May We Never Forget
The Lessons of History
The words Hitler and Auschwitz may conjure up pictures of a horrible era in history. We have seen the pictures of those half dead. The people with sunken, lifeless eyes and bony bodies of the death camps. Today, the overwhelming impact of what happened is fading. Their deaths are becoming just a symbol of what happened a long time ago; like a face on a milk carton.
Not long ago, during WWII, millions of people where murdered, starved to death, tortured, burned and shot. Babies and children were not spared. Surgical experiments where performed on adults and children alike without anesthesia. The Nazi’s and German doctors who performed these atrocities lived normal lives. They had families, children of their own and most were well educated.
How could this have happened ? The German people were desperate for relief from the awful suffering they endured brought on by the Great Depression. Millions were unemployed, thousands of small businesses had failed, homelessness and starvation were real possibilities for everyone. Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He was a well spoken, charismatic leader who told the people of Germany what they wanted to hear and they followed him like sheep. It happened because the people of the nation where hungry for change, uninformed, misinformed and lied to. What is to stop something like this from happening to us again? If we don’t learn from the mistakes of history we are doomed to repeat them.
Adolph Hitler hated Jews. Ya Vashem, the National Authority for the Remembrance of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust said his research indicated that the hated people were murdered at a rate of around 500 a day. Non-Jews where also targeted for elimination. The people who where ill with fatal diseases or mentally challenged where also killed. Like they where disgusting bugs to be stamped out. 6,000,000 Jews were killed by the Nazi Germany. 1.5 million children were murdered- more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of handicapped children.
Do you hear their screams? Can you imagine even one minute of the horror they indured? Can you see the faces of the children as they where torn from their mothers arms? Can you see the mass graves filled with human bodies? Sons, daughters, mothers and fathers suddenly taken away, never to be seen again. All of them completely innocent. This will happen again if we do not heed the lessons that history can teach us. We must listen.
What group of people gets your blood boiling? Who is it that disgusts you? What views do you get angry over? Pro-Choice activists? Homosexuals? Christian Pro-Life activists? Illegal Aliens? Democrats? Republicans? Jews? Blacks? Skin-heads? Atheists? Whites? Americans? Homeless people? Those on welfare?
It is important to have our individual opinions. To be able voice them. It is when our views become laced with disdain that we enter into the danger zone. Do you have negative thoughts about a certain group of people? Even perhaps wanted to spit on them? Would prefer that they where not part of our society? So did Hitler and his regime.
We are doomed to repeat history if we do not learn from it.
For furthur reading
The Rise of Hitler-
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/runs.htm
Angels of Death-
http://history1900s.about.com/od/nazidoctors/Nazi_Doctors_and_Nazi_Medicine.htm
Hitlers Religious Beliefs-
http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm
Holocaust survivors-
