by Henry Oliner

The Holocaust stands as a unique event in the history of western civilization, yet sometimes it seems as if few people other than the Jews really understand it. Some wonder why the Jews obsess on it and don’t ‘put it behind them’ and get on with their lives.

As we commemorate the victims of the holocaust during Yom Hashoah there are three main aspects of this event I wish every American and others in the global community would understand.

This was a unique event of biblical proportions. This is an event that is on the scale of the exodus from Egypt or the crucifixion of Jesus. It is epic in its nature and will be remembered for millennia.

This was not just a case of a one group of people murdering another or a tragic example of the casualties of war. This was a deliberate and meticulously organized campaign to deny a very specific group of people living in many countries the very right to exist anywhere. They were not destroyed to take their wealth though many took advantage of their misery. They were not destroyed to take their territory, and they were not destroyed for political differences. The Nazis and their many willing accomplices wanted them wiped off the face of the earth. This was a pure hatred deeper and wider than any we have ever seen.

This is distinctly different from the persecution of the American Indians, who were attacked or marginalized to take their land. It was different from the treatment of African slaves; we did not kidnap slaves from Africa to kill them but to use their labor like that of a common farm animal. Both policies were stains on our history and often brutal and inexcusably inhuman; but distinctly different. Millions of Cambodians were murdered by Pol Pot for political reasons, as were millions of victims of Stalin in Russia and Mao Tse Tong in China. The twentieth century saw a sickeningly high number of genocides, but the hatred behind the holocaust is unique.

The scale of this genocide was also unprecedented. One third of the entire population of the world’s Jews was destroyed. Nearly ten percent of Poland’s population, 5,000 villages ceased to exist. Of the six million slaughtered one and a half million were children.

The second essential point is that this hatred did not start with Hitler and it did not end with his defeat and death. For two thousand years the Catholic and Christian churches of Europe demonized, marginalized, and ostracized the Jews. In churches followers were taught to believe the most evil things conceivable about the Jews; they drank the blood of Christian children as a part of Jewish rituals, they ate excrement from animals, and they were sexual deviants, emissaries of the devil. They were pictured with horns and hideously ugly and sinister in the common works of art.

Politically, Europeans were taught that Jews were both evil and smart. They controlled the press, the banks and the schools. No one questioned how a group with no political power could do this, they just believed it. With this belief they could blame the Jews for all of their ills. Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague, World War One, the defeat of Germany, financial depressions, the rise of the Bolsheviks, the rise of capitalism and anything else that would take responsibility off anyone or any group who was actually responsible.

Jews were murdered by the Crusaders on the way to free the Holy Land, they were expelled from Spain in 1492, they were kept in ghettos by the Pope, and they were forced to convert or die hideous deaths during the Spanish Inquisition. In its early history when the Passion Play was performed it incited Christians to burn Jewish villages and murder Jews in their path.

In the Twentieth Century Henry Ford continued this anti Semitic legacy with a series in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, culminating in his famous issue, The International Jew. Henry Ford’s portrait hung in Adolph Hitler’s office.

The holocaust was not a unique invention of Hitler; this killing field had been nurtured and fertilized by the churches in Europe for two thousand years. Nor was this killing limited to Germany. In fact some of the most brutal and massive killings took place in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, as well as Italy and France. The “willing executioners” were common ordinary citizens in occupied territories taking delight in beating, burning, stabbing and shooting their Jewish neighbors: men women, children and infants. The Nazi soldiers often just gave them permission, and let the civilians willingly do their dirty work. Some Nazi soldiers were amazed at how brutal the locals could be.

If these details and events are new to you it tells you what is missing in our history curriculum, and what you may not have learned about the history of Christianity in Europe.

It did not end with Hitler. Even immediately after World War Two, the few survivors of the death camps were often murdered by the remaining inhabitants when they tried to return to their homes. Sadly, the anti Semitism taught to the youth in many of the Muslim nations of the Middle East today is even more violent and hate filled than that experienced before the Holocaust. Today’s anti Semitism in the Middle East would have made the Hitler youth blush.

The third and probably most important point is that it started with words. Ideas have consequences and when repeated enough by people with enough charisma, authority or power the results can be devastating. Whether the words come from published authors, political figures, journalists, intellectuals in our public institutions, or priests from our pulpits, words and ideas can instigate actions that can not be controlled.

Hitler and Henry Ford were both believers in the publication, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This proven forgery claims to have been based on secret Jewish documents on their plans to control the media, the universities, the banks, and shows how they planned to manipulate everything to enslave the world for their own selfish power. It amazes me how anyone can believe such obviously forged ignorance, but such hatred does not need a reason; it only needs an excuse. The Protocols became the basis for the anti Semitic ravings in Mein Kampf and Henry Ford’s the International Jew. And today it is widely distributed and believed in almost every Muslim Country in the Middle East.

This is why the words of Iranian President Ahmadinejad and so many others, whether on the campuses of our universities, or on the floor of the United Nations, or from school yard bullies can not be ignored. Our memory is still fresh with the consequences of hateful words and ideas allowed to grow unchallenged.

As the survivors and witnesses to the madness of the holocaust pass on it is critical that this event be remembered. This is why the numerous Holocaust memorials are critical and remembrances such as Yom Hashoah are necessary. In Israel, during the commemoration, they actually read out the name of every holocaust victim publicly out loud: ALL SIX MILLION NAMES.

We do not want to ‘put this behind us’. We want everyone to know about it and all of its ugly details so that it will never happen again. Never Again.

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