Why we Remember...

In the fall of 1995, I was able to travel to the site of the notorious concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen.

It also is the place that Nazi victim, Anne Frank died and is buried at.

To stand there is a moving experience, to say the least.  How can you process what you see....when you gaze upon a mound of dirt, and see the words "5000" buried here...over and over again?

I came across this description of Belsen, when I sat in the museum located just a few feet from the mass burials, and it chilled me with its description.  Written by an Allied physician, trying to put into words his thoughts of what he saw just after the camp was liberated...as they started the process of burning down some of the disease infested buildings...

It seemed to us the devil smiled, then, and seemed to say, 'I am stronger, more personal and more fearful than you thought possible in your little sheltered lives and bourgeois homes.  You thought Apollyon was a myth, a faery tale of misty, ancient days when men had superstitious minds and didn't know about modern science, progress and motor-cars.  Well, I hope I've shown you otherwise.  Now go home and deny me if you can, forget Belsen, hate for a time, take a little bloody revenge and then go back and gradually feel it wasn't true.  You'll soon believe that even what you saw was propaganda, when you're not believed at home.  Then when again the world is lulled with its own petty round, I'll give you another taste of what I can do when men give me their souls.'

                                                      -Robert Collis "Straight On" (1947)

So, on Remembrance Day, I am thankful for the brave men and women who fought against this evil...and won for me and for my children and grandchildren, freedom and liberty.

May we never be "lulled" again.