Holocaust history threatened by public’s ignorance
The late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who taught at Boston University, wrote a line in “Night” nobody should ever forget: “Let the world learn of the existence of Auschwitz.”
The Nobel laureate witnessed the atrocities in that camp. In that passage, a young man fearing the worst wanted to act. But it didn’t happen.
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night,” Wiesel added a few pages later.
On the next page: “We’re on the threshold of death.”
One million, mostly Jewish men, women and children, were murdered at Auschwitz. In all, the Holocaust claimed 6 million Jewish lives. But that’s just an estimate.
The word Auschwitz should never be used unless it’s offered up to condemn or educate.
Duxbury’s high school football team used Auschwitz as an audible at the line of scrimmage to change a play, among other anti-Semitic play calls. Why?
Have we become so desensitized that words don’t matter anymore? Or, has teaching history become such a low priority we’re filling the country with ignorance?
“My message,” Holocaust survivor Izzy Arbeiter told the Herald this week, “is to do a complete examination.” Find out why coaches and kids wouldn’t stop to think about the meaning of the word.
Arbeiter, who said he saw children put to death in the gas chambers in Auschwitz, said he’s “not afraid or embarrassed” to show the Duxbury players the tattoo the Nazis burned into his skin in the concentration camp.
“The public has to know what other people can do,” Arbeiter, 96, said Wednesday. “I wish I was younger, I’d go speak to them. I made a promise to my father when he was taken to the gas chamber. I promised to talk about it.”
Two proposed pieces of legislation would address genocide education in Massachusetts schools, and one of them would mandate all students receive these lessons before they can graduate high school, the Herald reported Thursday.
I guess we’ve come to that. But why mandate conscience?
Pick up a book. Read “Night.” Read “Oskar Schindler.” Sit down and absorb “The Diary of a Young Girl,” also known as “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Duxbury has fired head football coach Dave Maimaron, and the district has hired a firm to conduct an investigation. But this isn’t an isolated embarrassment. It’s a warning to middle school and high school teachers everywhere that history can’t be lost on young minds.
The players and coaches should know how “hateful and hurtful” the Holocaust references would be to the Jewish community, state Sen. Michael Rodrigues said this past week. The Westport senator’s bill passed the Senate last year, but did not make it to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk.
It’s clearly more urgent this year — especially with so many older veterans dying from the coronavirus. The nation went to war to rid the world of the Nazis. A generation of young men — some who likely prayed for one more chance to play football — were sacrificed.
That’s why Auschwitz should never be considered as an audible. The Holocaust wasn’t a game. As Elie Wiesel wrote: “Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.”