Lest we Forget!

Today marks the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet armed forces in 1945. While this may not have symbolized the end to hostilities or that of the war itself, it symbolizes something more humane, more stirring: the conclusion of one of the most horrific chapters in the history of the human race. I will not term it the most horrific, for greater horrors have been and continue to be perpetrated on people all over the world even to this date. The only difference between the Holocaust and these genocides is that the horror that the world felt in the case of the former has been sustained by a constant ‘Lest we forget’ campaign on the part of the Jewish populace, and quite rightly so.
Unfortunately, this campaign has become the focus of almost all anti-Semitic groups who even choose to ignore glaring historical evidences and deny the very occurrence of the Holocaust. The point behind ensuring that the world doesn’t forget that something as grotesque and inhuman as the virtual extermination of an entire race of people occurred in these modern times may have been to ensure that never again should a community be vilified or targeted solely because it is so, a community, united with the nation wherein it resides, yet distinct from the society in which it lives by way of its customs and traditions. The gross inaction on the part of the developed countries whilst the Nazi State prepared and implemented this dastardly plan is shocking and even unnerving to say the least. And yet given the way history has unfolded since then, one must feel no shock indeed, for the world rarely if ever has prevented the occurrence of such carnage; it finds it oh so very convenient to shed tears and offer its condolences, and maybe even launch armed invasions, much after over half of the targeted population has been wiped off the face of the earth.
If we were to evaluate the Holocaust itself, the German state had been, right from the time of the Prussian unity, an anti-Semitic society. France displayed her almost virulent hatred for Jews in the form of the Dreyfus Affair. Russia also was a prominent anti-Semitic state, given to small, yet significant pogroms of its own, which were conveniently hidden from the glare of public opinion. The English, who prided themselves to be a nation based on morals and values, somehow condemned the entire Jewish race for the Sin of Calgary and ignored the obvious signs emanating from Germany. Of the United States, one must remark that their splendid policy of isolation was more out of a desire of self-preservation, rather than out of a genuine desire not to take sides. They opined that once the world falters and collapses under the weight of its quarrels, they, being the only strong nation left, would be the obvious choice to rule the earth.
And so came about to be the Holocaust. And so come about to be many more Holocausts even to this date. The wars in Somalia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, and other African countries have taken maybe more lives than the entire count of the victims of the Holocaust, but sadly, the victims did not belong to the same community, for otherwise this community would have issued its own ‘Lest we Forget’ campaign, and kept reminding the human race that it still has a long way before it achieves the zenith of achievement. The Rape of Nanking and other war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese forces during World War II are no less gruesome, if not horrific, but somehow they have been buried beneath the dust of history. The systematic attempts at the annihilation of the Bangladeshi Hindu population, and the Kashmiri Pandits are horrors the world has somehow decided it doesn’t even want to confront.
Merely commemorating this day as a day of mourning and remembrance for all those who died in the Holocaust will not do. The world has to become more proactive, and must comprehend that when it comes to human lives, when it comes to the existence of a community, if a State threatens its own people, the rest of the world has the right to intervene, and command the State to cease such activity. This in no way compromises the sovereignty of the State concerned, as the sovereignty of a nation flows from its people, and if even a subset of these people are denied basic human rights, such sovereignty is blemished, and accursed, and should never be acknowledged by the world.