This is a fascinating online exhibition produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It follows the lives of six survivors and tells about their experiences. The more stories and experiences you can hear, the more you can learn. I highly recommend spending some time looking through this exhibition. Feel free to add any comments or reactions that you have . http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/life_after_holocaust/
I found this article while I was researching online today, and I thought it defined this website's goals perfectly. The very first sentence in this article states, "[t]aking the time to learn more about the past is one of the best ways to make sure that it isn't forgotten and that the mistakes of it aren't repeated in the future." This is the exact sentiment expressed in this website's name Never Forget Never Again. If you continue reading further, the article makes another interesting point. It explains, "[w]e can't erase the past, but turning a blind eye to it will only cause more problems down the road. Facing the horrors of the Holocaust is a part of life that we all need to accept as terrible, horrific, and all-too real." I think this last part is something everyone has faced in his or her lifetime. I know for me, facing the horrors is something that I have been doing with the interviews I have conducted for this website, but I will also face horrors in a class I am taking this year called Comparative Genocide. In this class, we will look at the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, and other mass killings that have occurred. It will be difficult to sit in a class for seventy five minutes every day watching videos of people being killed and reading the horrible accounts of the survivors, but I know that through this process, I will be learning more about what happened. And as this article voices, the more we learn today, the better prepared we are to prevent something else from occurring tomorrow.
This article can be found on Hitler's Children Website at the following URL http://www.hitlerschildren.com/article/1127-holocaust-survivor-stories#.UgKS-WRoTR4 Today marks the official beginning of my Gold Award project. I have been working on the set up and logistics for this project for about a year now, but today is the first day the website is launched. As my first post, I wanted to explain to my readers why this project started and how much it means to me. The purpose of this site is to spread awareness about the Holocaust. My montra has always been "Never Forget, Never Again." Never will forget about the atrocities that occurred during those terrible years. And never again can we let something of its caliber ever happen again. Apart from this larger message, there is also a much more personal connection that brought this project idea to my mind. My grandmother is a survivor and for years, she has been unwilling to tell my family her story. I know there are many other people out there with similar situations. The problem, however, is that within the next ten years or so, all of the survivors will have passed away, and with them, their stories. I believe that their stories are an important part of their identities that cannot be forgotten. When all of the survivors have passed away, there will be no more first-hand accounts of what happened. Children will have to learn about the Holocaust from textbooks rather than story time with their parents or grandparents. I cannot fathom that sixty, eighty, one hundred or however many years from now when students are sitting in a classroom that facts and figures are just being taught. Those children need to hear the stories just like I have been fortunate to hear. And so, that is the purpose of this website. I want the youth of today and tomorrow to read and see just how dreadful the Holocaust was in the hopes of inspiring them to stand up and prevent something of its sort from ever happening again.
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