Auschwitz 75 – Lessons in a divided world

On the 27 January 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz the biggest mass murder site in the history of the world. Seventy-five years on, and amongst the ever-growing division of Europe and the world, the warning from the Holocaust and all the genocides since is of where the division can lead.

With Brexit just days away, we cannot allow the rhetoric of the division lead us into a war within society. The issues of anti-Semitism don’t end, I don’t want to debate Labour’s policy, but we know where for the Nazi’s ideology came from. Hitler believed there was a Jewish conspiracy and they cost Germany to victory in the First World War.

Fake news is a common phrase now, it has echoes of what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, he implied that a lie could “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” I think that all sides try to use the media to get the message across, but as we know the Holocaust was based on mistrust between the establishment, the public and the government.

Over the past few years, it has worried me about the use of “fake news” by Donald Trump to dismiss stories he didn’t like. But, we know that Russia and other states use fake news to manipulate people.

The genocide by the Nazi’s cost millions of lives, ruined most life’s all for the sake of creating his vision of a racially pure state. That idea of wiping out a group of people has continued, look at Bonisa, Rwanda, Cambodia, and the on-going genocides in IS-held Syria, Darfur and Rakhine State.

Boris Johnson’s illegal move to prorogue Parliament last year shows that democracy needs protection. It shows how easy it can be to lose a democracy if you don’t have an independent judiciary.

Hitler silenced his powers under the constitution to suppress freedom of the press, expression of opinion, freedom of the press, rights of assembly, and the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications.

Our biggest enemy is these small groups who want to wipe out the other group. We can’t allow these heated debates around Brexit to lead to civil unrest, deaths and chaos. A lot of this is down to the divides of our country.

Everyone and every party/group will have their prejudice but we cannot allow that to become part of our mainstream language. There is enough hate, but you hear things from the far right like “Muslims want to introduce sharia law”, this is used to stir up hate, further device our country.

Some of the lessons from the holocaust weren’t fully learnt until the 1960s, while you cannot compare the suffering of LGBT prisoners to the decriminalisation in the UK, we continued to prosecute LGBT people until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

Seventy-five years is a long time, but the events of the holocaust are as important now, in a world which is moving to the right. The things which divide us will be the things which will test our democracies. The UN and what is now the EU were born out of the ruins of the war.

Every time I hear a politician use phrases like “we need a final solution to this problem,” it sounds bad as to me it stirs up images of the holocaust and Nazi Germany.

Auschwitz was like a city, it’s now a place know for the worst of humanity, it was run as a city, the ‘Auschwitz Zone’ was just under fifteen and a half square miles. Bigger than the City of Bath. More people died at Auschwitz than the combined loss of British and American forces.

The 1930s just had the warnings. The Wall Street Crash in 1929, the economic sanction placed on Germany at the end of the war allowed Hitler to blame the Jews by 1930. Our history shows us that people make radical decisions in reaction to the economic crisis, leads to division and mistrust leading to conflict.

Blaming minority groups is an easy thing, President Trump has used the Muslim as the reason for terrorist attacks and the ban. But, history shows that this only weakens foreign policy. During his presidential campaign, Trump had called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Ironically on Holocaust Memorial Day in 2017, Trump signed a policy banning citizens from mainly Muslim countries from entering the US. This went against his message condemning the persecution by the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.

Earlier this month President Trump made a dangerous decision to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, this I feel was a threat to global security. The unstable Middle East has been in a state of war since 2001, we have seen acts of genocide by the Syrian Government and the so-called Islamic State.

It is our duty as a global community to ensure we are not dragged into another conflict in the gulf or into a war with Iran. Any conflict with Iran in my limited understanding will harm minority groups with the potential genocide in the region as its likely Iran will use the attack to clamp down on descending voices in the region.

“Never again,” the world said, but we have seen genocides continue whether that be in Cambodia, Rwanda, or today in Myanmar (Burma), Iraq and Syria. We cannot allow the current political climate to deteriorate into unrest and violence, as that can be used to fuel these divisions can lead to genocide.

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day this year is ‘stand together,’ we really need to. We cannot allow the divisions caused by our politics on all sides need to engage in a peaceful resolution, I believe we need to tatkal the divisions we are seeing, one of the things we are doing is moving to protectionism.

The vote to leave the EU, I feel stirred up hate in this country we had just like in the 1930s and 1940s we need to Stand Together.

‘Standing together’

This year’s theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is Stand Together, in all the things I have talked about its important we do. Our country is based on freedom, to be who we are, love who we want and to live

Leading

It’s easy for us to miss the simple steps of discrimination which can become part of national policy. We still see pockets of discrimination against not only Jews but woman, disabled people. As I have written, its so easy for divisive debates to get heated and for both sides to dig in.

But when it turns into death threats, violence and arguing that where it needs to stop. It is easy now for propaganda and fake news to target a group, leading ultimately to genocide. Society normally likes to put us into groups, but we can allow them to use this to persecute minority groups.

During

As we become aware our acts of genocide it is our duty to protect those affected and take measures to try and stop. It’s about standing against any form of discrimination if you see homophobia do you grange it? It is our duty to support those who are facing persecution and try to stop them. Often phase I hear when researching genocides and humanitarian disasters is “only if we knew.”

We have a duty to give refuge to those fleeing conflict, percussion, as I believe if we just stand by that, makes us part of our duty as a global community.

Today

We stand together to stop wrongful decisions, standing up to those in power and using our powers to say, “not in my name.” As we head to a post-Brexit Britain it’s our duty not to forget…

The events of the Holocaust may seem distant and, in the past, but the events of the 1930s and 40s in my view have become more important. We are facing a dividing world, the intuitions which have protected peace like the EU, NATO and the UN are becoming fractured by the protectionism we are seeing.

The lesson’s seventy-five years on from the liberation of Auschwitz have I feel become more divided as the pressure for self-protection has taken over. We can not allow that to take over our duty to protect the persecuted, the less well off or the people who are on the margins as they are the most likely to feel any effects of losing their rights first.