Each group slaughtered should be honored in a unique and appropriate way, but they should never, never, never, never, never be compared.
The losses of the Ukraine, the losses of the Poles, the losses of the Belorussians, the losses in Lithuania, in Galicia, in the Netherlands and Denmark, in Hungary, in Austria, in France and Italy. The losses of the Romani Gypsy, of the homosexuals, of the disabled. All unique and painful. Each one unspeakably horrible--but each one its own way.
People like to say the Allies won the War, that they defeated the Nazis in Germany and Austria and the Fascists in Italy and Spain.
But, as far as Jews are concerned, Hitler won his ugly genocidal war. He won. He did it. He died victorious, because wherever there were flourishing Jewish communities before the war, there was left only burnt papers, charred corpses, broken glass and properties now confiscatable by Christians. Hitler won.
In 1941, massacres of Jews began taking place; by December Hitler had decided to exterminate all the European Jews. In all, he was able to eradicate more than 60% of the Jews in Europe, all murdered in the Holocaust. Germans knew. Christians knew. Lutherans knew. Catholics knew. Some spoke out most did not. Those who did suffered terrible punishment.
The world's Jewish population was reduced by a third, from roughly 16.6 million in 1939 to about 11 million in 1946. Over sixty years later, there are still fewer Jews in the world today than there were prior to 1940. Hitler won.
Doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, professors, musicians, actors, directors, designers, artists. All gone. Hitler won.
There are no flourishing Jewish communities in Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, not in Rome, not in Venice or Florence, not in Paris or Madrid or Lisbon, not in London, not anywhere, not like before.
That was Hitler's victory: He couldn't eradicate the Jews but he could destroy the happiness they had, the contributions they made to their nations, the security they felt as citizens.
All the groups that suffered suffered uniquely. The Jews were the only ethnic or religious group that had a extended government apparatus dedicated to the extinction of the group. That's the unique evil of the Shoah. It's not that we ignore the other evils. But they cannot be equated--equating any one of them to another or to other historical events normalizes them--and they mus never be made normal. They must be kept unique.
Only that way will they never be allowed to happen again.
Updated On: 2/5/13 at 12:00 AM
