Holocaust Remembrance Day: May 1, 2008

Six torches are burning in Israel: one for each of the 1,000,000 Jews killed by the national socialist party in Germany during WWII.

Never Forget Lessons From the Past

"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lashed out at Holocaust deniers during a ceremony to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem on Wednesday saying, 'The voices of those who deny the Holocaust are also being heard. To them, the haters, the deniers, and all the conspirators of evil and to all of those who allow them to function within their realms, we say today: This shall never happen again.' "

" 'Sixty-three years have passed since the Satanic factories of death of the Nazis and their collaborators seized to operate, yet with the passing of time, the dimensions of the Holocaust still remain beyond comprehension, unfathomably shocking, unacceptably chilling,' Olmert told the service at Yad Vashem.

" 'Who would have believed that 63 years later, hatred of Jews and Israelis would rear its ugly head in so many different places around the globe, provocatively and venomously, inciting hatred?" he asked."

" 'If the countries of the world had dealt with the Nazi threat in a timely, sober way, they could have prevented [Nazi leader] Hitler from degrading them and murdering tens of thousands of people," Peres said. He added that had Hitler acquired nuclear capabilities, the world would have been destroyed then.

" 'It is possible that we were too late in erecting the state. And we paid a heavy price,' he said, adding: 'It's forbidden to be late in history.' " [emphasis mine]

The Holocaust Remembrance Day observances came with criticism of American policy.

"Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Wednesday echoed Peres' sentiment regarding the importance of stopping global military threats.

"During an address former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on the second day of an official visit to Poland, Ashkenazi spoke of the U.S. decision not to bomb the camp during World War II despite knowing of the horrors taking place there.

" 'And today, they don't know what is happening in Iran?' the IDF chief posed."

The War on Terror is not World War II. Osama bin Laden is not Adolph Hitler. The Ayatollahs of Iran are not the leaders of the Empire of Greater Imperial Japan. ¹

But I think that parallels can be drawn.

Then		Now
Pro-"Aryan" Germany allied with a very non-"Aryan" Japan		Pro-"Islam" Iran seems to be making arrangements with non-Islamic Russia
Germany systematically exterminated 'inferior' people - including Jews		"Death to the Jews! Death to the great Satan America!" has been popularized by Islamic enthusiasts in Iran and elsewhere.

One-to-one match? Certainly not. I think the parallels are worth considering, though. I also think it would be well to think about what is at stake, if Americans and others decide to wait and see what the likes of Al Qaeda and the Taliban do next. Or, hope that these dedicated terrorists will become good and tolerant neighbors.

• "Israel solemnizes for Holocaust Remembrance Day"
  Xinhua, China - China View (April 30, 2008)
• "Holocaust Remembrance Day / Olmert: The voices of Holocaust deniers are being heard"
  HAARET.com (May 1, 2008)
• "On Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli President Urges World to Control Iran"
  FoxNews (April 30, 2008)

(It's late in the day, April 30, 2008, as I'm writing this.)

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¹ Yes, I know. That's English. Sort of. As far as I can tell, that's Dai Nippon Teikoku, phonetically, in Romanji. Or, in English, Great Imperial Japan, or officially the Empire of Greater Japan or maybe Greater Japanese Empire. But, more people know the outfit as Imperial Japan or the Japanese Empire. I could post the name in too character systems used in Japan, but you might not have the right font to handle them.