Orthodox Christians Asked to Observe Holocaust Remembrance Day

Jan. 21, 2012 - PRLog -- An American Bishop has called on all Orthodox Christians to pray and remember those murdered during the Holocaust.  International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed every year on January 27th, the day the Birkeneau death camp was liberated.  Saturday, January 28, 2012, will be the first time Ukraine observes its own designated annual Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Approximately two millions Ukrainian Jews were murdered.  

“This is not a Jewish tragedy,” said Bishop Paul Peter Jesep of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the United States.  “It is a human tragedy of epic proportions.  Entire families were taken by this surreal, incomprehensible horror.  Although many of their names and those of individuals remain unknown today by us, they are known to God.”

“The Holocaust,” according to Bishop Jesep, “offers each new generation lessons about life, personhood, and the responsibility to one another as sisters and brothers loved equally by the same God.”

He added, “Mother Maria Skobtsova, an Orthodox nun who died in the Ravensbruck death camp because she helped French Jews, said after the Nazis ordered the wearing of yellow stars: ‘There is no such thing as a Christian problem … If we were true Christians we would all wear the Star.’ ”

Bishop Jesep urged, "On January 27th, International Holocaust Remembrance Day and January 28th, a day specifically designated in Ukraine, take a moment of silence in memory of those unjustly and prematurely lost.  Remember them in private prayer and during the Divine Liturgy.  Let us all wear a yellow star on our soul."