The Holocaust Kerfuffle

"However even a bigger crime is this - in some respect the Holocaust victims as well as the victims of other genocides have died in vain. How? Why? Because we don't learn."

Well, we are now ready to start our second full week of the Trump Administration. Anyone who is bored from the activities during week one might need to be drug tested. And before I get into the topic de jour for today, one afterthought about my article yesterday on Betting on Deep Vetting. 

This morning one of the talking heads on a news show said something interesting. "You know, this vetting thing probably should have been run through the State Department before it was released." Yes, Mr. Talking Head - it should have been. Too bad the State Department is an empty house right now due to Schumer's parlor games in the Senate. 

On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz Prison Camp was liberated by the Soviet Army. That was 72 years ago. Every year, there is a remembrance for the estimated 6,000,000 Jews who died under Hitler in World War II. In the flurry of activity last week, the message from the White House for this event was somewhat cryptic. It recognized all kinds of different people from different groups who have died. But it did not mention the Jews specifically. Immediately, the Left made the accusation the White House was full of "Holocaust Deniers". 

I said when Trump first office, if he ever "stepped in it" (in my opinion), I would call him on it. Not recognizing the six million Jews who were murdered last week was a miss. He stepped in it. But now I will address the other side of the story. As many of us know, the Holocaust was not the first genocide, nor was it the last. And that is a huge problem for humanity.

Just a few decades before the Holocaust was an event which has come to be known as "the forgotten genocide". I am talking about the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1917. Just as the Holocaust was masked by World War II, the Armenian genocide was masked by World War I. Once the world found out about the massacre of 1,500,000 Christians by the Turkish government, the cry of "Never again!" went up from the masses. And that "Never again!" lasted until World War II.

Bottom line? And it hurts me to say this. We as a species, tolerate our self culling through mass murder and genocide. One would think after the Armenian genocide and then the Holocaust, that would be it. Seriously - never again.

But then we had Pol Pot, the Communist leader of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. We did nothing to stop him. He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. Then the Rwandan genocide of 1994. That claimed 800,000 lives. We knew all about it as it was happening. We saw it live and in color on our television sets, while people were massacred or tortured.

Finally, how about what has been happening in Syria and Iraq? Christians, Muslims of the wrong type, homosexuals, the disabled and so on have been exterminated by the Islamic State. Just like with Rwanda, we saw it live and in color on our televisions. Plus, since it is modern times, we could see the uncensored atrocities on the internet.

Was there a miss by not mentioning the Jewish Holocaust specially last week? Absolutely. That was a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportion. However even a bigger crime is this - in some respect the Holocaust victims as well as the victims of other genocides have died in vain. How? Why? Because we don't learn.

A motto from the Jewish Holocaust is "never forget". Unfortunately, the world seems to have a short memory.