From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The internationally recognized date for Holocaust Remembrance Day corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
What is commonly understood to be a main lesson of the Holocaust, is that we must be on the alert for any emerging trends in that direction, to fight back against them so as to prevent any such calamities from happening again. And it seems pretty clear to me, that yes- we have learned that lesson… this very site upon which I now write, magnificently exemplifies this spirit of resistance. And it’s just one of many components of a massive movement, resolved to thwart at every turn, the pernicious agenda of that walking nightmare currently holding our nation’s highest office.
But the flip side to this, is that there were enough hateful people to place said nightmare into that highest of high positions, to begin with.
I’m just going to come right out and say it: I think we may have been blindsided by the election results, because we had drastically underestimated their numbers.
Oh, sure- your Republican uncle will tell you that not all Trump supporters are bigots… but a lot are, and there’s just no getting around that. I highly doubt that all of the blasted neo-Nazis in this country celebrated his victory with the Nazi salute, because of his policies on trade & tariffs.
So, what can be done about the underlying issue- that there’s still so many with this narrow-minded, intolerant mentality? How can it be explained to them that their prejudices are irrational, when if logic entered into their thought processes, then they wouldn’t be the way they are in the first place?
And so this gets to the second part, of what we may have yet to learn from the Holocaust.
There are many who object to the Trump/Hitler comparisons, and this objection is certainly understandable, since border walls and travel bans and registries and deportations, are certainly nothing on the order of industrialized mass murder factories. But I’d like to reflect on this a bit, because it may have tremendous significance… If we can at least acknowledge that things- as bad as they may be now- are still a far cry from being that bad, then I’d like to pose the question: to what extent is the vast difference between then and now, due to people, being different? Perhaps, people are never really any different… it could just be that the percentage of chronic haters remains roughly constant throughout time, and every now and then, through some tragic fluke of fate, they happen to gain power and can thus execute their demented schemes. Or, perhaps their prevalence can vary…?
From my understanding, virtually all of the people who had been Nazis, simply lied about it afterwards, denying that they had ever supported the genocide. Although, they didn’t all deny it- there were some fanatical die-hards who did freely admit they were Nazis… and they unabashedly continued to espouse that ideology for the rest of their lives.
And then there also seems to be a smattering, who like the die-hards, do admit that they had been Nazis, but unlike the die-hards, they say that they have since realized that it was wrong.
But what I have never heard though, is anything along the lines of why they are sorry… what exactly was it, that had changed their minds? The importance of this, is that while we may not be able to come up with anything on our own that can be effective at persuading today’s haters, such a testimony from a past one might be effective, because ostensibly, it’s what had transformed them. Basically- what had worked once before (on themselves), perhaps might work again (on others).
Take for instance Oskar Groening, the so-called “accountant of Auschwitz”, who had been on trial a few years ago for his involvement in the Holocaust. In all that I had read on this while that trial was going on, never once was there any answer to the question of why he is sorry- he only simply stated that he was, with zero explanation. I guess it never occurred to any reporter, or to anyone else who currently has access to him, to broach this. Perhaps because to all those who now happen to be in a position where they could ask him this, the wrong of Nazism seems so blindingly obvious that it just never even crosses their minds to raise such a question. But it actually can’t be all that universally obvious, because if it was, then some people, like Groening, wouldn’t have ever bought into it as he once had, and moreover there wouldn’t still be so many people with this inclination today.
I am really, genuinely interested in this: if anyone might happen to know of any such accounts- something that could begin, “I used to be in favor of genocide, but today I no longer am, and this is why…” (i.e., what is different for this person, then versus now, which has resulted in this person feeling the way they did then, but the exact opposite way now), I request that you please share this, in the comments.
And sure, we could speculate about this among ourselves, and there may be some value in that as well… however, while any of them may still be alive, then why not just ask those people, directly? But I’d also like to point out that the window of opportunity for this is rapidly closing, because anyone who had been an adult at that time is now very very old, and so there’s not many of them left, and their numbers are only steadily diminishing.
But we should pursue this while we still can, for if we can fully understand all the factors that have resulted in how much things have improved between then and now, then what further leaps of progress may be possible for the world, for the future?