LESSONS OF HOLOCAUST STILL NOT LEARNED
1
Marc Rogers 2
The
defining event of the 20th century, the liberation of the Auschwitz death and
concentration camp, where the mechanization of mass murder and genocide was fine-tuned
and implemented to exterminate 1.5 million Jewish men, women and children, has
recently been the object of much media coverage, the subject of many secular
and religious homilies and the dominating theme of piety-laden speeches by the
governmental representatives from Germany, France, Poland, Russia and the
United States. This chorus of hosannas, highlighted, as always, by the clarion
call of "never again," left me feeling, however, lifeless and
spiritless, as the pronouncements were delivered in an obligatory and
mechanized fashion, devoid of the tumultuous and eviscerating underpinnings
that have seared, and will forever scar, the soul of humanity.
The
subject of genocide, the deliberate, systematic and planned extermination of a
national, political, racial, cultural or religious group, was defined and
refined, honed and perfected, in the gas chambers and ovens of
How did
this happen? Who were the major protagonists and their willing, if not
acquiescing, helpers? Why did some people join the resistance movements against
Nazi hegemony and others imbibe at the trough of Nazi philosophy, even going so
far as to aid and abet, both figuratively and literally, the Nazis in the
implementation of the Final Solution (the annihilation of the Jews of Europe)?
The
list of contributing (primary and ancillary) factors and actors to the Final
Solution is much broader and revealing than is commonly acknowledged in the
halls of governments, in the textbooks of schools and universities and in the
archives of religious institutions. Thus, the Vatican's signing of a treaty
with Germany (the Concordat) in 1933 and with Italy (the Lateran Treaty of
1929), gave Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini a free
hand in implementing their agendas, as the Roman Catholic Church, in both
countries, in exchange for its silence on Nazi and Fascist policies, was
rewarded by subsequent government subsidies, tithes and tax abatements to, and
for, its treasury.
The
invading Nazi armies also counted on, and received, a considerable amount of
assistance from native militias whose anti-Semitic leanings were well-known and
countenanced in their country of origin -- the Iron Guard in
Even
the
And the
state that was most influential (albeit in a circumspect and unintentional
manner) in the Nazi advocacy and embrace of negative eugenics (which was the
first step on the road to the gas chambers) was California, which in the 1920s
and 1930s was the U.S. pacesetter in the sterilization of people afflicted with
mental retardation and other physical and psychological handicaps.
This
short and piquant summary of the long arms and wingspan of genocide illustrates
just how far the history of the Final Solution, in speeches, memorials and
classroom textbooks, has been sanitized and polished for public comfort and consumption.
The savagery and finality of genocide have thus become, in the minds of many of
today's students, just another reality show, a show that downplays the complex
and interwoven factors of life and death and substitutes
superficiality and frivolity for depth and introspection.
The
aging of the Auschwitz survivors and their compatriotic brethren leaves us
little time to rectify these glaring and purposeful gaps in the historical
textbooks that are read, debated and used by students, scholars and the public
as the definite and accurate rendering of the Holocaust and its genocidal
extermination.
As
such, it is imperative that the following recommendations become part and
parcel of the public discourse in the halls of government, the homes of private
citizens and in the classrooms of academia:
·
The
true and intricately woven record of the Holocaust must be made public and
manifest. That means that all the governments that were participants in World
War II, including the Vatican, must release any and all of their records as
pertains to their (peripheral or central) role in the gestation and maintenance
of the Final Solution.
·
The
proliferation of genocides since the Holocaust, in
·
The
key element of those citizens and governments that risked their lives and
treasure to hide and rescue Jews from the Nazi maw of death is the
much-ballyhooed but little practiced process of empathy -- the identification
with, and experiencing of, the feelings, thoughts and attitudes of another. If
empathy is taught and experienced at every step of the educational K-12 ladder,
supplemented and augmented through all academic disciplines, then the wish of
Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, will
come to fruition: "The treaty of genocide and its implementation is like a
ship carrying survivors -- it cannot be permitted to sink."
Footnotes:
1. Ventura County Star, February
6, 2005 [ http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/pulse_speak_out/article/0,1375,VCS_126_3527422,00.html
]
2. Marc Rogers, Ph.D., lives in