Lajes observes Holocaust Days of Remembrance

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Angelique N. Smythe
  • 65th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
LAJES FIELD, Portugal --  A 5K Run in which participants ran in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust took place at Lajes today. Each runner carried names of victims in support of the theme "Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue."

Congress established the Days of Remembrance, April 15 to 22, as an annual commemoration of the Holocaust, and Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed on April 19.

"I think it's important for us to remember the individuals who needlessly died just because of who they were," said Staff Sgt.
Lora Begley, 65th Medical Group Education & Training NCOIC. "I think it's very important we remember these individuals and what they had to go through. It also brings about the awareness of what humans are capable of, and that we can do whatever we can as individuals and as a military to help prevent things like this from ever happening again in the future."

On April 16 Team Lajes had a Candlelight Remembrance at the base chapel which allowed Airmen to have moments of
silence or even say a prayer in honor of victims of the Holocaust.

A movie night at the Community Activities Center April 18 featured "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," which is a 2008 film that explores the horror of a World War II extermination camp through the eyes of two 8-year-old boys - one, the son of the camp's Nazi commandant and the other, a Jewish inmate.

"It was a very hard movie to watch, but it definitely brings about the reality of the Holocaust," Begley said.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 19, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Team Lajes gathered together to read out loud the names of 5,000 Jewish and non-Jewish victims who were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1939 and 1945. The victims' names were organized either by country of origin or place of death.

This very small sample out of millions of names of victims of the Holocaust were compiled for the Name Reading Ceremony from archival documents at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"We also had a display of books and DVDs about the Holocaust available at the Lajes library for anyone willing to check out," Begley said. "Also, Mr. Jim Norman, who's a big collector of antiques, has displayed some of his personal WWII items there as well."

The memorabilia on display at the library were period authentic items of the Third Reich Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler's assumption to power and then the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.

"I wanted to tie in some authentic items of the Holocaust so people could see a period of history that had taken place, and maybe have a clearer understanding," said Norman, 65th Force Support Squadron fitness director. "There are items from the Third Reich German, armbands, flags, medals, things that would have been worn during the time by high ranking German officials. They're all from the Third Reich period, except for some newspapers. The papers are from the spring of 1945 - the end of the war."

There is also a copy of a Life magazine from May 7, 1945, that has an article about the Holocaust to give people a general idea of what happened.

"I collect anything that's interesting in history," Norman said. "Having a piece of history in your hand has more of an impact on me, personally, than just reading something out of a textbook from that period. It's important to remember what happened in history, especially such dramatic events as the Holocaust. I think people should always look back and remember what happened to avoid something like that from ever happening again."