What are some lessons? Was it a unique event or could it be repeated? We know that he bequeathed us the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as that Judeophobia and anti-Semitism remain in force. We would like to think that it will not happen again, but denialism makes us doubt. Hence the preference of many to use the Hebrew word Shoah to refer to tragedy.
On 1 November 2005, the UN General Assembly designated 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of its victims. It corresponds to the entry of Soviet troops to Auschwitz. The Red Army had liberated other camps, but even that did not prepare them for the horror they encountered there.
Nazi Germany had succeeded in industrializing death. Massacres and genocides had existed and continued to exist, but before or after, never was it so close to the goal of making an entire people disappear from the face of the earth, and with the racial laws of Nuremberg, it reached even those who did not consider themselves Jews or did not even know they were.
It was made possible by centuries of attacks and progroms, inquisitions through, that had normalized that violence. Not only Jews, as the fury also reached gypsies, and other groups that were considered inferior, such as the disabled.
He taught us what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, that is, the terrible truth that these monsters were not people from another planet, but as was demonstrated in the trial of Eichmann, that any of us could become one. Not only soldiers, but also volunteers like the Polish citizens who integrated the so-called Brigades, that is, merchants, professionals and simple inhabitants of nearby villages, who destined some day of the week to collaborate in the extermination camps.
He taught us that everything begins before, with words, with the dehumanization that the one who is going to die does not deserve to live, that is, before the gas there were speeches of total contempt. It was also learned that first there were laws and as time progressed, there was a habit of increasingly terrible measures, promoted by real bureaucrats, who from a desk planned with little opposition a final solution, to argue before the judges that they only limited themselves to fulfilling orders.
There were also many deceptions, especially those who were told that they were going to labor camps, so Auschwitz received the death trains with the sign of the biblical phrase that work would make them free.
We also know that not only Germans or Austrians participated, but people who came from practically all over Europe and from occupied places, as well as people who traveled from as far away as South America. And that those countries where the authorities or the population put obstacles, the deportations of Jews were minor. But imitations from Denmark were scarce.
Could fewer people have died if, as Churchill writes, the railway lines carrying the victims like cattle had been bombed? We don’t know. What we do know is the subsequent information, that no effort was made to divulge what was happening as well as the war effort was affected. At least for me, it is striking that the Holocaust acquired such importance for the Nazis, that, in the last months of the war, transport to the death camps took precedence over weapons and troops. Difficult to explain, but it happened.
It was also learned that totalitarian forces can come to power through the popular vote and strengthen themselves to impressive levels of popular support as happened with Hitler. That support was mussolini, before him. The worst lesson that has been learned is that evil not only triumphs because of leaders, but because ordinary people obey and support, people who still passively justify deeply immoral acts. Therefore, no electoral victory should still be used today to infringe on freedoms.
Another great lesson is the acceptance of violence to impose ideas, present today in so many movements that from the left to the right use fascist methods such as cancellations and aggressive cyclists against those who think differently.
In this regard, Churchill himself is credited with the phrase said when responding to a journalistic query on a trip to the United States, that in the future even those who described themselves as anti-fascists were going to use their methods and symbols.
Above all, the need for democratic regimes to learn to identify, resist and combat any dictatorial advance. That includes Democrats who feel overwhelmed and don’t fight resolutely for the defense of freedom.
Something that does a lot of damage is to eliminate the singularity of what happened, calling any massacre with many victims a “holocaust” or trivializing it by comparing what happened in the Second World War with such different circumstances, such as some exaggerated sanitary measures that have been taken because of the coronavirus. Even worse is the current fashion of calling someone a Nazi simply because we dislike it, as it gives the wrong idea that they were not as evil as they are portrayed.
It is hoped that historians will not only see the pain of the victims, but will rescue those who, while risking their lives, defended and saved Jews, Gypsies and other groups. Also show those who fought heroically, as happened between April 19 and May 16, 1943, in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
He also showed Jews that some of the worst tragedies come when they seem to feel safest. It had also happened in 1492 with the Sephardim of Spain, expelled massively from a land where they had remained for centuries, exclusively for not wanting to convert to another religion.
And hence the enormous concern with the increase in attacks on the streets of the United States, Canada and the resurgence to levels of the 30s in France and other places in Europe, since that street violence occurs only because they are seen as Jews or are estimated to dress as such.
As if to worry and meditate on it, just because they are seen and perceived as Jews.
(*) Lawyer (Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Barcelona); Ph.D. in Political Science (University of Essex)
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