Today is Holocaust Remembrance day. In a world where up is down, ominous dictators are joked with by a sitting president, and patriots are listed by the DHS as potential terrorists, are we surprised to see a remarkable paralell to the rise of anti-semitism in the world once again?Until now, Holocaust remembrance has been about the past: the systematic murder by Nazi Germany of six million European Jews between 1939 and 1945. Suddenly, Holocaust remembrance is also about the future. It's about the threatened murder by Iran of nearly six million Israeli Jews. And, even worse, it's about the potential murder of many millions more. The meaning of "never again" has never been as clear, as urgent or as universal.
IN 1939, Adolf Hitler issued his "prophecy" that the Jews would be exterminated. And now Ahmadinejad, even as he races to build nuclear weapons, denies that the Holocaust ever happened and threatens the elimination of Israel.
In his speech Monday at the UN's "anti-racism" conference in Geneva, he called the Holocaust an "ambiguous and dubious question" and a "pretext of Jewish sufferings."
Hitler justified his animus against the Jews by accusing them of manipulating international finance and world governments. And Ahmadinejad, in his speech on Monday, justified his animus against Israel, as he'd done before, by hurling the same accusations against "the Zionists."
Here is the basis of our Christian recognition of guilt in consideration of what happened. We did not recognize the Lord Christ when he came into our lives in the form of a suffering brother. I didn't recognize him when he was put in the camp as a Communist, nor did I recognize him, when he was murdered as an incurably ill person, nor did I recognize him, when he was gassed and burned as the poor victims of his own people [probably an allusion to the fact that Christ was Jewish]. Here I became guilty in my very personal responsibility and I cannot excuse myself, neither before God, nor before humanity. -Niemoeller
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