Dr. Jim Denison
Note: For more on today’s discussion, please see my latest website paper: “Why the ‘Holocaust’ was not a holocaust: A reflection on the gravest crime in human history.” I also invite you to listen to our new podcast on today’s subject, “Confronting the past: Why International Holocaust Remembrance Day matters.”
Why did Hitler hate the Jews?
Why do so many people share his antisemitic animosity?
Tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, designated by the United Nations General Assembly to coincide with the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazis’ largest extermination and concentration camp, by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.
This annual remembrance focuses on the six million Jews murdered by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. One-fourth of them, 1.5 million, were children.
We remember the horror of antisemitic hatred so it will not rise again in our day.
But it is.
Antisemitism is surging on college campuses, part of a growing tide of animosity against Jews in America, Europe, and around the world. The Anti-Defamation League is reporting an unprecedented 337 percent increase in antisemitic incidents after Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, massacring more than 1,200 Jews.
What can we learn from the past to keep it from happening again in the present?