Did we learn from the Holocaust?

1942 Syrian women giving blankets and food to European refugees.

The Syrian lady in this photo shows great humanity. Let’s remember the holocaust, but have we learned from it?

The Israeli-Palestinian issues tells us we could do better. Also the rise of populism, a different fashionable word for nationalism, and the xenophobia in European countries shows us we may have forgotten some lessons.

With WW2 and the holocaust we refer to Nazis. A term that Nazis didn’t like. A Nazi was a German term for sort of an ignorant peasant. Nazis called themselves Nationalsozialisten (National Socialists) from the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party).

Their initial politics was to represent the common people and flame resentment against foreign powers who the country owned money to. They included a mix of xenophobia towards minorities (Jews etc). With this and due to the economic crisis following the Wall Street crash of 1929 many people joined in ‘and the rest is history’ as they say.

Social psychology lessons has shown us that with the right circumstances people can be brought again to such extremes. Now I ask the reader to consider recent history and compare. Are we now making mistakes or did we learn from history? It’s my hope we can still find our humanity in ourselves, just as this Syrian lady did. Not just as an individual but also as a group or country. It’s never to late to learn. Let’s vote wisely and carefully.

Kris


(The above was written prior to this video)