The pain and shame of the Holocaust

Speaking on Holocaust memorial day, United Nations Secretary General Antonia Guterres called on the people’s of the world ‘to resolve to never again remain silent in the face of evil – and to always defend the dignity and rights of all...’  

The day commemorates the six million Jewish children, women, and men, as well as the Roma and Sinti, the people with disabilities, and countless others who perished under Nazi Germany’s ‘final solution’ to what they referred to as the Jewish problem.  

The Holocaust it was the systematic, state-sponsored, persecution and murder of millions Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945 across Europe and North Africa.   

The height of the persecution and killing of Jewish people occurred during World War II. By the end of the war in 1945, the Nazis and their collaborators in Europe had allegedly killed nearly two out of every three European Jews.
The Nazis believed, Germans were a superior race -a racially superior group. They saw Jews as being a threat to the purity of the so-called German master race.  

And so it was, Jews became the primary victims targeted by the Nazis. The Nazis also targeted other groups like the Romas/gpypsies, people with disabilities, Slavic people (Polish, Russian and blacks claiming hey were biologically inferior. Also included were those who differed from the Nazi political ideology -communists, socialists, the LGBT community and Jehovah’s Witnesses- who were termed ‘asocial’.  

By 1935, Jews were stripped of their German citizenship. In 1938, Jewish men began to be arrested and sent to concentration camps.  

To create more space for itself, Nazi Germany invaded, and occupied neighbouring countries. As Germany’s territory grew, millions of Jews came under Nazi control. German authorities rounded up Jews and forced many of them into ghettos.   

As Secretary Guterres points out, the Nazis could only move with calculated cruelty from the discrimination of Europe’s Jews to their annihilation because so few stood up, and so many stood by.  

With the start of the second World War and a swift succession of German victories, the Nazi regime began realizing its longstanding goal of territorial expansion. Under conditions of war and military occupation, they could pursue racial goals with more radical measures. The German Army, military, SS, and German police units took an active part in authorized mass murders of Jews in the Soviet Union. The Germans and their collaborators deported roughly 2.7 million Jews and others from occupied Europe to killing centres in German-occupied Poland. At the largest of the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports arrived from across Europe.

Today learning about the Holocaust is important as it should inspire critical thinking, societal awareness, rather than blindly falling for propaganda while atrocities are being committed in broad daylight so-to-say.   

The Holocaust itself is a watershed event in world history, spanning geographic boundaries, affecting all sections of society. Even today, decades later, societies continue to wrestle with both the memory and historical record of the Holocaust.   

However there can be no two opinions on the holocaust. it was and continues to be evil. Millions of children, men and women suffered and were ultimately killed because of their ethnicity. Lands were expropriated on the basis of race. Homes were pillaged, women, young girls and even female children were subject to rape and other sexual crimes.  

The then German regime sanctioned the continuing evil. The Jewish people in Europe were the targets of this evil, and we understand the pain and fear Jews the world over collectively feel. The setting up of the state of Israel by the UN was perhaps influenced by those events and crimes committed against the Jewish people. The dividing of Palestine -whatever the rights and wrongs the decision- was to help the Jewish people overcome the trauma they suffered under the Nazis on the European continent. In this light it is sad to watch unfolding events in Palestine, a situation where Palestinian lands are being expropriated by the state of Israel and Palestinians are being incarcerated in prisons. Israelis or Jewish people were evicted from their lands and homes because of their ethnicity or race. They were herded into concentration camps, enjoyed no human rights.
Yet today the State of Israel is infringing on the rights of the Palestinians.   
Once again the world is simply looking on