Hello again everyone. Greetings to you from chilly November southwestern Indiana. Hope you guys are well. The topic of my blog today is actually inspired by a friend of mine's twitter conversation with another about people who claim the Holocaust didn't really happen and how that "opinion" is shared openly in college classrooms in a discussion about religion. My dear friend is Jewish and so of course naturally this guy assumed that her whole beef with him was simply because she's Jewish, and for no other reason. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not just Jewish people who are highly offended and completely appalled by this "opinion". As you've noticed by now I put opinion in quotes because to me this is not a valid opinion. I do my best to be as open minded and non judgmental as I can and understand that we all have our own viewpoints in life and it's many issues. But see, there are some things I just don't find to be relevant, valid viewpoints. And chief among these is willful ignorance, which is what you have to have if you believe that the Holocaust never happened and it was some big elaborate hoax perpetrated by Jews to get sympathy or whatever your particular crazy illogical nonsense belief is. See, you are denying an absolute historical fact. It's a fact. To try and make it anything else is beyond ridiculous and every time you spew that nonsense out of your mouth you slap the faces of every single Jew who had to endure the agony and the suffrage of those atrocious years. Every single time you deny this despicable event occurred you are mocking the families of those survivors of this event who have listened to their loved ones account the horrid details and who have had to comfort them while they relive those disgusting memories over and over again. I remember being so naïve to the fact that holocaust deniers existed. I truly never imagined that anyone could deny something like that. To me, denying the holocaust is akin to denying history. So imagine my complete and utter shock when I too was sitting in my college ethics class and we got on the subject of climate change and people who denied it's existence and impact on the earth when suddenly this one guy started talking about how there are many great hoaxes out there designed to manipulate the masses, chief among them the landing on the moon and the holocaust. Now, he had me with the landing on the moon being a hoax because I thought that was pretty ridiculous but when he had the audacity to say out loud that the holocaust was a hoax, I couldn't even form any words for a minute. When I finally did speak, I just said how offensive it was to claim that was a hoax and how could he think something so repulsive? He was smug himself and asked me if I was Jewish to which I responded that I am a Christian but my religious views have no bearing on your ignorance. That was all I said. It was all I could say to keep from getting into a fight with him cause I think I would have. As I walked back to my car and drove home, I just remember feeling so angry and so offended at the blatant disrespect and the extreme ignorance of this man. Then I realized something even more disturbing: he wasn't the only one who felt this way. He got this idea from somewhere else through some other person. That's when I realized just how bad this was. That people actually believe this and speak it out loud and get others to follow their teachings, to hell with what history proves otherwise, boggled my mind. I mean, do they really believe that over six million people weren't just exterminated by order of Hitler? They think the survivors who lived in concentration camps are just making it up? They were really on vacation somewhere? I just can't understand that kind of ignorance and I don't want to either. I never want to understand the way that kind of warped thinking works. The biggest issue for me is that these people think it's only Jewish people who could ever possibly be offended by or disgusted by their words and their beliefs. Do they honestly not comprehend that there are people out there like me who are not Jewish who just are utterly offended by their ignorance and their disrespect? It's similar to those people who think the only people offended by the use of the six letter racial epithet starting with the letter n are black people. I'm deeply offended by that term as well. And not that this is on the same level at all, but the ignorance shown when guys automatically think a woman is upset with them because its their time of the month is a smaller example of what I'm talking about. I don't know in that case if anyone besides me is offended by that ignorance but my point is that I am offended by ignorance, but actually I am offended by willful ignorance. We are all ignorant on things until we are educated but once we gather the facts and are educated and then we still refuse to accept those facts and form another "opinion" we are willfully ignorant. There is an anonymous quote that sums this all up quite eloquently, "we are all entitled to our own opinion but not to our own facts." The fact is the Holocaust, a systematic extermination of one group of people, happened. It's a documented historical fact. To form any other opinion or form any other conclusion is being willfully woefully ignorant and I cannot respect that opinion at all. I sincerely hope that anyone out there who is being willfully ignorant will at some point see the light and understand the error in their way of thinking.
Until next time,
Mel
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