I never realized how very special my birthday was. For many people ans their families January 27th is a very special day. On January 27, 1945 was liberation day for the remaining prisoners of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camp. When we left for Ottawa we were very excited to visit the Holocaust memorial in the War museum. However when we got there, we were very dissapointed to discover in consisted of a small wall space( I did find another picture related to the Holocaust in another area) with a few photos and a prisoner uniform. Even the little amount I saw nearly over whelmed me. We tried to look into the larger Holocaust museum in Montreal, but it was closed while we were in the city. Next year we will scheduel our trip so we can see it, it is very important to us that we go.

When we came home I delved into reasearch to answer some questions I had, and to lay rumors I had heard to rest. Most everyone has heard of the Holocaust, and has opinions about it. Most are horrified, others deny it's exsistence, some like me take it very personally. I have German blood in me, and I am in the middle of my conversion into Judaism. I am raising my children to be proud, and hopefully, caring Jews. I think I am shamed by my German heritage because they allowed this to happen. As a woman who happens to have German blood in her ancestory, had I lived in that time, I'd like to hope that I would have listened to my heart and protected the innocent persecuted by a madman. Children, handicapped, infirmed, nobody that hitler (and no I will not give power to that name by using a capital, I don't give a damn about the grammer laws!) deemed unworthy survived if he could help it. I have learned that I would have been considered a traitor for marrying a Jew, and defiling the purity of the Germans.

There were so may acts of unspeakable horror, I am unsure if I could hear any worse then what I have read in accounts written by survivors. Torture, cruelty and humiliation.

Many people thought that hitler( who was not blonde and blue eyed) had Jewish blood in him, however the only possible Jew in hitlers lineage may have been his grandfather. There is not documented proof , but hitler grandmother had a son( hitler's dad) out of wedlock, it is possible that one of the men in the wealthy jewish home she worked in may have been the father. This leads to other questions, Is that why hitler tried to keep his family a secret? Is that why hitler was so anti semetic against Jews, because his family was shamed by his grandmother being an unwed mother, with a bastard son(it was the term of the time)?

A question I have is who decided on the name concentration camp? Was it named like that so the Germans could concentrate on their harted, and cruel experiments against humanity. Didn't they realize they were only making Jews more determined then ever to survive?
I have met survivors of the Holocaust when I was young. I was told about it, and yet it took me researching into it myself to understand the horrors that took place. Now I have friends and family members who experienced, or escaped those horrors, and I hope we all will work together to prevent things like that from happening to any people , anywhere, ever again!

I want to share with you a few photos I took, some require explanations, some need no words.

This pictures is hand drawn, it is pre and post Holacuast, of the couple in the large picture.

This picture is of hitler's car, look closely to see the smashed window, I took this picture envisioning hitler trying to escape while his car was pelted with rocks thrown by people who survived his so called cleansing.

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."- Viktor E. Frankl