The Yellow Badge ... J. D. Longstreet

The Yellow Badge

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Man's inhumanity to man is an under statement when applied to The Holocaust. 

The Nazis murdered Six million Jews.  Slaughtered might be a better word. 

Why must we remember?  Why can’t we just leave it alone, put it behind us, and move on?  Simply put, dear reader, evil still prowls the earth seeking to devour anyone it can -- and sometimes that "anyone,” is an entire people.

J. D. Longstreet

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not Jewish.  I would be proud, honored and consider it a privilege to be one of God's "Chosen people."  But, alas, I am not.

I am a Gentile, but a gentile who is determined to stand with the Jewish people and the state of Israel for as long as I inhabit this mortal frame.

You would think that here, in 2012, the overwhelming evidence of the holocaust would be without question.  But you would be wrong.  In the past decade the voices of those who deny the Holocaust ever happened have been raised proclaiming the lie, the falsity, of the Holocaust.

Jennifer Rosenberg, in an article entitled  "Our Turn to Remember," said the following: "We know that the Holocaust was infinitely more horrible than we can imagine. But does everyone know this? The deniers have become more vocal within the last decade. Their ideas are becoming more mainstream as they show up in ads of college newspapers, on official looking web sites, and even in some classrooms. Who speaks up against these false ideas? Who speaks up against the people who say it never happened? Who speaks up against those that say it is a Jewish conspiracy attempting to gain pity? Not many - for it is too disturbing to discuss."(SOURCE)

Ms. Rosenberg is absolutely right.  

Look, America had a role in the holocaust.  We Americans bear some of the guilt for the deaths of some many millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis.  Oh, we don't like to think about it.  We don't like to remember that our government was presented with evidence of the murder of the Jews by Hitler -- and we refused to believe that such atrocities were even possible in a 20th century world.  It was just too much to ask of the human mind to accept that it was, in fact, true.  The camps DID exist.  The Nazis were murdering Jews by the millions in what they themselves referred to as the "Final Solution." 

America waited.  More Jews were slaughtered.

Ms. Rosenberg continues:  "For over six decades, the survivors have been trying to educate the world about the Holocaust. For over six decades, the survivors have been remembering and saying the Kaddish for the victims. Sadly, these men and women are now in their seventies and eighties and will not be able to continue the struggle for much longer. These survivors have fought for life when there was only death, fought for good when there was only evil, and fought for the future when there was only the past. Their struggles have not only become part of our history but have shaped and prepared our future."

The fight against ignorance and bigotry is never easy.  But America has a duty to aid, if not lead, in this fight.

The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as America’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust and created the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a permanent living memorial to the victims. Holocaust Remembrance Day is Thursday, April 19, 2012. The Museum designated Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue as the theme for the 2012 observance. In accordance with its Congressional mandate, the Museum is responsible for leading the nation in commemorating the Days of Remembrance, and for encouraging and sponsoring appropriate observances throughout the United States. (SOURCE)

A Look Back:

 "In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million.  By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.

In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities."(SOURCE)

We encourage you to read more about The Holocaust. A good starting place is here: INTRODUCTION TO THE HOLOCAUST.

The killing did not stop until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day).

We must remember the Holocaust, lest it happen again! 

J. D. Longstreet