Holocaust Memorial Day - Monday 27 January

Thank you to you all for your thoughtful and sincere comments and contributions on this very meaningful day.

As long as we all, have breath in our bodies, we MUST NEVER allow bigotry and hatred to triumph, nor see any human being or race, suffer any form of genocide or ethnic cleansing, as we have seen over the past 100+ years, we must stand together to raise our voices collectively. We must be the ripple in the ocean.
 
Today. No words to describe the horror and depths humans can sink to. I read a very vivid book on Auschwitz describing how the body reacted particularly females with woman giving premature birth, girls having periods starting. It described how people would climb on top of one another to try and get to the skylights.

The sheer horror these poor poor people suffered is beyond comprehension
 
Ric said:
As far as I’m aware, it is a compulsory part of the national curriculum. Maybe that’s why the thread has had relatively little engagement. This is from the Holocaust Educational Trust website:
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Teaching about the Holocaust has to also include the reasons why the Holocaust happened. I don't believe that is possible within the constraints of the national curriculum because of the sheer weight of what would be needed to be taught.

I think you would possibly need to do a PhD and even then there would still be gaps because it was not a simplistic event, it was an accumulation of events that lead to this abomination and stain on humanity.

You would possibly have to go into the works of Neitzche , the romanticism of Wagner and even the influence of early works of propaganda like the Protocols of the Elders of Sion to get a real overview of why it happened.

Personally I would teach about the horror of Fascism, although in todays world many might not like it, they would prefer the rote learning of the likes instituted by Gove where you can name the dates of events but not the context.

On a side note i read there were objections to the Holocaust memorial being built in the park near Parliament because it took up too much space. How can people complain about such an important memorial because it spoils there view of some grass. I despair at times, i really do.

We should never forget the Holocaust and every reminder of it will hopefully serve as a warning that it can never be allowed to happen again.
 
Rascal said:
Teaching about the Holocaust has to also include the reasons why the Holocaust happened. I don't believe that is possible within the constraints of the national curriculum because of the sheer weight of what would be needed to be taught.

I think you would possibly need to do a PhD and even then there would still be gaps because it was not a simplistic event, it was an accumulation of events that lead to this abomination and stain on humanity.

You would possibly have to go into the works of Neitzche , the romanticism of Wagner and even the influence of early works of propaganda like the Protocols of the Elders of Sion to get a real overview of why it happened.

Personally I would teach about the horror of Fascism, although in todays world many might not like it, they would prefer the rote learning of the likes instituted by Gove where you can name the dates of events but not the context.

On a side note i read there were objections to the Holocaust memorial being built in the park near Parliament because it took up too much space. How can people complain about such an important memorial because it spoils there view of some grass. I despair at times, i really do.

We should never forget the Holocaust and every reminder of it will hopefully serve as a warning that it can never be allowed to happen again.
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The reason it happened is because a group or groups of people demonised and persecuted another group or groups of people, something that has happened many times in history. Often it has a religious or ethnic basis - non-Jews v Jews, Catholic v Protestant, Sunni v Shia, tribe against tribe - but the common thread is that involves people who aren't part of what we could call the "mainstream", who are different in some way. Who weren't "one of us".

You're right that it wasn't a simplistic event but it started with the need for a scapegoat and the use of increasingly virulent language, via the media, to start to dehumanise that scapegoat. The US Holocaust Museum is particularly good on that part of it. People just assume it started with places like Auschwitz and Ken Livingstone perpetuated that with his ridiculous and insulting comments about Hitler suddenly 'going mad'. I'd recommend the late David Cesarani's brilliantly researched and written book 'Final Solution'.

And it's equally facile (but quite convenient for you) to blame it solely on 'fascists'. There are people on the left who deny it ever happened and who think British Jews are just Israeli propaganda shills. You & me have had this discussion and I've no wish to go over old ground but we had the former leader of the Labour Party - not someone you'd describe as a 'fascist' - describe British Jews (except he used the term 'Zionists') as having no sense of English irony, thereby making the 'not one of us' point quite openly. There are people who called for one of the oldest affiliated groups in the Labour to be kicked out because "they're not one of us" and "they're just a fifth column for a foreign power".

And that's how it starts, with people applauding and defending it. It's the pattern every single time it happens, with people turning their backs on, then actively turning on, their former friends & neighbours. The wilful blindness of some on here to this is empirical proof of how these things start, along with the more extreme view that would see Israel as a wholly malevolent presence that needs to be wiped out. And that's just on this, supposedly well-moderated forum.

And while your desire for a Holocaust Memorial is undoubtedly sincere & well meant, I think such a thing is the height of hypocrisy, as the UK (along with most other countries) did everything it could to turn a blind eye to the situation and kept the borders of the Palestine Mandate firmly shut even after Kristallnacht in 1938. The USA was little better, refusing to accept the few hundred passengers on the ship St. Louis, who had applied for US visas before they sailed from Hamburg. They were forced to return to Europe and meant were subsequently murdered.

Even today, we saw Brexit fuelled by the anti-immigrant sentiment expressed by people like Farage and the Leave campaign openly taking this line before the referendum. Rwanda, Bosnia, the situation of the Rohingya in Burma, the Kurds in Iraq & Turkey, and the Uighurs in China, show that if the lessons of the Holocaust have been learned, it's probably not the lessons we thought ought to be.
 
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sfi.usc.edu

One Day in Auschwitz

In this documentary which aired around the world via Discovery Communications and subsequently on Comcast and Showtime, Holocaust survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon revisits Auschwitz 70 years after her liberation. At 89, she shares her eyewitness experience and daily struggle for survival with two...
sfi.usc.edu sfi.usc.edu
 
By coincidence I have been reading a book called, “The Volunteer”, based on the Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki. He volunteered to be captured to go into Aushwitz to form a resistance network and to help to bring attention of atrocities to the outside world (albeit he had no idea of the scale of the crimes he would witness). Countless requests for the death camp to be bombed were rejected. I won’t say any more in case peole wish to read the book.
 
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