Holocaust Remembrance Day

Hat tip to Steve for bringing this to my attention




April 8 is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Unfortunately, anti-Jew hatred is still alive and well in the world-especially in the Middle East and only slightly less so in Europe-a continent which should know better.

Arsen Ostrovsky has written this sad but timely piece for the Jerusalem Post.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=309022

If you ever find yourself in Poland, I strongly suggest you visit Auschwitz, which is located near Krakow. I was there in 1995. I would especially recommend it if you are one of those who believes the propaganda that Israelis are committing the same crimes against Palestinians-which they are not.

Today at Auschwitz, you can still see the remains of the crematoria and gas chambers, albeit in rubble lying on the ground. You can see the exhibits of the victims' eyeglasses, their suitcases, and other possessions which were taken from them as they arrived. You can see the rooms where Dr Josef Mengele carried out his inhuman experiments on children. You can see a small courtyard in the main camp (Birkenau, a couple of miles away, was the site of the gas chambers) where individual prisoners who had broken this or that rule were stood up against a wall and shot. You can see the wooden barracks where those that survived the initial selection process were housed in filthy, sub-human conditions. I defy you to make the case that Israelis or Jews anywhere are doing this to anyone.

How strange is it that there are those out there who still deny this ever happened or that the number of victims was far less than 6 million? Even the nation that was the principal culprit, Germany*, openly admits it happened and teaches its school children about it as we teach our kids in the US about slavery-so that it doesn't happen again. (* Other occupied nations assisted the Nazis in the Holocaust.)

This is the lesson of where anti-Semitism leads. Unfortunately, there are some people in this world who would like to revisit this horror upon the Jewish people and finish the job Hitler started.  We have a duty to let them know, whether they represent nations or only themselves, that we will never allow this to happen.