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80 years ago today, Nazi Germany officially and unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Forces, ending World War 2 in Europe.

Did we learn – do we remember – all the lessons taught by the death of over 60 million people?

I won’t tell you this is easy to think about again. There are people right now counting on that fact.

At times, it is almost unbearably moving. Yet it is so important.

You can watch the entire program HERE, or if you are a member of your local PBS station, you can watch it on your TV using the PBS portal.

I encourage you to watch the whole hour, and share it with your friends and family, but if you won’t, at least watch the part with a survivor of Auschwitz, Marian Turski, (who died 3 months after the program was made) that begins roughly :53 minutes into it, very near the end.

“Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. It comes step by step. Evil comes step by step. And therefore, you shouldn’t be indifferent. Let’s start with reducing hatred, and trying to understand other people.” ~ Marian Turski 

“The most important thing is compassion. It’s absence dehumanizes. Take the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the devil’s servants on earth. They pretended to be humans. Nay, super-humans. They were nothing. They knew not what compassion is.” ~ Bolesław Taborski

We ignore their hard-earned knowledge at our own peril, our own moral peril.

“Evil comes step by step.”

I hope you’ll watch, and share, and then act, “trying to understand other people” realizing “the most important thing is compassion: it’s absence dehumanizes.”

Please, God, if I can help by speaking out, never again.