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Stop Insulting the Memory of the Holocaust

This year has been marked by numerous World War II-related “80th Anniversary” celebrations, keyed to 1944 as the penultimate and most decisive year of the war. D-Day has been commemorated, and Anzio, Monte Cassino, and the Battle of the Bulge, as well as the massive naval victory at Leyte Gulf. A sad feature of the 80th-anniversary events is that the veterans still living are not likely to make it to the 90th — someone born in 1926, the threshold in most WWII armies for combat service, would be 108 years old in 2034.

But this week marks another and arguably more poignant 80th anniversary, commemorated (not celebrated, certainly) this past Monday, Jan. 27 — this year’s “International Holocaust Remembrance Day.” The best estimates are that there are some 220,000 Holocaust survivors still living. Few, if any of these will make that 90th anniversary — the marvel is that they still live today, reminders and witnesses to the most horrifying event in modern human history.

This week, then, should be a time for somber reflection. It should be a moment when the meaning of the Holocaust and its place in history is treated with the utmost respect. As someone who devoted years to the study of Nazism, and as someone privileged to know a few Holocaust survivors, I took the time on Monday to ponder how this 80th anniversary was recognized.

If one looked hard enough, one saw memorial events across the globe, and some — notably those in Israel — were carried out with due sincerity and an appropriate level of passion. President Trump marked the day with a respectful proclamation, and other world leaders offered similar recognition. Still, there seems to be a perfunctory quality to much of the official recollections, and, as has become the norm these days, too often the horrors of the Holocaust are muddled with other themes.

Notably, in the U.K. and many European countries, the ritualistic condemnation of “all forms of oppression,” is usually coupled with a link to such contemporary obsessions as “Islamophobia.” In recent years, various U.S. politicians — the usual Democrat suspects — have trafficked in the same ritualistic diminution of the Holocaust. None, this time around, have been as egregiously wrongheaded as the president of Ireland, Michael Higgins, who used his invitation to speak at his country’s remembrance event to traffic in an anti-Semitic condemnation of Israel.

This has become so common, so completely a part of the landscape of international politics, that, sadly, one becomes inured to such displays. But in this season, a week after the second inauguration of Donald Trump, one encounters at every turn a different kind of insult to the memory of the Holocaust, namely the almost casual comparisons of Trump to Hitler and of Trump supporters, from Elon Musk on down, to a raving crowd of stormtroopers. It’s only taken a few days, and now it seems to be everywhere. (RELATED: Enough with Leftist Fantasy — Hitler Is Really Dead, and He Should Finally Be Buried)

I’ve written recently of the falsity in equating Trump with Hitler and also, filled with regret, of the extent to which this has invaded even the interaction between friends. I don’t mean to revisit those arguments today — honestly, I’d be delighted if I never had to revisit those arguments ever again. However, there’s one final argument that must be made, an argument about the significance of the Holocaust itself. (RELATED: Dueling Memes on Deportation … and Our Lives)

Simply stated, there has never been a historical event comparable to the Holocaust. I say that in full awareness of mankind’s sorry record of mass slaughter, from Genghis Khan to Stalin, from the Armenian genocide to the killing fields of Cambodia, from the Aztecs to Mao Zedong. If one goes simply by body count, the competition for “top horror” is excruciating to contemplate.

What makes the Holocaust different, however, is not simply the horrifying numbers, but the specific historical context. This was not an exercise in primitive passion, an atavism, a throwback. It was not, except around the edges, mobs wielding machetes to hack up their neighbors. Instead, the perpetrators brought the tools of modern project management and modern science to the task of systematically eliminating entire categories of their fellow human beings.

This was genocide industrialized, supported by every sinew of the modern state.

Moreover, it occurred at the proud heart of supposed “civilization.” It’s become a cliché to wonder out loud how the country of Beethoven and Goethe could have done this, but the cliché captures something important. That this could happen in Germany insulted the very notion of human progress. That many other Europeans became willing collaborators represented yet a further insult — the roundups of Jews across Western Europe depended in no small part on the enthusiastic support of willing locals.

After WWII, the left cloaked itself in the mantel of resistance, disclaiming any complicity in the Holocaust, a claim that ignored such embarrassments as 1939’s Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. From 1939 until Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, the Soviet Union and its client parties around the world did nothing. Only after Russia was invaded did “resistance’ become the watchword of the left.

And, it needs saying, the U.S. didn’t exactly cover itself in glory; our role in ending the Holocaust, if we’re honest with ourselves, was a byproduct of prosecuting a war against Nazi aggression, not a war to rescue the Jews. Historians have tirelessly debated the question, “Could we have done more?” Certainly, the Roosevelt administration was responsible for creating barriers to Jewish emigration from Germany at a time when this was still possible. Perhaps the best we can say for ourselves is that, in the end, we tried very hard to make up for our failures, in our work with the survivors, and in our support for the fledging state of Israel.

My point, then, is a simple one. The Holocaust was an absolutely unique historical event, not perhaps in the number of dead, or even in the endless presence of heartrending stories. It was unique because, at a particular moment in time, every pretense of human progress, every suggestion that humankind was well along the path to a better world — all this was stood on its head, mocking to the core the very notion of human progress. It wasn’t simply the case that mankind failed, utterly, but that it revealed a darkness at the heart of what we were pleased to regard as our most advanced civilization.

The Holocaust, then, wasn’t simply an atavism, just another barbarism in a long line of human barbarisms. It was and remains unique, and it deserves to be respected for its uniqueness. Thus my objection, in this remembrance week at least, to the mindless Trump comparisons. Despise Trump if you will. Make your case against each and every one of his policies. Deride those who support him. Make yourself feel good by preening your contempt, and enjoy the notion of infuriating, of “owning,” MAGA while harvesting “likes” from those who share your outlook.

But please, please, this week at least, do it without reference to Hitler and the Nazis. It demeans you intellectually, and it obscures whatever legitimate arguments you might have. Above all, and worst of all, by evoking the Holocaust so casually, you trivialize it. Neither the victims nor the handful of survivors still living deserve to be treated in such a manner, least of all in this special moment of Holocaust remembrance.

Next week, if you must, go back to your silly Hitler memes and your facile comparisons. Go back to your costumes of “resistance” cosplay, safe in the knowledge that the 2nd SS Panzer Division won’t be coming to your town, and won’t be subjecting you and your neighbors to another Oradour sur Glane massacre. If you can’t see the difference between ICE arresting violent criminals and the SS Einsatzgruppen murdering innocent Jewish villagers, then perhaps you might crack a history book or two, preferably ones written before my erstwhile profession prostituted itself in the name of “woke” piety.

And speaking of massacres, if you refused to display your support for the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, then you’ve forfeited the right to say anything about Hitler, or the Nazis, or the Holocaust. If you didn’t forthrightly condemn the pro-Hamas demonstrations at your nearest college campus, if your social media posts failed to draw a link between Hamas and another era’s jackbooted Nazi thugs, then maybe you need to take a good hard look in the mirror — you haven’t earned the right to say “never again.”

This week, of all weeks, is not a time for the political equivalent of stupid cat videos. This week, at least, honor the victims of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and all the rest by showing your respect. It’s the least you can do — it’s the least we all can do.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

Trump and the Gaza Ceasefire: Implications for the Future of the Abraham Accords

Dueling Memes on Deportation … and Our Lives

Enough with Leftist Fantasy — Hitler Is Really Dead, and He Should Finally Be Buried

James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.

The post Stop Insulting the Memory of the Holocaust appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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