Auschwitz Liberation & True Freedom

Today we commemorate the Liberation of Auschwitz. 75 years since the physical end of the horror story that was Auschwitz. 75 years since my grandmother marched to nowhere, to anywhere, in the Death March.

It is a strange word here – “liberation”. It feels incongruous to me. It means “to set someone free from oppression or imprisonment”. It comes from the word “liberty”, which means “freedom from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s life, behaviour, or political views”. It means freedom.

I remember my grandmother, a Rubin, waking up screaming from nightmares of the horror, her whole life. I remember my grandfather, a Wiesel, unable to speak of Auschwitz at all, it eventually consuming him and his soul. I remember my mother growing up with it ingrained in her palpably, vividly. I know that epigenetically it lives in our cells, our bones, as the children and grandchildren of the survivors, as I have experienced it.

We are free.

When we say #NeverAgain, we mean it with every cell and gene in our bodies. We mean it with our souls. We feel the consequences of mob-hatred in our bones, our antennas finely tuned. We know it.

We commemorate the Liberation of Auschwitz at a time when those claiming to support justice and freedom for all the world’s oppressed, inadvertently and bizarrely blame Jews for any and all oppression.

We are free, even though this is what our neighbours preach:

Boy taught in school: “Fight the Jews, kill them, and defeat them”. Courtesy of Palwatch.org

We are free, even though certain leaders of the first world happily visit these neighbours, who literally preach exactly what Nazis preached about Jews.

We are free, even though far too many of our own nation pander to the threat that is the mutating mob-hatred mentality of the political left, by supporting it. It did not work for the Kapo, and it will not work for our own anti-Zionists.

True liberty and freedom will come from within, not from without – not from the media, laws, politicians, writers.

True freedom will come when the good people stand up with no more fear and no more pandering. When good people stand up courageously, bad people have a harder time spreading their agenda. When the good people stand up and clearly state, “When you attack my nation and family, you attack me”, automatically the strength of character and esteem to defend oneself, and defend and what is right, will rise.

We will continue to heal, and we will never forget.