Saturday, January 30, 2016

Solace Scarce, Seeking Haven

"To our shame, some have not yet learned the lessons of the past."
"Some say the Holocaust never happened that it was all lies. What angers me is that they sit in the parliament here. Holocaust deniers are elected to the European parliament."
"Some insult or attack people because they’re Jewish or support Israel destroying cemeteries, spray-painting on graves, spitting on young people wearing a kippa."
"In the Europe of today, Jews are again afraid for their lives; they ask themselves if it’s safe to go to the synagogue, if their children will be protected at school. Young people are asking whether to raise their children in Europe, and are considering leaving because they don’t feel secure."
"Without the Jews, Europe would not be Europe."
Martin Schulz, President, European Parliament
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Another annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day has come and passed. In Poland, the observance of the liberation of Auschwitz anniversary has taken place. Elderly Jews who are Nazi concentration camp survivors in their ever-diminishing numbers were there, at the site, to hold white roses as a symbol of hope, endurance and survival during a commemoration ceremony at Buchenwald extermination camp, close to Weimar, Germany, but it was at Auschwitz and other camps located outside Germany where most of the extermination of Jews took place.

Fully seventy-one years have passed since the liberation of the death camps and the full horror of the Third Reich's concerted, complex and determined effort to annihilate Europe Jews was fully unveiled to a world unable to conceive of a master plan of such magnitude. In the ferocity of the emotional disgust of a world in which a monstrosity of anti-Semitism driven by complicity of ordinary people could take place concluding in the murders of six million Jews, an aura of penitential guilt settled over Europe.

Anti-Semitism in all its viral pathological irrationality and viciousness was no longer to be tolerated in public. In an act of general atonement, the United Nations Security Council voted to permit Jews to re-establish in their ancient homeland a renascent geography of their very own. A place of comfort and of haven, where a common spirit could be maintained in dedication to the preservation of world Jewry. And there, Jews were informed, they would find safety and security.

And there Jews thought they would and they laboured to make that a reality, with the full knowledge that their journey would be a difficult one augmented by the need to take up arms in their own defence to stave off a series of collective military attacks by their nearest neighbours in the Middle East. Little did Israel anticipate that in defending itself against constant attacks from the spectrum of Arab states to the closer presence of Arabs calling themselves Palestinians they would live to see the Final Solution reborn under a new guise.

Defence in Israel, and a quandary in Europe which, having outlived its Holocaust-era guilt is now itself conflicted with the quantum presence of its own Arab and Muslim populations bringing with them their historical, cultural, religious animus against Judaism and rage against the presence of a Jewish state in a Muslim territory. Anti-Semitism has been reborn in Europe with a deadly vengeance. Little wonder Jews who have lived for a thousand years in Europe and more now find it increasingly less of a prospect for future well-being.

"We must be honest enough to admit that more than 70 years after the Shoah, anti-Semitism is still alive in our 'civilized' European Union", spoke a statement from Federica Mogherini, the European Union's chief foreign affairs representative. And so, in cyclic predictability for Jewish existence and survival from never-ending attacks and threats of more, immigration from Europe to Israel is growing apace, in lock-step with Islamic extremist attacks and the unleashing of Europe's own native hatred of Jews propelled by the presence of their Muslim counterparts.

Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz-Birkenau

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