It seems fitting that on the cusp of Holocaust Remembrance Day (April 27-28, evening to morning on the Jewish calendar in the month of Nisan, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), we also think about a woman named Gerda Weissmann Klein.  As a Polish woman one who survived the horrors of the Holocaust in her home country, Mrs. Klein did much to tell the world about the unspeakable weight of memory the Holocaust has placed upon the planet.  After narrowly escaping being sent to an extermination camp when the Nazis liquidated the Polish "ghettos," Mrs. Klein met her future husband and, eventually, moved to the United States.  She subsequently became an American citizen.  The Academy award winning film "One Survivor Remembers," is based on her autobiography All but My Life.  The book is well worth reading, reminiscent of Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, another powerful account of Holocaust survival.

    From her new home in the States, Mrs. Klein devoted the remainder of her life to advocating for Holocaust education and human rights around the world.  Because of her life story, she was uniquely qualified to talk about both, ably communicating the immensity of the Holocaust and its effect on the human imagination.  Although the Holocaust is well in the past, its effects are anything but:  even after all of its survivors are gone, the Holocaust will remain.  It is a singularly incisive event of horror and memory.  We remember it to remember.  To remember the depths to which we are capable of plunging, yes, but to also remember the heights to which we can soar when we recognize the enormous responsibility of being human.