Days of our Lives Stars Pay Tribute To Holocaust Remembrance Day

They both play sometimes dastardly characters on Days of our Lives but when it comes to understanding real-life evil, Tamara Braun and Paul Telfer comprehend what it truly means. Both actors paid tribute on Wednesday by marking Holocaust Remembrance Day with stunning tributes.

Days of our Lives Stars Pay Tribute

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website, “The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.”

For Braun, who plays Ava on the NBC show, it was about her grandparents. She shared a beautiful photo of them on Instagram, writing, “Without these two I do not exist. So on #holocaustremembranceday I honor them even more than I normally do. My grandparents. Oma and Opa. Steffi and Erwin. Beautiful. Young. German. Jews.

“The Holocaust didn’t happen over night,” points out Braun. “It was slow, insidious. There were signs. My Opa was a survivor of #buchenwald concentration camp. My Oma got him out. Their love story is one for the ages. I love and miss you Oma and Opa. Thank you for your warmth, your grace, your humor(oma), your strength…for not letting the trauma break your ability to love and give with all your heart. #love #strength #remember #neverforget”

As for Telfer, who brings Xander to life, it was about his grandfather too — but he was one of the ones who fought in the war and encountered the horror of one of the camps as the war came to a close.

The actor shared his thoughts on Twitter saying, “My grampa Jimmy tried to avoid WW2…Instead he ended up landing with the minesweepers on D-Day…Later his outfit had to clean up Belsen. At least 100k died there…My dad believes his mental health didn’t survive what he saw.”

Telfer then shared a paragraph from the Wikipedia entry about the death camp: “The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division.[4] The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill,[5] and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied.[4] The horrors of the camp, documented on film and in pictures, made the name ‘Belsen’ emblematic of Nazi crimes in general for public opinion in many countries in the immediate post-1945 period. Today, there is a memorial with an exhibition hall at the site.”

Days of our Lives (DOOL) airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for airtimes.