Thoughts on the seventieth anniversary:
I think it’s fair to say that the world has learned something from the war and the Holocaust. When hateful people begin referring to enemy groups as insects or clods of human feces or as sons of pigs and monkeys, we all know now, much better than we did in the 1930s, that this is part and parcel of the dehumanization that invariably precedes genocide. This is a hopeful collective memory earned from the war, and of course it applies universally.
Needless to say, there have been other, literally monumental efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, and of the heroisms great and small of World War II. But as the generation that lived during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the war flies from us with each passing day, we Jews, anyway, ought to know better than to rely on stone and glass monuments and buildings and sculptures and physical structures to preserve memory. That is not the Jewish way. Other civilizations throughout history have built great buildings—pyramids and palaces and castles and cathedrals and great walls, and some have even carved huge idols in mountainsides. Yet all of those civilizations have either perished, been layered over to oblivion, or are likely one day to be layered over. Jews instead built palaces of memory in the hearts and minds of their children using words and melodies, not bricks and stone. Jews have translated their historical experiences into ramparts of the spirit.
That’s the purpose of the Seder, to preserve memories, and rituals like that grow more important as the events of seven decades past pass from living memory with the aging and deaths of their participants.
Unfortunately, the memory will fade.
I am not Jewish, but I have many Jewish friends with whom I empathize. Why is it that the Jews are always the canary in the coal mine when great evil arises? Why do so many people nurse astoundingly virulent grudges against the Jews? Is it because some are very successful? That’s a little like Scott Adams’ response to those who say men rule the world. Paraphrasing from memory:
Hitler didn’t just go after the bankers by whom he felt Germany had been slighted. He went after ordinary people schlepping away, trying to make do and live their lives. And, there are still many people around the world who would do the same, given half the chance. What explains this murderous widely focused antipathy? I have no clue.
With a growing number on the left, including persons well connected with the democrat party core, calling for conservatives to receive treatment similar to what the jews received from Nazi Germany, some of us consider that it can happen again, even here in the US.
I recently watched the movie, “The Pianist.” I highly recommend it. It provides a chilling insight into what is was like in Warsaw under the Germans. One of the things that made this film different that other Holocaust films is that is showed life in Poland prior to the German invasion. What struck me was how similar the lives of the Jews were to ours today and how quickly–within months–it was transformed to hell on earth.
With that in mind, the point made by Peterh is well taken. The question is, when do you get out? By the time it is obvious, it will be too late as there will be no visas issued and no place to go.