Days of Remembrance | Communicators & Communications

What We Honor is Who We Are

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Howard R. Debs

This week is Days of Remembrance. Remember? Perhaps not, if not, I’m about to remind you. You surely remember this: “We are known by the company we keep.” It’s the same with our culture. Our holidays, observances, all add up to identify our identity as a society, and the days we make special as individuals signal who we are as individuals. If you wish think about it this way; it’s about branding. Who and what we associate ourselves with personally and publicly matters. Take a holiday like Martin Luther King Day, mandated by Congress in 1983. Some Senators opposed it. It passed 338 to 90. It is still working to take hold. There are a number of reasons for this, some bearing on the face we put on as a nation. The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) is an annual 8-day period designated by Congress for civic commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust. The period begins on the Sunday before the Jewish observance of Yom HaShoah. It is still working to take hold. A Facebook post from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about the observance includes a reference to #DOR2015. The last time I checked there were but five posts associated with this hashtag, three of those from USHMM. Today is the first day of DRVH. Hardly trending. I’ll state it again: who and what we associate ourselves with personally and publicly matters. As a reminder, here’s a list of events. Here’s one reminder of mine, from my first visit to USHMM. It’s the Identification Card I was given as I entered. It is card #6706. The name on the card is that of Max Krakauer, born April 1, 1901, the same month the Days of Remembrance commemorate to the victims. At 41, Max died either in the forced-labor camp at Rejowiec or in an extermination camp in Poland. This, I will always remember. Note: On April 15, the start of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, On Being will present my essay “The Poetry of Bearing Witness” and from my Holocaust poetry series: “Terezin: Trilogy Of Names” — please share to help keep truth and memory alive.