History of Sorts

I wish I could say that, despite the horrors inflicted during the Holocaust, humanity somehow managed to restore itself.

But I would be lying. How can we claim that, knowing that 1.5 million children were brutally murdered in the most inhumane ways imaginable?

Children like Greetje Leger, who has been reduced to a statistic: “Reached the age of 3 years. Born 18 October 1940, Amsterdam. Murdered 11 February 1944, Auschwitz.”

Like all the other 1.5 million children, Greetje was not a statistic—she was a living, breathing human being who could have meant so much to the world. She could have grown up to be a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a nurse, a doctor, a scientist, a plumber, a teacher, a carpenter, a police officer. The list is endless.

Today, she might have been celebrating Sinterklaas with her grandchildren or even great-grandchildren. Her face should have lit up as she watched the children open their presents.

But an evil ideology stole her life when she was still a toddler. An ideology that never truly disappeared—it merely went dormant for a while. And now, slowly, it is waking up again.