Fogetting the Holocaust

Recently I received thru the email, a powerpoint presentation that was condemning the UK for banning the teaching of the holocaust in its school systems. This email offended me with its prejudiced style, odd spelling contractions, over use of caps, and lack of purpose. Oh, plus the fact that it completely ignores the facts and still spouts drivel with vigor. Yet another chain email spread about by mass hysteria and dogmatic assumptions. But it did get me thinking. Is there a reason to remember The Holocaust?

The Holocaust makes just a small portion of the total genocide perpetrated in the last century, what about other travesties in recent history? The genocide in Rwanda, atrocities in Sudan and Cambodia, Sierra Leone and blood diamond wars, Algeria, India, Pakistan, Ireland, Ethiopia, Kosovo, and Hiroshima. Have we have already forgotten those?

Must we remember The Holocaust to know the travesties that man can cause? Must we remember to know how far hate can take us? How it can blind entire nations, consume the heart, and destroy the soul? Must we remember the individuals, the Kitty Genovese’s, to know of this trait in humans that make us inhuman and to know that perhaps man truly is evil, or at the very least prone to fall into evil. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Now I don’t write this by way of suggesting we forget or of supporting those who wish it gone. But to make a comment about history, about what concerns us in our lives, how we hold on to some things but let others pass us by or fall off, and perhaps a little about education, about whose role it is to educate and who determines what we should learn.

I propose that remembrance of itself is unimportant, that alone it is not enough. We need to know that history will happen again and that we could again sit by and watch it unfold as we did, to say this is not my concern and put it out of our minds. To remember and to see in ourselves the human frailties and weaknesses that causes these shameful marks on the name of man. Then we need to fight against our weaknesses. Perhaps then we will have learned from history and stop the cycle of repetition.

I will leave off with a section from Elie Wiesel’s speech ‘The Perils of Indifference’ and I would highly suggest looking up and reading the entire thing.

“… indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction.”