Monday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland by troops of the Soviet Army. Auschwitz has come to be the biggest symbol of the Holocaust, the program Nazi Germany undertook during World War II as the “final solution” to what it considered the “Jewish” problem. Six million Jews were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps, along with homosexuals, Romas, Russian prisoners of war and other people the Nazi’s considered undesirables.

Holocaust Remembrance Day should be an important event each year, to keep alive the memory of what transpired. Each year, more and more of the survivors of the death camps pass away, leaving fewer and fewer people who can bear witness to what happened.

As they do, the brutal facts of the Holocaust become consigned more to history books, and the facts often become contested by Holocaust revisionists — anti-Semites, enemies of Israel and others who for some reason deny that the Holocaust ever happened, or that its toll wasn’t anywhere near the six million figure, or that it was a hoax made up by Zionists to make it possible for the creation of the state of Israel.

In years ahead, Holocaust Remembrance Day will be needed to keep the memory alive, to preserve the testimony of the survivors, and to remind us that such horrors can be inflicted again, if hatred is allowed to run unchecked in this world again.