Is Another Holocaust Around the Corner? |
The Question Many Jews Never Expected to Ask Again
When people think about the Holocaust, they often imagine the danger must have been obvious from the beginning.
That may be one of the most important and misunderstood lessons of Holocaust history.
When I wrote Taken. Numbered. Survived., available on Amazon, I was not only documenting my mother’s survival through Auschwitz and forced labour. I was trying to understand something far more disturbing: how ordinary people fail to recognize danger while they are still living inside ordinary life.
My mother, Mary Katz Claman, survived the destruction of Hungarian Jewry in 1944. She survived Auschwitz. She survived forced labour. She survived the collapse of an entire civilization that many Jews believed, until very late, could not possibly disappear.
That history no longer feels distant to many Jews today.
The Holocaust Did Not Begin With Mass Murder
The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers.
It began with language.
It began with propaganda, intimidation, exclusion, humiliation, and the normalization of hatred. It began with Jews becoming increasingly isolated from the societies around them. It began while many people still believed that however bad conditions became, there would still be limits.
History proved otherwise.
One of the great historical misconceptions about the Holocaust is that catastrophe suddenly appeared fully formed. In reality, the destruction of European Jewry unfolded through stages. Rights........