Remembering the Holocaust

Entrance to Auschwitz Death Camp

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial day, a solemn occasion to reflect on the systematic murder of an estimated six million Jews from a number of European countries by the Nazi regime in Germany. The day coincides with the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, the largest of many.

The number of anti-Jewish incidents are on the rise around the world, everything from the desecration of Jewish cemeteries to a horrific shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Canada is not an exception with acts of vandalism at synagogues and cemeteries.

Also here in Canada the publisher and editor of a miserable excuse for a newspaper were convicted in Toronto last week for “an overreaching and unrelenting depth of hate" toward Jews and women.




The vandalized Jewish cemetery monument in Thessaloniki, Greece, last week

While it might seem less disturbing, a recent survey of Canadians found that there is a deepening ignorance about the facts of the Nazi campaign to eradicate Jews.

• One in five young people in Canada either hasn't heard of the Holocaust or isn't sure what it is.

• 15 per cent of Canadian adults and more than one fifth of Canadians under age 34 (22 per cent) haven't heard about or are not sure if they have heard about the Holocaust.

• Nearly half of Canadian respondents (49 per cent) couldn't name a single concentration camp. That's roughly equal to the U.S., where 45 per cent couldn't name one in a similar survey last year. There were over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust. 

• Nearly one quarter of all Canadians (23 per cent) believe substantially fewer than six million Jews were killed (two million or fewer) during the Holocaust, while another 24 per cent were unsure of how many were killed.

• Few Canadians believe there are many neo-Nazis in Canada today, while nearly half think there are many in the U.S. In fact, on a per capita basis, the two countries have roughly the same number of neo-Nazis.

I wonder what role Christian communities of faith could have in education and conversation with other faith groups, including Jews? Mainline churches have so few young people now that it's unlikely that acknowledging Holocaust Memorial Day would  make a difference. In the past I led a study group in a congregation called Bearing Faithful Witness (link below) which explored the relationships between Jewish and Christian communities. Perhaps it's time to revive this document and both literally and figuratively open doors.

What are your thoughts about this?

Today's Water of Life Groundling blog is not about ice fishing! Click here for more...
https://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.com/2019/01/waters-of-life.html

 https://commons.united-church.ca/Documents/What%20We%20Believe%20and%20Why/Ecumenical%20and%20Interfaith%20Relations/Bearing%20Faithful%20Witness%20-%20United%20Church–Jewish%20Relations%20Today.pdf