Use the power of the press for the better

In 1944 two little girls were murdered. Five year old Marta was a live wire. At 10, Veronica was thoughtful and protective of her little sister. They were my husband’s first cousins. Their mother was murdered and their grandmother Cecelia was, too.

How could this have happened? Hungary, where they lived, had been a prosperous and open society before WWII. The arts and sciences flourished, much of it the product of minorities.

Then, when the country and the world were on the brink of the great Depression — people were out of work, afraid and angry — a book titled “The Three Generations” was published. It purported to be a history of the true and pure Hungarian people.

Like the Easter “poem” that appeared three times over this past weekend in the TimesStandard, this book was a thinly veiled anti-Semitic attack. It used innuendo, fact, and fabrication to lay the blame for Hungary’s economic and political problems at the feet of its Jewish population. It was one of many such publications.

Because it is easier to blame and to hate than it is to speak out against those forces, these ideas spread and hate prevailed. Hungarian sympathizers joined with their Nazi conquerors to round up Jews. Veronica and Marta were taken by train to Auschwitz where they were killed along with most of their family and millions of other children, parents and grandparents.

In difficult times, and surely we are now in difficult times, it is easy to look for people to blame. Hate is a virus that is always in our midst and it is our job to call it out when we see it and not let it destroy who we are.

It is racist hate to blame Asian people for the corona virus, just as it was homophobic to blame gays for the AIDS epidemic. And it is anti-Semitic hate to blame Jews for the death of Christ.

As a Christian, and the daughter of a loving God, I am revolted by the hate-filled insert that appeared in our community newspaper in the guise of an Easter message.

May we use the power of the press to speak to our better selves and not to pull us apart — for the sake of the children and for all of us.