Yom HaShoah

[Visual content warning, near the end, for concentration camp survivors.]

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, instituted by the United Nations General Assembly, is on the 27th of January (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day).

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, in the Jewish calendar.

But I remind you, my friends, that the Holocaust killed not only Jews. That of the 11 million people killed in the Nazi concentration camps, 6 million were Jews, and 5 million were:

• political prisoners
• leftists
• liberals
• communists
• pacifists
• conscription resisters
• deserters
• spies
• prisoners of war
• unionists
• royalists
• social democrats
• socialists
• Freemasons
• anarchists
• convicts
• forced laborers
• immigrants
• gay and bisexual men
• lesbian and bisexual women
• people of color
• Jehovah's witnesses
• Roma (gypsies)
• people with mental illness
• people with disabilities
• alcoholics and addicts
• beggars
• homeless people
• sex workers
• "race defilers" (people who had sex with the "wrong" opposite-sex people)
• those who couldn't work
• racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities
• and more.

You and me.

Never again. Never forget.

I was privileged to know a number of Holocaust survivors growing up.

I honor them, those who are still living and the memory of those who have died.

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The Nazis used at least twelve distinct symbols in concentration camps.  Here are two posters depicting them:

Photos of Nazi concentration camp charts of prisoner markings public domain; source, Wikimedia; second photo by US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

For more information, I encourage you to see the Wikipedia entries on:

Nazi concentration camp badges at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges and

Holocaust victims at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims.