WATCH: Astronaut Records Holocaust Remembrance Message In Outer Space
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Josefin Dolsten April 12, 2018
(JTA) — American astronaut Andrew “Drew” Feustel didn’t let being in outer space stop him from commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Instead, Feustel recorded a video message aboard the International Space Station to honor the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.
In the video released on Thursday, the NASA astronaut displayed a replica of a drawing titled “Moon Landscape” by Petr Ginz, a Czech teen with Jewish roots who was killed at Auschwitz. Feustel, who received the drawing from the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, noted that late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon had brought a replica of the very same drawing with him on board the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.
Ramon and the rest of that crew were killed when the shuttle broke apart shortly after takeoff.
“May the memories of Petr Ginz, astronaut Ilan Ramon and the six million victims of the Holocaust always remain in our thoughts,” Feustel says in the message, before floating away inside the space station.
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