Pragmatist
Pragmatist

New JLI (Jewish Learning Institute) class started last week.  Tonight was the second session.  Classes are usually eight weeks long, but this one will be six only.  It's about the Holocaust.

But not about the Holocaust itself, but how we deal with our feelings about what happened.  In the class is a couple who are Holocaust survivors.  Fifteen million people were sacrificed for an evil dream.  And still there are deniers that it really happened.  I've heard it called Jewish propaganda.  Six million of those fifteen million were Jews.  I hope the history books get it right, as the survivors are getting older, and soon there won't be any first-hand accounts of the horrors.

My grandfather read Mein Kampf in the original German.  He was livid.  His comment was "Ach! That man will destroy Germany."  He read Hitler's own words about his dreams of the Third Reich, a Thousand Year entity.  He read Hitler's own words about "the Jewish problem" and what he intended to do about it.

How can people deny the fact of the Holocaust when we have writings by Nazis who actually participated and wrote about their activities?  How can anyone deny the facts of the mass graves and the furnaces when there are still soldiers alive who liberated the people who miraculously survived?  How can anyone deny the facts of the war criminal prosecutions of Nazi officers who actually testified and wrote about their activities?

How?

Shalom