Essay - Holocaust
An
Ode to Hutton Gibson (Mel’s Dad)
By Bonnie Greenberg, Age 16
Ignorance.
Hate. Prejudice. Bigotry. All of these words are affiliated with the Holocaust.
Add on death, destruction, Genocide, and massacre to that list, and you’ve got
Europe in the 1940’s. Six million Jews were killed horribly during the time
period when Hitler was in power. To a lot of people during this time,
they were “just Jews,” and they said this as if this group of people
were just space in the storage basement, a weed in the garden of opportunity.
But, to the Jews themselves, they were doctors, lawyers, bakers, dancers,
actors, students, parents, Mom and Dad, Brother James, Sister Rose, and Baby
Danielle. Yet, in some minds today, these people never even existed. In some
minds today, the Holocaust never occurred at all.
When the Jews remaining in the death and labor camps were liberated in
1945 after Germany lost the war and Hitler committed suicide, some were so
starved, broken, and near death that after taking their first bite of real food
in four to five years, they dropped dead. Their frail bodies couldn’t handle
any sort of nourishment, so their stomachs- and other major vital organs-
rebelled. Others were so confused and disoriented that their newly acquired
freedom didn’t even register in their minds. The rest, well, they just sat
there, wondering if their family members, friends, neighbors, classmates, and
coworkers were still alive or rotting away with a myriad of other corpses in a
mass grave somewhere.
These
people, these “survivors,” lived to tell their gruesome tales. They passed
it down to their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, and
so on. There are some still alive today, with that green number stamp tattooed
to their skin until the day they die. That alone, combined with the disturbing
pictures, eye-witness accounts from soldiers, and the still-standing camps
should give people today enough information, enough proof, that the
Holocaust really happened. And still, some refuse to believe.
There
was a recent controversial remark made by Mel Gibson’s father, AKA Mr. The
Passion of the Christ himself. The movie itself held controversial issues,
as there were some negative insinuations about Jews. Well, that turned out to be
blown way out of proportion, and the movie was a hit. What wasn’t blown
out of proportion, however, was the comments made by Mr. Gibson Senior. He said,
and I quote, "It's all -- maybe not all -- fiction, but most of it
is," Hutton Gibson told a New York radio station. Apparently, according to
him, the death and labor camps were merely “work camps.” And those gas
chambers and crematory ovens? Completely fabricated. "Do you know what it
takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?" he said. "It takes a
liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They [the Germans] did
not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war." (quote credited
to Jewsweek at A&E.com)
Sadly
to say, he’s not the only one who thinks this way. Many other people, ignorant
people, believe that most of the Holocaust, and the casualties that occurred
there, was greatly exaggerated, or even worse yet, a figment of people’s
imaginations. Despite photographic evidence, the tattoos etched by the Nazis
into the flesh of the survivors, eye-witness accounts by US soldiers, direct
stories from escapees and survivors, and complete families all but vanished in
“thin air,” this select group still doesn’t believe that the true
horrors of the Holocaust ever really happened.
In
my opinion, some folks refuse to believe because it seems so ludicrous now. The
Holocaust was the extermination of Jews- and other minorities that Hitler just
didn’t favor- by the Nazis in the 1940’s. They used such methods of homicide
as gas chambers, death walks (which was a form of torture; a group of captives
would walk, naked, in the cold or heat, for miles on end; if they stopped, then
a Nazi would shoot them), random shootings, starvation, cremation, you name it,
the Nazis did it. It’s absolutely inconceivable that humans would do this to
other humans, equals to themselves; some were even friends, but relationships
were severed after Hitler came to power in 1932. It’s no wonder some people
don’t believe this horrible event actually took place. But it did, and it’s
disgusting.
Another
reason a few doubt the severity of the Holocaust is because, to be frank,
they’re either ignorant, prejudice, or just plain Anti-Semitic- or hateful of
Jews for whatever reason. Prejudiced people nowadays are more…quiet about
their feelings. Yes, there are still some Nazi-wannabe gatherings where trash
gather in nearby parks to bash minorities, specifically Jews and African
Americans. Some believe in a fascist America, but to the same token, some are
very uneducated and oblivious to the interest in worldwide cultures around the
US. But in any event, these ignorant and racist members of the human race ignore
the basic facts in order to improve on their opinion or belief. They say things
like “There’s no way that could’ve happened; Hitler wasn’t that bad,”
“That is unbelievably exaggerated. Six million people? Don’t you think
that’s pushing it a little bit?” and even “Those camps weren’t death
camps, they were just work camps. Besides, they taught those Jews a lesson or
two; they were controlling too many of our businesses. They had to be stopped
somehow.” Some of these comments I’ve heard in my very own educational
atmosphere, but of course I won’t mention names. Unlike those students, I have
class.
What
would I do to educate this particular group of people? In all honesty, I’m not
sure. For those who were just brought up believing this way, IE: their parents
were ignorant of the whole fiasco in Europe, they could be taught to understand
the full weight of exactly what happened. I could show them the photographic
evidence, the pictures of Jews of all ages eaten away to the bone from
starvation and loss. Or there’s the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. There,
they have various pictures of the six million Jews massacred during the time
Hitler served as dictator of Germany hung on walls all around the building.
There are actual drawings hung up in a special “children’s area” of the
museum that some of the young ones drew while being held captive in a labor or
death camp. Whether most of those kids actually survived is questionable. They
have an actual train cart where the Jews were shipped back and forth from the
ghettos to the labor camps to the death camps. And they also have the torn,
tattered, and disease-ridden working outfits the members of the camps were
forced to wear day in and day out spread across a section of the museum.
There’s also the option of sending them to the camps themselves, which are
still standing in Germany, Poland, Austria, France, and the many other countries
that Hitler claimed. I could also just get my grandmother, Mrs. Molly Greenberg,
to tell them some stories. Many of her relatives were killed in the Holocaust,
never to been seen alive again.
It’s such a shame, that there are some people out there that could be so unbelievably ignorant of past history as not to believe that something so horrendous as the Holocaust actually did happen in Europe during World War II. Some folks, like Hutton Gibson, believe the Holocaust to be greatly exaggerated, to the point where the Jews were just merely “asked” to do some manual labor in order to make up for their “treason-esque behavior.” I can only hope that someday, these few will finally see the light and accept that yes, the Holocaust really happened, and no, there wasn’t anything exaggerated or fabricated about it at all. It’s people like this ignorant bunch that started the Holocaust in the first place. Hitler placed an idea in their minds, and they went with it because they needed someone, or in this case, a group of someones, to blame all of their problems on. This extent of prejudice cannot happen again. And if the non-believers don’t let go of their stubborn opinions, religious and family-based beliefs, and ignorance, what will become of this country? What will become of this world?
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