It takes a special person to call Up North home.

This past weekend was one reason — albeit a major one — of why that is true. It isn’t everyone who can mentally deal with a constant National Weather Service winter storm warning that began at 8 p.m. Thursday and continued through 8 p.m. Monday.

The storms would eventually dump a foot and a half of wet, heavy snow across the region. Because of its weight, the snow was hard to move. The heavy snow literally closed schools, churches and businesses. Most people heeded police warnings to stay off the road but those who did venture out, often ended up stuck. Even Alpena County Regional Airport was closed from Saturday through Monday night.

Most of the region’s “old timers” couldn’t remember a storm of this magnitude in April. Most of them could remember storms like this in the past, but those storms came in the normal winter months of December, January, February or March. Many a storm story was shared over coffee in recent days.

Interestingly, as of this morning Alpena’s snowfall total for the season is running at just about the average for a normal winter. Through Friday we have received 82.5 inches of snow for the winter, while an average winter would have us receiving 84.3 inches.

If you think we have received a lot of snow in April, you are exactly right. We have received just under 30 inches of snow since April 1, where a normal April would have us only receiving a little under six inches. April has been the snowiest month of the winter, with no other month even close to the snowfall numbers this month.

At this rate maybe the snowblower will be put away by Memorial Day. Then again, maybe not.

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I was appalled at a recent story in the Washington Post that shared that two-thirds of American Millennials surveyed in a recent poll could not identify Auschwitz, and 22 percent of them had never heard of the Holocaust.

The Pew Research Center defines Millennials as anyone born between 1981 to 1996, making them 22 to 37 years old today. The group now exceeds 71 million and next year, Pew researchers predict Millennials will exceed Baby Boomers as the country’s largest living adult generation.

As this country struggles with political, social and religious issues that threaten to divide us, understanding historic global atrocities such as the Holocaust are vitally important. We can never allow such a sin to ever be repeated. The question becomes though if a generation knows nothing about those sins, how can the sins be prevented? What safeguards exist so that they won’t occur again?

With something as serious as this, ignorance is no excuse and cannot be accepted.

We have to do better. Our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren deserve that from us.

I would suggest a good place to start learning about the Holocaust would be watching the film Schindler’s List, reading “Night” by Elie Wiesel or visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Accomplishing just one of the above suggestions would make a powerful impression on anyone and would be an important first step in understanding what happens when evil reigns unchecked in the world.

Bill Speer can be reached via email at bspeer@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 354-3111 ext. 331. Follow Bill on Twitter @billspeer13.