An experience I will never forget

A few days ago I visited the Melbourne Holocaust Museum -- and the things I saw there, all the faces, of the children, infants, the old, sick and those in between killed under a silent sky will never leave me. The most unforgettable part of the museum however was being able to listen and meet two actual Holocaust survivors.

They told me of their stories and their pain; Halima as I remember, talked about her experience as a 17 year old amidst the events and how her life changed from a peaceful, content one to one of separation, constant paranoia and suffering. She explained how she fled to other countries and disguised herself as German, how she avoided detection, how every day was a neveredning struggle to survive. She described the rebuttal of the Jews in warsaw, she described the limp corpses that lay on the streets in numbers of hundreds and she described the women and children that tossed themselves off tall buildings while on fire to face premature death.

Then came Willie. He was a humble man, who'd often joke about his time in the concentration camps. He spoke of his experience within the confines of both the labour and death camps, the 'fools showers', the beatings, the lack of food, medicine, the loss of family, intergrity, faith and finally the loss of identity.

When we hear the statistic, that around 6 million Jewish people fell victim to Nazi reign not including those of homosexual, polish, gypsy and disabled culture/nature, we feel no emotion; we feel nothing. We treat the fact for what it is, a fact; nothing more. But when we begin to search for the faces of every number, every digit, every person, human being it is then when we are able to truly understand what really happened.

Don't judge, don't hate, don't discriminate. Instead of highlighting the worst in people, find the good. We can't make a difference in this world by working with carbon copies of ourselves, but we can make a difference if we see the potential, the ability, the value in anyone and everyone - no matter what their religion, sex, sexuality, skin colour, language, origin, interests. Because in the end, there's no such thing as 'races', there's no such thing as the Jewish Race, the Australian Race, the American Race etc, because there's only one real race - mankind.