Lay Holocaust to rest?

By Ed Ziegler

Do you really think that World War II’s Holocaust has taught the world a lesson? I think not. It clearly appears, to me, that much of the world has not learned. If we do not honestly face facts now, in this nuclear age, we are doomed to endure even greater horrors.

There are “Holocaust Deniers” and“ “Revisionists” who claim there’s no evidence the Holocaust ever occurred. They claim there are only false tales of “gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, factious wartime barbaric sadistic atrocities forms of mass murder designed to exterminate all European Jewry. They claim the Holocaust is the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity.

If the Holocaust wasn’t so horrible the deniers would almost be laughable especially when one realizes that the Holocaust is one of the best documented events in history. In Bad-Arolsen the Germans maintained 50 million pages, housed in thousands of filing cabinets in six buildings. Overall, there are 16 miles of shelves holding information about the victims of the Nazis. Then add the remaining death structures throughout Europe that are evidence of the Holocaust.

People commenting, such as Prof. Phyllis Chesler, a writer, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow, and a recipient of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award  says “anti-Semitism is no longer viewed as racism, but as politically correct.” 

Then there is Professor Shaul Magid of Modern Judaism at Indiana University, who titled his article in Tablet magazine “American Jews Must stop Obsessing Over the Holocaust.”

Prof. Jacob Neusner of Brown University, states that we must “normalize the Holocaust” in order to advance our “intellectual and spiritual acculturation.”

To commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, a BBC show called The Big Question, asked “Is the time coming to lay the Holocaust to rest?”

Sir Andrew Burns has been the United Kingdom envoy for post-Holocaust issues since 2010 and was British ambassador to Israel from 1992 to 1995. Sir Andrew is chairman-designate of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) for 2014-15. The HRA is an intergovernmental body whose purpose is to place political and social leaders’ support behind the need for Holocaust education and remembrance internationally. Yet, he too, is posing the question “Is it Not Time to Lay the Holocaust to Rest?”

According to Facto.com the superintendent of da’wa affairs at the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments, Sheikh Ahmad ‘Ali ‘Othman, has issued a fatwa stating that all pigs living today are descended from Jews and must therefore be slaughtered. He bases this on verses in the Koran. The Hadith states that “Judgment Day will not arrive until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees, but the trees will say: ‘Oh Muslims, a Jew is hiding behind me, come and kill him’.”

In Islamic countries, Islamic parents, schools and leaders have been, and are still, teaching lies to future generations to promote Jewish hatred, it is understandable why that hate will continue indefinitely if memorializing the Holocaust is not continued.

The Nobel laureate, V.S.Naipaul, said, “The Islamic State Is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust.” He believes, “To call the Islamic State the Fourth Reich is to diminish it. The Islamic State is even more savage and barbaric than the Third Reich was. They just don’t have the means (yet) to commit mass murder on the scale they’d like.”

With all that the above conveys it should be clear that we cannot allow the Holocaust to fall into obscurity. As time passes the number of surviving victims and witnesses is diminishing. With the continued denial of the Holocaust, and the escalation of anti-Semitism doubling France, in 2014, it should never be asked,”Is it time to lay the Holocaust to rest?”

Every caring person must take every opportunity to perpetuate the importance of the Holocaust.

Anti-slavery activist Wendell Phillips said in 1852, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” This should include remaining alive.

Ed Ziegler can be reached at Brooklyn13@Embarqmail.com or 352-750-3298.