The Jewish Solution

As I sat watching the second part of BBC programme, ‘Auschwitz remembered,’ on 28^th January 2020, when the 75^th year of the liberation of Jews from the concentration camp at Auschwitz by German troops at the end of World War II was being observed, I was moved to tears as some of the 200 odd survivors of Holocaust gave their testimonies at this ceremony at Auschwitz. They were old and frail, wearing a scarf of stripped design to remember the stripped pajamas they were made to wear in the concentration camp. Out of the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis during the World War II, 1.1 million perished at Auschwitz concentration camp. The books I had read about this gruesome pogrom and the movies like Schindler’s list I had watched, where some humane Germans help the condemned Jews to survive, came flooding to my mind. ‘Diary of a young girl,’ by Anne Frank, a Jewish girl in hiding with her family, who lost her life in the last few months and the Book Thief, The Pianist, were all powerful movies.

What remains in my mind uppermost are how the hair of the women gassed were gathered to be sent to industries in Germany to be converted into wigs and bones of these victims crushed and sent to fields in Germany to serve as manure; how they conducted experiments using these victims as guinea pigs to test how much heat or cold human body can tolerate, by immersing them in very hot and very cold freezing water alternatively. Young and old, babies and teenagers were all killed, murdered and buried in mass graves. What horror! What trauma they must have undergone! The survivors would have been seared for the rest of their lives.

How did this happen? How did the German people allow Hitler and his henchmen SS officers to carry on such heinous crimes? Did they not know? As one of the survivors recalled, Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. It was in the making. First Jews were segregated; not permitted even to sit on the same bench as others; sold bread only during the dusk after everybody else had had their fill; treated as separate and second class citizens; their properties confiscated and no one objected. German people watched with amusement and satisfaction, so also others in Europe. Then one fine morning they were hurdled in trains like cattle and taken to the concentration camps to be slaughtered like infected cattle. It was only after the war the horrors of these concentration camps and the torture and killings indulged by Hitler and his SS henchmen came to light. Nuremburg trials though highlighted these, really couldn’t do much as the dead have died. They cannot be brought back. Families broken were broken; they cannot be made whole. It is surprising that not one German was harmed or killed in the post war world by the afflicted Jews. May be we can say, they had taken it in their stride.

 

Again and again the plea of the survivors at this function was ‘let it not happen again,’ not just in Europe, but anywhere in the world and not just to Jews but to anyone else. Someone had invented a Eleventh Commandment in this respect. “Thou shall not be indifferent!” When good people keep quiet in the face of wrongful happenings it is then that evil flourishes. Germans watched and kept quiet allowing such discriminatory policies of the ruling elite to go without impunity. No one objected, not even the church, excepting a theologian of repute, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted Nazism, was arrested in 1943 and hanged as a traitor, just 21 days before Hitler himself took his life. May be the fear of the ruling regime was a factor in people keeping quiet!

Did these six million people lose their lives for nothing? Was it just a fodder to the power hungry and xenophobic rulers of that time? Or was something else at stake? May be out of all these sacrifices and mayhem emerged Israel as a country, a nation for the Jews! Was it a price paid for the establishment of the nation of Israel? I don’t know! May be!

I am troubled when I recall things that are happening today in India. Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) being pushed through by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Home Minister Amit Shah who are spearheading these to eliminate those who are not able to prove that they are citizens of India, cast a long shadow of doubt. In Assam, the one State where this exercise has been done, 19 lakh people have been categorized as foreigners, not citizens of India. Detention centres have been built to accommodate these people till their fate is decided. Some are already in detention in the regular prisons along with criminals and murderers. Among these people, Hindus will be accommodated and made Indian citizens to set right the so called historical injustices. But Muslim refugees will be separated and dealt with separately, perhaps similar to the harsh treatment meted out to the Hindus in Islamic countries like Pakistan. This CAA and NTC are to be brought to cover the whole of India.

Does the story remind you of similar pogram some 75 years back let loose by Hitler and co in Europe, the scars of which are yet to heal? Is this another pogram to separate the Muslims and exterminate them in the detention centres? Once the Muslims are dealt with, won’t they train their guns at the other minority, Christians? Should we let these horrible things to be repeated in India, the land of accommodation and tolerance, which our forefathers carved as a secular, democratic, Republic? Should we allow the heritage of age old India to be spoiled and ruined by the BJP (Bharatya Janata Party), and it's the political arm the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh)?

Fortunately, in India the youth are up against arms in this respect continually carrying out agitations and protest marches in the face of police atrocities and thousand lies of repeated assurances from the ruling elite. Even women have come out of their homes to protest. Yes, Union government can bulldoze and try to implement these laws, but they cannot do it against the will of the public. Regional and opposition parties in nine States namely Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Andra Pradesh have declared that they will not implement these draconian laws.

Let us hope and pray that the time tested secular spirit of India will triumph against such divisive forces and its people can live in peace proudly as Indians.

God bless India!