Seven
decades ago today, Soviet forces were rolling through Poland, uncovering some
of the worst inhumanities of the Third Reich and some of the greatest abuses of
the Jewish people. On January 27, 1945,
they came into Auschwitz…a name that has become synonymous with evil and human
suffering…where they liberated nearly 7,000 prisoners still in the camp. Nazis had forced some 60,000 to march west
just days earlier and the world would come to learn that at least 1.1 million
people were killed there.
We
should remember the Holocaust for its history.
Now seventy years distant, time has worked some of its effect. The movies, the pictures and the stories have
perhaps calloused us a bit to the great horror of this epochal nightmare. We must work to make sure this history still
haunts us and moves us to the resolve of “never again.” Stories like those of today’s Washington Post
are very helpful at achieving this goal.
The
IHRA is also committed to this. In
reaffirming the Stockholm Declaration today, they declared:
The
unprecedented character of the Holocaust will always hold universal meaning for
us. We are committed to remembering and honouring its victims, to upholding the
terrible truth of the Holocaust, to standing up against those who distort or deny
it and to combatting anti-semitism, racism and prejudice…
We
should remember the Holocaust for its anti-Semitism. Adolf Hitler’s maniacal obsession in obliterating
the Jewish race is instructive. In the
final days of Germany’s war effort, troop trains gave way to the trains
carrying Jews to the gas chambers. The
nation of Iran, the Palestinian state and a multitude of terrorist
organizations are committed to the deaths of Jewish persons and the destruction
of the nation of Israel. Stephen Spielberg, in his remarks today at the Auschwitz memorial said:
“If you are a Jew today, in fact if you are any person
who believes in freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression,
you know that like many other groups we’re once again facing the perennial
demons of intolerance.”
We
should remember the Holocaust for its spirit.
The spirit behind the Holocaust
was hatred and violence. And this spirit
lives on and is too seldom checked. Dr.
Josef Mengele was the doctor who performed some of the worst experiments imaginable
on human subjects at Auschwitz, most notably on identical twins. Mengele was able to escape to South America
where he lived in Argentina for its “no extradition” policy. Mengele became an abortionist in Buenos
Aires, transporting his violence towards Jews outside the womb to babies within
the womb. In America, 57,000,000 babies
have been aborted since its legalization.
Our nation’s abortion chambers have turned out systematic death with
such ruthless effectiveness that many of Hitler’s “Final Solution” Nazi
planners would find impressive.
When
several hundreds of people rioted in Ferguson, Missouri to protest the Grand
Jury exoneration of Officer Darren Wilson, the national news media ran non-stop
coverage. When nearly a quarter of a
million people marched peacefully in Washington DC at this past year’s March
for Life, the national news media was silent.
Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group, have killed nearly 2,000 Christians and
burned numerous churches in Nigeria with little resistance from the world. And again.
We know more about the New England Patriots deflating their balls than
the suffering of those Nigerian Christians.
We
definitely need to remember the Holocaust.
Let us remember the victims of one of the world's worst eras, and let us not forget that such evil continues.
