It Always Starts with Words; But Doesn’t Always End There - CAEF Bulletin
The Holocaust in Poland
Today marks an historic moment acknowledged the world over—the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. Thousands of people are commemorating, millions are remembering, and hundreds of leaders are speaking, but does this mark the end of Jew-hatred? Will noble words spoken at memorial services affect the terrible words spoken against the Jews, Israel, and Zionism that are raging across North America and Europe? Will the words and photos in our national newspaper and tv stations depicting the horror of WWII and the Holocaust, make up for their regular onslaught of anti-Israel reporting, their ignoring of antisemitic acts on our campuses, and the venom spewed from the mouths of Islamist religious leaders, neo-Nazis and the Students Against Israeli Apartheid on our campuses?
The ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau
The crematoria the Nazis tried to destroy at Auschwitz
Today is remembered at Auschwitz, the eternal symbol of the Holocaust but surprising news—while 1,000,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed there, more people lived to experience freedom than left Treblinka or any other death camps. NONE of the 1,100,000 Jews that were sent to Treblinka lived to attend the memorials. The very buildings were destroyed, including the crematoria and train tracks that brought the nearly dead to become permanently dead.
Majdanek death camp
The Memorial, all that is left of Treblinka Death Camp, graveyard to a Million Jews
Grass is growing at Auschwitz. Over 2 million people visit very year. What are they learning? What are they doing with the knowledge, after their vision is blighted with the painful sight of remnants of lives lived, of historic photos of walking skeletons? What do they do after they see the gaping ovens that held Jewish ashes?
Somehow, the message has been sublimated. It is being ignored, denied, trivialized, denigrated and even replaced with other victim-claiming woke-progressives and Islamists who undermine the truth every day.
WE MUST NEVER FORGET, BUT WE MUST TURN NEVER AGAIN INTO MEANING THAT WE WILL NEVER AGAIN ALLOW ANTISEMITISM TO INFILTRATE OUR COUNTRY, OUR LIVES AND THE FUTURE OF OUR PEOPLE.
Today we remember the victims of the worst acts of inhumanity in human history; we honour the survivors and their descendants. Let us also show respect for the people who stand up for Jewish survival, who support Israel, and love the Jewish people, and who join in our fight against antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
To all our allies, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Druze, Yezidi and others, we thank you and cherish your support, so that Never Again Will Truly be Never Again and We Will All Be Free.
Here is a pledge I read on the Christians United for Israel, US site and I urge all to make to make this same commitment:
-
Oppose anti-Semitism in all its forms, wherever it may be found;
-
Educate my friends, coworkers and elected officials about how to identify and condemn the anti-Semitism that hides in plain sight;
-
Fight those who would use opposition to Israeli policy as a thin veil to hide their hatred for the Jewish state; and
-
Support our Jewish neighbors should they ever be victimized by anti-Semites.