Myriam was fourteen years old when she and her sisters, Adele and Ana, as well as Anna’s child, Esther, were closer to hundreds of other Jews in Poland during World War II and ordered the removal of their clothes. Instead, the sisters ran and find a shelter in a deserted tanning. It was very calm. Suddenly, the stillness of Anna was broken by her child. Two shots. Anna or her child will not see again.
Then silence. After the cough broke the silence, one of the armed collaborators discovered the husband in hiding. When the girls appeared in the face of a certain execution, a German soldier looked at his watch and said: “Let them go. Enough for today.”
In the end, the sisters were separated. Myriam, who needed a class card, tried to register at an employment center using wrong baptism papers, but she was suspicious. Her fate was now in the hands of the German officers who already killed her sister Anna, Bibi Esther, as well as two brothers.
While she was waiting for the challenge facing her credentials, a German officer entered Mary and said: “This girl will do.” Thus, Myriam escaped from a certain death for the second time and became a slave worker throughout the period of World War II. My aunt, Maryam and Adel, survived the war and immigrated to the United States.
The day of the Holocaust anniversary should be an invitation to work
I often think about the atrocities that you carry, but especially on April 24, The day of the Holocaust anniversary Or yom hashoah. It is a day dedicated to thinking about the lives of survivors like my aunts, as well as 6 million Jews Those who were killed by the German fascists.
Pass Mary and Adel. There are now a few survivors, but the manufacture of Holocaust has gained momentum. A recent survey stated that one in 10 Americans believe that the Holocaust has never happened; 23 % believe it is a legend or that the number of deaths has been exaggerated. Extreme right -wing organizations such as proud children and department guards have appeared and legitimacy was added. The Trump administration has adopted egg Christian leaders such as Victor Urban in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
opinion: The hatred of the Jews led to 6 million deaths in the Holocaust. Now anti -Semitism takes the root.
These developments make the day of the Holocaust anniversary more important for one day to educate the public about the collective persecution and murder sponsored by the state Millions of people By the Nazi regime and its collaborator. The genocide campaign targeted those opponents of the fascist government in Germany and the people who believe that the Nazis are biological inferior to the anti -Semitism, homosexuality or other hatred. During the Holocaust, two thirds of European Jews were killed.
The anniversary days should be more than time to remember and think. They should also be an invitation to work against the use of state authority to persecute minority groups and participate in ethnic cleansing.
To honor memory, we must oppose the attacks that have been punished for the state over our freedoms and rights that occur in the United States today. This means the Trump administration’s demonic refusal to immigrants, refugees and the LGBTQ community.
We are facing the same attack on freedoms, as in Nazi Germany
Fascism did not start with the gas rooms. I started banning books, censorship and attacks on individual freedoms of the press, speech and assembly, followed by persecution and arrest of political opponents and the persecution of “lower races”. The death camps were the last stage of the country’s goal of establishing Aryan sovereignty.
Today we are witnessing attacks on these freedoms themselves. American military areas and military academies prohibit books that enhance ethnic and sexual equality. Romisa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student on her way to dinner surrounded, handcuffed and kidnapped by disorganized ice agents unknown in a scene that reminds us of dictatorships in Latin America. Its only crime was participating in freedom of expression, which led to a form of an article criticizing the United States’ support for the genocide of Israel against the Palestinian people. Other foreign students were also arrested by ice agents and their prisoners away from their families and friends without due legal procedures. Their visas have been terminated.
opinion: We are members of Jewish society. Israel’s protest is not anti -Semitic.
Kilmar Austro Garcia, a father of three of the rights of the situation, was arrested, and the government recognized was an “administrative error.” He is still imprisoned in Al Salvadouran Prison. The aim of these arrests is to give the institutional character to terrorism as a state policy like Nazi Jewish families.
These attacks are not limited to immigrants and refugees, although this will be bad enough. Yasmine Money, Canadian Business Adviser was kidnapped Immigration authorities and imprisoned for 12 days Although you have a job offer and visa papers. In a terrible statement, the president Trump confirmed that he intends to start deporting American citizens To El Salvador Golaj.
We cannot silence in the face of the attack on freedoms
Trump follows these attacks on our freedoms in the name of fighting anti -Semitism by incorrectly drawing foreign policy criticism with anti -Semitism. They are not the same.
It was not long before Trump extends that the mob chant “the Jews will not solve us” as “very wonderful people” and they claim, reminding us of Hitler, that “the immigrants were allowing the blood of the country.” The logical basis has a chimney screen.
Messages: Ron Johnson needs to read the constitution, do his work and support the rule of law
As the son of the Jewish parents of the first generation whose father fought fascist in World War II, I was taught to be silent in the face of injustice. This remains the Holocaust lesson. Silence in the face of the Trump administration’s attacks on our freedoms and democracy is complicity.
In August 1963, Maryam traveled to participate in the march in Washington for jobs and freedom with 250,000 others. If it is alive today, I know how you will celebrate the Holocaust anniversary day: by opposing the Trump administration attacks actively on the rights and freedoms of all of us, citizens, immigrants and refugees. This is the only way to give a meaning to say “Don’t be held again.”
Michael Rosen is a retired professor at the Milwoke College of Technical.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: We are facing the attack on similar rights to Nazi Germany opinion
