Event focuses on widespread impact of the Holocaust                    Chris Rasmussen      Leader Staff

 The Holocaust is not just a Jewish issue. This is the 2008 Days of Remembrance guest speaker’s very important message to share with the Fort Jackson community. “The Holocaust is not just a Jewish issue. We were all there,” said Stephanie Alexander, Days of Remembrance guest speaker. Genocide, she said, is not unique to what Hitler’s Nazi regime did, “In Bosnia, 200,000 Muslims died at the hands of a Serbian-backed government. “But even earlier in 17th century America, yes, our America, 4,000 Cherokee people died of the cold and hunger in a forced march relocating them from the East to designated western lands.” Alexander, who works at the U.S. Army Chaplain School and Center as a training program specialist, is a Jewish Lay Leader. Despite the installation not having a Jewish chaplain, she has conducted Jewish services at Fort Jackson for the past two years.  She is a member of Beth Shalom Synagogue and is active in the Jewish community working with the Greater Carolinas Association of Rabbis and South Carolina Council of the Holocaust. The Days of Remembrance will begin at 2 p.m., Tuesday at the Joe E. Mann Center. The theme of the observance, which is being organized by the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant School, is “Do Not Stand Silent: Remembering Kristallnacht 1938.” “This Holocaust thing is far from over. We’re still surrounded by anti-Semitism, hatred and intolerance,” Alexander said. “Very recently, a Jewish Soldier came to me and related a comment made by a fellow student concerning NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) training.  “As they donned their chemical masks before entering the gas chamber, the student remarked, ‘He should be used to this.’ The remark ... referred to the gas chambers used in Nazi Germany in which countless Jewish men, women and children were murdered.” Between 1933 and 1945, it is estimated between 9 million and 11 million people were put to death by the Nazi regime. The majority (an estimated 6 million) were Jews.  In 1980, Congress established Days of Remembrance as an annual commemoration of Holocaust victims. Yom HaShoah is the Hebrew name for Days of Remembrance. “To speak at Yom HaShoah is a very difficult assignment,” Alexander said. “It is also a privilege.”