The world is at your fingertips

Once there was a world before the Holocaust, a place where families lived normal lives. Kids played outside and families had gatherings, they took family portraits and had weddings, they had businesses and homes.

Then came the propaganda, the intense hatred and racism, the speakers who didn’t deserve a platform, the evil that came a forced children into labor camps and slaughtering humans after making them dig their own graves.

It all began with racist propaganda and hatred, attacking businesses, mocking religious beliefs, and believing whatever they were told to believe by speakers who used their words to become leaders in a hate filled movement. The Nazi genocide and ethnic cleansing efforts did not begin as a specific plan to starve and gas Jews, others in concentration camps being starved and beaten while their babies were smashed into brick walls but rather evolved over time, beginning with systematic persecution aimed in part at encouraging Jewish emigration from Germany to other countries.

It grew from spontaneous murders to planned massacres of Jewish communities, to the establishment of an industrial apparatus for the efficient, wholesale slaughter of a people. The term Holocaust used systematic murder by Nazi Germany of approximately six million Jews and the destruction of their communities, representing one-third of world Jewry at the time. It began with propaganda, a crucial instrument to gain power and control thoughts for the implementation of Nazi policies much like social media influences people today based on the things they read and what people share.

National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism is the ideology and practices associated with the Nazi Party—officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Once upon a time, there was a world before the Holocaust, a world without open hatred and murder but propaganda took over and people became filled with hate whatever the cost and advancing a racist, anti-semitic agenda.

My friends, if you see racist or antisemitic posts on Facebook or any social media platform, a speaker at any event, a comment, a flyer, I BEG OF YOU to speak up. You have the power to stop hatred. Use your voice to know the difference between right and wrong. Social media can help make the world a better place or it can lead to the destruction of humanity. You have the power at your fingertips, stand up, speak up! You see things shared every day, you pay to go to events where some speakers are spreading messages of hatred around the world but make jokes to be seen as “entertainers,” you watch videos online, you’re in Facebook groups where comments are made, you see flyers, you have thousands of social media contacts- you have the power to stop hatred.

We are the world before the Holocaust all over again just open your eyes, lets never let it happen again. My family (and anyone who lost family in the Holocaust) didn’t suffer and die in the Holocaust for us to live and stay silent.  Our kids lives and futures depend on you. Speak up!