Children are children

This morning we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem.

This was my first visit to this beautiful place since I've been a mother...in each photograph of those beautiful little children who died much too soon I saw my own children.

I saw the work passes for the children of the Lodz ghetto and I tried to imagine putting my children to work to save their lives.

I looked at the photos of the mothers holding their babies walking into the gas chambers and I felt my own children in my arms.

And I saw the eyes of the young soldier-girls who stood in the museum with us. Their strength and power contrasted so strongly with the helplessness of the ghetto children, I wanted to reach out and pull each of these strong young women into my arms and kiss their heads.

I watched the young teenagers from the Chicago area who were also here with us and I saw my own children visiting Israel and seeing these horrors. And i looked at these bright shiny American teenagers with their lifeforce so strong...against the grainy black and white of the dead...

And I know...I KNOW that these young people....MY children...are the ones who will ensure NEVER AGAIN.