GUEST COLUMN: On Yom HaShoah, Hatred Is Not Isolated

I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of years fighting against huge numbers. In working on Holocaust education, I've tried as hard as I can to stay away from discussing "the six million." It's too large a number, I felt. It's too abstract, too staggering. No one can relate to it. It's better if we work on a much smaller scale, better to take it to the level of the individual. But as the year has progressed, I have learned that the small scale is just part of larger, more complex and frightening trends. At the beginning of the year, I posed a question to the Holocaust Education Committee. Why engage in Holocaust education? Though viscerally we know that we have to keep the memory alive, that we can "never forget," what is the real necessity for it? Is there a true purpose and justification for spending so much time and energy memorializing and constantly invoking this particularly unpleasant period in human history? Shouldn't we, instead, concentrate on the problems in today's society? And there are plenty of problems today. I recently received a bounced piece of e-mail. It seems there's this guy in Virginia who wants the Jews out of his America and off his Earth. They hold too much power, this man believes. The Jews, he claims, raise the prices of food items for all Americans with their "kosher tax." He'd be much happier if we all just disappeared. Don't worry, though, this is an isolated incident. One man out in the countryside poses no real threat. Last night I discovered the Stormfront White Nationalist Resource Page on the World Wide Web. Between a couple of articles on the need for a homogeneous, white America was a link to another page entitled, "Cyberhate." There, among other items of interest, were documents attempting to shoot holes in our basic assumptions about the Holocaust. It claimed that a world-wide conspiracy existed to create facts about World War II purely for the sake of winning sympathy for the Jews (forgive my Judeocentric examples. I don't have enough space to be all-inclusive). Of course, this is just a little publication out of the backwoods. Upon serious examination, its claims are hollow and transparent. One little magazine cannot threaten us. Sometimes, however, this hatred and intolerance -- thought to be so distant and isolated -- is closer than you think. There have been some interesting discussions on a campus e-mail forum lately. Apparently someone at this University wants to know why we Jews always have to "pull together against everyone else." He feels the Jewish/Zionist lobbies have far too much power in American politics. Yet another student says that if the Jews don't like the way things are done here in America, they should "go back where they came from." Does it matter, though? Individual opinions can be (and were) easily shouted down. Obscure instances of verbal bashing hardly make them dangerous. It's not a threat. So there I was at the Offspring concert. I don't think I was doing anything particularly provocative. That didn't stop eight skinheads from jumping me. That didn't give pause to any of the hundreds of people who moved back to give them more space in which to kick me and punch me. I can't think of anything I did or said to merit coming home that night with a bloody face, lacerated scalp, bruised body, shredded lip and the memory of being called a "goddamned insect." The fact that they felt I deserved it, though, gave me my individual understanding. I became one of those small, isolated incidents. So now I have a way to relate. After all, it's hard to feel detached from racial hatred and violence when it (quite literally) smacks you in the face. But what will you say when you look at today's news? One college kid got beaten up? Some crackpots are using electronic media to spout their insanity on a larger scale? A few people out there are inventing phony historical evidence to further their agenda? Big deal, you say -- small, insignificant incidents. You feel bad for the individuals who have been personally injured, but little more. Me? I must have run across a few freaks. No one with any sense would take these people seriously. We can't do anything about it anyway. This seems to be the prevailing attitude. Incidents of intolerance are small, isolated, meaningless, and there is nothing we can do. This Saturday night someone observed that I've been very sad lately. These aren't unique occurrences; these aren't wackos who will be ignored. The hatred situation in our "enlightened" society has clearly reached crisis proportions. That's why we have to think about history. That's why we need the huge numbers. A small-scale approach to these events doesn't help. No incident is isolated, no individual is innocent. There has to be something we can do. Fifty years ago, these "wackos" seized Europe and slaughtered 6,000,000 Jews on assembly lines. Look at that number carefully. I don't care how difficult it is to comprehend. You'd better learn to understand it. Putting it in an individual perspective only helps us feel an individual sympathy. Only when we look at the enormity of the actual numbers can we feel the terror of what a human civilization can become. I can relate to the individual. I became the individual. Now, let's do something about the totality.