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| Light amid darkness July 2012 London, ON This photo originally shared on Instagram |
Let that number sink in.
Because those who managed to survive this darkest chapter of human history are rapidly leaving us.
Soon there will be no first-hand witnesses to the Holocaust, no victims left to tell their own stories.
Which, against the backdrop of deniers and Jew-haters who would deny that any of this ever happened, and the historic rise in anti-Semitic activity across the globe, should chill us all to the bone.
I wrote the following passage three years ago. It is as valid today as it was then.
Actually, more so:
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.
Not quite never again, January 2022
The dangers of forgetting about Auschwitz, January 2020
Never again means never again, May 2019
No, Mr. Trump, one is never too many, January 2017
They hate Jews, too, July 2016
Never forget, April 2012
On never keeping silent, July 2011
Hatred through an 8-year-old's eyes, June 2009
Kristallnacht + 70, November 2008
Never forget, May 2005
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