Lost Families, Hate and the Holocaust

Last week we watched Schindler's List again. I have to do this to myself every so often to keep the horror of that time refreshed. It never goes away but with the competition of daily inputs it recedes to someplace less visible.

My grandmother was a Gypsy (Roma really) from the district in Europe known as Alsace-Lorraine, an area contested for centuries by Germany and France. It was the home territory of many Gypsy families and like other parts of Europe was systematically purged of them in the Nazi program of "purification of the race". My mother was unable to reestablish contact with that branch of the family after WWII ended, so we concluded that they were purged along with Jews, homosexuals, priests, mentally handicapped (PC: intellectually challenged) and other undesirables. So I have a dog in this fight. Up close and personal. The thing is, you don't have to have a relative that was murdered by the Nazis. Look up "six degrees of separation" and you will find that you are very close to someone who was personally touched by this madness. You know me, and I have family that died in the camps. Two degrees of separation. I have friends whose familys died in the camps. Three degrees of separation.

I was preparing a short assignment on Judaism for my scriptural text course (taking, not teaching) and came across a link called The Auschwitz Album . I was prepared for another horrifying look at the camps when they were liberated. Go to this site if you have not seen what I am taking about http://www.shamash.org/holocaust/photos/ . (Holocaust deniers are not as strange to you as you might think: actor Mel Gibson is one, as is his father. I don't pay to see his movies any more. )

This was far worse. These pictures showed live people being moved into the camp, women, children and men, thinking they were going to work for the Nazis, but were in reality mostly a few hours or days from death. Then, out of nowhere, comes the NPR update on Ahmadinejad once again professing that the Holocaust is a Zionist lie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism ).

He may or may not actually believe that but he is broadcasting it loudly. This is akin to Hitler's theory of "The Big Lie" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie). Once again being used as an excuse to exterminate a people in an act of genocide.

Most of us can do little to influence the direction of international events. We can vote and speak out, a few will run for office. But we can all REMEMBER. And that is the point of this posting. Don't ever forget that the evils of mankind are just around the corner. Up the block or next door. The Klan, White Supremacists, Taliban, Al Qaeda to name a few. You can't hate just a little. Hate builds like an approaching storm then breaks into fury. In the fury good people follow bad, and bad things happen. Please, don't forget what happens when hate takes over. Please remember my lost family and the families of millions of others lost in the ovens and pits of hate. Learn and Remember.

Photo: Gypsies waiting for "processing" at Belzec concentration camp.

Photo credit: Archives of Mechanical Documentation, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives