The Holocaust: A Time to Remember

By Elizabeth Windisch
Special to the Independent

As I sat down at the computer to start writing this column, I noticed an e-mail from my friend Gerald O’Hara. Checking my e-mail one more time before beginning the writing process was my way of procrastinating. Little did I know that his e-mail would be a cartoon that would actually help me get to the task of writing about the Holocaust Seminar to be held Saturday, April 19. The Non Sequitur cartoon is titled “In Memoriam” — the young girl in the cartoon is talking with an older gentleman on a park bench when she notices his tattoo. A very boring tattoo because it is just numbers. The man explains that he was about her age when he got it, and he kept it to remind him of a time when the world went mad. He asks her to imagine a time when people followed political extremists that didn’t like you just because of your religion. A time when everything was taken from you, your family put into concentration camps as slave laborers and then systematically murdered. He continues to tell her that it was a Holocaust, in which millions of people perished. She asks the old man, “So you kept it to remind yourself about the dangers of political extremism?” He replies, “No, my dear. To remind you.” (By Wiley — ucomics.com/nonsequitur)

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War ended in Europe. This cartoon was being sent in an e-mail as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 30 to 50 million Ukrainians who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian people looking the other way!

Today we have Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Israel, China, Tibet and so many other countries where political extremists impose their personal political power-hungry rule. The extremists are actually very few in number but through fear tactics (aided by media coverage) their numbers seem much larger. Human life is of little value in many areas of the world. Respect and an understanding that we are all One in the eyes of God, that we are All Children of God, is certainly not a commonly held concept.

I am reminded of the Pete Seeger song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” from the early 60s. The young men have gone for soldiers, the soldiers have gone to graveyards, the graveyards are covered then with flowers. This is a vicious violent cycle. “When Will We Ever Learn” that war is not the answer?

It is time to remember those whose voices were extinquished through the memories of those who witnessed the Holocaust of World War II. Four individuals who experienced the Holocaust will share their stories on April 19 at the First United Methodist Church in Gallup.

One fled Germany for China after Kristallnacht, only to be put in a Japanese concentration camp. Another lived in war torn Germany and briefly was part of the Hitler Youth. A young U.S. Army soldier was among the first to enter and liberate a slave labor/concentration camp, and yet another witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust through her mother’s nightmares.

We cannot forget and we should not neglect to do what we can to keep such atrocities and inhumanities from recurring. It might mean taking an idea and seeing it to fruition. The making of the anti-war documentary “Body of War” by TV host Phil Donahue, filmmaker Ellen Spiro, and Iraq war veteran Thomas Young targeted hearts over minds. “Change in the world starts with people’s hearts, not their intellect,” says Spiro. “Talk show host Donahue makes anti-war documentary,” The Independent, March 17, 2008, 10.

A federal government business lawyer sees an opportunity to develop a line of food products. It is now his business tp help “enemies” work together. Daniel Lubetzky is “the founder of PeaceWorks, an innovative, ‘not-only-for-profit’ company based in New York City that fosters business partnerships between groups in conflict and then markets their food products. The company has joined Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs; black and white residents of post-apartheid South Africa; Christians and Muslims in Indonesia, and other ethnic and cultural groups whose relations have been marked by persistent and often violent conflict.” “Make Food, Not War,” Hope Magazine, Nov/Dec 2002, 11. PeaceWorks and their business partners are committed to work together and showing that more can come from cooperation than killings. (www.peaceworks.com)

Or it begins quietly and individually by showing kindness and respect to ALL of God’s creation

Elizabeth “Betsy” Windisch is the Christian education director at First United Methodist Church-Gallup. She is a member of The Stewards of Creation, New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light, GALLUP SOLAR, McKinley Ctizens’ Recycling Council, and the McKinley Education Foundation.