Holocaust Remembrance Day

JANUARY 27, 2015
The UN General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.

AUSCHWITZ
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper Silesia, an area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland. The SS authorities established three main camps near the Polish city of Oswiecim: Auschwitz I in May 1940; Auschwitz II (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau) in early 1942; and Auschwitz III (also called Auschwitz-Monowitz) in October 1942.

UNSPEAKABLE PRAYERS
A novel about Lodzi Ashstein, a 19-year-old Jewish boy forced from Warsaw by the Nazis in 1942 to board the cattle train to Treblinka. A novel of evil, survival, overcoming, and hope. A look at one man's life from Treblinka to Chicago and a trial based on the Hate Crimes Act in reverse, for this time a Nazi captain from Treblinka has been murdered. An inquiry into the prevalence of hate toward a people chosen as God's own. The why remains a mystery at the end of the book--you will be asked to draw your own conclusions. Truth be told, there are probably as many conclusions to be drawn as there are readers of this incredible novel.

If you're looking for a novel fitting for Remembrance Day, this novel, released on that day, is suggested.

You will never forget Lodzi Ashstein, I promise you. -- John Ellsworth, January 2015.