Why It’s Important To Talk About The Holocaust

I was recently told by a friend that I was “wrong” to read The Diary of Anne Frank with my kids. It was apparently too stark and too upsetting to talk about with kids. It might upset them. Just hearing that made me shake my head because the death of 6 MILLION people is upsetting. That’s exactly WHY we need to talk about it. We need to share the stories of the people affected by the Holocaust because if we continue to let it become sanitized, the lessons to be learned from it are going to be forgotten.

I recently heard about a book written by Ella Scheinwald called Wolf, A Story of Hate. I wondered why she’d write a story about hate, then I read more about it and realized she wrote it in love. The description of the book is stirring: This is the true story of a young Jewish man imprisoned in corporate-owned labor camps during WWll. His name is Wolf. He was caught up in the most vicious and disgraceful mass slaughter of people in history. His experiences during the Holocaust are relevant today, resonating with decent human beings who are concerned about morally corrupt leaders and their admiring masses, which, together with self-serving corporations, can orchestrate tragedies against their own populations.

I’ve been interested in learning about the Holocaust for quite a while. As a non-Jew who doesn’t have a connection to this atrocity, I find that learning the personal stories about those were affected help me to realize more of the harrowing events that occurred- and to see the lessons in them. For instance, in an interview recently, Ella has answered this question: Part of the story is not just about how the German people and soldiers embraced the concept of The Final Solution, the extermination of all Jews, but about the failure of so many others to rise up and stop it. There were so many other countries and entities that could have taken action to stop these atrocities — but did nothing. That’s why I emphasize that Jews never went to slaughter like cattle. it is the Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, of course, Poles, Romanians, and many others who went like cattle, following a murderous regime which they embraced, making them murderers as well. Entire populations, millions and millions, through their inaction, allowed and enabled this atrocity and some even participated happily in this orgy of death and murders.

It is important to know the murderers were “normal” people, had families, children they loved, a dog, a white-picket fence so to speak. It is not good vs. evil. It is good vs. normal. When it becomes “Normal” to hate, then love becomes lost. The real truth is that the only thing that can help us become a better society is love.

You’d think this hatred had ended but in some places, human exploitation and genocide are still taking place. We need to rise up and take strong and immediate action when we become aware of such actions. That’s why I read Anne Frank to my kids. It’s why we discussed concentration camps and Jewish Stars and all the horrible things that happened. Because it started not just with one man, but with the hundreds of people who looked the other way and let hatred win. It’s time to stop it and let love win.