When I think about my Dad, so young, having to leave my Mom who was pregnant to fight the war, my uncle’s going off to do the same, and see the ultimate results of their efforts and the aftermath, I understand why they went and fought the war. It was because of what the Germans were doing. There is a reason why we have a Holocaust Remembrance Day and it is because at no time in human history has anything like this industrialized genocide ever occurred.
I went to the house where the Holocaust was planned. I sat in the chair Reinhard Heydrich sat. Why? an astonished reader might ask. Because it was a simple ornate table, and there was the chair along with several other chairs and there in that room in that gorgeous house, in that beautiful green district of Berlin, the greatest evil ever perpetrated by humanity on humanity was planned. Think about how banal that was. These men, bureaucrats all, sat and had lunch and tea and coffee and then they talked about the murder of 11 million people. Of course they added other so called undesirables: the Slavs, Poles, Russians and Homosexuals, etc. But there these men sat as if they were planning a new city park, or a new Messerschmidt factory. Just think about how bizarre that is.
When I sat in Heydrich’s chair and looked down that table it occurred to me this meant nothing to the man sitting there in that chair in 1942. It was a job, a tedious job he had to complete. That is all. And there was Adolph Eichmann, the Donald Pleasance of bureaucratic robotics at his side like a faithful schnauzer. That is how utterly incomprehensible the Wannsee Conference House and what happened there was.
We can’t forget. History is a very hard judge. History is God’s measure. The fact is the Holocaust is unique because of its nature. The hate behind it is as old as humanity itself. It is not just a monument to Anti-Semitism, it is a cautionary tale that it can happen again. Just as the news coming from the Holy Land and even Europe proves that the bombs we dropped, the trials we adjudicated did not really change this black mark on civilization. This is the day we remember those who fought the battles of World War II, to preserve God’s law and repeat it will never happen again.
When my Mom whacked that bully in the elevator she didn’t realize she was striking a blow for everything that civilization stands for. She was helping her friend who was being abused. But what I, as a five year old, got out of that legend was this: never again.
Stephanie Janiczek is a former Capitol Hill Staff Assistant, Schedule C Appointee and Leadership Institute alum. Military Wife, Hunter, Horse enthusiast, dog owner, writer and feminist kryptonite.
