The power of words was the theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day. Held on 27th January every year, it marks the date that the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated.
The power does not evaporate with the passing days. Words can make a lasting difference ‘for good and for evil’, as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust states. They can also invoke action.
Amongst the first words widely distributed telling the world what was happening in Germany was Days of Contempt by Andre Malraux published in 1935 with Gollancz publishing a translation in Britain in 1936. Its warning was ignored because it was the Communists that were being treated with contempt in Dachau, located at the time on the edge of Munich. This makes the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller and his famous poem even more resonant.
First They Came
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Denial despite known evidence
Word about the ‘wholesale slaughter’ of the Jews came out via a variety of sources in 1942. In March of that year, when Operation Reinhard had only just begun, Burzio (the Papal Nuncio in Bratislava ) told authorities at the Holy See: “The deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland at the mercy of the Germans means to condemn a great part of them to certain death”.
The Riegner telegram issued by the World Jewish Congress from the British Embassy in Bern in August 1942 to New York and Washington reported that “all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany” would be deported, concentrated in the East, and “exterminated at one blow…”.
There was some prevarication, disbelief and quite a bit of disingenuousness by bureaucrats at this information. However, “… an inter-Allied declaration denouncing the murder of Jews“ was formally issued in the name of eleven governments and the French National Committee, and released simultaneously in Washington, London, and Moscow.” (Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History, p.160-163).
Despite all these words and despite pleas to act on the declaration there was a lack of action grounded in a denial of the known evidence that what Robert Burns called ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ was on the scale of the reports received. Proof positive that it’s deeds, not words, that matter when lives are at stake.
Some of the most moving and insightful words on the Holocaust were written by the late, great Primo Levi. If This Is a Man and The Truce exemplify the exhortation by the historian Simon Dubnow who was shot in December 1941 as the Warsaw ghetto was ‘cleared’. In his final days, he constantly urged all who could hear him: “Jews, write and record”.
More dangerous are the common men
Levi’s testimony is direct experience which answers this injunction brilliantly. In my edition there is an afterword in which he answers readers’ questions. His answer to the question, “How can the Nazis’ fanatical hatred of the Jews be explained? “ is revealing and maybe brings an understanding as to why incomprehension at the known information was not acted upon.
More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions, like Eichmann; like Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz; like Stangl, commandant of Treblinka; like the French military of twenty years later, slaughterers in Algeria; like the Khmer Rouge of the late seventies, slaughterers in Cambodia.
The slaughter has not stopped. It has just moved on. And that’s why the website for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust marks not only the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust but also the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Reports indicate that the Rohingya of Myanmar may soon be added to that list.
Lévi makes the case that study, discussion and reasoning are the best tools against repetition of his direct experience but “when wise counsel no longer serves …one must find the strength to resist”. This applies to governments as much as to the reader. You and me.
The power of words is a powerfully apt theme for Holocaust Memorial Day as it gives us the chance to study, discuss and reason but also reminds us that sometimes words are not enough. They were not enough in 1942. It is action that will prevent repetition. We must demand from our governments action along with fine words. Words and deeds are indeed a potent combination.
Featured image: The Power of Words, at The Quad Derby by Diego Sideburns CC By-NC-ND 2.0
Unite against fascism
Update: Meanwhile, la lotta continua/the fight goes on as Unite Against Fascism reminds us:
What remains of the fascist Scottish Defence League (SDL) have called a demonstration over the tragic death of homeless veteran Darren Greenfield. Darren had served with the Royal Tank Regiment but found life hard to cope with after leaving the Army. He was well-known in Edinburgh, asking for change while wearing his khakis, close to Waverley Station
His death before Christmas, at the age of 47 after contracting an infection, caused many to ponder on the sort of society we live in that culminates in such sad news.
Unlike the vast majority of people who have sent condolences and messages of support to the Greenfield family, the fascists of the SDL, have cynically tried to blame refugees for Mr Greenfield’s death. Their weasel words will find no echo in the city but their racist scapegoating is to be opposed.
This was commented on the event page
If the SDL cared, they’d have helped him while he was ALIVE, instead of using him after it’s too late.
Please share the Facebook event page
Join the counter protest
Sunday 4 February 1.30pm
Charlotte Square
EDINBURGH, EH2 4DR
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