By Deborah Hart in the Otago Daily Times…
“Hate is easy, love requires effort.”
Today as we remember the sixmillion Jews that were murdered by the Nazis during World War 2, these words feel more pertinent than ever. They are the words of Marek Edelman, a Jewish youth leader who survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
For the first time, an event to recognise United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day is being held in Dunedin. This year’s marks 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It may have occurred generations ago on the other side of the world, but there is still much we can learn from it today.
When the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto to deport the remaining 50,000 Jews to the Treblinka and Majdanek death camps, they expected to find cowering, defeated and weakened people. They were all that were left of the 400,000 Jewish people forced to live in the walled-in ghetto. The rest had died of disease or starvation, or had already been sent to death camps.
Instead the Nazis were met with some of the fiercest resistance during the entirety of World War 2 and the Holocaust. For nearly a month, fewer than 2000 Jewish teenagers and young adults fought the Nazis street by street, with few weapons. They knew they were facing certain death. They had nothing to lose…
Read the full article on the Otago Daily Times website here.
