I would like you to imagine something.
Imagine that you had to leave your home right now to go to an unknown place.
What possessions would you take?
How would you explain the news to your family?
How would you manage swapping the life, the friends and community you have known so well for years, for a fate unbeknownst to you?
You may arrive in a foreign country, safe yet in the midst of a culture you do not know and a language that you do not speak.
Perhaps you will arrive in the same place as others in your predicament and be greeted with familiar faces and perhaps a sense of home.
Or maybe, you will find yourself in another land where your very existence is hated and you are, yet again, greeted with the same bitter looks as before.
This was the predicament faced by many during the holocaust as well as the many other genocides in places such as Serbia, Rwanda and Cambodia. However, as well as remembering of the journeys of fear of terror and also of hope, we must also remember what lead to people to take these journey.
May there never be any other time when a human being is forced to leave his or her life behind due to the hatred of their fellow humans: Never forget! Never Again!
This article has been written as a commemoration for Holocaust Memorial Day (UK), the day of remembrance for the victims of Nazi persecution as well as subsequent genocides, by Joedah Maccabi