A Modern Analysis of the Holocaust

It is hard to say if any connection can be made between the Holocaust and events that are occurring in the world today. It can never be said that one genocide is much like another, just as the political, emotional and psychological aspects can never be said to be exactly the same. In general terms, yes, the Holocaust is very much like the genocides that have taken place in recent years, including those in Darfur and Bosnia.

Anytime one group of people feels threatened by the very existence of another based solely on the beliefs of the others and not a direct or even perceived threat, the parallels to the Jewish Holocaust are obvious. Anytime nations stand by and do nothing while thousands or millions of people perish at the hands of their own state then the memory of the Holocaust has to be evoked.

Of course the scale of the Holocaust is what was so terrifying as well as the acquiescence of the citizens and surrounding nations to allow it to happen. Still, in this modern age it is a mistake to think that the Holocaust has changed human nature toward others who are outside of our own group. In this we have been victimized by that type of fearful, hate in the Jihads who seek to destroy out Western way of life. America's very origin is littered with similar programs against Native Americans and Africans brought to this land as slave labor. A feeling of supremacy over other humans is what brought the German Nazi machine to its apex of terror and that same supremacy is prevalent today as it was as far back as biblical times through the centuries to the founding of the United States if America.

But in contrast, the Holocaust saw a brand new form of ingenuity in the process of human suffering. The entire Holocaust was orchestrated in a very particularly cold-blooded fashion through the institutions of a state's laws, military and Bureaucracy. It was wrapped in a nationalistic frame and touted as a morally upstanding thing in the face of German resurgence. For a nation to inflict pain and death on any other group of people-especially those whom were formerly citizens of your country-is to lose the morality of that nation and forfeit its right to carry out governorship of its people.

Even still, it happens even as we speak in China, the Middle East and Africa and though not as acute or concentrated, it is still state enforced. Poor children are forced to work in extremely hazardous conditions to produce goods to support the economies of some countries, the ignorant are suppressed and fed propaganda disguised as religion so they can continue to make places in the world unfit for Westerners and the few very powerful and rich can keep control or oil production and wealth, and ancient tribal aggression has spilled over into this modern world where blunt weapons are replaced by machine guns. This is a direct connection to the Holocaust of the Jews in Germany.

In his essay "Why Remember?" Milton Meltzer asks the question, "can the Holocaust be understood by those who have come after?" This is a very poignant question because as time extends between the modern and the events of the Holocaust and the survivors, witnesses and direct descendants of the survivors begin to die off, the personal pain of the tragedy will ultimately wear off.

I can try to understand what it meant to go through the horrors of the Holocaust but I can never truly understand what it meant, not just as a personal experience facing death and torture-as that practice unfortunately continues to this day in many parts of the world-but the organized elimination of an entire race from the face of the earth. From within the mind of a person at the center of a cattle car being shipped off to death or the people marched or worked to death among thousands of others, there is no one who can truly understand the feeling of what it is like to watch as the literal end of the world comes around you.

But those who were born in a world where the Holocaust is a part of history can understand the implications, horror and tragedy of this evolving event. Not only academically but emotionally as well. As a Jew I identify with those of my "nation" who were exterminated and the burning questions invoke great pain inside of me. I do not understand the reasons for it in the greater theological or philosophical sense, but I do understand the importance and terror of the Holocaust.