I have learned more about the Holocaust via 90 minutes of documentaries (“Night and Fog” by Alain Resnais and “The Holocaust: What the Allies Knew” by Kino Lorber Edu.) and by reading the first chapter of Richard L. Rubenstein’s “The Cunning of History” than I did in 12 years of grade school, 6 years of undergrad, and 2 years of grad school.
You know all of those promises Trump has made about banning certain people because of their religion, closing our borders, etc.? You know all of the rhetoric from the people in power in the Republican party supporting such rhetoric? Believe them. Believe every word. The last time multiple international governments didn’t believe such promises and felt other goals were more important than stepping in when the exterminations were revealed to them, SIX MILLION people were murdered over the course of THREE YEARS simply because they were Jewish.
Believe them and do not let it happen again.
With our sincere gaze we survey these ruins, as if the old monster lay crushed forever beneath the rubble. We pretend to take up hope again as the image recedes into the past, as if we were cured once and for all of the scourge of the camps. We pretend it all happened only once, at a given time and place. We turn a blind eye to what surrounds us and a deaf ear to humanity’s never-ending cry.
Alain Resnais. 1955. “Night and Fog.” Criterion Collection/Janus Films.