Arbeit Macht Frei

As I read through this article, I thought this was an extraordinarily good idea. As time passes we tend to erase from our memories the bad things in life and replace them with the good things. As the article says

The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.

a quote from George Santayan which appears on a plaque at Auschwitz.

I will be trying to get my children to take this visit as they have little concept nowadays of what total war is about, as it is remote to them, despite Iraq, Afghanistan and the other conflicts that have taken place in recent years.

When I was young, many years ago now, we had many reminders of both World Wars both at home and in our daily life. Our parents and grandparent had fought in or survived the wars and our teachers had often fought in the wars and brought a personal view to the history we learnt. Nowadays, veterans of the wars are few and teachers have only second-hand experience.

An experience like this may help youngsters today understand what happens in war and may just let them make a difference when they become more active in decisions that affect us all. The explanation by one of Rabbi's who lead the children in the visit of why they want people to see and hear about Auschwitz is well worth reading in this age when we prefer to hide the dirty parts of life. He states that the Holocaust is not just an atrocity against Jewish people but against difference of any kind

People ask why do we have this obsession with the Holocaust? Why can't we move on and leave it in the past? How we would love to leave it in the past. That would be the easy thing to do, but we cannot," he says. He describes the horrors which took place at Auschwitz as simply the endgame of a sustained campaign which started with pointing people out as different. A world which allowed the Holocaust to happen has also witnessed genocide in Rwanda and Darfur.

What really upset me about the article were the first 4 comments from persons who would like us to believe that the Holocaust never happened. These people are unbelievable and there denial in the face of the truth marks them out as type of person who commit this sort of crime against humanity.

Perhaps some quotes from Winston Churchill might put this in context.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

and also

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

and finally aimed at all those deniers out there

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber

The Children Who Are Determined We Will Never Forget The Horror (from The Herald )