On Wednesday, 18 April 2012, the United States Africa Command hosted Holocaust Days of Remembrance observance. Mr. Edwin Baer, Deputy Chief, DIA Forward Element, AFRICOM J2, keynote speaker, honored his father, a survivor of the holocaust, by sharing his father's experiences and hardships through a series of pictures and writings.



Mr. Baer opened his presentation by noting that Jewish families who lived in Germany during 1933-1939 were perplexed by the harassment and persecution against them by police and military since they considered themselves Germans first, given that they were born in the country. He stated how his father is eternally grateful to the United States for giving him and his family new hope after escaping Nazi Germany. He quoted his father's words advising us that "man's inhumanity to man" continues to this day with evidence in Darfur, the Balkans and Rwanda and that everyone needs to say "Never Again" for these types of atrocities" (John (Hans Lothar) Baer, son of Buchenwald survivor Berthold Baer as quoted by Mr. Edwin Baer).



After his presentation, Mr. Baer engaged the audience in dialogue. Frau Marianne Zinser, one of the event attendees made the following comment regarding the word 'Kristallnacht,' mentioned by Mr. Baer in his briefing. "Don't call it 'Kristallnacht'; that means Crystal Night and is actually a euphemism. Call it what it actually was: A 'Pogromnacht - a series of coordinated attacks against the Jews. This can be marked as the initiation of the "Final Solution" to detain and murder all European and Soviet Jews."



Ms. Dianna Duncan, Lay Leader for the Stuttgart Jewish Military Community, offered a simple but powerful Invocation. In her closing summary Ms. Duncan read a few lines from Anne Frank's Diary written on 15 July 1944: "It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."



The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation's annual commemoration of the Holocaust and created the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a permanent living memorial to the victims. This year's theme "Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue" not only honored the victims of the holocaust, but those who so valiantly risked their lives to do what they felt was the right thing to do and did not turn a blind eye to what was happening. Albert Einstein said: "The world is a dangerous place to live - not because of people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it."