“’We believe the one who has the power.  He is the one who gets to write the story.  So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing?  Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?  Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too.  From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.’” – Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

Auschwitz was liberated eighty years ago.  How much is being forgotten?  Denied?  Recently we’ve seen a significant rise in the expressions of antisemitism.  Some have said a rise in antisemitism.  I’ve carefully chosen different words.  The antisemitism was always there.  What’s changed is a culture that now is more tolerant of its expression.  Trump and the MAGA movement have made it OK to openly hate again.  And it’s not just here in the United States.  It’s present in with the AfD in Germany.  Elon Musk spoke to them.   His words can only be seen as an attempt to normalize hate, to deny history.  We find the same with Viktor Orban in Hungary.   The hate is in so many places including with the National Rally (Rassemblement national) in France

What we are facing is a simple reality: it’s easier to blame and hate than it is to understand.  It’s easier to blame George Soros and some imagined Jewish conspiracy than it is to take the time to learn how excess wealth has corrupted our political system.  It’s convenient to accept the lie that an undocumented farm worker picking lettuce in California is to blame for someone’s unemployment than to see the real causes, that corporate greed, the change in the balance of power from  from workers and unions to corporate management, has led to layoffs and stagnant wages, all the while knowing that CEO pay has grown by factors of several hundred times.

Uncertain, transitional times scare people.  And we are in one now.  Climate change has impacts across broad parts of our world.  It’s not just the weather that’s impacted, but also the industries that people have relied on for their livelihoods.  Massive technology changes have eliminated countless jobs through automation and things like just in time delivery.  Social media has disrupted us in so many ways, not the least of which is providing the means for lies to propagate quickly, to go viral.  And it’s easier to believe the lies than to learn about and face the underlying truths.

Where does this leave us?  What should we do?  Frankly, I wish I had good answers to those questions.  The youngest of those still living who were liberated from the camps are in their mid to late eighties.  The youngest of the surviving liberators are nearing one hundred years old.  It won’t be long before the last of the living witnesses dies.  It’s up to the rest of us to never forget.  The only thing I can say for certain is that I don’t know if never again is now.  I don’t think it is.  What I’m certain of is that the kind of hate that led to the Holocaust, to the extermination of six million Jews and countless others, seems to be growing in many parts of the world.  If we forget, if we allow others to deny, then the words “never again” will become meaningless because it will be happening again.

Note: all of the above pictures were taken by me on May 9, 2024.  What you won’t find among my 145 pictures from that day is any sort of “selfie”.  I saw others taking them.  Granted, there weren’t that many.  That said, it just felt wrong.

Be the Pebble