Hello, and welcome to my blog post about the International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023. A number of members from my family perished and fell victim to the massacre of Jews that happened in World War II, namely the one known as Babiy Yar. My maternal great-grandfather perished in the second world war by having been burnt alive while his extended family was shot in the Ukrainian city of Poltava. Like him, many others have suffered of the same fate. So, to truly understand the importance and impact of this devastation known as the Holocaust, I do not need to study some obscure and faceless documents from libraries across the world. I only need to look into the eyes of my grandmother and parents, who cry every year from the wounds of the loss that happened a long time ago, but would never heal.

This personal approach is a quite sufficient reason to never shy away from remembering the Holocaust. But, as we remember our loved ones each year, we also recognize of the importance of remembering the Holocaust by looking into the stories of those who were brave to not only survive, but also to be resilient enough to fight for their people. We can learn from those who gave their lives for all of us, while never stopping to protect our people. I had found some information on a website on the Holocaust, so that I can find the stories of people who lived and died in the second world war. I learned from this source about the people who were in the Holocaust, fighting and suffering. One person I found that peaked my interest to me was Lutz Haase, a Holocaust survivor.

Lutz was a German Jew who eventually was deported to a forced-labor camp, but then he was condemned to an underground bunker, where few survived. When he was there, the emotions he may have experienced could have been more of desperation, sadness, defeat, weakness, etc. He had experienced several hardships throughout forced labor. Eventually, he had met with a general who was a classmate of his before the war, and he helped Lutz arrange his leave to Shanghai. I was impacted by this story in a way that taught me to never give up, even in the most dire of situations, especially when Haase had to talk with the general to arrange his leave to Shanghai to survive. It made me think about what I would do if I were in a similar situation. This can teach others, because of the fact that, as a human being, you are much more valuable alive than dead. Haase could have perished, but he chose to survive and fight through the hardships he went through. And this can teach future generations to think along the lines of having to live to another day to fight and to survive – the very reason that keeps Israel alive and strong today.

In conclusion, what was learned here was abut the importance of remembering the Holocaust, the story of Holocaust survivor Lutz Haase, and how his story can teach us resilience and passion to survive and have a will to live. I want to say that the Holocaust is a supremely serious matter, and that many people died not only trying to protect the Jewish people, but also to set the foundation of the the newly found extreme resilience that Jews have been famous for. So we should be grateful to our ancestors for being strong enough to have us see this world.