By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Our society seems to have a short-term memory whenever it comes to the hatred of the Jewish people. Before the current Israeli-Gazan War, the frequent misuse of the term “Nazi,” has been bandied about as though it can refer to anyone opposing the belief in “climate change,” misinformation, anyone who is considered, “a threat to our democracy.”
Such banal uses of “Nazi,” has become a mere label for discrediting those who disagree with leftist views.
My father, Leo Israel Samuel, endured the harrowing experiences of being interned in several concentration camps, including the Kraków-Płaszów camp in Płaszów, which was under German occupation in Poland. Remarkably, his expertise as a tailor played a pivotal role in his survival, allowing him to navigate through unimaginably difficult circumstances. His encounters included interactions with Amon Göth, which were certainly significant in his wartime experiences. Göth told him the world will forget about how the Nazis killed six million Jews.
Unfortunately, he was right.
Remarkably, today’s young people know little or nothing about the Holocaust.
A recent NBC nationwide survey reveals a concerning lack of Holocaust awareness among U.S. adults under 40.
· The survey, the first of its kind to span all 50 states and focus on millennials and Generation Z, found that over 10 percent had never heard the term “Holocaust” before.
· Key facts about the genocide were unknown to many: 63 percent were unaware that 6 million Jews were killed, with over half estimating the death toll under 2 million.
· Additionally, nearly half of the respondents could not name any of the over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos established during World War II.
Today’s students and their teachers have become embarrassingly ignorant of the world’s oldest hatred—the hatred of the Jew. Look how quickly the world has forgotten about the Nazi’s systematic, industrial-scale efforts to exterminate every Jewish person—encompassing infants, women, the elderly, and adult men. This was a unique historical horror. In just four years, the Nazis exterminated two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.
Then on October 7th, the world discovered that the spirit of Nazism is alive and well in parts of the Muslim world, which share the Nazis’ genocidal goal: the annihilation of Israel’s seven million Jews and the eradication of the sole Jewish state. This parallel positions this ideology as a modern ideological successor to Nazism.
· The Israeli peace activists slaughtered by Hamas came to a grim realization before they were killed, ‘All they want to do is murder Jews’:
The Israeli army in Gaza produced Arabic translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
· As Jewish teenage girls were being raped to death, the bodies of pregnant Israeli women were being cut open, and throwing Jewish unborn infants into ovens, professors of American campuses were cheering and experiencing ecstasy.
If you ever wondered: How could the Holocaust have occurred in a highly educated like Germany, a country that was the leader in science, art, philosophy, theology, and music? Look no further.
Civilization cannot be measured by the intellectual breadth of a country’s leading thinkers. This is a lesson students of the Holocaust know all too well. Did you know that more than half of the officials at the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which orchestrated the Final Solution, held doctoral degrees?
Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi replied in a famous and perhaps apocryphal way: “I think that would be a very good idea.”
As disgusting as I find the new Islamo-Nazis of Gaza, I think that in some ways, the anti-Semitism conveyed by today’s elite professors, local superintendents, and principals is incomparably worse.
You might expect American college students to empathize with Israelis in this crisis, regardless of their views on Israeli policies. The principle of human dignity transcends religion, nationality, or historical context.
But think again:
· At Yale Law School, student groups celebrated the attacks and “Palestinian resistance.” Yale professor Zareena Grewal, smiled and said, “Israelis aren’t civilians.”
· Columbia professor Joseph Massad, described the Hamas attack as “astonishing,” “astounding,” “awesome” and “incredible.”
· Harvard Jews for Liberation and the 30 other Harvard student groups issued a statement saying they hold Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ attack.
The Holocaust survivor and writer Chaim Ginnot said it best in a memo he wrote for his teachers decades ago:
Dear Teacher:
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers,
children poisoned by educated physicians,
infants killed by trained nurses.
Women and babies shot and buried by high school and college graduates
So, I am suspicious of education.
My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, and educated Eichmans.
Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more humane.”
Unfortunately, today’s elite professors and their college administrators can take perverse pride in knowing they have created the Frankenstein monsters of tomorrow.
They have produced students who have no human empathy or moral compass. “Western Civilization” as we know it today, may well be the ultimate endangered species.
Student groups at Columbia University called the massacre a justified “counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor.” Reacting to similar sentiments at the University of Pennsylvania, disgusted alumni have stopped supporting it. One large donor called his alma mater an “antisemitic cesspool.”
You get the picture. Elite colleges are producing students with no empathy, no analytic skills, and a moral compass that is stuck pointing toward a savage terrorist group.
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Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com