This is a cross post by Darren Cohen from The JC
Tick tock, tick tock. Time is running out. We must act now. Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th 2012 marks 67 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration camp and Holocaust survivors will not live forever. Our duty as students and Jewish ambassadors to ensure ‘never again’ means ‘never again’ starts by ensuring that the very people who can testify to the horrors of the abhorrent era are heard.
Less well known, it’s also 69 years since Mordechai Anielewicz inspired Jewish rebellion against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. The idealistic Zionist youth that constituted the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB) had taken over the ghetto. On April 19th 1943, when the Nazis arrived to carry out their deportation, the courageous Jews refused to be taken like lambs to the slaughter. Lasting three weeks, the heroic Jewish fighters ensured they were more than a full stop in history.
Their will to die as human beings with Jewish Spirit and not allow the systematic dehumanisation process to corrupt their souls is eternally inspiring. Today too, we should stand together against all forms of dehumanisation.
The incorruptible spirit of Anielewicz and others should encourage us to ensure that Holocaust education is of absolute necessity in every educational establishment. Holocaust denial is on the rise and we cannot allow for the glorification of Nazi ideology to become acceptable in mainstream discourse.
Jews have a responsibility as ancestors of victims of the Holocaust to educate in the same spirit as Anielewicz fought to defend Jewish dignity. No-one should ever be able to say “I didn’t know”.
This harrowing culture will transpire if we do not deem awareness and education paramount. The Holocaust Educational Trust does fantastic work, providing moving and brave Holocaust survivors to speak throughout the country. They arranged for Ruth Barnett, who came to the UK on the Kindertransport, to speak at King’s College London. She spoke with empowering vigour, emboldening us to tackle discrimination, hatred and racism in every form.
Our challenge is to completely reverse the moral direction of society from that in Nazi Germany.
Jewish students should not be victims of the unacceptable rise of hate speech and Nazi glorification on campus and in society at large but equally we are responsible for being part of the solution in preventing it. Only through effective and meaningful education can ignorance be eradicated. The fact that survivors, the most profound educators around, aren’t getting any younger, should make this need an urgent one.
