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The Holocaust: We Must Not Forget
Fifty years ago last August, the Japanese surrendered and World War II ended. Four months earlier, amid the celebration of Germany's defeat, the world was stunned by the unprecedented horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. But the world blinked, and in the years following World War II, people turned their eyes from the horrors of the death camps and their survivors in order to rebuild their own lives. As Maria Rosenbloom, a Holocaust survivor and the author of "Implications of the Holocaust for Social Work" (Social Casework, April 1983), states, "A conspiracy of silence set in and continued for decades."
The world has changed dramatically over the past five decades. The Iron Curtain grew old and tattered, its steely threads rusting and eventually disintegrating under their own oppressive weight. The information age has shrunk the world into an intricate web accessible by the click of a key. Yet, despite these causes for celebration and hope, we are still confronted with a world that responds to political and cultural chaos by designating scapegoats to blame for its ills. The disturbing rise of neo-Nazism and the horrors of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia teach us that the degenerative spirit of the Holocaust remains alive and well in the world today.
In this year of remembrance of the end of the worst war in the history of the world, it is fitting that we temper our celebration by acknowledging the pain, courage, and suffering of the most tragic victims of the war. And in remembering the suffering of the Jews 50 years ago, we must remind ourselves that though World War II is now a page in our history books, the bigotry, hatred, and fear that drives such cruelty is evident in the newsprint we read daily. As social workers, we must assist Holocaust and other survivors to bear witness to their suffering so that the public never forgets that the possibility of human cruelty is with us always.
THE AIMS OF THIS ARTICLE are to stimulate engagement with the moral and universal issue of the Holocaust; to enhance sensitivity and knowledge about Holocaust survivors and their children; and to highlight aspects of knowledge related to the Holocaust which...