May 1

Happy Beltane to those who celebrate. And for those who don't I'm sure you're enjoying Spring finally getting here.
Today, May 1, is also National Holocaust Remembrance Day. Those who survived the holocaust are getting older and as times goes by we are having less opportunity to hear eyewitness accounts of those who were there. I have been honored to be able to hear firsthand stories of what it was like to live in an occupied country during that time, to have to hide, to starve, to make horrible choices because there wasn't freedom of choice. I have made sure my own kids listened to these stories as well, hopefully instilling in them what prejudice and intolerance can cause.
Those of us fortunate to have been born in a free country are inclined to think that the holocaust was long ago and far away and will never happen again. But it is happening. Hate crimes are more common. Bullying, torturing and tormenting another human being because they are "different" is firsthand evidence that we have not evolved as a human race. That generations later we are still producing subhumans who have the same genocidal mentality of those who committed atrocities to a whole generation of people whose only crime was that they were deemed "different."
We must never forget what happened, and we must stop what is happening now.
I had a long, exhausting event filled week, and I had a post queued up with my usual snarkfest.  As I remember the significance of today's date, what I have to bitch about is microscopic in the grand scheme of things. For those who have been teased, bullied, tortured, tormented (and worse) because of being different, this is your day. To those who survived and those who did not, you are all heroes.