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Holocaust remembrance reflects on power of words
YOUNGSTOWN
“The Power of Words in the Holocaust” was the theme of 24th annual Holocaust Commemoration in the Mahoning County Courthouse rotunda.
“Throughout history, words used unfairly have promoted hatred and even murder,” said Jesse McClain, Holocaust education specialist with the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.
Disparaging words “dehumanize and make it easy and acceptable to do things one would never think of doing otherwise,” he told the gathering Tuesday, which was sponsored by the federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council.
“Even today, words are frequently used to incite, rather than to inform,” McClain said.
Rabbi Joseph Schonberger of Temple El Emeth told the audience it’s important “to hone the use of language in every medium for the betterment, rather than the detriment, of humanity, to help people, instead of hurting people.”
Mayor John A. McNally presented a proclamation in recognition of the event.
“Words are powerful tools, no matter how they are presented, and they have a huge impact,” McNally said. They shape public opinion, and so it is important for all of us to chose those words wisely.”
Local high-school, junior- high and middle-school student winners were recognized for poetry and essays they wrote in a contest that used the power of words theme.
In a solemn ceremony, children, grandchildren and a great-grandchild of Holocaust survivors lit six candles, one for each 1 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The local memorial event took place in conjunction with the annual international observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
That uprising began April 19, 1943, after German soldiers and police entered the ghetto to deport its residents to concentration camps.
By mid-May of that year, the Germans crushed the uprising, leaving the ghetto in ruins and deporting its surviving inhabitants to the camps.
“The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe,” according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Some 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, which was the Nazi-sponsored persecution and annihilation of that group of people and others, including gypsies, Poles and people with mental or physical disabilities.
Also oppressed and killed by the Nazis were homosexuals, political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Russian prisoners of war.