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thedrifter
04-24-09, 06:17 AM
How news of the Holocaust fell through the cracks during WWII

4/23/2009 By Lance Cpl. Chris Kutlesa , Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION, Iwakuni —

For one week in April every year, the Department of Defense observes Holocaust Remembrance Week. It is a chance to remember the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust. Holocaust Remembrance Week is also an opportunity to educate and remind ourselves of lessons learned.

Today, wars dominate headlines next to genocide and disasters. Our minds are constantly riddled and bombarded with information from every direction. With so much negative news entering our world, it can be easy for some reports to slip through the cracks. Missing a few stories is forgivable, but missing an entire genocide is a disgrace. Thus was the case in the 1940s when the world ignored the Holocaust.

In the summer of 1941, the Nazis began their “War on the Jews” by aggressively killing them via firing squads. Six months later, fire squads became too expensive, prompting the Nazis to look for other options. After a few trial runs the Nazis began using Zyklon B, a cyanide-based insecticide which the Nazi’s initially tested on Russian prisoners of war. The large communal shower type room killed larger amounts of people for less money. By 1942, the Nazis had killed an estimated one million Jews, leaving one-sixth of the old world’s Jewish population dead.

Unfortunately, most civilians and servicemembers in the United States and deployed overseas knew little if not nothing about the Holocaust.

“As a unit, we knew nothing about the Holocaust,” said Rudy Schneider, an Army infantryman during World War II. “We were 20-30 miles away from a concentration camp and had no idea. We suspected something was going on, but no one wanted to believe it.”

The public’s lack of knowledge was a result of insufficient coverage from the media, which at that time, was primarily newspapers. During World War II, many newspapers knew about the genocide occurring in Germany but consistently placed reports on back pages with small headlines. Some historians say small headlines and the lack of coverage was a result of the lack of photos and a level of disbelief and validity of early reports.

“Even though we were fighting the Germans many still didn’t believe they were capable of such atrocities,” said Schneider.

It was not until after the war that the general public began to realize what the Nazis had done to the Jews.

“After the war, we started seeing footage of the Holocaust in the movie theaters,” said Norma Curtis, a singer during World War II. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. The entire event was unfolding right there in front of me. The dead bodies, the crying people, it was all plastered on the big screen. The whispers of what the Nazis had done were louder than ever. People could no longer deny it, but they certainly wanted to forget about it as soon as possible.”

To this day, people still argue whether or not the Holocaust ever occurred. The danger in forgetting and ignoring this tragedy is the danger of letting it happen again.

George Santayana, a Spanish-born American author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The mistakes we made during the Holocaust, failing to publicize it and talk about it, is one of the most important lesson we can take away from this moment in history. By remembering and recognizing where we went wrong and where we could improve can only better us as a nation. Educating ourselves through the past can help propel us into the future and help us combat the current war against evil.

Ellie