"Never Again” Must Mean Never again!

This image from the superb series, “Band of Brothers,” powerfully portrays the experiences of many allied soldiers, as they came across the Nazi concentration and “labour” camps and discovered, the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Upon their discovery General Dwight D (Ike) Eisenhower, then Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, is quoted as saying...

“Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Prophetic some might say however, regrettably, there is little hard evidence to support that he said those actual words… In a letter however, to his superior officer, General of the Army George C. Marshal, Eisenhower wrote the following,

“the most interesting—although horrible—sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter.

The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

Same idea, only perhaps, a little less “media friendly” in modern speak… although just as prophetic…It is thought that this may be the basis for the so called quote… Indeed Eisenhower may actually have sad something to that effect, while on the ground…

The Holocaust remains a unique and most terrible event in human history, where indeed, there are those today who choose to deny the Holocaust and its horrors putting it down to what Eisenhower called “propaganda”.

This denial represents a clear and present danger, not just to Jews, but to all mankind. It facilitates modern day genocide and untold cruelty, where events in Syria and North Korea, to name but two, show us that despots and dictators believe they can deny their acts of barbarity and practice them with virtual impunity. Holocaust denial also teaches us that mankind has learnt little, if anything from history.

On this eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, we should all take a look and remember that “never again” must mean never again!! Not just for Jews, but for all mankind.