Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz -Birkenau concentration camp in 1945. On November 1, 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 60/7 to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Perhaps just as important, the resolution not only establishes January 27 as “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” it also rejects any form of Holocaust denial.
The Holocaust is one of the best-documented events in history. “Holocaust denial” describes attempts to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry.
Common denial assertions are that the murder of six million Jews during World War II never occurred; that the Nazis had no official policy or intention to exterminate the Jews; and that the poison gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center never existed.
At the memorial site in Poland, a small number of survivors gathered in an auditorium. Attendance at the yearly event was sharply curtailed amid Europe’s coronavirus surge. Others joined online, reports the Associated Press.
In the United States, President Joe Biden will mark the day by inviting Auschwitz survivor Bronia Brandman — who lost her parents and four of five siblings and didn’t speak of her experience for half a century, to share her story at the White House.
But this Day of Remembrance is clouded by growing antisemitism. German parliament speaker Baerbel Bas points to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that it has acted “like an accelerant” to already burgeoning antisemitism.
Rising antisemitism – along with the politicization of Holocaust images – are now often tied to debates about the Covid-19 pandemic or Israeli policy. This is not only disgraceful, but it has become a societal sickness.
“I have lived in New York for 75 years, but I still remember well the terrible time of horror and hatred,” survivor Inge Auerbacher, 87, told the German parliament. “Unfortunately, this cancer has reawakened and hatred of Jews is commonplace again in many countries in the world, including Germany.”
“This sickness must be healed as quickly as possible,” Auerbacher said.
This sickness is going to be difficult to heal as long as the public stands aside and does nothing. In May, a group calling itself “Goy Power” showed up at a pro-Israel rally in a van carrying the message “Hitler was Right.”
In November, attendees wore yellow stars to a hearing of the Kansas state legislature to discuss Covid-19 policies in the workplace.
This was followed by a host on Fox News going so far as to compare Dr. Anthony Fauci with Josef Mengele, the sadistic SS “physician” known as the “angel of death.”
These outrageous comparisons, which were made to score cheap political points, are irrational, irresponsible, callous, and hurtful. They deserve swift condemnation from all our elected officials from both political parties, writes CNN in an editorial.
The liberation of the Auschwitz -Birkenau concentration camp occurred just two months before I came into the world. Over the years I have known and talked to Holocaust survivors and children of parents and siblings lost in the Holocaust.
Yet, for many young people today, the Holocaust is nothing more than an historical event mentioned in textbooks. It becomes more and more distant and abstract. This is all the more reason to remember what happened – and to never forget.
