Shoah

Anne Frank was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary in which she documented life in hiding under Nazi persecution.

In the 7 October terror attack, etched in the human psyche as among the worst malevolence inflicted on mankind, Israelis’ default reference is the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany slaughtered six million Jews in World War II.

The Shoah became the “default frame of reference” for so many Israelis “almost immediately,” a commentary said right after the murderous rampage by the terrorist group Hamas. Shoah is the Hebrew word for “catastrophe,” a term that refers specifically to the carnage of Jews in Europe.

Holocaust scholar Avinoam Patt said that for Israelis and many Jews and non-Jews around the world, the memory of the Holocaust serves as “the strongest reminder for why Israel must defend itself against all its enemies.”

Hamas’ 7 October attack saw some 2,500 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,400 people and seizing more than 200 hostages of all ages under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.

The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians, including babies, children, and the elderly.

On 24 October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of the Holocaust in remarks he gave during the solidarity visit of French President Emmanuel Macron.

“Like Anne Frank, Jewish children hid in attics from these monsters and they were found and butchered,” Netanyahu said.

Anne Frank was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary in which she documented life in hiding under Nazi persecution.

Netanyahu likened, in a meeting with US President Joe Biden, one of the Hamas massacres, at Re’im, to the largest German operation which took place at a ravine outside Kyiv in 1941.

“As in Babyn Yar, Jews were machine-gunned in killing pits. Hamas butchered. Hamas beheaded. Hamas burned babies alive. Hamas raped. Hamas kidnapped hostages — over 200 — babies, children, elderly, Holocaust survivors,” Netanyahu lamented.

Biden, in response, promised the US would not abandon the Jews to genocidal enemies for a second time in living memory. “The world watched then, it knew, and the world did nothing. We will not stand by and do nothing again. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever,” Biden said.

Historian Patt recalled the “profound sense of abandonment and isolation” felt by Jews during the Holocaust.

A Holocaust survivor, who had avoided comparisons to the persecution that Jews endure in contemporary times since he knew nothing could equal the horrors of the Nazi barbarity, is now having a reflection.

Rafael Medoff told The Times of Israel, “There are times when there are so many similarities between contemporary atrocities and the Holocaust that comparisons are unavoidable.”

After hearing the remarks of US officials following 7 October, Medoff said their analogies were appropriate.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken was correct when he said the Hamas pogrom had ‘harrowing echoes’ of the Holocaust,” said Medoff, referring specifically to the intense dehumanization of Jews.

“The pogromists’ up-close savagery, such as decapitating babies, their use of sexual violence as a weapon, and the dehumanization of Jews in the Palestinian Arab news media and school textbooks, are all examples of behavior that warrant comparisons to the Nazis,” he said.

Surprisingly, false narratives are gaining adherents worldwide, primarily among those who refuse to accept the lessons of the worst form of human savagery that happened in the Holocaust.

The influence of those peddling deception has turned the tables on the truth by highlighting the false narratives of the many anti-Semitic forces that paint Israel now as the oppressor.

The world has an obligation to make sure the Holocaust never happens again, a task that for Israel is a duty.

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Credit belongs to: tribune.net.ph