“If it happened once, it can happen again.”

Not all wisdom is feel-good candy. Harsh truths can be the most important truths.

Not all wisdom is feel-good candy. Harsh truths can be the most important truths.

The quote in the graphic above expresses one of the most important facts of our age. The Nazis DID engineer The Holocaust. It DID happened. To deny it is both stupid and a crime. The Holocaust did happen and other genocides have happened since. More genocides CAN happen again and something like The Holocaust can happen again if we do not actively work to prevent them. The totalitarianism of the Nazis was a virulent and ruthlessly efficient form of an all-too-common manifestation of human society. Jews and others deemed undesirables were slaughtered before the Nazis and have been slaughtered since the Nazis. We remember The Holocaust to honor those who suffered and perished in it and to warn against it happening again.

The person quoted in the graphic is the Italian Jewish chemist Primo Levi. He survived a year in Auschwitz and wrote about it for years afterward. Read about the tragic life of the amazing Primo Levi here.

And I recommend this heart-felt article about Primo Levi’s Last Moments. From the article: “His writings on the Holocaust were fundamental in shaping many people’s understanding of what it means to be a decent human being — their sense of the prospects for human survival, even under the worst possible conditions. “

Primo Levi did prove that there IS poetry after Auschwitz. We need to prove that we understand that The Holocaust could come again.

Originally published at https://insertphilosophyhere.com/if-it-happened-once-it-can-happen-again/