GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- A three-person panel informed service members on the importance of remembering the Holocaust at the Base Theater May 24.
Holocaust remembrance traces back to the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945. It offers a chance to remember the events of a genocide which took millions of lives.
“I got to go to Germany and see the camps myself,” said Roy Adame, 17th Training Wing Substance Abuse Program specialist. “It gives you a different outlook on someone else’s life.”
Dr. Gail Wallen, opened the seminar and Theresa Dulgov and Wanda Wolosky, Holocaust survivors, also came to the event to speak.
In 1944, the Nazi’s took 20 children, 10 boys and 10 girl’s ages 5-10 to Neuengamme Concentration camp and injected them with a live Tuberculosis virus as part of a Nazi experiment, said Dr. Gail Wallen, director of Holocaust Services for Tucson, Ariz. In 1945, with the Allies three miles away, the Nazis decided the experiment needed to be terminated. The children were taken to the basement and injected with Morphine and while unconscious the children were hung on hooks to die.
The seminar educated attendees about the severity of the holocaust casualties.
“I knew there were children but I didn’t know there were 1.5 million children that died,” said Adame.
Some service members changed their perspective on serving in the armed forces after hearing the grim facts.
“Listening to what they experienced compels me to take a deeper look within what I’m actually standing for when I wear the uniform,” said Staff Sgt. Keisha Bogard, 17th Training Wing Legal Office paralegal.
The seminar raised awareness and let attendees reflect on the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust killed more than 12 million people according to https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008193.
That someone could endure such harsh treatment, said Bogard. “It really helps us take a more in depth look that we can stand strong as well.”
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