Op-Ed in Today's Houston Chronicle: State-Sponsored
Anti-Semitism Must be Taken Seriously
On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz
concentration camp. In 2005, the United Nations established Jan. 27 as
International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The day’s official tagline, “Remembrance and Beyond,” denotes its dual
significance. First is the obligation of the world body’s members to remember
and memorialize the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide and, in those
countries where it took place, to recall the particular circumstances of the
tragedy. Second, venturing “beyond” remembrance, the U.N. explicitly rejects
denial that the Holocaust took place, and mandates educational programs aimed
at ensuring that nothing like it ever happens again.
This second theme faces a severe challenge in our time. While the world
was shocked in the later stages of World War II to learn of the destruction of
European Jewry, Adolf Hitler had never made any secret of his plan to carry it
out. From the outset of his political career, Hitler blamed the Jews for
Germany’s defeat in World War I, the worldwide economic depression and any
other ills that had plagued the German people. As early as 1922 he promised his
followers, “If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be
my first and most important job.” This principle, which figures prominently in
his book Mein Kampf, was the rationale for the comprehensive anti-jewish laws
enacted by the Nazi regime. After the outbreak of war it provided the
opportunity to carry out the long-contemplated plan, forming the basis for
genocide.
Even as he harped on the need to destroy the Jews, Hitler cleverly
insisted that it was world Jewry that was conspiring against Germany. Nazi
rhetoric portrayed Jews as a cancer whose elimination was necessary to
guarantee the health of the German nation. In a 1939 speech, Hitler asserted
that it was “international finance Jewry” that wanted to “plunge the peoples into
a world war,” and the result — entirely defensive — would be “annihilation” of
the Jews.
In Houston, the American Jewish Committee and the Holocaust Museum
Houston, along with the Houston consular corps, come together on this day to
recognize a World War II diplomat who did not stand by and watch annihilation.
We will remember and tell the story of Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian businessman
who posed as a Spanish diplomat and intervened on behalf of Hungarian Jews. We
have also honored diplomats from El Salvador, China and Mexico over the past
three years.
Fast forward to 2012. There is one head of state who openly defies the
intent of the U.N.’S International Holocaust Remembrance Day by denying the
Holocaust and at the same time promising to re-enact it against the one Jewish
state in the world. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called the
Holocaust “a myth” and urged the formation of an international inquiry to
“expose” it. He calls the state of Israel a “fake regime” that “must be
wiped off the map.” This head of state who calls for the destruction of a
fellow U.N. member state is regularly allowed to address the very U.N. General
Assembly, in New York, that today solemnly pledges to prevent any repetition of
the Holocaust.
Ahmadinejad, like Hitler, announces in advance his intention to kill
Jews, and portrays this as a defensive reaction to an economic attack on his
country by world Jewry (for which he uses the term “Zionists”). But in
one important sense Iran is a step ahead of Nazi Germany. While the latter
had to conquer Europe country by country and laboriously ferret out the Jews
and send them to their deaths, Iran — as demonstrated in a recent report by the
U.N.’S International Atomic Energy Agency — is well on its way to
securing nuclear weapons and the missile capability to launch them against
Israel, home to another 6 million Jews. Some say that this danger is wildly
exaggerated, since Iran would never begin a nuclear war that would lead to its
own devastation by Israeli retaliation. Too many world leaders today, like
their predecessors in the 1930s, interpret calls to kill Jews as empty
rhetoric. But the clear message of International Holocaust Remembrance Day is
that state-sponsored anti-semitism must be taken seriously — especially if the
state will soon be ready to deploy a nuclear weapon to carry it out.
Dena Palermo is the co-chair of the American Jewish Committee Houston’s
U.N. Holocaust Victim Observance for the consular corps.
