Why is this day different from all other days?

[thatcrazycajun]

With thanks to my good friend technoshaman for reminding me, I would like to note that today is Holocaust Remembrance Day ("Yom Hashoah" in Hebrew), an international day set aside in memory of the millions, both Jewish and not, who lost their lives to the obscenity that was Nazi Germany before and during the Second World War. Public television is marking the occasion this week with an excellent new film dramatization of one of the most important documents of the Shoah, The Diary of Anne Frank, airing on PBS' Masterpiece Classic.

I think the most fitting and eloquent summation of why this day is needful was written by the late Rod Serling as part of a 1961 episode of his now-legendary TV anthology show The Twilight Zone, "Death's-Head Revisited." Serling, who was himself Jewish, wrote the story in reaction to news coverage of that year's trial of Adolf Eichmann following the Nazi SS leader's location and capture in Argentina. In the final scene, after Serling's ex-SS protagonist is found gibbering in lunacy at the Dachau camp, the local physician asks incredulously why the horror-haunted camp is left standing. Serling's closing narration follows, altered somewhat in the aired version from the script transcribed on Wikipedia:

"Dachau is left standing because it has to be. All the Dachaus—the Belsens, the Treblinkas, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes, all of it—must remain standing forever. They serve as monuments to a moment in time when some men decided to turn this planet into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled their reason, their logic, their knowledge, their decency...and worst of all, their consciences. And the moment we forget what they did, the moment we cease being haunted by its remembrance...we become the gravediggers. Something to think about; something to dwell on and remember—not only in the Twilight Zone, but wherever men walk God's Earth."

To this I would only add: The moment we begin listening to the smooth words of those who, even today in the face of overwhelming evidence and the personal recollections of thousands, seek to deny that it ever even happened. Those who would bring about a Fourth Reich, or something like it, desperately need to discredit the very existence of these events and this diary...for the reality of this crime is the single greatest obstacle to the rehabilitation and acceptance of the hate-filled, genocidal worldview back of it.

And the really sad thing is: for all the passionate cries of "Never again!" that have resounded over the years since, it has happened again...in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Sudan and everywhere else one group of people has sought to blame its problems on another group's skin color, or religion, or ethnicity, or you-name-it, and to enslave and/or eradicate them. And as the last of those who were there succumb to age and illness, it becomes more important than ever to remember, and keep the memory alive so that, perhaps, one day we—or our descendants—can finally learn the lesson once and for all.

Comments

Zecher tzaddik b'racha

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Thank you, my friend, for the thought and the words and the impulsion to signal-boost.

The memory of the righteous is a blessing.

Re: Zecher tzaddik b'racha

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

You're entirely welcome, old friend...but would you mind translating your header for the Hebrew-challenged goyim here? :-)

Re: Zecher tzaddik b'racha

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Did. The second line of the comment is the translation.

Re: Zecher tzaddik b'racha

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

It's the last line of the post.

[crystalgee.livejournal.com]

Wow...

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

My mother's brother (z"l) was one of the first to enter one of the camps. He never talked about it, at least as far as I know. I should probably ask her.

I had (I don't know if they're still alive) cousins living in a suburb of Tel Aviv who had the numbers on their arms. I should probably check and see.

Oh, and the song was "Denmark 1943," Matt.

And thank you for reminding us all.

[ericavdg.livejournal.com]

Thank you for remembering this occasion, dear. My great-gradfather, a rabbi, died in Thieresenstat of starvation: he gave all his food to others. Don't tell me he went to Hell because he hadn't accepted Jesus as his personal savior!