The Holocaust, me and you – why it still matters
I have been an ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust since I visited the Auschwitz in March 2012. Events of the 1930’s and 40’s I believe are more important now than ever, in an age of nationalism, it’s hard to remember the advents of the period.
The Holocaust shows the horrors of man to man, we create divides out of fear, and ignorance. However, while I accept the Jews were the biggest victims, I feel we forget often about the disabled, LGBTQ, the Roma, Russians, and Travelling communities. Put it basically the Nazi’s wanted to destroy and remove any ‘threat’, both to their power and bred.
Why did I want to go? I wanted to understand why, learn about our shared history and also see the world. Ever since I have become more aware of what’s really going on in our world. Auschwitz should serve as a reminder of what evil we are capable off as humans.
The thing we see with all dictators is “they want to be Jesus”, you could also say that about some leaders. The Holocaust is very important to us as Europeans, our history is shaped by the biggest mass murder in the 1940s an estimated 17 million, as a wider definition were killed by the Nazi’s and the calibrators.
“Anna Soubry is a Nazi,” we heard in recent weeks, the far right still believes it OK to use language like that. I don’t agree with Soubry’s party, but I agree that anyone in politics should not be called a Nazi for any reason.
We cannot say there aren’t people who believe that the Jews should be distorted. The reason why Hitler created the Jews as the bad guys was to blame, but there are multiple reasons behind why these events happen.
I don’t want to call Donald Trump or the Brexiteers Nazi’s, but there are some patterns we can see why these events happened. Look the stock market crashed in in 1929, Germany was plunged into crisis after the first world war and Hitler blamed the Jews.
The crash in 2008 Trump has blamed China, and the civil problems in America have been blamed on Mexicans. Trump and Hitler, both great speakers who appealed to the forgotten. They both have used the phrase ‘fake news’ for things they didn’t like.
While we cannot and I am not suggesting Trump is a Nazi, you can see similar ways they got there message out there. Everything comes down to power like Trump and Hitler both wanted to change things.
Their power centred on change and tapping into the forgotten, they both believed that the policy had not worked for the ordinary people. Its very easy to become a victim of demonization. In my experience, being singled out, yes not to the extent of the Jews, for being different is not great.
I have been called a gay in a bad way, mocked for being disabled become withdrawn in social situations. But, I believe one of the biggest things is not having state-sponsored discrimination. I can’t imagine what it would like to be persecuted for who I am and what I believe.
We shouldn’t allow the far right to rise. Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested in Nazi Germany as ‘homosexuals’, of whom 50,000 were sentenced, and between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps.
We need to watch places around the world too, like in China. Reports in the media at the end of 2018 told of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims being sent to ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang. There are more than 10 million Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Year by year, we know that survivors of The Holocaust are dying, and we cannot allow their story of torture to end. In 2019, as we look at our world there are many divisions along race, religion, disability, sexuality, and gender, although these are protected characteristics.
The Holocaust and all genocides are created by prejudice. Prejudice in my view is created by misunderstanding which can be deadly. Last week, I wrote about Trump, Brexit etc, that does play into it as we have seen a rise in anti-Semitism.
But it’s not only Jews, its Muslims. Home Office data in 2018, shows that Muslims account for 52% of all recorded religious hate crime victims. A poll by ComRes last month found 58% of people agreed with the statement ‘Islamophobia is a real problem in today’s society’.
There are many reasons for the rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, as well as general discrimination, some blame Labour, some blame the media, the far right, Brexit and of course Donald Trump. In my view, I don’t believe there is a general single reason for the rise.
However, you need to say and accept that 2016 was the year when everything changed. It has been made ok by the political evens to be Islamic, anti-Semitic.
The Holocaust was the biggest loss of human life we have seen, but the cause was division and miscommunication. We still see people believing that The Holocaust never happened, my response is why in a war would anyone build these huge camps, why would millions of people vanish on trains, why would there be hundreds of people telling similar stories.
We know that Hitler’s grand plan failed, but we still have similar believes about certain religions and groups of people. However, as ever its going to be a debate about what is offensive and that is a personal choice. But there are things you shouldn’t I believe joke about openly, like race, disability, sexuality, religion, and gender.
But you need to be able to laugh at gender and sexual stereotypes, as ever it’s a balancing act. The decision by Family Guy to phase out gay or homophobic jokes, I believe is political correctness gone a bit over the top, it may see the death of humor and comedy.
However, we must not allow those jokes to become attacks, whether it is physical, verbal, to the state-sponsored removal of rights and criminally.
Free speech is a right, we all have however that does come with responsibility. We have a right to voice an option in public, but you need to do it without being offensive. However, we need to say things without causing offense.