27th January was chosen as International Holocaust Remembrance Day because it is the anniversary of the Russian army’s liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp - now 76 years ago.
scapegoats
This year’s opportunity to remember the horrors of genocide falls almost a year after our world became engulfed in this seemingly endless COVID-19 pandemic. Almost every one of the 7.8 billion members of our global society are affected. Billions of our less privileged members are stoically suffering even more than usual. Millions of our more relatively privileged members are getting royally fed up of suffering. And a significant number of us are beginning to lash out in all directions - at ourselves, our families, communities & governments, at other communities & other governments.
When distressed, it’s human nature to look for a scapegoat. It’s just so easy to climb up onto the slippery slope that starts at upset, slips through blame & anger, and hurtles right along to hatred of the newly-identified scapegoat. The trouble is, once you hate someone, it’s only two small slips further onto condoning their suffering & even their death. That might seem to be a shocking, hyperbolic exaggeration of where lashing out could get us. But it’s not. It’s history.
Slippery slope
A century ago, the Jew-blaming Nazis took the German nation for a ride on a monstrous slippery slope: it started in the despondent ashes of post-World War I Germany, and it ended in World War II & the Holocaust. Yet it wasn’t just a few extremists who rode that blame train: no, the ride took on board generally caring & compassionate people - politicians & intellectuals, lawyers & doctors, and the man & woman on the street.
During the raking of the ashes of the resulting World War II, the Council of Europe was created and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) drawn up - in part to try to prevent a recurrence of the ethical degradation of such slippery slope thinking. The ECHR even went so far as to write down, in Articles 3 and 2 respectively, what should have been obvious all along - that ill-treating and killing fellow human beings is wrong.
New weapon
It’s taken us just over a century to get in three world wars though thankfully ‘World War III’ is ‘humans v virus’ rather than ‘humans v humans’. Yes COVID-19 is a new & dangerous enemy and it’s essential that we put up a strong fight against it. But there’s another new weapon in town - double-edged smart phones. Their oh-so-fabulous edge is that they are incredibly handy lockdown companions. Yet their dangerous edge is that they are Tardis-like portals to the powerful realm of social media. This means that a 21st Century version of a slippery slope into scapegoating and genocide could be a far faster ride.
Responsibility
Quite rightly, we’re all being asked to play our part in preventing virus transmission - through hand hygiene, social distancing and mask wearing. Yet it’s equally vital that each one of us takes responsibility for our own words and actions. Could our words be interpreted as blame gaming? And could our actions - either directly or indirectly - contribute to the escalation of conflicts with our near neighbours? We must not succumb to the temptation of looking for a particular nation or people group to criticise or scapegoat for this pandemic, which we - as one massive community of 7.8 billion souls - are all in together. We need to care for one another in our thoughts, words & deeds. Otherwise our fight against this pandemic could very easily morph into a ‘humans v humans’ war with the coronavirus cheerleading from the side lines.
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
It’s #InternationalHolocaustMemorialDay. #NeverAgain.