Auschwitz museum: Important to remember Holocaust 'did not start from gas chambers'

Authored by thehill.com and submitted by DoremusJessup

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland issued a statement on Monday amid an ongoing debate between U.S. lawmakers over whether the Holocaust offers lessons for contemporary events such as those at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“When we look at Auschwitz we see the end of the process,” the museum said in a tweet on Monday afternoon.

“It's important to remember that the Holocaust actually did not start from gas chambers,” the museum continued. “This hatred gradually developed from words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence.”

When we look at Auschwitz we see the end of the process. It's important to remember that the Holocaust actually did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed from words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanisation & escalating violence. — Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 26, 2018

The tweet came hours Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamPence, Kushner huddle with Senate GOP on criminal justice reform GM layoffs show Congress played Americans with corporate tax cut Auschwitz museum: Important to remember Holocaust 'did not start from gas chambers' MORE (S.C.) slammed Democratic Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) for comparing recent events along the southern border involving migrants to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

"I recommend she take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC," Graham tweeted Monday. "Might help her better understand the differences between the Holocaust and the caravan in Tijuana."

Graham was replying to a tweet Ocasio-Cortez shared over the weekend, in which she wrote, "Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime."

"It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany," she continued. "It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda. It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America."

Ocasio-Cortez also responded to Graham’s tweet later on Monday night, in which she told Graham “the point of such a treasured museum is to bring its lessons to present day.”

“This administration has jailed children and violated human rights,” she added. “Perhaps we should stop pretending that authoritarianism + violence is a historical event instead of a growing force.”

Ocasio-Cortez has since found support from many on Twitter in making her case, including from actor Ben Stiller, who countered Graham’s suggestion with his own.

“Just to add into this, I would say that @LindseyGrahamSC go visit Guatemala as I did earlier this year and talk to the families fleeing the terror of targeted gang violence an unlivable poverty rate to understand the refugee experience,” Stiller said in a tweet on Monday night.

“These people are fleeing for their lives,” he added.

HumanaKAT on November 27th, 2018 at 23:32 UTC »

It’s also important to remember that wanting people to enter your country through legal means doesn’t make you unreasonable, racist, or a nazi.

Many countries require people to meet certain criteria to become citizens (I.e. make a certain amount of money, be outstanding applicants, etc.), and while seeking asylum is not the same, denying people residency is common practice throughout the world.

EmergencyTaco on November 27th, 2018 at 21:22 UTC »

I'd like to share a passage from Milton Mayer's 1955 book "They Thought They Were Free". This passage explores exactly how the German people transitioned from frustrated citizens in 1933 to full-blown Nazis in 1945. Here's the thing: changes like that don't happen overnight, it takes quite a long time. The issue is that the change is so gradual, and each time things get 'worse' it's in small enough increments that people are not compelled to take action until it's too late. I urge people to look at the similarities between this passage and what is happening in the US right now. This isn't to say that Donald Trump is the next Hitler or anything, it's simply meant to draw attention to how far a people can slip when they let each 'small issue' go unpunished. The passage:

"...Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?-Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in-your nation, your people-is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

-Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945

autotldr on November 27th, 2018 at 20:03 UTC »

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot)

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland issued a statement on Monday amid an ongoing debate between U.S. lawmakers over whether the Holocaust offers lessons for contemporary events such as those at the U.S.-Mexico border.

"It's important to remember that the Holocaust actually did not start from gas chambers," the museum continued.

ADVERTISEMENT. "I recommend she take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC," Graham tweeted Monday.

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