I Will Remember

Today at school, we had the Remembrance Day Ceremony.

Before the assembly, I remember a lot of kids moaning and complaining about how boring it was going to be, and a lot of kids just ditched. But I wasn't one of those kids. To be honest, I wasn't thinking it was going to be especially intriguing, but I wasn't not going to go.

It started off like any other Remembrance Day Assembly I can remember. The singing of the National Anthem, a reading of "In Flanders Fields," a moment of silence. It wasn't until the special guest started speaking, when the mood of the gym drastically changed.

The special guest was a Holocaust survivor.

Both of his parents were murdered in concentration camps, along with many other members of his family. They were Jewish, as was he, and that's all it took for them to loose every human right that ever existed.

People say that he was lucky. To have survived it. And he was, but when you think about it... we are the lucky ones. We have no idea what it was like, to live in that time, to be in that situation. To be thrown into a life where we have no choice, no freedom, no safety.

Even though I can understand what happened then, and what happened to that man, I can never truly fathom how that would feel. How it would feel for that to be my reality.

It's hard to believe something like that actually took place. It's always been told to us, or read to us- like a story. But today, that man made it real.

A lot of emotions ran high in that room, including mine.

Now I am sure,

I will remember.