The Holocaust: Never, Ever Forget

The names conjure evil on a scale the world has never seen.  Auschwitz.  Treblinka.  Belzec.  Mujdanek. Chelmno. Sobibor.  Those were the six Nazi death camps where Jews were brutally tortured, gassed, starved and burned alive in ovens. The world must never forget the horror.

During the sinister reign of Nazi terror, the Germans operated 40,000 camps, prisons and other ghastly facilities within their country and in the nations it occupied.  But the six slaughterhouses were the final stop for most of the Nazi victims: six million Jews, including 1.1 million children.

The depraved campaign, directed by demonic German leader Adolf Hitler, was designed to butcher every living Jew in Europe.  Before Hitler began his purge in 1933, about 9.5 million Jews lived on the continent.  When the war ended in 1945, less than 1.5 million Jews remained.

This human carnage became know as The Holocaust. President Trump signed a proclamation last week declaring April 12 through April 19 as the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust to remind Americans of one of the darkest periods in recorded history.

The timing of the proclamation could not have been better.  Hate crimes against American Jews rose nine percent in 2016, reports the FBI. That is a sobering statistic in light of the political embrace of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who preaches anti-Semitism to growing audiences.

That's why countries need to be vigilant.  The darkness of denial has already descended in Poland, where all six extermination camps were located. The government has passed a law criminalizing statements that suggest Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, despite damning evidence.

Poles imprisoned in the death camps were given roles as guards and block captains.  Some were willing participants in torture and beatings.  But the government now believes that part of Polish history is better forgotten to protect the country's new shiny progressive image.

In America, no government edict is required to scrub the Holocaust from memory.  Many schools today no longer teach students about the Nazi campaign to eradicate an entire race.  As a result, young people are growing up naive about Jewish genocide and the racial purity preached by Hitler.

A study by the Claims Conference, a consortium of diverse groups, found 22 percent of Millennials have never heard of the Holocaust.  Some 41 percent believe less than two millions Jews were killed. And a stunning 49 percent could not name a single Nazi death camp.  Their ignorance is chilling.

Even American adults are no longer knowledgeable about the Holocaust.  More than 10 percent do not know about the Nazi purge.  One in three adults incorrectly identified the number of Jews killed. Nearly 60 percent of adults are convinced another Holocaust could never happen again.

That last finding is alarming in light of recent events.  This month the heinous Assad regime in Syria used chemical weapons, specifically a form of poisonous gas, to kill an unknown number of men, women and children.  This is not the first time the Syrian dictator has gassed his own people.

Some Americans do not want this country to intervene to halt the massacre of Syrians.  For those who know U.S. history, it is an eerie reminder of America's reluctance to enter World War II despite reliable reports of the systematic decimation of Jews.  It took Pearl Harbor to change minds.

But there are more recent examples of global hand-wringing.  In a single 100-day period in 1994, an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in the largest genocide since 1945.  Not a single nation intervened to stop the bloodshed. The world's condemnations rang hollow.

That is why President Trump's proclamation deserved more news coverage.  The world can never again fold its arms and allow mass killings.  Nations that do nothing are complicit by their inaction.  How many Jews could have been saved if the U.S. and its allies had acted sooner?

The world will never know the answer to that haunting question.  But we should heed the words of the president. "We must ensure that the history of the Holocaust remains forever relevant and that no people suffer these tragedies ever again," Mr. Trump wrote in his proclamation.

If we the people allow the Holocaust to become a footnote in history, then our country and indeed the world is doomed to turn a blind eye to evil even when entire populations or races are obliterated by maniacal rulers and hate-mongering regimes.  Please vow to never, ever forget the Holocaust.