I love the TV 60 minutes. I have been watching it on Sunday nights ever since I can remember. My father loved the show and as a family we would watch the stories and often discuss them afterward.
On this Sunday 60 minutes correspondent Scott Pelley discussed Holocaust documents that were taken to a town in the middle of Germany, called Bad Arolsen, where they were sorted, filed and locked way, never to be seen by the public until now. There are 16 miles of shelves holding the stories of 17 million victims – not only Jews, but slave laborers, political prisoners and homosexuals. 60 minutes has flown three men who are Holocaust survivors to the town to look at their own records.
Every time I see something on the Jewish holocaust I cry my eyes out. Maybe it is my Irish upbringing and the understanding that my reason for being in the US is the discrimination that went on with Irish Catholics. not only Ireland, but in Canada where my Grandmother landed after leaving her home country. Maybe because it is the darkest side of our humanity ... bigotry ... like the trail of tears and the Rwanda genocide of 1994.
It really pisses me off that people say the holocaust didn't happen. How ignorant does someone have to be to say something so stupid, arrogant and cruel. There's the President of Iran and his recent summit on proving the holocaust didn't happen. I think there's a special place in hell just for those that supported it.
I remember a guy I dated in college who had his degree and made the statement that he wasn't sure the holocaust happened. How in the hell does someone graduate from college with a BS degree from a prestigious school and say something so ignorant? I remember wanting to spit on him. Needless to say we didn't date anymore. Oh but to some future employer he had a good credit score and could pass a pee test, because to corporate America that's all that matters. He lives in Texas and is in management at Transunion. What an ass.
This is one of the reasons I speak up when something bugs me, or a neighbor is being mean. There is this trend inthe US to not make waves and ignore situations that make us uncomfortable. Don't say anything - don't "make waves". How in the hell do people think the holocaust happened? It was exactly fear and turning of the head that allowed an entire race to suffer a cruel history we will take with us into the afterlife. This is why I say something to the teachers who are mean to children, or the guy calling his girlfriend derogatory names in front of her dad's house at a party or the bigot that makes a comment to the casher at the local grocery store. Brian always grins when I calmly speak up against cruelty with some redheaded comment.
But will the ignorant travel to see the documentation of Anne Frank and those that died with her? I doubt it. We will continue to hear this rhetoric about the holocaust not really happening and Irish redheads like myself standing up to say these comments piss me off to the extreme.
Can you tell this subject hits a nerve with me? All bigotry does. One doesn't have to be Jewish to recognise the contribution they have made to America, and probably to my family, somewhere in our family tree.
Until next time-
C
