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Someone once told me that when you reach a certain age, nothing is shocking. How untrue that is.
I was shocked to listen to a broadcast on WBRE on International Holocaust Remembrance Day which referred to "millions of people" killed during World War II. This was followed by a blurry picture of a nondescript group of people wearing what appeared to be long black trench coats. After that, there was a Jehovah's Witness opinion piece referring to the thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses among the "millions of Nazism's victims." Neither the WBRE broadcast nor the op-ed said anything about the Holocaust as the "final solution" to the problem of Jews living in Europe. The decision arrived at Wannsee Conference was that the Germans were going to eliminate the last vestiges of Jews and Judaism in Europe, which meant the mass murder of six million Jews
Both the TV broadcast and the Op-Ed piece referred to commemoration of the "victims" of Nazism. While it is true that there were people other than the Jews who were killed by the genocide of Nazi Germany in World War II, the overriding plan of the Nazis were to murder all remaining Jews in Europe. The mass extinction of Judaism was actually begun by the Romans after the failure of the Bar Kochba rebellion. The Jews always fought for their freedom, and when they were defeated by the Romans in the year 125 of the Common Era, the Empire murdered every Jew they could get their hands on. Estimates vary between 750,000 to 1.25 million Jews killed during the Roman orgy of death, the rest being dispersed throughout the known world.
During the period of time between Roman rule and First Crusade, there were sporadic programs, killings, and genocide against the Jewish people. However, the First Crusade initiated by Pope Urban II resulted in the Jews being murdered and expelled from England, France, Germany, and in 1492, Spain. The genocide against the Jewish people continued right up to and even after World War II.
The war against the Jews, the only proper name for it, is unlike any other crime in world history. It is for that reason that there is now an international day in memory of victims of the Holocaust. It is an international memorial day which takes place on January 27th.
The fact that countless members of other minorities were murdered by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, does not in any way demean the pain of other groups. When the memorial day was created by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60-7 on the 1st of November 2005, it was specific to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration and death camps.
The Remembrance Day specifically states its purpose is to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, 6 million Jews: "One-third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities."
It is a perpetuation of the crime of destroying and marginalizing the Jewish people to address the Holocaust or Holocaust Memorial Day without mentioning the primary victims of Nazi Germany, and Europe in general. That others suffered along with the Jewish people, should not be ignored. However, those who want to be sure that the Holocaust includes multiple victims, likewise must not further degrade the Jewish people by failing to mention the chief aim of the Third Reich.
As time passes, and the Freedom of Information Act results in the release of World War II documentation, we now can only fully come to appreciate that the Roosevelt Administration and the west in general aided Nazi Germany in its destruction of the Jewish people by their indifference and, at times, knowingly turning their back on the suffering of the Jews. When Germany volunteered to release hundreds of thousands of Jews from its grip, the west turned down the offer. At the time, Roosevelt's ambassador to England was the notoriously anti-Semitic Joseph P. Kennedy. Scholarly research shows that not only did Roosevelt himself say ugly, mean spirited, and anti-Semitic garbage about the Jewish people, but in fact he knowingly turned his back on their suffering. When a number of researchers at the Treasury Department wrote a paper titled The Acquiescence of The United States in the Murder of the Jews, January 13, 1944, Roosevelt created a rump conference to take up the issue, which did virtually nothing.
Heroic people like Ben Hecht and the so-called Bergson Group tried to draw attention to the annihilation of European Jewry. They held rallies at Madison Square Garden and took out full page ads in The New York Times. It has come to light that The New York Times itself willfully and knowingly back paged the story of the murder of Jews in Europe, another sign of the rampant anti-Semitism which existed in this country.
The few survivors of the Holocaust nevertheless were extremely forgiving of America turning its back on Jewish suffering. Stories from my own family abound about the bravery of American soldiers , and their heroism in helping the starving victims who they found when camps were liberated. While Russian liberators raped the women, American troops clothed and fed them. Members of my mother's family perished entirely due to German genocide and later Stalinistic terror against the Jewish people. Those on my father's side, who had been in America for many generations, signed up for the United States Army and Air Force and fought bravely in the European theatre.
The Holocaust is not merely a testament to man's inhumanity to man, but is a constant reminder that the Jewish people have barely survived millennia of hatred, cruelty, anti-Semitism and greed.
Today, the State of Israel stands in tremendous peril. Most of the Arab world salivates at the prospect of destroying Israel and killing its Jewish inhabitants. Hopefully, the United States will continue its policy of helping itself, Israel, and free societies by continuing its support for the Jewish State.
Clifford A. Rieders is a board-certified trial advocate in Williamsport.