The evil that stoked the Nazis still remains
Exclusive: Barbara Simpson warns against forgetting WWII
horrors
By Barbara Simpson
WND - Commentary
Published January 31, 2020 at 7:33pm
Media being what they are today, there wasn't much
coverage of the varied remembrances of the anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland.
Given the level of our educational system over the last
60 years, and our penchant for "forgetting," it isn't surprising that
outside of perfunctory coverage of the day in local news and several larger
remembrances by interested groups, it was a day like any other.
But it wasn't. And it isn't. And it never will be.
We have become inured to violence as our present-day
world is filled with horrific instances of ancient forms of torture and killing
– kidnappings, stoning, beheadings and more.
It's reported in the news media, and we're subjected to
grisly pictures of the horrific deaths of innocents – people killed because of
their religious and/or political beliefs. There's no end.
When children grow up seeing things like this, when
adults see it repeated constantly, there comes a time when it doesn't horrify
them to the point of wanting to put an end to it. They shut it out.
Add to the news coverage of such violence, the
degradation of our "entertainment" – movies, videos, all forms of
print and stage performances – which explicitly show acts prior generations
considered vile.
What, you might ask, does all this have to do with the
liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in 1945?
I relate it because as our culture has become more
tolerant of violence, we have managed to forget parts of our history and how it
affected the world.
I would suspect the average school child today knows
virtually nothing of the horrific details of World War II. That's a reflection
of the deplorable situation in our schools and what they don't teach
anymore. History is treated with kid-gloves – we don't want to upset those
little minds, after all – so gruesome details are ignored.
Add to that the fact that we hardly celebrate any
historical events anymore – from trying to eliminate Columbus Day for
politically correct reasons to the virtual elimination of patriotic parades and
the lessening of flying and honoring our flag.
I grew up at a time and in a place where patriotism was
rampant.
The people I knew and grew up around had been through the
WWII – and many had older relatives who were in World War I. My husband's
father and his brother were in World War I. In fact, both those wars affected
almost everyone in this country.
Families had members who fought in WWII; they either did
or didn't come home, and often they came home in pieces. Death was
ever-present. My mother's cousin was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. Other
relatives were in the military. Many homes displayed small flags in their front
windows, showing the number of their relatives who were war fatalities.
Trips to the movies showed newsreels with the latest
films of the varied battles and the consequences on the people and the terrain.
One thing they didn't show, until after the war, were pictures of the people
who were prisoners of the Nazis in those torture death camps that, in fact,
were kept virtually secret until that fateful day in 1945 when Soviet troops
went into Auschwitz and freed the 7,000 prisoners who were left there by the
Nazis.
The prisoners found by the Soviets were in the worst
condition. They were left because the Nazis figured they were ready to die –
starved, tortured and diseased. The other thousands of prisoners had been
marched out by the Nazis to other camps where eventually they all were killed.
Murdered is the correct word to use.
The world was horrified as the truth came out. Auschwitz
was but one of a string of such camps run by the Nazis. The main purpose was to
kill all the Jews from all the countries occupied by Germany. They also killed
Poles and Catholic priests and nuns, Jehovah Witnesses, the mentally ill,
homosexuals and anyone else considered beneath the level of pure Germans.
It's estimated that 1.3 million people were
deported by train to Auschwitz between1940-45, and of them, at least 1.1
million were killed.
Try to imagine that.
People were rounded up and families separated. They were
stripped of their belongings, clothes, eyeglasses, their hair cut off. They
were beaten, starved, gassed, individually killed – and eventually, their
bodies were put into oven to be cremated, their ashes dumped in pits and across
fields.
There were work units of prisoners whose job it was to
kill and dispose of the victims – until it was their turn to die.
Everyone was killed – from infants to the elderly, men
and women. They were all disposable. When the whole horrid scenario was
examined after the war, it was determined that more than 6 million
people were killed.
Try to imagine that.
I was fortunate to have grown up in a part of New Jersey
where many of the survivors of WWII came to this country to settle. The people
I knew were mostly farmers, and they gloried in the freedom the United States
provided them.
But the fact that I knew them made their war terrors all
too real.
I saw that they all had numbers tattooed on their arms.
They explained they were put there by the Nazis. I knew people who were there
and fortunately survived.
They told of horrors endured. One that has stayed with me
was the parent who told my father that he saw his child taken from his wife by
a Nazi soldier, the baby thrown in the air and caught, as a joke, on the
soldier's bayonet.
My dad was horrified, and when I heard that story, it was
seared in my memory.
We hear "Never Again." And for Jews,
especially, that is a good goal – but it appears we are sliding back into the
mire. Cases of anti-Semitism are not only rampant in Europe but also are
increasing in this country.
We must NEVER allow anti-Semitism to grow. Americans must
join together in celebrating our freedoms and the life our Constitution makes
possible. And we must educate our children about history and prepare them for
the world they will face.
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