Illinois officials gathered in Springfield Thursday for the annual Holocaust memorial ceremony. As happens every year, a survivor shared her story.
Magda Brown grew up in Hungary. On her 17th birthday in 1944, she was sent to the the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Upon arrival, her mother was sent somewhere else, so after a few days she asked the more experienced prisoners when she might see her relatives again. Their hands went up, pointing to the chimneys over the crematorium.
“We could not believe it,” Brown said. "We thought they were lying, because we come from a civilized, modern country. This is the 20th century. There’s no such (thing) happening as killing people and burning their (bodies) to ashes."
But of course it was true: six million Jews, gays, political dissidents and others, systematically murdered. The parting instruction for this and every Holocaust remembrance is simple: Never forget.
