Reading what Balram Kapoor wrote on the Holocaust Internatinal day brought tears to my eyes and I thank you so much for posting for the International Holocaust Memorial day in memory of the one and a half million children who could not speak on their behalf. The strong words at the end of this eulogy bring me the chills and I wish to relate. My mother Sonia Frenkel Welis had a number on her hand. When I was a young girl I did not really know the meaning of this horrible number, I asked her and at the time she did not speak about the Holocaust as she did not want to traumatize my sister Elaine or my brother Sid. She had tears in her eyes when she told me they branded her like an animal, cut her hair and pushed her into a shower.She was a young adelescent at the time and never forgot how humiliated she felt and how lonely she was. Then she looked at me with her wise and beautiful blue eyes and told me not to worry and that she would always take care of me. Now, let anyone try to tell me it did not happen that my mom Sonia Welis Frenkel was not a Holocaust survivor, then who am I? I am who I am and NO one can take that away for me. Mommy I miss you so much, may you rest in peace and know that your legacy lives on forever in my heart and in the heart of so many educators and children on our planet. I pray you are proud of me.
Marsha Goren - I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor
Edit
"The 2012 observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust will focus on the theme “Children and the Holocaust”. The United Nations will remember the one-and-a-half million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust, together with the thousands of Roma and Sinti children, the disabled and others, who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Some children managed to survive in hiding, others fled to safe havens before it was too late, while many others suffered medical experiments or were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at the death camps. Highlighting the impact of mass violence on children, this theme has important implications for the 21st century."Illustration: Auschwitz susrvivor - Sonia by Tanya Pahwa, SMSchool, Meera Bagh, New Delhi, India - Butterfly by Sonia's grandson: Matt Chateauneuf