Thread by @catmonkey22

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Why is it so important?

The World Values Survey reported that only 30% of Americans born after 1980 believe that it is absolutely essential to live in a Democracy.

That's less than 1/3!

I'll tell you how it relates. 1/

Survivors of the Holocaust are in their late 70's or older. As they dwindled, the horrors they were subjected to have been forgotten more by each successive generation.

Modern culture doesn't value the elderly the way it used to- the message of Holocaust survivors is dying. 2/

Jewish antisemitism is on the rise. Absurdly, Holocaust denialism is also on the rise. With every passing year, history focuses less and less on the importance of remembering the Holocaust as a preventative for any such atrocities to happen again.

For instance: 3/

By the end of WWII, American soldiers had seen plenty of Hell, but none prepared the unsuspecting troops for what they found when they entered
the Barvarian town of Dachau.

When it opened in 1933, Dachau was a concentration camp for political prisoners. 5/

People marked as enemies of the Nazis were shipped to places like Dachau where they were subjected to unimaginable terrors.

Here they lived under a "doctrine of dehumanization" they were beaten, tortured, starved, and executed at random. They were forced to do hard labor. 6/

They were subjected to medical experiments and torture, even being injected with chemicals and various deadly diseases.

The accounts of American soldiers are haunting.

They all mentioned the smell-- they likened it to a chemical plant or burning feathers. 7/

They found thousands of naked, rotting corpses, some in train cars, others stacked like cords of firewood.

The sight of the innocent people's emaciated, rotting corpses, robbed of all human dignity took its toll on the soldiers, many fell to their knees and sobbed. 8/

They were even more horror- stricken when they first saw the survivors of Dachau. They described the survivors as "walking skeletons."

Shell-shocked and unable to process the emotions spawned by the death and suffering all around them, the soldiers were sickened and angry. 9/

There was an unusual break with protocol, in a reaction of blind rage and disbelief at what he had seen Lt.William Walsh gave the command to open fire on the 50-100 German prisoners consisting of guards, medical staff and camp personnel of Dachau. Around 20 were killed.

10/

There aren't words heinous enough to describe the physical and mental torment suffered by victims of Nazis, nor the emotional trauma of seeing thousands of people murdered all around them, living amongst their decomposing remains, and in constant fear for their lives. 11/

War is always ugly. But the attempted genocide of the Jews and inhumane treatment of the Jewish people and others in the Nazi's crosshairs surpasses the ugliness of war and even the ruthlessness of vicious dictators and extends far beyond into an unfathomable evil. 12/

It is your duty and my duty to remember and tell the stories of the people just like you and I, who were ripped from their homes, beaten, tortured, starved, squeezed into barracks infested with lice and diseases like typhus, murdered in gas chambers or worked to death.
13/

Learn from the past, or we are doomed to repeat it.

It started out with intolerance, hateful words and skillfully targeted propaganda-- positive messages sprinkled with language to slowly demonize Jews effectively making Germans indifferent to the fates of Jewish people. 14/

If it sounds familiar, that's because it is happening all over the world today. It is not limited to Jews.

Propaganda that divides any set group from "others" is growing.

We can stop it. Democracy is in peril. Visit the past, or it will become our future. /end

#WeRemember