I've been so annoyed over the debate around if Anne Frank had white privledge. It doesn't feel like the right question to ask.
However, I do think there is something important to take from the holocaust that can be applied modern day hate, and that's not saying it's the same thing, or even comparable, but to me it's an awareness.
As a 7th grade I remember first learning about the atrocities of the holocaust, and our teacher leading a discussion about why on earth such a horrible thing happened. As we all were appalled at horrific murders, we all felt clueless as of how everyday people could sit by and even participate in genocide.
We then as a class learned about the different brain washing techniques used to dehumanize jewish people. We say the chartichures, the comics the stories, cultural references. We learned about how ingrained in European history and culture hatred toward jewish people were, and the methods used to do that. We learned that before the holocaust there programs and acts of terrorism at jewish communities for milleliumn. We learned about scapegoats, fearing someone different, and religious discrimination. We learned about defining people as others and how that flips one's mentality and makes a person capable of evil.
Then the teacher turned it a different direction, and asked if we ever saw the same methods used to today against other groups of people. No, we don't see groves of people taken off to gas chambers, but we did see cartoons making fun of black people, hispanic people and native Americans, and connected that as a method of spreading ignorance and hate.
I remember our teacher pointing how often people in Europe were suspicious of Jewish communities because they spoke an additional languages such as Hebrew and Yiddish, and then pointed out how a group of recent immigrants at school was being targeted for bullying because other's didn't speak their language and wondered if they were being gossiped against.
I remember thinking that if I'm not aware of these methods of dehumanization, I am at risk of going along or even preptuatling hate and atrocities just as everyday Germans were when they turned in their jewish neighbors and friends. I started asking myself when was I going along with hate because it was the status quo, and wondering when I should stick up for those with less privledge even if it went against what was socially acceptable.
Case in point, we learned about World War II, and the Holocaust, and learned it as it's own major even and trauma. Then, we transitioned to learning about hate, which is it's own lesson. The holocaust, among other things, is an example of what hate can lead to. What hate looks like, how it grows, and in the case of the holocaust, some of the things it leads to if we don't stamp it out. Then I started reflecting on how I could identify and stop hate in the world around me. There are many types of hate, and they often involve muder in other forms. I recall learning that more native Americans died in the colonization of my country than people in the holocaust, though it was by germ warfare rather than gas chambers, but that doesn't make what happened in WW2 okay. Other people in the world experience hate, this is true. The holocaust happened to Jewish people, as well as homosexuals, Romoni, dialed people, mentally ill people, and others, and that should not ignored or compared. However, hate is everywhere, and many different groups experience awful manifestations of it, and when standing up against it as I see it, to me is the best thing I can do.
Victims of hate should not be competing for who had/has it worse, rather respecting each other's journeys and coming together to fight hate. Many people are victims of hate, and each has their own story, it's not the right question to compare.
To me, the best thing I can do to honor the memory of those who died in the holocaust, is to do my best to prevent another one. Of course to stand up to ant-semitism, but also any hatred of any group. I don't think Jewish people want any other group to go through what they did. That doesn't mean forget or trivlizie what happened to them in the holocaust, but to not perpetuate a new one with another group.
