KaAeBerlin

"Wer die Erinnerung an die Opfer als Belastung empfindet, vergisst, dass diese Erinnerung das einzige ist, was uns vor einer Zukunft als Täter schützt." Hape Kerkeling in seiner Rede zum Gedenktag in Buchenwald.

Sara Cohen lived eight months. Her father never held her. Her mother carried her to Auschwitz. This is what we remember. Sara was born on May 13, 1943, in Groningen, Netherlands. A healthy baby girl, six pounds, four ounces, with dark eyes. Her mother, Carolina, had already lost two children, and now she had a newborn to care for. But her husband, Joseph, had been taken a month before, deported to a concentration camp without ever having met his daughter. Carolina brought Sara home to J.C. Kapteynlaan 7b, a house in Groningen, where she lived with her two older children. Alone, she fought to keep them alive in a Nazi-occupied world. For eight months, Carolina did what mothers do—she cared for her children, fed Sara, changed her, and likely sang to her. But she knew, deep down, the knock on the door would come. And it did, in February 1944. The family was taken to Westerbork, a transit camp in northeastern Netherlands. Thousands of Dutch Jews passed through it on their way to the extermination camps of Poland. At Westerbork, they lived in crowded barracks, waiting. Every Tuesday, a train would leave for the east, filled with people who knew their fate, but not the details. Carolina and her children, Sara now eight months old, were put on one of those trains. The journey to Auschwitz lasted three days, spent in sealed cattle cars. No food, no water, no sanitation. People stood pressed together, old and young alike, enduring the agony of travel before reaching the camp. When the train stopped, the doors opened, and SS officers separated the arrivals into two lines: those who could work and those who could not. Carolina, holding Sara, with her two toddlers beside her, was sent to the left. There was no selection for her. Mothers with babies were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Babies couldn’t work. Children couldn’t work. Carolina and her children had no chance to survive. Sara Cohen was murdered in Auschwitz at just eight months old. Her mother, Carolina, was murdered beside her, along with her two siblings. Her father, Joseph, who never got to meet his daughter, was murdered in another camp. The entire family was erased from existence, their names lost to history. Sara Cohen’s name lives on, though—remembered in documents, in a birth certificate, a deportation record, a line in the Auschwitz death registry. She is remembered because we refuse to forget. Sara would be 82 today. She might have had children, a career, a life full of experiences. Instead, she lived eight months. Her father never held her. Her mother carried her to Auschwitz. And we carry her memory now. Zichrona livracha. May her memory be a blessing.

The "Zelensky should wear a suit" guy can’t even take his cap off for fallen American soldiers.