Yesterday I spent an hour and a half talking to a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor.

As expected, it was a moving experience. As expected, his stories were harrowing and horrific. As expected, hearing his personal experiences from his own mouth was incredibly powerful.

I prepared myself. I knew I'd hear stories like the Nazi swinging a Jewish baby's head into a door frame, or the commander giving 25 lashes to every 10th person in line and shooting those who couldn't remain upright through it. Those were terrible but not unexpected stories.

The detail I didn't expect to hit me was what this man's father did for a living prior to the Nazi invasion.

He was a chocolatier.

He *made chocolates* FFS. He was one of the first to cover wafer cookies in chocolate, "like a Kit-Kat." Only he made his in the shape of animals.

His five kids would run to him when he came home from the chocolate factory, knowing he had chocolates in his pockets for them.

This Jewish father who had to gather his children one morning as the tanks rolled in and say, "As of today, there are no more children in this family."

This Jewish father who had saved up US$1000 and hid it in a book "just in case," only to have that book confiscated and thrown into a book-burning pile.

This Jewish father, who would be killed along with his wife and three of his five children, by blind, violent hatred.

He tried to save his family. The man was a chocolate maker. The purity and sweetness of that one little detail hit me so hard.

How such simple humanity can be destroyed by such unfathomable inhumanity.

The countless stories like that.

It's just too much.

#NeverForget