Image by Mischelle Sandowich from Pixabay
There are names the world remembers.
And there are names the wind carries quietly.
Some were written in history books.
Some were stitched onto uniforms.
Some were burned onto papers that never should have existed.
And some were never written down at all.
But they were here.
They laughed once.
They argued over dinner.
They fell in love.
They held children against their chest during thunderstorms.
They made coffee in tiny kitchens before the sun came up.
They dreamed about ordinary tomorrows that never arrived.
The Holocaust was not numbers.
Not statistics.
Not black-and-white photographs trapped behind museum glass.
It was people.
Jewish families ripped from centuries of tradition and memory.
Romani children whose songs were silenced before they could grow old enough to teach them.
Disabled souls labeled “unworthy” by a machine built on hatred.
Polish civilians.
Soviet prisoners of war.
Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Gay men forced to carry shame that never belonged to them....
