La vita è bella

I have a tradition to write about the holocaust day, two years ago I have written about my father and the king Alfred,  a posting that brought me many reactions from around the world.   Today is the eve of the holocaust day in Israel, and the TV broadcasts all evening holocaust related programs an movies.   My daughters called me to watch a movie called: La vita è bella, an Italian speaking movie  (in Israel the movies are not dubbed, they are sub-titled talking about father and son, both Italian Jewish, sent to a concentration camp, and the father plays for the son as if everything is one big game, and saves him various times.   It is a great movie (three academy awards),  where besides the plot there is a lot of symbolics, the idea to view all the events in the concentration camp as a game, where in some points the child discovers the reality, and tells his father that he heard that they are doing buttons and soap from people, and burning them, and his father treats it as if it is all just a joke.   
As I have written before, my late father, who was a sole survivor of a big family, used to say that this period occurred on another planet, and people who were not there, cannot understand it.   I think that it is good that one day a year is dedicated here to educate the younger generation which is two generations removed and give them some glance on that dark period.