Submitted and written by Marty Richman
The Nazis, their allies, and many willing partners wanted to rid Europe of its Jewish population – they have almost done it.
According to Pew Research there were 9.5 million Jews living in Europe in 1939. In 1945, after six years of systematic genocide, there were only 3.8 million and many of survivors were in terrible condition. Several hundred thousand non-European Jews were also exterminated. That genocide is called the Holocaust.
The most often quoted number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust is six million, but no one really knows; the records were sometimes destroyed with the human beings.
Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 which to me is a strange date. The uprising was a rare case, not the norm. For the most part the Jews were just slaughtered, some quickly and some slowly, most of the latter by starvation.
In 2010 there were only 1.4 million Jews living in Europe and the number of Jews worldwide was still millions less than it was 75 years before.
Throughout history many groups have been the victims of genocide, some of them during that same era, but the term Holocaust has come to signify the plight of the Jews because it was so pervasive and systematic and, yes, effective.
The so-called “Final Solution” to the Nazi’s Jewish problem at home and in the conquered nations was to murder them. Ridding the entire world of Jews would come later after total victory.
For the most part, the perpetrators saw murdering Jews as a logistical problem, and that’s the way they approached it. How could they get the Jews not suitable for slave labor killed in the most efficient manner and what was the best rate to work the remainder to death?
The children, the old, the infirm, and mothers who were “burdened” with children were prime candidates for immediate murder; the rest came in short order.
I know that for most of you April, 1943 was a million years ago, but I was alive, if unaware, being a little over a year old. My Jewish parents were in the prime of life, their early 20s, and I wonder what they thought about it. They never revealed their deepest feelings.
Many people have seen a film or two about the Holocaust and perhaps some newsreels, but it is not the same as living it or feeling it in your gut. When I was a child I remember thinking to myself, why did they kill the children? After all, even if they saw the Jews as enemies, the children could not harm them.
At some point the truth came to me. The perpetrators did not see the Jews as enemies. They did not see them as human.
Marty Richman wrote this piece. The video above in this post is from the speaking engagement of Gita Ryle, a Holocaust survivor, at San Benito High School last month. See more video and audio from the engagement below.
https://vimeo.com/261535201
https://vimeo.com/261884242
Holocaust Remembrance Day was April 13
