Yom HaShoah 2007
By Schvach Yid , (formerly Mechiya)
originally posted on Renegade Rebbitzin's blog site

My parents are, and my grandparents were, Holocaust refugees - they got out, but not before the eyeopening
fest of Kristallnacht (my father and his family in Germany, my mother and hers in Vienna). I grew up hearing all about it from them, especially from my maternal grandmother, and from many others. Almost every adult I knew who was a family friend either escaped capture and deportation or else managed to survive interment in the camps. Several times a year my parents would invite their friends to dinner, and each time the subject of conversation would invariably turn to their war-time experiences. Each summer we rented
a bungalow in the Catskills where perhaps half the families were headed by concentration camp survivors, most from Hungary. We attended a stiebel where, you guessed it, most people had had the same experiences. I would go to schul and watch these people daven. During the summers, in the bungalow colony, the wives would bench Shabbos candles and the men would congregate in a small wooden shack dubbed 'The Office' to daven Kabbalas Shabbos. What lessons for a youngster of any age. If you want to see people daven who demand absolutely nothing from life, who are greatful just to be alive, then you should have been around to see these people. When these women recited the brocho over Shabbos candles one understood the meaning of gratitude and of Kiddush Hashem.
The matter of educating our children -the next generation of Holocaust survivors - is a matter of approach and method and not of their ages. If it's done properly, then they will benefit. Few lessons can be as significant as the ones I received, and now that that generation is dying out, alternative lessons will have to be developed, but they can't be trivial, kitch, showy, or vulgar.
This will require smart, well informed educators to accomplish.
Not to have lectured,
-Schvach