Sunshine and Remembering the Shoah

How nice it is to wake to sunshine. OK, it's not anywhere near Summer weather but it is a huge difference compared to the arctic weather we have had over the last few weeks. It feels good sitting here in my office typing this as the sun shines through my glazed doors warming my back and neck.
As I take a cursory glance over this morning's news stories, I am reminded that it is Holocaust Memorial Day here in the UK. My thoughts turn to the horrors of the concentration camps and the fear and terror of those millions of persecuted human beings who were inflicted the most evil of crimes during the Second World War. The effects of the sunshine this morning soon pale into nothing as I try to imagine the overwhelming sense of fear and terror felt by so many of all ages herded into ghettos and sent on cattle trains to spend their final days in such places we today know as Treblinka, Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
A good few years ago, I decided to discover for myself all I could about the atrocities committed during the Second World War. I hadn't been taught very much at school about the period and the little I did know had come from films I had seen in the form of Schindler's List and the odd documentary. Although the Internet was evolving, I did manage to find out about the Shoah Foundation and the amazing work they were doing in recording and preserving the testimonies of those who had lived through the period and witnessed the horrors committed by the Nazi's against Jewish people and those of different faiths, backgrounds and ideologies.

It didn't take very long for me to be convinced that the things I had heard were true and watching the heart wrenching testimonials of those who had lost parents, brothers, sisters, wives and husbands, left me in no doubt that as many people should know as much about what had happened as possible.
As a father, I wonder whether it will be left to me to provide my son with the answers to what really went on during this dark period in our 'recent' history. I do hope it isn't simply glossed over by his schooling and that he understands that as well as all the great things we have achieved, humankind can be destructive and evil.
I suspect, and hope, that he will someday mention that he is studying this period at school and I know I will have the confidence to talk to him about the events in our history that so many would rather choose to forget.