Thursday, February 13, 2014

My Most Unpopular Subject


As you might know, I am an unapologetic Zionist.
And nothing stokes my zeal for the State of Israel like a good Holocaust documentary.

Last week, I watched an amazing show on the History Channel about some recently discovered photographic albums from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

There were two albums.

One focused on the happy-go-lucky Ernst Hoecker, an SS Administrator who enjoyed having his picture taken picnicking and frolicking with the SS women, while just a few hundred yards away, men, women and children were being escorted off a train and shoved into a gassing chamber.

The other album focused on the victims, some of whom may have been my own distant relatives.

What I find most interesting is that these were not just ordinary people. They were, in different circumstances, the same people who could have made Hitler's 1000 Year Reich last a little longer than a dozen.

Because in those gas chambers, and later into the ovens, were physicists, chemists and engineers who could have harnessed the power of the atom for Deutschland.

Among those 6 million, there might have been a doctor who would cure cancer.
A novelist who might have written the next Moby Dick.
A composer who might have topped Beethoven.

In addition to the unimaginable human suffering, it pains me to think of the intellectual capitol that was lost.

None of that has stopped the hatred of Jews.

In fact the movement to boycott Israeli goods and academia is only gaining steam. Seems some good-hearted, progressive activists are more than willing to overlook the atrocities in Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, and the 120,000 civilians killed in Syria, and are more intent on stopping those damn Jews.

Nowhere was this more aptly contrasted than in my recent Facebook feed.



One group of people are determined to move mankind into a brighter, better future, while another group of people are determined to go the other direction.

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