“It is OK to kill Jews”

Today is May 19, 2009. As I was driving to work this morning listening to the news. Some guy named Morgan was arrested for killing Yohan Justin- Jinich, a Wesleyan University student in a bookstore. The killer wrote in his journal ” I think it is OK to kill Jews”. Yohan’s grandmother, as the newsman informs, is a holocaust survivor.

Has anything changed from the dark “Years of Extermination”? Years when ordinary neighbors in Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Stonia and many many other places, taunted, cursed and even laughed as their neighbors were being rounded up, humiliated, paraded through the town and deported to the gas chambers. Years when the ordinary citizens of Europe, educated and cultured, came home from a hard day at work, kissed and hugged their kids, drank and ate good food while listening to Bach and Wagner, and made love their wives and husbands and did not think for a moment about thousands of men, women and children they just sent to the gas chambers?

Has anything changed from the years of extermination when the best of the politicians and academic thought “it was OK to Kill Jews” and the top man of God was more worried about the advancing Communist Russian Army than 1.2 million children were being killed by the Germans and their European allies?

Has anything changed from the years of extermination when the same man of God, while meeting to the newly appointed Ambassador, found time to thank Germany for the time he spent in Germany and went on to praise Germans but could not find time to express outrage (if he had any, I doubt it) on the murder of millions of innocent through Nazi killing machine?

This not to brag as I don’t consider it a big deal that I am a fast reader but lately, well,  not. For last few days I am trying to read Saul Freidlander’s book “Years of Extermination: The Nazi Germany and Jews 1939-1945” I got from my local library. This book has become the most difficult book for me to read. I can not read more than few pages and not feel depressed, shocked and deeply sad. And when this happened, I am unable to continue and I close the book.

And the sons and daughters of these killers, these mass murderers, lecture us, on Human Rights and Democracy?

Tags: "It is OK to kill Jews", anti-Semitism, Hate