Yom HaShoah

Tuesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day in the United States. For the record, I don’t love days or months to remember or honor things. One day to remember the horrors of the Holocaust is hardly enough.

There are actually two Remembrance Days. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27^th, the day of liberation from the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, which is in Poland and 40 miles west of Krakow.

Auschwitz was a death camp, a labor camp, a place for medical experimentation, and actually had a total of over 40 camps where various atrocities were committed. Over 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, of which 1.1 million of those sent there were murdered. Nearly a million of those murdered there were Jewish. Other groups sent and murdered there were non-Jewish Poles, Romany people (called gypsies), Soviet prisoners of war, and a smaller group of people of other nationalities.

Best estimates are that 13 million people were killed by Nazi Germany, 6 million of whom were Jews. (Other groups include Romany people, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Soviet prisoners of war). Of those killed, 2.7 million people murdered at killing centers set up by the Nazis. Auschwitz was one of six Nazi killing centers.) People died in gas chambers, mass shootings, death marches, and starvations often in ghettos. And the Nazi government hunted and killed thousands of German resisters.

The US National Holocaust Remembrance Day happens in April in connection with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the largest revolt by Jews in World War II, done to prevent transportation of Warsaw Ghetto residents to the killing centers.

Yesterday, I wrote about wanting to be in control of the little moments of our lives. Last night, I saw Adelita Grijalva, the new congressional representative in Arizona (you may remember it took a long time for her to be sworn in.) interviewed on television about the current US version of detainment camps.

Congresswoman Grijalva and two other Arizona representatives paid a surprise visit to an ICE facility at the Mesa Arizona airport. Congressional representatives have the right to visit these facilities. They had visited the site before, though always letting officials know they were coming.

Clearly, this surprise visit was worth doing, as officials had cleaned things up for announced visits. This unannounced visit was eye-opening. Massive overcrowding. Not being able to privately use the restroom. Grijalva was asked for feminine sanitary supplies.

“What we saw was utterly horrific. People are being packed like animals into grossly overcrowded spaces,” said Rep. Grijalva. “The conditions are horrendous; no human being should be treated like this – not in America, not anywhere.”

“What is happening here is a humanitarian failure. Oversight is not optional – it is our responsibility. Secretary Mullin must act immediately to address the overcrowding, restore basic sanitation and nutrition, and provide full transparency about how this situation was allowed to escalate,” Grijalva added.

A local television station followed up with a visit to the center and discovered people on boarding on planes being deported the next morning well before 5 a.m. The ICE facility also released a statement saying the claims made by the congressional representatives were false. They also asked why the representatives didn’t focus on the horrific crimes committed by illegal aliens against American citizens.

It’s hard not to draw parallels.

The Nazi government said initially the camps were education centers for prisoners. There are wide debates still about how much the German people knew about the camps.

There were 44,000 camps and detainment centers run by Nazi Germany. There were major camps in Germany, but the majority of the camps and detainment centers were in occupied territories like Poland, France, Austria, and the Baltic States.

There is a running debate about how much the German people knew about the camps and what happened in them. There was perhaps the bigger question than what they knew though. Did any of them want to protest or feel safe enough to protest. When you know people are being killed in camps, what’s to prevent you from being next to be detained if you speak up?

What did the government say about them?

Nazi propaganda regarding concentration camps and “ghettos” aimed to mask the mass murder by presenting them as necessary, humane, or productive labor centers. They utilized curated films, fake documentation, and staged sites (like Terezin) to show things were okay.

Terezin was in Czechoslovakia. The King of Denmark had demanded that observers be allowed to see the Danish Jews held there. Swiss observers from the Red Cross and two Danish representatives were given permission to visit.

The Germans immediately engaged in an infamous beautification program – “Operation Embellishment,” a ruse intended to mollify the king’s concerns. Weeks of preparation preceded the visit. The area was cleaned up, and the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz to minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Terezin. So it was named, “Operation Embellishment”. The Nazis directed the building of fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The beautification worked initially. The observers believed there were no more than three people in any room, that living conditions were good, and were even treated to a concert.

After the end of the war, the true stories came out. Survivors told the real story of brutal conditions, overcrowding, and death. We are lucky to have had 3 members of Congress able to show up and see for themselves unannounced. Though who knows what else is going on in all the places ICE has detained people where congressional representatives don’t show up unannounced or even know about. We can’t remember what we never know.

Yom HaShoah was established in 1951 based on the Hebrew calendar was established by Israeli Knesset. The day celebrates resistance, heroism, memory, and survival.

The need to control others is always cause for concern. Americans are more and more aware of the manipulation and control. And the deceit. They are doing something about it.

Americans are beginning to resist the placement of their detention centers in their communities. Sites in at least 10 states have run into active resistance or ICE has walked away from them. Here’s where resistance and heroism are happening.

· Hutchins, TX (community members and leaders successfully lobbied a company to not sell a warehouse to ICE)

· Roxbury, NJ (the governor and community leaders are working to block a warehouse conversion)

· Surprise, AZ (state officials are questioning the legality of a surprise warehouse purchase)

· Merrillville, IN (a building owner stopped negotiating with federal officials after local concerns were raised)

· Orange County, FL (officials are drafting resolutions and exploring legal challenges against proposed facilities)

· Tremont/Hamburg PA (the state is blocking water access for the building citing it would overwhelm the community’s ability to serve its own residents’ water needs)

· Social Circle, GA (state officials and residents have managed to pause construction of a super facility due to water, infrastructure, and safety concerns)

· Hagerstown, MD (state officials have raised community and environmental concerns)

· Chester, NY (ICE withdrew from the site after community protests and attention was brought to the project)

· Lebanon, TN (ICE withdrew from the project after safety and infrastructure concerns were raised and proximity to schools)

I suspect there are other efforts as well. The resistance is growing. We must remember how easily we forget to be humane. Less than 200,000 Holocaust survivors remain alive, over half of whom live in Israel. Those still alive are in their mid-80s and older. They would beg us to remember, lest we lose control.

Yom HaShoah ended at sunset on Tuesday. We remember it today and everyday to resist. History repeats itself but only if we let it, don’t remember it, and don’t know it. May the resistance continue. May we control what’s next.