Monday, January 27, 2020

The dangers of forgetting about Auschwitz

Always follow the light
London, ON
November 2018
This photo originally shared on Instagram
As the world marks 75 years since the liberation of the #Auschwitz death camp, the largest killing grounds in history, I can't let the day go without saying something. A few thoughts:

The #Holocaust can happen again.

In fact, the conditions for the rise of Nazism - or something terrifyingly like it - are ripe.

The signs are all around us. Ignore them at our peril.

Those who survived the Holocaust are reaching the end of their natural lives, and the number of living witnesses to this unfathomable atrocity is moving inevitably toward zero.

Their story must continue to be told even after they are gone.

The storytelling is our responsibility. Every single one of us.

Anti-Israel, BDS, and anti-Zionism are all anti-Semitism. Full stop.

Those who practice it, and deny it is anti-Semitism, are anti-Semitic.

The Token Jew excuse doesn't hide that fact.

Jew-hatred was around long before Hitler.

He and his henchmen raised it to industrially, massively scaled levels.

Jew-hatred isn't going anywhere.

It is the canary in the coal mine of hatred.

It touches us all.

We are all barely removed from someone deciding we are worthy of being singled out. Of extermination.

Jewish. Or not.

We are more alike than not.

Hitler was elected to office.

Those who follow his ideologies are being elected to office as we speak. Check the European map. The American one, too.

It's not much of a jump between random spewing of racist thought to participation in national policy implementation.

And it's happening now.

We say "never again".

The world seems to be ignoring this.

Silence is not an option. For any of us. Jew or not.

Tell their story. Stop history from repeating itself. Be the light.

1 comment:

Tabor said...

75 years since that horror but there are smaller horros in AFrica and Syria and elsewhere still. Hate is strong.