Never Again

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This date was selected for a very specific reason — it was on this day, Jan. 27, in 1945, that the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, where approximately 1.1 million people — most of them Jews — were killed by the Nazis. 

In all, there were six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, which was more than two-thirds of the total Jewish population of Europe at the time. In Poland alone, nearly three million of the 3.5 million Jews who lived there before World War II were killed.

To this day, there are fewer Jews alive now than there were prior to the Holocaust. Think about that. For that matter, if TigerBlog's great grandparents had stayed in Poland and Odessa instead of coming to the United States in 1898, odds are good that TB's family would have ended with them and the next generation.

There were others — who like the Jews were considered inferior races — who faced the same attempted extermination as the Jews. The exact number of those who died in the Holocaust isn't clear, but it approaches 10 million.

This was 80 years ago. Today there is a steady rise in anti-semitism throughout the world, including in this country, which makes the phrase "Never Again" even more important. For those who don't know much about the Holocaust, you can learn more by clicking HERE for the Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Or watch "Schindler's List."

TigerBlog has been to the Dachau concentration camp outside Munich. He would like to visit Auschwitz at some point, not because it would be fun but because it would be important.

TB wanted to share this with you today, before he talked about the weekend in Princeton Athletics. It's not the greatest segue ever, but for a day like today, it's important to remember what happened less than a century ago while focusing on the good things about life. 

And so it's on to the weekend.

For those who made both ends of the Penn basketball doubleheader on Martin Luther King Day, there's another, albeit more challenging, opportunity tomorrow. 

The women are home in Jadwin at 2 against Yale. The men's game in New Haven tips at 7. Doable? Depends on the traffic. If you do both games, let TB know.

As TB said earlier in the week, the women's race appears to be five teams for one (or more) champion(s) and four spots in the Ivy tournament at Jadwin. Columbia and Penn are both 5-1; Princeton, Yale and Harvard are all 4-2. Everyone else has five or six losses.

Clearly, every game is huge. The games among the top five are even more so. In addition to Princeton-Yale, this weekend also has Cornell at Brown, Dartmouth at Columbia and Penn at Harvard. By Sunday, the race can look extremely different in many different directions.

On the men's side, Princeton is in first place at 5-1, after last weeks' thrilling OT win over Dartmouth. Behind the Tigers? There are five teams with either two or three losses.

On the hockey front, the women have a home-and-home weekend with No. 4 Quinnipiac, the ECAC leader, with games in Hamden tomorrow at 1 and at Baker Rink Sunday at 2. The men step away from the ECAC schedule to host LIU for the second time tomorrow night at 7.

The men's hockey team also has a single-game trip next weekend to Dartmouth. After that, it'll be three straight weekends of back-to-backs to close the regular season, as the Tigers look for home ice in the ECAC playoffs, either by finishing in the top four and getting a bye or finishing fifth through eighth and playing at home in the first round.

Right now the Tigers are in fifth with 20 points, five back of Colgate and six points ahead of ninth place.

There is home wrestling in Jadwin Gym tonight against Harvard and tomorrow against Brown, with both matches at 6. TB wrote yesterday about the men's and women's track and field H-Y-P meets up at Harvard; the men's and women's swimming and diving teams also have their H-Y-P meets at Harvard as well.

The women's water polo team hosts its Winter Invitational. 

There is also home men's and women's squash (Trinity tomorrow, Yale Sunday), with men's and women's tennis and men's and women's fencing on the road.

As always, the complete schedule is HERE.