If you have never visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., you have not seen first-hand how prejudice and discrimination can escalate into something horrific and evil.
Once you are inside, it is a somber mood, as the crowds make their way through the authentic film footage, artifacts, photographs and documents that mirror what life was like in pre-war Europe, the Nazi move toward the "Final Solution"*** and life after the Holocaust. The Holocaust Museum is not for the faint hearted. You can spend an two to three hours in this self-guided exhibition and it is recommended for visitors 11 years of age and older.
There are different estimates of deaths during the Holocaust because not only did the national borders change during the Holocaust, but many of the victims were never recorded. In the eastern European regions, millions of Poles — Jews and Catholics alike — were murdered by the Secret Service and police personnel in the field or in killing centers such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. In the ideology of the Nazis, the Poles were considered an inferior "race."
It is estimated that the number of Jewish fatalities during the Holocaust is usually given as between 5.1 and 6 million victims.
It is estimated that between 5 and 5.5 million Polish civilians, including 3 million Polish Jews, died or were killed under Nazi occupation. Poland lost one-fifth of its population: three million of the dead were Polish Christians, predominantly Catholic, and the rest were Polish Jews.
Many people were killed trying to hide or help people escape concentration camps and executions.
Why? What was the Holocaust and why did it happen?
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims — six million were murdered; Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany. Ref: http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/faq/details.php?lang=en&topic=01#01
Does this boggle your mind as it does mine? All these people executed because of who they were and what they believed in? So how is this related to world peace and how does it start with You, and You, and You and You?
You can see above what happens when a people decide that they are going to annihilate people that don’t think, live, believe or act like they do. They were people, with families, with normal lives going about the business of making a living and loving and caring for their family. And because of discrimination, profiling, intolerance and persecution, innocent people like you and me were executed.
I don’t know the intricacies of what and how these seeds of discontent against others first materialized into what they did. Perhaps because people who were different from those in charge behaved differently, believed differently and acted differently. Germany wanted a ‘Master Race’ that did not include specific races, religion or people.
Is not today’s world filled with people who are all very different; they behave differently, believe differently and act differently from how we do? Aren’t our all our countries a matrix of different countries, languages, religions, customs, lifestyles, and even countenances different from one another?
It would be easy to point out the differences, make fun of the language or customs and shun their religion and lifestyles. We can make ethnic or lifestyle jokes about them, call them popular derisive names, and not want them living in our neighborhoods. It could be just as easy to accept and respect people for who they are and learn from their diversity of ideas and values.
We are all different from different worlds and walks of life and we have many similarities; a mother is a mother anywhere else, love is love anywhere else, and survival is survival anywhere else. But there is one sameness among all peoples in all countries that we all have. We are all created by God and made in His likeness. There is no discrimination in His eyes; He loves each and every one of us the same. We are all equal; all races, all creeds, all people, men and women and children. There are no classes, castes, or standards of living in God’s eyes.
And as Jesus said when he summarized the ten commandments into two: Matthew 22:36-40
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments".
When you look at the ten commandments, loving your neighbor as yourself combines the remainder of commandments …in not killing, not stealing, not lying, not coveting, etc. They all relate to our neighbor and if we love him, we won’t act against him.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself and you will help make peace in our world.
There are websites with Q&A relating to the Holocaust http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/faq/details.php?lang=en&topic=03#02
***"Final Solution" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution
