Holocaust Remembrance Essay

(a) analyze why it is vital that the remembrance, history and lessons of the Holocaust be passed to new generations; and

(b) suggest what you, as students, can do to combat and prevent prejudice, discrimination and violence in our world today.

The Holocaust is a reference to the Nazi attempt to rid Europe of the Jewish population. A total of 5,962,129 people were killed, adults and children alike. In fact, an estimated 1 million children under the age of 16 were killed during this time, and many estimate the number to be much larger. Unfathomable tragedies, and truly inhuman behavior thrived during this era under the view that the Jewish race were not humans or worthy of dignity and respect. The children, I believe, were, in some cases, the ones who suffered the greatest. As you read through the remainder of this essay, I urge you to think of the young ones in your life. Innocent children such as these were brutally harassed, tortured, and killed, and children of today are suffering much of the same.

Some young children, in addition to generally cruel treatment by Nazi forces, were subjected to the heartless experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele. Most doctors take an oath to the preservation of life. However, Dr. Mengele took a silent one to death, and had no regard for the value of human life. The merciless acts performed against the children in concentration camps, particularly twins and dwarves, by this man are so graphic, I won’t mention them here. Very few survived, and those that did were left with horrific emotional scars. Many doctors today, even ones that may have treated you in some way or another, have been responsible for the death of an innocent child, possibly many. In the same way as Dr. Mengele, these doctors have taken a silent oath to death as well.

The importance of remembering such atrocities as the Holocaust, many would say, is to prevent the same from ever recurring. However, the ideologies of Hitler and many others are many we hear regarding another holocaust. One begun January 22, 1973 – the legalization of abortion. The perspectives that inundated the European society, which originated from Adolf Hitler, are astonishingly similar to the justifications of abortion in the United States. One of which being that the subject, people of Jewish heritage, or unborn children, are not human, and are not worthy of the rights that those of the human race should be - one of which being the opportunity to live and thrive. Jewish children were merely subjects to Dr. Mengele, who used and murdered them in the name of science. Many doctors and scientists do the same today, using live human embryos, often conceived solely for scientific purposes, to use for bone marrow and other research, after which, the child’s life is terminated. The same doctors who vowed to preserve human life are now disregarding it. Hitler and many others desired to have “the perfect race”, by both altering genetics and killing those who are not included in their definition. In many ways, unborn babies are being subjected to the same thing. Parents, when they find out that their unborn child has a birth defect, such as Downs Syndrome, are often urged by the doctor to abort the child. They are not included in today’s definition of a perfect baby, so they are subject to death. In Hitler’s eyes, Jews were responsible for the downfall of his perfect state. Jewish people were referred to as a “problem” in a direct quote from Adolf Hitler himself, and unborn children, when conceived in inconvenient circumstances, are viewed as a problem as well, and not valued as the precious young children that they are. In the United States, our actions depict that “if a child is not convenient for ME, it’s not a child.” Governments and prominent leaders, in both these scenarios (the Holocaust and the issue of abortion), altered the way the people viewed the people in focus, and their actions and beliefs began to turn, despite their moral beliefs. We, in today’s culture, must be particularly aware of following our government or political leaders with blind faith, and embracing their ways of thinking without taking our own morals into account.

A question remains: What can we, as students, do about it? Well, the teens of today are the influential leaders of tomorrow. The perspectives that we take up now are the ones that we will carry into the future, long after those who the views originated from are gone. My utmost advice is to be a truth seeker. Media and government quite often have political agendas and will make a profit from publishing or supporting a certain view. Know your morals and where you stand on the most prominent of political, ethical, and religious debates. Then, take a stand! So many injustices occur because the people who can make a difference are unaware of what’s really going on. Make sure the truth gets out there for the people to see. If you watched “The Boy in Striped Pajamas”, it depicted how much of the Holocaust was shadowed from its supporters. How many people actually know what’s involved in a partial birth abortion? Organizations such as Planned Parenthood insist that an embryo is not a human until it is fully born and that the operation is painless. However, the nerves of a child do not suddenly begin to function after the baby is fully born, but rather, a child can feel all that is happening during an abortion, making it that much less humane and utterly unethical. This said, I urge you to seek out the truth regarding all matters of morality, so that the same injustices that the Jews were subjected to, innocent children will not continue to be subjected to as well.