Reading the papers and listening to the news is pretty scary these days, especially for Holocaust survivors. In Romania there is now a list of 220 prominent Jewish citizens who need to be "purged" from the nation if Romania is to thrive. So speaks a candidate for a major office there. The number two person on the list says that there was once a list like this before and those people ended up in concentration camps!
In Hungary we have the Jobbik party and in the now unsettled Ukraine, we have Russians stirring the pot with anti semitic statements and incidents which they attribute to the Ukrainians and who the hell knows who is telling the truth in this situation. In France we have the right wing party rising in power and in Poland we have that native strain of anti Semitism rising once more. In Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the list goes on. A statement was even made by one Russian that before 1939 Hitler was the "good" Hitler. Really? Dachau, the Nuremberg laws, Krystalnacht , the ongoing destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria - all this is "good"?
So the question is, should we be scared? Do we make plans once again? I believe that we need to be watchful and careful. See the hatred for what it is no matter what form or disguise it wraps itself in. We need to make others aware and know that hatred creeps into one's soul in an insidious manner, almost without noticing its increase and depth. We need to make people aware that one hatred leads to another and no one is exempt from its horrors for hatred needs food and it will eat anything in its path.
We have just commemorated the Shoah, the Holocaust and yet how much has the world internalized? The answer, my friends, is to look within ourselves and see where we stand and then to look without, and see what we can do to make this world, our only world, a better and safer place. Just think about it.
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