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Base commemorates ‘Days of Remembrance’

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MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. --  A memorial service for the victims of the Holocaust during WWII is April 14, 2-3 p.m., in Air War College's Brock Auditorium.

The service is hosted by the Maxwell-Gunter "Days of Remembrance" program committee, chaired by Senior Airman Kjelen Brown, 42nd Civil Engineer Squadron.

This year's national theme is "Learning from the Holocaust: Choosing to Act," and the installation theme is "Justice and Accountability after the Holocaust."

"This starts with the oath we all took to support and defend our Constitution, which speaks to our role in establishing justice, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty," said Col. Andrea Tullos, 42nd Air Base Wing commander. "The history of the Holocaust shows us the worst side of mankind, but also serves as a reminder that we must continuously recommit ourselves to preventing such atrocities from ever recurring."

Rabbi Elliot Stevens from Temple Beth Or, Montgomery, Alabama, will be the guest speaker for the service. Rabbi Scott Kramer from Agudat Israel Synagogue, Montgomery, assisted by Chap. (Maj.) Travis Yelton, installation chaplain, will light memorial candles for the victims of the Holocaust.

"In April 1945, American and British troops came face-to-face with the horrors of the Nazi regime when they liberated tens of thousands of starving, disease-ridden and dying inmates in numerous former Nazi concentration camps across Germany," said Dr. Robert Kane, Air University director of history, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. "Yet, despite the appalling conditions of these camps, western troops did not encounter any of the death camps where the Nazis murdered about three million Jews from all over occupied Europe by shooting or gassing between mid-1941 to February 1945. All but one of the death camps were located in Poland and liberated by the Soviet Army, advancing toward Germany by spring 1945."

Another two to three million European Jews died from disease, starvation and execution by the Nazis and their European collaborators between January 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, and the end of World War II in Europe in early May 1945, he said.

"European Jews, however, were not the only victims of Nazi racial and occupation policies during the war," said Kane. "The Nazis caused the deaths of 500,000 Romani (Gypsies), over 15 million non-Jewish Soviet citizens, about two million non-Jewish Poles and 200,000 mentally and physically handicapped Germans, as well as tens of thousands of other Europeans."

Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp, once wrote, "I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again." 

To remember the victims of the Holocaust, the United States government established the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in October 1980 and held the first national commemoration of Holocaust victims in April 1981, the anniversary month of the heroic 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The "Days of Remembrance" commemoration is not only to remember the victims of Nazi persecution during World War II, but also to remember similar acts of genocide since 1945, such as the 1975 "killing fields" of Cambodia, the 1994-95 Rwandan genocide and the "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans from 1994 to 2000, said Kane.

In addition to the memorial service, the program committee has a traveling Holocaust exhibit that will be on display at:

Maxwell medical clinic, April 13, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
Officer Training School, April 15, 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center, April 16, 7:30 a.m.-1 p.m.
Air Force Senior NCO Academy, April 17, 6:30 a.m.-12 p.m.
Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (Bldg. 892), April 17, 12:30-1:30 p.m.