RIP

It pains me with great sadness to write this particular post.

One of Louisville's own, Ernie Marx, a Holocaust survivor, died yesterday at the age of 81.

Holocaust survivor Ernie Marx, who spoke thousands of schoolchildren and other groups about the atrocities he witnessed as a teenager, has died at the age of 81.[...]

"We have a mission that we educate the young people so that it will not happen again," Marx said in April at Temple Shalom in Louisville during Yom HaShoah, a commemoration of the Holocaust.

"My friends, I'm here and I'm proud to be an educator."

Marx had made more than 62 trips to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., where he was an honorary tour guide. He had spoken at more than 400 schools since 1982, when he began publicly speaking about his experiences as a survivor.

A native of Germany, Marx came to Louisville in 1947 with his mother, from whom he had been separated for six years during the Nazi campaign.

May he rest in peace.