Holocaust Memorial Day: Some people have actually forgotten

Posted on by January 27, 2010 by banafshe.zabeti

Today it is the Holocaust Memorial Day, a day of rememberance of the victims of The Holocaust which is in my opinion, humanity’s worst episod. This date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union in 1945. For me, it is frustrating to know that some people really need to be remembered because they do not even spend one day per year to actually rememember what human beings and ideologies are capable of.

It is even more frustrating to know that people still deny the Holocaust, and not only political leaders such as Ahamdinejad who says whatever he likes just to live up to his fantasim and ideology. Many times, too many times, I have heard people say “My God it was over 60 years ago that the Jews were victim of fascism, racism and holocaust”; what is the fuzz about? Can you imagine that people actually express themselves like this?

Yesterday I saw the awaraded documentary “Mr Rakowski”  by Jan Diederen about Sam and Richie Rawkowski, a father who was reffered to as a “survivor from the Holocaust” and his son Richie Rawkowski who belongs to the category “the second generation of survivors”. What was very striking with the documentary, that I will always remember, is what mr Richie Rawkowski said about the term “survivor” about the people who were not murdered during the Holocaust and who are still alive.  He said, and I quote “What a bad word, what a wrong word”. In Richie Rawkowski’s point of view, the survivor experience, wheather you belong to the second generation of “survivors” or the victims, it is mainly an experience of rage and bitterness. He says “The real message and goal should not be survining, it should be thriving”.

I agree with mr Rawkowski, let us grow together and re-value our own thoughts about our human beings and their experiences. Let us transform the anger into political and personal will to change this world. Not all human beings were gulity of the Holocaust, but we are all responsible of our thougts and actions today.  So let us all remember The Holocaust and what fantasism and ideologies are capable of doing to our fellow human beings. Let us all remember that it is not an innocent comment to say “Oh what is the fuzz about,  the second world war was over 60 years ago”.

First of all, 60 years is nothing and you cannot measure one of humanity’s worst tragedy’s, if not THE worst tragedy in human history, in years, seconds, hours etcetera. But you can measure your own thoughts and actions and CHANGE your way of thinking. This is what we need to do. How can someone in a modern world, express themselves in terms like that?

 Would the very same person with this fanatic ideas that I would like to call racist, look into his fellow human beings who actually experienced fascism and its horrour and say the very same thing? I do not think so. He or she would not be able to say one word. So once again, please let us all change our ways of thinking about mankind, our fellow human beings and how we think about ideologies. You do not need to be in an explicit racist organisation to be a racist today. New racism is so hidden in everyday comments and deabtes, that it is invisible to many people. 

These ideas and thoughts who appears to be innocent, said during the coffee break, or while drinking a glass of wine with some people, are actually dangerous and political. It is in my point of  view: violation, racism and oppression. It is visible oppression that is unseen.

So lets make unvisible oppression visible by never being quiet. We are not directly responsible of other people’s thoughts and actions, but by shutting up, we are responsible of in some ways repeating history.

Viola Banafshe Zabeti