Whitewashed Tombs: The Holocaust Does Not Belong to the Government

I’m just sick and tired of it all.

Every year, the same old, pretentious hypocritical charade.

As a non-Jew who nevertheless belongs to a certain medical demographic that the Nazis would have characterized as that of a ‘dysgenic’ and of an ‘Untermensch,’ I can’t bear it any more.

The utter self-serving, sentimental virtue-signalling of ‘State Commemorativism’ is nothing less than an abomination.

It is well enough known that an abomination is ‘that which sits in the seat where he ought not.’

Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the temple of memory, of heritage, of beauth and of justice, by setting up images of devils and of cannibalistic spirits.

So also do Westminster’s polishers of whitewashed tombs.

Like so many other things, the memory of the Holocaust is too precious to be timidly consigned into the cruel talons of its self-appointed guardians.

Who is Tony Blair, or David Cameron, that they should sanctimoniously moralize about the Holocaust?

Who is Mitterand, or Sarkozy, that they should idly intellectualize the gas chambers?

What communion hath Bush, or Obama, or Trump, with Auschwitz or Treblinka?

It is impossible to gather figs from thistles.

My hearts desire is that every year, everyone, individually, in their own way, should pause for grief and meditation.

But not this very same man who slew Jeremiah and Zechariah and all the prophets between the threshold of the temple, and the mercy seat; and who sawed in half the righteous one, who had done him no harm.

How have our goverments in Europe and the rest of the self-appointed ‘Free World’ shown penitence and performed atonement for the sins of their spiritual godfathers in Germany and many other nations of collaboration and sinister confederacy?

They have turned a blind eye to antisemitism among their own ranks.

They have downplayed the importance of objective, dispassionate, principled ‘honest brokers’ on the Israel/Palestine issue.

They have dishonestly characterized antisemitism as a ‘far-right issue.’

They have defended the moral validity of eugenical choice in many forms.

They have fuelled the flames of hate and bigotry and violence by introducing laws on hate speech and historical negationism, instead of encouraging people of good faith to win the argument, when all the truth and evidence is already on our side.

They have rained down hellfire and brimstone upon innocent civilians from many nations; turning cradles into ashes, suckling mothers into dust.

And when all is finally said and done and signaled out, they have wiped their mouths, and said:

‘I am not guilty.’

Truly, a wicked and adulterous generation are seeking after a virtue-signal.

But the only sign for them shall be the sign of the prophet Jonah.

Jonah had to pass through fire and water to truly make this penitence his.

And those of us who attend commemoration at the synagogue, or at the church, or at the chaplaincy, or in the house of our friends (whose wounds we also bear, as ours indeed are lovingly borne, and borne with)…

We, at least, have some hope of attaining unto true penitence.

But cheap commemoration, by contrast, is the very epitome of political cheap grace.

Grace that costs nothing is worth nothing.

Atonement that aches nothing means nothing.

And penitents that repent nothing are blessed with nothing.

The feminist Naomi Wolf once wrote a beautiful essay about how, despite her own advocacy of abortion availability, she found much talk of abortion dehumanizing.

She said there were degrees of responsibility, and not all abortions were equal.

She finally finished her poignant essay by dreaming that one day, after the fury and rage had died down a little, people would be able to attend a little vigil and finally, finally do what they could not do before…

To mourn the precious, tender little lives lost through all the horror and fear and terror of the past.

I wonder if my Holocaust commemoration, and yours, can be like this too.

When will the Holocaust be a tribute to the neighbour, to the concrete, really, actually-existing human individual?

To the hombre de carne y hueso?

The man, the person, of flesh and bone?

I do not want the government to sanctimoniously and hypocritically moralize about the Holocaust.

I want the people who really matter to remember the people who really matter.

The Holocaust has nothing to do with The Good of Humanity, the National Interest, or any other meaningless, sentimental, rhetorical, redundant idiocy.

There is nothing worse in the whole of human history, than a Crime Against the Individual.

For that is truly, indeed, the Supreme Crimes of Crimes, and none other.

I want nothing to do with the government’s politically expedient hand-wringing and crocodile tears.

If you can give me nothing else, have the decency to give me your silence.

Silence may not golden. But I would rather have a few dried herbs, among those I love, than ten thousand fatted calves where there is only hypocrisy, dishonesty, and cynical, sanctimonious brutality.