Yom HaShoah for the Slightly Disconnected among Us

Yom Hashoah...A day to Remember, or 'Never Forget' as Meir Kahanae o's used to warn us.
Remembering something can be hard when you feel disconnected from the klal. It becomes an intellectual exercise rather than something in the blood, something instinctive and protective. If you're far from family and other yidden, it can be general, instead of personal. Yom HaShoah has to be personal if it will continue to mean anything and have power to motivate yidden to be strong, separate and united.
It has to be personal because the destruction of jews is a mission that continues and is growing. Every yid, cursed, spat on, despised who has suffered antisemitism, lost their lives simply because they are yidden, been murdered only for being yidden, had their beards cut off, been humiliated, isolated, pushed into camps, ghettos, ovens, had their lives, belongings, children and futures stolen from them in ways and with methods unknown to civilized societies prior to the Nazis y"s are now historical models for the arab world to emulate as they continue to call for the obliteration of world jewry.
Nothing, but nothing has changed.
The hate is subdued, dressed up in intellectual propaganda, but barely. It is contained but not for long...its a dam weakening and the right hands of tzadikkim that once walked among us, are no longer physically with us to help hold back the hate, rally us in prayer and guide us. Yom HaShoah has become a personal requirement for all living jews.
To remember those who have been killed, means not only honoring them, but holding a place, a future for those to come. Its not a matter of sitting and saying tehillim, it has to be more. It has to be a commitment to chinuch and to people around us. It has to include a seachange in values that is less defined by what one has accumulated materially to what one has done to build spiritually on a personal level and for one's community. Starting with one's self and building outwards. It is NOT about how much tzaddekah is given to build something with your name on it, its about quietly looking right outside your dalad amis to see who is hungry, who is lonely, who is a jew and doesnt know, what being a jew is. It is about reaching out to those closest, nearest and spiritully furthest from the center of the klal and frumkeit. It's about understanding and acceptance. YomHaShoah means nothing if its displaced with discussions about 'other genocides' and 'other injustices.'
There was and remains no greater injustice than was perpetrated on the Jewish people, there is no Holocaust to compare to the one our families went through. The world is tired of our righteous claim to this distinction? This is not our problem, it is the world's problem. To equate Judaism and Zionism now with Nazism y"s is another bit of political skulldugery and a mere rehash of ongoing antisemitism. Every discussion, every move, every dollar, every bit of energy spent on other wars, peoples and fights that are NOT ours, is a battle diverted and a distraction of what we need to attend to in our own backyard.
Arabs and muslims (not always the same thing!) will continue to butcher and slaughter mindlessly because its inherent in both the culture, the politics and dare I say it about the 'religion of peace'-- and in Islam.
I lived with it and among it for 15 years. Its a blind faceless enemy innocculated early with hate by parents and in school. It may not be evident right away. It does not always comes direct and immediate. But when the choice has to be made, blood is first and antisemitism is second.
"The enemy of my enemy, is my brother" an arab expression that we see coming to fruition today as the discombobulated arab world tries to set aside its pathetic machismo indian chief mentality and unite against Israel and the Jewish world in general. Their own barbarism, their own theft and destruction of their peoples, their internal religious messes and abuses against women in particular, now has a structured agenda: get rid of the Jews and all the problems are solved.
We mock the anxiousness of Abe Foxman and other people like him, warning us its happening again. We prefer to think as many did previously, it can't happen here, it can't happen again. We look to political incompetents in the White House and beyond, constantly analyzing who is a 'friend' to Israel and Jews, who will protect us.
We still haven't learned completely the lessons of remembering if we look to goyim, strangers to do the work we must do for and among ourselves. I feel badly for the people of Darfur. I feel worse for the settlers displaced by the government of Israel who sold them out and have ruptured lives in ways we only thought strangers could do to us. I feel badly for Ethopians, but I feel worse for our own jewish youth who have become strangers among us, estranged from religion, family, meeting in places to talk about their disconnection and apathy, their sense of betrayal and loss and loneliness.
We have so much work to do, 'remembering' is only the beginning.