Today, of all days, I decided to pull out my Dad's camcorder from the nineties and look at some tapes.
To most of you it would mean watching you receive your first Furby, running around in your brother's parachute pants, and screaming like Macaulay Culkin. To us, it is a recollection of recordings wherein my parent's had the sense and foresight to capture every home we had as refugees in Germany.
To listen to them converse about what is happening in their lives as they all, with children and in their early thirties, recall being forced out of their homes and into an unknown future. We laugh at their funny German, and they smiled with grace at the very difficult situation they were all dealt.
Separated from their families, and never hearing from some. In the years to come, we crossed many different thresholds together. It takes a particular kind of person, one with decency and pride, to overcome all that we as a family have overcome, but especially, calling out to our parents generation who were the true heroes of it all.
Today, in remembrance of the 20th anniversary of one of the most heinous crimes in history committed against my brothers and sisters, I want to honor those of you who gave us our lives. Those who endured for us and protected us and who insured the happy future yet to come. Let us never forget where we came from, let us never lose pride in who we are. “