On Holocaust Remembrance Day, It's All but Forgotten

by Donna Diorio,
Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019

I never cared about history classes in high school but when we hit World War II in my junior year, something ignited in me and I was all over it. I was vitally interested and bringing down the best grades I ever had in history. My teacher wondered what got into me I'll bet.

I didn't really know why either, but I couldn't get enough of it. This was OUR history and I felt it even more strongly than when we studied the Alamo in Texas history classes. In school I was not into anything that did not seem to me that it would be useful in my life...like diagramming sentences, or world history.

Little did I know what would become useful to me in life, but at least the schools attempted to teach us. I believe I'm on solid ground in saying that the schools are not teaching about the Holocaust anymore and that is good reason why so many are ignorant about it less than 100 years after the fact.

In 2018 a CNN/ComRes poll interviewed more than 7,000 people across Europe with 1,000 respondents each in Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland and Sweden. ONE THIRD OF THEM SAID THEY KNEW JUST A LITTLE OR NOTHING AT ALL ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST.

The mass murder of some six million Jews in lands controlled by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s, and 1-in-20 had never even heard about it, while in Austria where Hitler was born, only 12% of 18 to 34's had never heard of the Holocaust.

US polls show that Americans are in no better shape: 10% of American adults were not sure they’d ever heard of the Holocaust, rising to one in five millennials. Half of all millennials could not name a single concentration camp, and 45% of all American adults failed to do so.

Writer and philosopher George Santayana famously said, ""Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

To remember history, one has to be taught history. Why do you suppose the people who have dominated Academia and school text books over the past 30 to 40 years have ceased to teach two generations of our young people about the Holocaust? In light of the anti-Semitism that has risen among us in this past decade, along with the false narratives of anti-Israel Islamists which even infects a good deal of the Church. do you not see how this leading us down a path of destruction?

If the schools will not teach accurately about the Holocaust or about the truth of the Palestinian aggression against Israel, then it is our responsibility to teach our own generations the truth. The facts don't care about feelings or narratives. Speak the truth on these matters and save your own generations from making the worst mistakes this generation can make in choosing the anti-God side of history.

After the Holocaust, the Jewish people adopted a motto, "Never Again" which meant they would educate the world on what happened in the attempted genocide of the Jewish people led by Hitler. It also meant they would not be passively led off to gas chambers again like they were in Hitler's reign when six million Jews were murdered.

It was not just Hitler's blind hatred and scapegoating that murdered those sic million Jews, it was also the ignorance and apathy of all the peoples who allowed it.

It is the unfortunate truth that for all their efforts the "Never Again" vow is not strong enough to hold back what anyone with a clear eye can see coming down the pike again. 

I choose to be on God's side, which is not on the side of those who set themselves against the Jews or against Israel. It is really just that simple. Choose now because everyone will have to choose at some point soon.