What did we really learn from the Holocaust?

What did we really learn from the Holocaust?

This week we have been talking about the Holocaust in my history classes. I teach with the hope that we will learn from the past and not repeat it. The survivors of the Holocaust speak their stories in hopes to prevent it from ever happening again. This is a good and noble hope. It is not reality, I’m afraid.

I find it a bit crazy that we say “never again” and yet how many mass murders and genocides have happened since the Holocaust?

We have Pol Pot and the killing fields in Cambodia in the 1970s that resulted in the death of about 1.7 million. We have Slobodan Milosovic and his concentration camps throughout Bosnia in the 1990’s. We have Sadaam Hussein gassing people in the northern part of Iraq in the 1990s. We have the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Right now we have the millions dying in Sudan. Who’s ready to stop it? Do we not acknowledge these tragedies if they don’t equate to 6 million?

From 1975-1979 Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge effectively purged the country of 1.7 million people – focusing on those that were from the “old society”. Basically anyone that had a western influence, was an ethnic minority, educated, wealthy, etc. was a target.

In 1987-1988, over 60 Kurdish villages were gassed by Saddam Hussein. More than 5,000 people died in just one incident in Halabja. Thousands of others died in other campaigns and today there is still a massive amount of health problems among the Kurds.

Between 1992-1995, Slobodon Milosevic led an ethnic cleansing on Bosnian Muslims. By the time it was done and NATO finally stepped in, 200,000 had been killed.

In 1994 approximately 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutus by clubs and machetes. The United Nations was present and eventually voted to pull all the soldiers out until enough news media coverage shamed them into sending soldiers back in but not in time. One tenth of the population had been murdered.

Currently, we face a crisis in Sudan. I first saw an article written by Franklin Graham in 2000 asking why we are doing nothing to help the southern Christian Sudanese who are being terrorized by their own government? Recently the focus as been on Darfur where an estimated at very least 300,000 have been killed as a result of the Janjaweed and Arabic friendly government.

So, it forces me to ask the question what did we really learn from the Holocaust? Sure, we have learned about the Holocaust, but have we learned from it? Here we sit, in our seats of judgment, and wonder why people did not do more to stop Hitler and yet completely ignore the atrocities happening on our watch. Are we willing to sacrifice our comfort, our supplies, and potentially our lives to protect those that are falling prey to these madmen? Unfortunately, the last 70 years since the Holocaust has echoed a resounding “no” to this question. Do we have the self-sacrificial mindset and determination to help bring stability to the countries that are destabilized when we take away their dictators?

There are not easy answers and hindsight it 20/20…but are we following God’s command to practice justice, protect the weak, and love selflessly? Are we willing to stand up in the face of injustice and say, “this is my problem”? Too many people avoid answering the call to protect and defend others by saying “it’s not my problem”. I always love to read the poem by Martin Niemoller to my students which pretty much expresses how he did not stand up to the Nazis because it wasn’t affecting him. Then, it did affect him and it was too late.

Those countries far away in Africa – they don’t affect us. Those gang-ridden neighborhoods - they don’t affect us. Those people we don’t like who are getting harassed every day? They don’t affect us either, so it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to ignore, or even easier to be overwhelmed and become paralyzed. And the genocides keep happening…the injustices remain…our fellow human beings face incredible pain while we sit on our philosophical thrones and shake our fists at Hitler and ignore the world around us.

It is overwhelming and I am guilty of getting paralyzed…apathetic. It’s all too much, but at least we can start small, reaching out to those next door or down the street facing injustice. Start standing up in the every day things – the little comments, the small prejudices (not just limited to that of race/ethnicity), the stereotypes. Look around and notice who is hurting…any step, big or small, is a step in the right direction.