Hatred

This Tuesday, January 27th, was the official Holocaust Memorial Day. 44 years on, the world is still traumatised and horrified by the atrocities that Hitler's evil regime brought. And rightly so.

The sad thing is, that the Holocaust lives on, in more ways than one. It may not be in the form of a short hypocritical fascist with no awareness of conscience, but in the face of many others...in the form of genocide.

But, moreover, it lives on in another very prevalent way. And it is no longer in Adolf Hitler or his counterparts, but in Joe Bloggs, and in John Smith, and in yourself, and in myself.

It lives on every time, decades after the eras of apartheid and of Martin Luther King, a soul utters a scathing or derogatory remark against a person of another race.

And it lives on every time you or I complain about immigrants "taking over our jobs and houses" (when unemployment and homelessness are worst among immigrants...)

And it breathes on every time that one accuses homosexuals of bringing down society, being unnatural, and "not right".

And its heart beats every time a young person is assumed to be a violent, immoral, inconsiderate thug.

And it goes on, still, with every dismissive remark about people who are overweight, and every assumption that they must all be over-eating, lazy pigs.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people can be reminded of the atrocities of the Holocaust, and feel trauma, horror and deep sorrow, even shed a tear or two, and yet still completely miss the point. The point being that the reason the Holocaust happened was ultimately the deep-rooted unjustifiable twisted prejudices of one man.

I hope and pray that we as a society can wake up and finally appreciate the deadly consequences of true prejudice.