Today is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). It marks the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Each day, as we hear more and more horrible stories about the Russian invasion and learn about Ukrainian refugees,

I cannot help but think about my great-great-grandfather, Shlomo Schwarz (1852-1944). During the pogroms of the 1880s, he fled his home (in what is now a town in Ukraine near the Polish border) to find a better life here in the United States. Within his lifetime, the Nazis exterminated more than 6 million Jews and others who they deemed "the other." Today, please take a moment to read this very uncomfortable essay about my experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

I offer this account to help ensure that we never forget!