FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – This week, 75 years ago, Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland was liberated. On Monday the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills marked the day with a somber message.
The memorial center wanted to ensure the horrors of what happened will never be forgotten and will never happen again. The eternal flame was lit to remember the lives lost during the Holocaust.
Never take anybody for granted, never treat anyone the way you wouldn’t want to be treated," student Abby White said.
White is visiting with her classmates from North Branch. Seeing the artifacts and hearing the stories from that point in history was difficult for her and others.
“Sadness, kind of anger, not really happiness, 'cause who can be happy dealing with all this stuff,” she said.
Guy Stern, 98, works at the memorial center. He immigrated to the United States as a teenager and he lost his family in concentration camps.
“It’s a remembrance of the freeing of the one of the worst camps in the history of the holocaust,” Stern said. “It is a day in which I want to recollect my own personal history. I, probably, from the papers I was able to inspect, my parents may have perished and my family, my brother and sister, on that day,” he said.
The museum regularly gives tours to share the world history.
It’s open everyday except Saturday. Public tours are at 1:30 p.m. and tickets cost around $8.
“This kind of dehumanization must never occur again,” Stern said.