Ricardo Angoso
The Holocaust, as the end of a long path incubated for almost centuries, had an explanation; It was not the irrational resource of a society driven mad by Nazism and driven by collective madness with genocidal passions, but rather it was the result of a long process latent and nourished by hatred towards those who were different, the exhibition of an intolerant and brutal primary nationalism. and a primitive and basic anti-Semitism. These conceptions, which drank from the most ancient European traditions, were rooted in the dominant religion - Christianity -, the dogmas established over a long period in search of a national identity that would contribute to the strengthening of the new nations in the making and a certain feeling of inferiority to those who are different, to explain it in a simple way. These ideas, as the main nutrients, were manipulated and used by Nazism to achieve political success in a society like Germany, defeated and sunk after the defeat in the first world war and then devastated by an economic crisis that shook the democratic system. , incapable of giving logical responses to a society dejected and fed up with so much calamity. Nazism provided the Germans with easy and simplistic answers, seasoned with a good dose of manipulation and conspiracy theories of the worst kind.
The pejorative conception of the Jew permeated German society and ended up bearing its sinister fruits, such as the Holocaust. The non-accidental disappearance of six million Jews in Europe has a lot to do with the history of Germany, as historian Daniel Goldhagen relates: "I take as a starting point the most obvious: the Holocaust arose from Germany and, therefore, was mainly a German phenomenon. This is a historical fact. There is no doubt that an explanation of the Holocaust must consider it as a development of German history. However, although the Holocaust emerges from German history, it must be recognized that it is not the inevitable development of that history. If Hitler and the Nazis had not come to power, the Holocaust would not have occurred.”
Then the very fact of the Holocaust makes us face a new dimension of tragedy to which we were not “used to,” to put it in a euphemistic way, because, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt reminded us, “we have nothing on which to base ourselves to understand.” a phenomenon that, however, confronts us with its overwhelming reality and destroys all the norms we know.”
The Holocaust occurred because it responded to preconceived plans by Hitler prior to the rise to power of the National Socialists. Hitler had assured that, during the First World War, the Jews should have been gassed for having been responsible for the so-called “stabbing in the back.” However, there is a direct casual link between what Hitler states in Mein Kampf about the Jews and subsequent events. This is because, as he was convinced that the Jews had sabotaged, from their rearguard position, the possibility of Germany winning the war, he was also determined to prevent them from ever having the opportunity to do the same. "That race of criminals has on their conscience the two million dead of the First World War," Hitler stated privately on October 25, 1941, when the Second World War had already begun two years ago, "and now they have to several hundred thousand more.” We will find the idea that we had to “learn” from the First World War and that the lesson learned legitimized the Holocaust later,” subject expert Laurence Rees would write in this regard.
EDUCATE ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST SO THAT THE ERRORS OF THE PAST ARE REPEATED
Starting from Primo Levi's undisputable premise that “if the world became convinced that Auschwitz never existed, it would be much easier to build a second Auschwitz. And there are no guarantees that this time it only devoured the Jews", Enrique Moradiellos establishes that "this mere and simple reason would serve to justify the need to know what the Holocaust was as the summit of human barbarism and to guard against the theoretical and doctrinal doctrines that encouraged it in the form of anti-Semitism and Judeophobia.” Education about the Holocaust, therefore, becomes a basic element to understand the history of Europe.
Historian Francois Furet also points in the same direction: "The crimes of Nazism were so great and, at the end of the war, so universally visible that the pedagogical maintenance of their memory plays an indisputably useful, and even necessary, role long afterward." that the generations that committed them have disappeared. Because opinion was, more or less concretely, aware that there was something specifically modern in these crimes, that they were not unrelated to certain features of our societies, and that it was necessary to carefully guard to prevent their return (...) The ways of remembering that it adopts (the memory of the Holocaust), the type of pedagogy it inspires, are not always very profound, and can be used for political purposes. But what this misfortune expresses must be taken with an essential political sentiment in the citizens of democratic countries at the end of the century - this text was written at the end of the 20th century. It is up to the historian, and the intellectual more generally, to convert it into a more informed and less partisan teaching. He confesses that it is not easy, but it is necessary.”
Then, in this whole issue of the Holocaust, there is a responsibility of the European countries from which we cannot escape, as the historian Saul Friedländer rightly pointed out: «In effect, the tacit complicity of the West in the face of the persecution of the Jews and then the almost absolute silence in the face of their extermination strengthened Adolf Hitler in his conviction to act for the good of all humanity. The endemic anti-Semitism of the European peoples was not the direct cause of the final solution, but it facilitated its execution.
Nor after the Holocaust, once the great massacre had been consummated, was there a true collective catharsis on the European continent about the true magnitude of what had happened, but rather, as Professor María Sierra points out, "European societies did not face the "In the immediate post-war period, they did not accept the phenomenon of the Holocaust nor did they assume the deep cultural and moral crisis that it represented." Reflection, then, about the Holocaust, its consequences and its meaning, not only in the history of Europe, but of humanity, continues to be an absolutely inexcusable and irreplaceable duty in our society. Educating about what the Holocaust meant is essential to be able to ward off the threats of the present and also to avoid falling into the mistakes of the past.