives shows Jewish people from Hungary rounded up and transported to Auschwitz in May of 1944. This crowd may include Paula Schwartz, my grandfather's younger sister, who was killed on May 21, 1944, according to the eyewitness testimony of her daughter--a survivor who later sat for an emotional video interview and provided a written statement about relatives murdered at Auschwitz. 

Never again, never forgotten.