This year, as we mentally prepare to hear the Yom HaShoa (Holocaust Memorial) siren, we have so much to mourn and remember.
This year, in addition to remembering our own family's stories, we should also make a special point to remember Shlomo Mansour (85). He is an Iraq-born chicken coop manager and was taken by Hamas from his home on Kibbutz Kissufim on October 7.
Mansour survived the Farhud in Baghdad, Iraq in 1941. He later resettled in Israel. The Farhud was the Iraqi Jews' Holocaust. It was the catalyst that led to the entire Jewish population being driven out of land with centuries old ties to Jews, Muslims, and Christians... within a decade. The ethnic cleansing of Jews from Iraq.
Shlomo, if alive, has lived through a pogrom, attempted ethnic cleansing, being a refugee and finding status in Israel, and now being a Hamas hostage.
The Holocaust didn't happen in a European vacuum. Without learning from the atrocities of the past we are doomed to keep repeating them.
80 years ago, between the years 1941 and 1945, some six million Jews (two-thirds of the Jewish population) across German-occupied Europe were systematically murdered. The murderous campaign of ethnically cleansing Europe (the world) of Jews was executed through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka.
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Soon thereafter, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. They were deported by rail (in cattle cars) to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be enslaved in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments.
Nazis also targeted other groups for persecution and mass murder. These groups included Soviet POWs, ethnic Poles, Roma, Homosexuals, and people with disabilities, among others.
Antisemitism was at the foundation of the Holocaust. Antisemitism, the hatred of or prejudice against Jews, was a basic tenet of Nazi ideology. This prejudice was also widespread throughout Europe.
Now, in 2024, antisemtism is loud and proud and the parallels between the rise of the Nazi occupation and what is happening on university campuses across North America and Europe is terrifying, to say the least. Now, instead of calling us Jews, we're called Zionists the new "PC term" for antisemitism.
The Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany) is starting a digital campaign called #CancelHate with Holocaust survivors taking on hate, holocaust denial and antisemitism.
Holocaust denial (and distortion) is on the rise with staggering statistics, but there are real survivors alive right now.
#NeverAgainIsNow and we mean it.
There are already October 7th deniers and distortionists who have been working non stop and far too many people are eating up the denial, agreeing with the distortion, praising men like Osama BenLaden and the Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The absurdity astounds me.
Stand up to hatred.
Stand up for your Jewish friends.
Do not let the mistakes of the past, repeat.... right now, because history is happening... right now.
Instead, be the light.
You can learn more at: https://www.claimscon.org/cancelhate/
Citations:
- https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
- https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud
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