Yes Virginia, there really was a holocaust.

I have been watching Band of Brothers. Tonight I watched the segment titled "Why We Fight". This is the episode where Easy Company comes across a concentration camp near a town in Germany. The scenes are pretty graphic, tragic, and heart wrenching. It was right that the German civilians from the town were made to clean up the camp; lifting the dead bodies, facing and dealing with the reality of what their Nazi leaders had done. The occupants intered in that concentration camp had been put there not because they were criminals, but because they were Jews. That one fact alone was the sole reason for the Nazi's subjecting them to the atrocities they had endured and under which so many of them had been killed or died.

I remember as a young lad in elementary school in the late 1950's, seeing some of the grainy pictures of the concentration camps on our black and white TV set. Back then there was no question that the holocaust had happened. The evidence, hardly 10 to 15 years after the end of the war, was over whelming. And there was also the continuing hunt for the war criminals that had perpetuated those atrocities.

An example of the information that was and is available is Alfred Hitchcock's Documentary on the Holocaust. Movies such as Schindler's List and The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler as well as others are based on historical documented events.

To deny the holocaust is to deny historical truth; it is to bear false witness regarding the nature and criminal activities of the 3rd Reich. We must never forget. Yes, there were other holocausts in the 20th Century. They should not be forgotten either. But if we forget this holocaust, I believe those others probably will very quickly be forgotten too.

~ The Billy Goat ~