The Holocaust

Can history forget the horrible slaughter of millions during the Nazi Holocaust? I think not. There is so much in this world that is good, and yet there is so much evil. I believe that those prisoners that stood behind the chain-link fence at concentration and death camps were not bad people; rather, they were good souls who were being persecuted unjustly. I don't believe that their captors were good at all, however. It tears me apart inside to know that human beings can be so cruel to one another. In the video "6,000,000: Story of an Auschwitz Survivor," I heard accounts from several individuals, and each tale was heart-wrenching. 

Imagine people of all age, sizes and genders being filed into a room only to be forced to inhale toxic vapors. Each one of those human beings that entered into those chambers died slowly but surely, and their bodies were heaped into piles and burned. All of this because of race and ethnic background? Children were split from their families and forced into slave labor. Many died. They all had to suffer. Was one man's crazed quest for power worth the death of millions? Was one man's crazed quest for power worth even the death of one soul? No. It's impossible. 

I don't want to believe those stories of human degradation and the loss of life. People can rarely find it in themselves to forget the wrong that someone has done to them. Normally I advocate the "forgive and forget" idea, but in this instance I believe that forgetting Auschwitz and leaving it for history's scrap pile will do more harm than good. No soul should be harmed because of something like ethnic background or religious belief- those innocent children didn't choose to be Jewish any more than I chose to be female. I think that the Holocaust was and still is a horrible stain written into the world's history books, but it needs to be remembered so that we know that we can avoid it if/when it starts again. Like they say: 

"Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."