review
“Every day memorial” is a chronicle of Jewish suffering. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has listed for each day of the year several horrific events experienced by Jews throughout history. The emphasis is on the Holocaust. But earlier anti-Semitic incidents that have taken place are also discussed. It is a document that must demonstrate what people are capable of towards their fellow man.
data
- Anniversary every day ?? Chronicle of Jewish Suffering
- author: Simon Wiesenthal
- year: 1987
- publisher: Elsevier
- ISBN: 90-10-05852-2
Contents of the book ‘Every day memorial day’
Jewish history begins with Abraham. The Jews are shepherds who wander around and are guided by God. At some point the Jews end up in Egypt. At first they are treated well, but it is not long before Jews become slaves. Moses finally manages to free the Jews from slavery. No grave is known of Moses. Neither are the graves of Jews who died during the Holocaust known. They are buried deep in Jewish memory.
The Torah is given to man to live a humane life. This is followed by the period of the Judges fighting against neighboring nations. God rules the people. Later kings will come, including King David. The Star of David that persecutors of the Jews later chose for their victims is today the symbol on the flag of the Jewish state of Israel. Under the guidance of King Solomon, the Jews learn self-criticism and self-examination. After his death the empire disintegrated into Israel and Judah. Tribes of Israel end up in Mesopotamia. Judah (20%) is later deported to Babylon. Here Jews long back to Israel ?? Psalm 137: 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, my right hand forgets itself. Jews return but live under Persian rule. Later the Greeks are the boss in Israel followed by the Romans. In the year 73 of the common era, the castle of Masada is conquered by the Romans. The Jews commit suicide. An act that would later set an example for the collective suicides during the Crusades and later the German cities. Jews never forget this. No greater sin than forgetting.
Meanwhile, a new religion has emerged: Christianity. Jews would later be persecuted by the Church. Christians came to believe in witches and wizards in the Middle Ages. Monks write about it. It leads to major massacres, especially among Jews. Jews are also forced into Christianity. Those who refuse are killed. Over time, records indicate that 341,021 people were burned at the stake of the Inquisition. Popes forbid Christians to associate with Jews, although they often have Jews themselves as personal physicians. Over the centuries, the Inquisition took on a life of its own, separate from kings and Popes. We see the same when Himmler orders the gassing to be stopped in order to negotiate with the Allies, while the subordinates continue as usual.
Anti-Jewish teaching holds that Jews have “impure blood” which is the root cause of all evil. Nothing can change that. When a Christian hates someone, all he has to do is find out if that person is Jewish. If so, further proof of guilt is superfluous. There is a kind of ‘Aryan statement’ (limpieza de sangre) that must be used to demonstrate whether you have ‘pure blood’. Christians also invent the ‘Aryan Christ’, the non-Jewish Christ. This is the forerunner of the ‘German Christ’, the ideal image of the Deutsch Christen, a particular movement within the Evangelische Kirche in the Nazi era.
In 1547 the Archbishop of Toledo writes about the purity of the Spanish blood. Many Spanish clergy and aristocrats are thought to be of Jewish descent. The obsession with the blood creates an underground civil war. Race discrimination is enacted in Spain. Even converted Jews and Muslims are not complete Christians. The Spanish blood laws later served as a model for the Aryan declaration under the Nazis. Despite Christians believing that all humanity has a common ancestry, Spaniards and Germans are concerned with pure blood.
The term was introduced in 1879 anti-Semitism fashionable. This is rampant evil in societies both on the right and on the left. Jews suffered under Hitler (right) and Stalin (left). Both the Catholic and Protestant churches played a role in the persecution of the Jews. The Catholic Church sees itself as the ‘true Israel’. Also within Protestan churches there are still communities that consider themselves chosen, giving the wrong meaning to the word chosen, namely superior to others.
The Holocaust shows that some of the murderers had a Christian upbringing and that the Nazis are using propaganda reproaches that the Church has used against the Jews. Despite this, thousands of Catholic priests also ended up in camps and died there. Auschwitz marks the beginning of reconciliation between Catholics and Jews.
Vision of Etsel
Each day of remembrance is a chronicle of Jewish suffering. It shows what happened on every day of the year in terms of Jewish suffering for 20 centuries. The emphasis is on the Holocaust, but also the period before it is discussed. Not all suffering has been mapped. That is impossible in one book. But this is so much that you become very quiet when reading it. How did all this happen so recently? Often thousands of people gassed in 1 day! When someone is murdered by senseless violence, the whole of the Netherlands is already shocked and we complain about insecurity. Not long ago, such murders took place on a much larger scale and the world watched in silence. Even the Allies did not bomb trains, railways, or gas chambers to stop the destruction of Jews.
Recently (early 2011) I have been using the contents of this book to reflect on the news overview of Israel every day about the Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. They have never been allowed to experience the state of Israel. Had that state been there then, the Holocaust would not have happened. Incidentally, hatred for Jews has certainly not diminished after the Holocaust and after the establishment of the state of Israel. Israel has become the Jew of the world. Many enemies fight against the Jewish state. The army is active every day to prevent attacks. Were Israel not to defend itself, millions of Jews would be killed again. And the question is whether many people would be sad about that. Many opponents are already shouting that Israel is far too strong and that this is so sad for the poorly armed Palestinians. Many don’t want Israel to defend itself at all. They prefer to see powerless Jews as they were used to for 2000 years. Israel must never and will never forget the Holocaust. Never again should such a disaster take place. That is why it is good to think about it every day, no matter how annoying that may be. In that regard, Simon Wiesenthal has written a very valuable book.