Holocaust Day of Remembrance 2016

  • Published
  • 355th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  Eight holocaust survivors told their harrowing tales of survival during the Holocaust Day of Remembrance at the Dove Chapel May 9.

Dessert lightning team members were invited to listen to holocaust survivors’ personal stories and participate in a candle lighting ceremony to remember those who were lost.

Sidney Finkel, Holocaust survivor, recounted the deaths he witnessed on his first day arriving at the Buchenwald concentration camp when he was 11-years-old.

“Then the cold water started and the people were so sick and they just fell down and died because we were not allowed to leave [the showers],” Said Finkel.

“We light a candle for the six million Jews and for the nearly six million non-Jews who perished in a planned system of human destruction the scale of which had never before been even imagined,” said U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Charles, 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern) A2 operations superintendent.

The ceremony concluded outside with the release of butterflies as a symbol of hope.

“As long as genocide remains a threat, we must continue to ask ourselves about the consequences of action and inaction,” Said Charles. “That is how we strive to fulfill the promise of ‘never again’.”