It is strangely odd I found myself arguing with a man of
Middle Eastern descent on a message board just the other day over the
Holocaust. He claimed the Holocaust was a false story and never
happened. He boasted that the story was a tool by the Jews to garner
sympathy and shed a bad light on Germany
and the Middle East. He said that Jews were
out to destroy the world and that the Holocaust never occurred.
My mind went numb and I
stuttered aloud when I read his words across the message board. The
Holocaust is a subject I know well and it is a piece of history I’ve
studied in details since I was in Junior High School. Come on buddy I
said to myself – I’m so ready for your ignorance. Mr. Achmed
(my given name to this idiot) found someone that could stand toe to toe with
him on his fallacies and lies.
Let’s start out with the Wikipedia definition below folks:
The Holocaust, is the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Other groups were persecuted and killed by the regime, including the Roma, Soviets (particularly prisoners of war); ethnic Poles; other Slavic people; the physically or mentally disabled; gay men; religious dissidents such as Jehovah's witnesses, and political dissidents. Many scholars do not include these groups in the definition of the Holocaust, defining it as the genocide of the Jews, or what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Taking into account all the victims of Nazi persecution, the death toll rises considerably: estimates generally place the total number of victims at nine to 11 million.
Did that get your
attention? NINE TO ELEVEN MILLION people were murdered because Adolf
Hitler and Nazi Germany thought they were repugnant. Oh it happened, and
now many in society are trying to say it was a big lie and a propaganda tool of
Semitic sympathizers. If I had lived in Nazi Germany and lived an openly
GAY LIFESTYLE – I would have been included in that NINE TO ELEVEN MILLION
people that are now gone………………..erased………………..wiped
off this earth by pure hatred. Do you realize entire nations, families,
generations of families and their way of live obliterated – gone –
puff disappeared forever?
So I responded to this
idiot over the internet – me sitting in my cozy home in the U.S. and him
most likely blogging from the Middle East. I advised him he needed to
go back and read history and look at the thousands of pictures of the dead all
lined up in chalk covered mass graves and think again. He argued and
stammered with me that it was a lie – basing his reasons on heresy and more lies.
As I went round and
round with Mr. Achmed in this pointless argument, I thought about Rose Berenbaum.
Rose Berenbaum was a survivor of Ravensbruck – a concentration camp in
northern Germany.
She was a guest speaker at a conference I was assigned to cover one spring day almost 20-years ago. She was a small framed woman and when I met
her she was in her mid 70’s. As I introduced myself to her, she gripped my
hand and held it tightly with both of her hands. As I sat down and
listened to her story I studied her weathered and fair face. I quickly became
aware that I was sitting next to a heroine and a heroic survivor.
She should have never lived through that nightmare I kept thinking to myself as
I listened to her story and took notes. She told me the story of her
family being uprooted and separated from her father and brother – she and
her sister marched with their mother to one location after another and finally
to Ravensbruck. After 14 months both her mother and sister had died and
she was alone and almost dead when the troops liberated Ravensbruck.
As her she neared the
end of her story she rolled up her long sleeve shirt and exposed seven rudimentary
and small black numbers that had been tattooed on her forearm. As she
held up that frail arm towards me I could see a lifetime of suffering inside her brown eyes. I could feel her pain, her rugged spirit and her will to survive. She had survived Ravensbruck. Rose looked at me in a defiant pose and said, “The Germans branded me a prisoner, branded my
skin because of my faith and told me I would die a prisoner. This tattoo
is proof that no ink, no mark and no amount of hatred can overcome the will to
survive. I survived and this tattoo is that brand to remind me that I am
here for a reason and I prevailed over hatred."
I gave Rose a hug before
I left – in my lifetime I will never meet another fearless and brave
woman like that wonderful and grand survivor.
I’ll never let her story die and I’ll never forget her and the
images she made on my young mind.
As my argument with
Achmed ended and he disappeared in the internet black hole – I thought it
was the least I could do to stand up for Rose and of the Holocaust she endured
and survived through. May we never let the Holocaust be forgotten or the
likes of Achmed will try to convince the world that the Holocaust never happened.
Rose Berenbaum what a mighty warrior you were………..
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana
