"Memoirs are often incomplete. They relive recollections--some good, some bad--that often lack a context for the tale. I don't want my story to be among those memoirs, I want my story to be a focal point that illustrates a greater message.

Many Holocaust survivors have penned narratives. These memoirs run the range--like all literature--from good to bad, meaningful to lacking true purpose outside of simple expression of experience, and there is nothing wrong with that. What they all have in common is the absolute necessity to share, and in sharing, allowing readers to learn and remember. For what would be the consequence if we forgot?

I don't want to just tell my story, as I am only one of millions of members of a community who witnessed the worst of humanity. My story is like each of theirs--no different. I lived. I experienced. I witnessed. I survived. There are six million more who cannot share their story. They were erased. We attempt to remember for them, but their stories will never be told. I do not represent anything special beyond the scope of just one more voice that finally found a page.

In sharing my experiences with you, I want to do something different. I want to provide the context for the atrocities that became the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the epitome and peak of a wave of anti-Semitism that flooded the world for thousands of years, an evil based on lies that have been perpetuated to this day. This is the context I want you to understand as you read my tale and others."

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"There are nearly seven billion of us on Earth represented by every race, ethnicity, and religious group. This diversity should be a mark and measure of pride--we ought to embrace it rather than continually use it as a force of division, then call it a revenge against hate and evil."

"Living in a society as beautifully diverse as ours, it would be nice if we all loved or even liked each other. We don't. And we don't have to; this is no necessity. The necessity is respect and it is only through the mutual nature of this attribute that we can survive as the race of man. Mutual respect is the glue that bonds us in civility."

For more about Jack Adler, visit his website: www.jackadler.com