Today is Yom HaShoah or “The Holocaust Remembrance Day,” a day for the Jewish community to mourn the loss of those slaughtered in the Holocaust during World War II. While I’m not Jewish, in recent years I’ve taken to posting an image or an article to commemorate the grim affair.

My primary motivation is the biblical account of the Hebrew people, which teaches in the Old Testament that “Abram the Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) was the father of the Israelites (through Isaac and Jacob [or “Israel,” see Gen. 32:28]), the ancestors of the Jewish people we read about in the New Testament and whose descendants are still with us today.

The Jewish people hold a special place in God’s heart. They were, after all, his “chosen people,” about whom it is written, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6).

I believe, even after the new covenant that came with the advent of Christ, that the Jewish people’s chosenness remains in effect, for the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 11:

“As far as the gospel is concerned, [the people of Israel] are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (vv. 28-29).

Therefore, as the only ethnic group in history selected by God, the Jewish people are due special consideration. “Touch not God’s anointed”—the phrase sometimes used by Christian ministers to humorously shield themselves from congregational criticism—is actually a reference to the Israelites, i.e. the Jewish people (1 Chronicles 16:15-22).

The Jewish people are also my spiritual ancestors. The Christian faith was founded by a Jewish Messiah. Jesus was a Jew, the Christian church following his resurrection was made up of Jews, those who first preached the gospel to Gentiles were Jews, and the truth is that Gentiles, i.e. anyone not a Jew, are being grafted into Israel, not the other way around (see Eph. 2:11-13).

I’m also motivated to stand with the Jewish people for the simple reason that they have been subject to abuse across the centuries, sometimes perpetrated by purported members of my own faith, much to our shame.

None in recent memory was worse than the Holocaust. We owe it to those who died and to succeeding generations of humanity not to forget what was done.

Holocaust survivors are slowly dying off, leaving less than half-a-million with first-hand memories of the atrocities. Holocaust denial is an insidious and contemporary effort to deny the Nazi regime’s systematic mass murder.

In his blog post today, Jeremy Kalmanofsky writes that even ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students in New York City are not learning about the Holocaust.

“Graduates of many Hasidic schools tell YAFFED they received no formal Holocaust education, either. In their exclusive focus on Jewish sacred texts, these schools do nothing to convey to students the importance and significance of the destruction of European Jewry.”

As George Santayana (1863-1952) said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But, as we all know, memories fade with time, as the Israelites in Egypt found out: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8).

To keep a memory alive takes effort. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day (every January 27) and The Holocaust Remembrance Day are opportunities to contribute to keeping this particular memory alive.

I consider keeping the Holocaust from being memory-holed a duty. May we never forget and may it never happen again.