The majority of the world won’t notice, with people living their lives as they always have, pathetically ignorant and committing the same mistakes. When Holocaust Remembrance Day passes on April 29, 2003, Paris will still remain a bastion of anti-Semitism, and pro-Zionist lecturers at University of California-Berkeley will continue to travel with an entourage of bodyguards. But I implore you not to march alongside the obedient and mindless, like so many jack-booted thugs of the past. When you awaken on Tuesday the 29th, remember the Holocaust. And pensively glancing at a calendar doesn’t count.
Remember the Holocaust by engaging in a rigorous educational experience. American schoolchildren are marvelously indoctrinated with Holocaust literature and history, but many adults have escaped the same saturation. Regardless of age, an extensive theoretical and practical background in one of the greatest human atrocities can’t be missed. Attending Holocaust museum exhibits is an inexpensive route, but irrespective of cost, all efforts should be made to travel to the physical sites of the horrific events themselves at least once in a lifetime. But what may be the least pricey and most poignant activity of all is a face-to-face interview with an actual survivor. Their numbers are dwindling fast and so are their lessons.
Remember the Holocaust by remembering that it wasn’t just about being Jewish. The crux of Nazism’s unbridled racism was the loathing of the individual man. German culture had always been far more collectivist-minded than the relatively laissez-faire English or individualistic America; the German people were among the ripest fruits for the picking when a psychotic wanted to try out his version of the time-tested scapegoat theory. The explicit and implicit hatred of the individual was the engine that kept the cattle-cars rolling into Auschwitz. If it wasn’t the Jews or the gypsies, it was going to be another group; a collectivist society can never survive without the sacrifice of the one to the many. The greatest enemy of the Nazis wasn’t the Jewish people, but the one person who didn’t smile vapidly at the notion that his life was to be for the good of the state. The one person who said, ‘No.’
Remember the Holocaust by remembering that the Nazis’ assault on Jewish bankers was an assault upon capitalism and success. Fascism, however ‘conservative’ it was, wasn’t above the redistribution of income, and the prerequisite to redistribution was a scapegoat the Jews, the most productive segment of Germany society. The profit motive of a local baker wasn’t considered; instead the entire nation was mired in a cataclysmic military-industrial complex that would have eventually obliterated it. The next time some Nazi-apologist in sheep’s clothing claims that Hitler did some good things for the country, get scared. And the next time some far-left politician asks, ‘How much money does a person really need?’ – tremble just the same. Because within lies the search for the next scapegoat.
Remember the Holocaust by unequivocally supporting Israel and opposing the move to create a ‘free’ Palestine. Israel is the only free country the only true democracy and free-market economy in the entire Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that was started by the Arabs and should be ended by the Israelis. It is illogical to expect Israel to cede any of its land for the creation of a homeland that would be inherently less free and tantamount to arguing that the slave-holding Confederate States of America had a moral claim to the southern United States. To this day, Chairman Arafat still dons the Palestine Liberation Organization’s official insignia an image of Palestine controlling the entirety of the Israeli landmass. With European and State Department buffoons drooling at the prospect of jump-starting peace talks with this modern-day Nazi, there is little one American can do to stem the tide of the second Holocaust. But unfailing moral support and political allegiance for pro-Zionist candidates can go a long way. Israel and the free man, regardless of race or religion, for which the nation stands needs all the friends it can get.
Remember the Holocaust by working for a new Middle East. Israel shouldn’t have to be the only free country in the Middle East; hopefully it and a revitalized Iraq can find something in common and spread their vision to Iran, Syria and beyond. Saddam, who warned of a ‘Zionist conspiracy’ until the start of the war, is no longer in power, but his paranoid fears still are. The anti-Semitic and anti-Western feelings at the heart of the Middle East must either drift away or be replaced. Their dreams of the future are dark reflections of the past, and they cannot be allowed into reality.
Remember the Holocaust by remembering that it could happen again and still does against any man who dares to step up and say, ‘No.’
Remember the Holocaust by saying ‘No.’
[ Jacob Cote, a freshman in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press and can be reached at [email protected]. ]