International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Hebrew equivalent to “Holocaust”, SHOA (שואה), means, quite literally, CATASTROPHE.

The Holocaust was precisely that, a catastrophe extending beyond our imagination, an event that marked humanity as a whole, unmatched in its degrees of sadism and horror. A vulnerable minority was systematically and mercilessly massacred in the name of a supposed ethnic superiority.

In five years, six million Jews died. Many more were forced to flee and ended up in México, Chile, United States, South Africa, Argentina, Guatemala, and many other countries.

Even though the Holocaust took place more than half a century ago, ethnic violence is still present accros the world. We’ve witnessed, time and time again instances of people being massacred because of their ethnicity or their religion. During the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Chinese immigrants were murdered in northern Mexico; in the last decades we’ve witnessed ethnic killings in Rwanda, Kashmir, Yugoslavia, and Sudan; and, currently, a small Muslim minority in Myanmar is under persecution.

Today there are more displaced people than at any point in history.

More than 65.6 millon people have had to flee their homes due to violence and persecution. 22.5 million of them are considered refugees, most of them are underaged. Of those, 10 millon people have been stripped of their nationality, without access to the most basic human rights.

In CADENA we are committed to helping all victims of ethnic violence.

This is why we have carried out missions to help Syrian refugees and to the Kakuma refugee camp, with refugees form South Sudan. Most recently, we have helped the migrants fleeing from persecution in Central America. We will continue to help those in need without distinguishing race, religion or ethnicity.

As an institution based in Jewish valúes, we believe that humanitarian aid should transcend all types of hatred. We are above all, humans, and we have a sacred responsibility to The Other.