Do you believe in the Holocaust? – Lydia Torrington
Last Sunday, the world remembered the 17 million people who were persecuted as part of the infamous Holocaust, a number that is greater than those who died in World War 1. Of this number, 6 million Jews (making up two thirds of the European Jewish population at the time) were murdered solely for their religion, and others for their race, their political views, their sexuality or their health. In 2019 Britain where we strive to accept all humans, it is hard to imagine how so much death and torture could have been caused by the disturbing and twisted ideals of one mentally insane man, and how so many could have conformed to this, but nevertheless it happened (or so we would think).
The Holocaust is as huge part of the history of Germany and of all the world, as it highlights the sheer danger of allowing ideals to rule a country. However, it may surprise you to know that there is one person in every 20 in Britain that refuses to accept that the Holocaust happened, according to a survey by the Guardian. Very few people knew the number of Jews killed, with most people grossly underestimating the amount. There were also a large number of Europeans, mainly millennials, who had never heard of the Holocaust. Being at a school like RHS I think it would be very hard to have no awareness of the Holocaust, and even if you only have a slight knowledge, you may find it disgusting and terribly disrespectful that there is this level of ignorance about such a huge tragedy.
I’m going to try and explain the reasons for denying the Holocaust without condoning them. Many of the so-called ‘holocaust deniers’ argue that Hitler’s Final Solution only involved deporting Jews from Germany and that none were ever exterminated (despite the overwhelming evidence and photographic evidence to show they were). Others deny that Nazis had or used extermination camps or gas chambers, even though hundreds of survivors can support this fact. Others may except that the Holocaust happened, they state that the number of deaths was extremely exaggerate, by over 10 times. Personally, I would like to ask these people where all these Jews went if they were not murdered, and how they would explain the millions and millions of dead bodies that were found when the camps were liberated. These people are not all anti-Semitic, some are Germans who are ashamed of their country’s past and other are the kind of ‘the world is flat’ lunatics.
However, it also makes me sad to say that even now, years after understanding the full extent of the Holocaust and grieving the loss of the millions that died, there are still some people who think the Holocaust was justified as they are anti-Semitic. In fact, at the infamous concentration camp in Poland on Sunday, 50 far-right Nazi Polish organised an anti-Semitic protest during the memorial service. To imagine that such people can ruin the remembrance from families of those who died and even from survivors of the Holocaust themselves in order to incite more hate makes me feel a bit sick.
Therefore, I think it is supremely important that our generation educate ourselves and carry on the memory of those who died and of the dwindling number of survivors. The raw physical and emotional torture that these people had to suffer, and the many children who had to witness their parents or siblings being brutally and heartlessly slaughtered bears no comparison to the liberal world we are now lucky to live in. If you are one of the people that would fall into one of the categories above, start reading some books and watching some documentaries (such as Last Survivors on iPlayer) and educate yourself. If you are a Holocaust denier, open your eyes and imagine telling a Holocaust survivor that you believe that all the suffering they went through and the colossal amount of death they became desensitised to was simply just a story they made up, and then see what they do to you.
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