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Paula R. Stern

Would it have changed the world….

Would it have changed the world…if someone had spoken out against Hitler and his plan? Before he’d started, as he was amassing his army of death, perhaps in the early months of the war? Perhaps later on, even – could words have stopped him?

Could we have stopped the Holocaust if some great leader, even a Jewish one, had stood before the League of Nations to demand that Hitler stop or be stopped? Someone to demand that Europe not stand quietly by as Jews were humiliated, isolated, beaten, starved and finally gassed to death in the millions? 

The road to the gas chambers was not paved in a matter of days but it was built on the indifference towards the ghettos, the riots and attacks.Could someone have stood up and said to Hitler – we will obliterate your country if you dare?

Had the US entered the war sooner and bombed the railroads to Auschwitz and other places as they were asked to do…how many lives could have been saved? How many individuals could have survived?

My mother-in-law and father-in-law survived but their parents died in 1944…so close to the end but not close enough. Could they have been saved if the world had cared more what was happening to Europe’s Jews? Is it at all possible that words alone could have stopped Adolf Hitler?

It certainly does seem impossible.

In a few hours, Binyamin Netanyahu will have the chance to do what no Jewish leader did in 1933…1935…1937.

The world will be listening. Could his words change what is to happen in the coming weeks, months, years?

It certainly does seem impossible. And yet, he has the burden of trying so that, should the military option against Iran become mandatory – the world will not wonder why.

Tonight may well be Bibi’s most important speech. He does not speak to Ahmadinejad, who will not listen. He does not speak to the Arab world. Tonight his words will be for history so that when this madman is stopped – and he will be – the world will not wonder why no one spoke up.

 

About the Author
Paula R. Stern is CEO of WritePoint Ltd., a leading technical writing company in Israel. Her personal blog, A Soldier's Mother, has been running for more than 5 years. She lives in Maale Adumim with her husband and children, a dog, too many birds, and a desire to write her thoughts and dream of a trip to Italy, Scotland, and beyond.