Editor's note: The Jewish Community Foundation of the Durham-Chapel Hill Jewish Federation sponsors an annual Holocaust Remembrance Essay Contest for local students. This year's first prize recipient is Chris Wolfe, a student at East Chapel Hill High School.

The Holocaust was arguably the most infamous of human rights abuses in modern history. Between Hitler's rise to power in 1933 and Germany's defeat in 1945, over 9 million people, including Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners-of-war, homosexuals, the disabled, and over 6 million Jews were killed in a system of concentration camps, mass murder, and persecution by the Nazis.

But what is the relevance of these events today? Many genocides and injustices have occurred since the Holocaust, and many continue now. Remembering these injustices honors those who died and helps us prevent future atrocities. Remembering gives us the ability and, therefore, the responsibility as good world citizens to take action.

Many who survived these events feel that it is their duty to tell their stories. This is their way of honoring the dead. For example, in Elie Wiesel's book "Night," the character Moche the Beadle returns to Sighet after narrowly escaping a mass execution of Jews in a forest. When he warns the Jews of Sighet, they do not believe his story. He tells Elie that he feels his sole reason for living was to tell his story as a warning. Later in the book, Elie feels the same way himself. In Elie's words: "I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again."

If we do not understand past wrongs, we allow history to repeat itself. The same crimes could be committed again. We learn about the sins of the past so we see the potential consequences of our actions and avoid repeating similar violations of human rights in the future. Elie Wiesel also offers insight into this topic with the words: "A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent." We are unable to stop ongoing abuses if we know nothing of them. Watching a news report about the violence in Darfur then gives us the knowledge necessary to do something about it, whether by writing to Congress, sending money through a humanitarian organization, or participating in a protest.

Having the knowledge that enables us to act against genocide in the world gives us the responsibility to act. After seeing the violence and persecution around us, it is hard not to act in good conscience. Before we learn about a problem in the world, we are blissfully ignorant of it and cannot be expected to help alleviate the problem. In today's interconnected world, we are, whether we want to be or not, citizens of the world. To be a good world citizen, we must know that events outside of our own country affect us, and we must participate in the world, which means looking outside of our own immediate surroundings and being connected.

Apathy is a dangerous and harmful attitude. Consider the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. The world averted its eyes as over 1 million Rwandans died in a brutal ethnic conflict. Only a small United Nations peacekeeping force was in Rwanda at the time, and it had orders not to shoot. Instead, it was forced to watch a nation tear itself apart for a hundred days. We were not actively helping the killers, but we were not stopping them, either.

Our capacity to act for the benefit of others makes us responsible, as world citizens, to act. Inaction implies apathy, which is dangerous. Perhaps the slaughter of 6 million Jews in Europe will never occur again, but to restrict our knowledge and understanding of genocide and human rights violations to the Holocaust would be to ignore the stories of millions more. The Holocaust is a powerful example of the global problem of genocide and persecution, and the memory of its horror must inspire younger generations to fight against such heinous crimes today and in the future.