TIME FOR ALL TO STAND TOGETHER
The Holocaust is a reminder of what can happen when a country weaponises hatred
WE LIVE in unprecedented times. On Tuesday we will be remembering a very important day in the Jewish calendar – the systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime between 1941 and 1945.
This year – the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, one of the most infamous Nazi German death camps – we suddenly find ourselves in a world where almost half of us are interned, voluntarily, in a bid to stave off one of the worst existential crises in recent history. The coronavirus pays no heed to creed, colour or class in the devastation it wreaks.
Covid-19 reminds us that we are one world, one humanity, interlinked in everything we do. It should matter not from whence it came; what should matter is how we deal with it.
We should be debating what kind of society we will craft when we emerge from the hibernation of the mandatory lockdowns imposed.
Are we ready for that debate? On the face of it, no. The finger-pointing has already begun; from the White House declaring Covid-19 “a Chinese virus” to accusations that it was brought to the east by US soldiers, which only shows how little we have learnt in the last 75 years.
When we blame, we do so because it’s easier to find someone to hate than fix the actual problem. As a people, the Jews know all about demonisation; the pogroms that had us killed or forced to flee eastern Europe, the mindless anti-Semitism in western Europe, the Kristallnacht vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses and destruction of Jewish-written literature, the beginning of the mass deportations and ultimately murder.
Every year we remember the sacrifice of those in the extermination camps. We do so because to forget would be to dishonour the memories of those who perished; gassed in the chambers, worked to death, tortured or medically experimented upon.
We cherish the survivors who we have left, almost all of them mere children when they were in the concentration camps, while we still can.
As time passes and memories dim – or even die out altogether – there is a terrible tendency to forget history or even worse to revise it altogether.
We dare not allow that to happen, we dare not “just get over it”, because if we do, we open the door for crimes against humanity to become normalised. But sadly, we do forget. It is human nature if we don’t act.
In 1918, this country was ravaged by the Spanish Flu. Estimates are that up to half-a-million people could have died in South Africa alone. The experience brought out the very best in us; people working together united in a common humanity irrespective of race and the drafting of the first public health policy that would last almost unchanged for decades.
But as suddenly as that wave of goodwill washed over this country, it dissipated to be replaced by the horrors of the World Wars I and II, apartheid and now, the aftermath of state capture. The seeds of apartheid that were sown then have given us the bitter fruits we still choke on today. What would come after the Spanish flu was so intense that when Covid-19 first arrived on our shores, very few people appreciated our previous century-old history with a global pandemic.
When we forget, we are not just condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past, but we become blinded to the fissures in our society that are revealed and cleaved even further by our insensitivity and our selfishness.
Already, as our country takes hard decisions to ensure we buck the global trend of devastation, critical questions are being asked about the growing inhumanity of interning the most vulnerable, the homeless, while complaints are being raised about the alleged heavy-handedness of police and soldiers on our streets.
We dare not lose our humanity at this time. We dare not tolerate behaviour that demonises the most vulnerable in our society or normalises conduct that can open the door to an even greater despotism than we thought we had escaped.
The Holocaust reminds us of what can happen when a country weaponises hatred, but sadly we see that same hatred all around us. Pandemics breed paranoia, they are a petri-dish for the fear and fake news we are already immuno-compromised by.
We need no reminding of our own xenophobia as a country, but as we sit here in self-isolation we should think seriously about those at risk; the next Jews, the next gypsies, the next Jehovah’s Witnesses, the gays who would be “ethnically cleansed”, their properties expropriated, livelihoods denied and ultimately their lives extinguished in the Nazi concentration camps.
Three quarters of a century ago we thought they would be the last. The Tutsis, the Cambodians, the Rohingyas and the Bosnians would tell us differently. Covid-19 though has given us an opportunity to stand together and give the world a hard reset. Our world faces a common enemy that affects us all directly; in terms of our health and the economy. We will emerge from this crisis. Just like 75 years ago, the world will have to be rebuilt.
But this coronavirus will soon be in our past, scientists will discover a solution. Let’s never forget either its lessons or the enduring lessons of humanity’s own historic inhumanity.
Let’s use them both as an impetus to fashion a future in which we finally all have equal opportunity to live in health and harmony, free from persecution because of the colours of our skin, the languages we speak or the gods we worship.