We do not want to talk about neurology, or face issues related to the functioning of our brain or the unconscious, because today the word Memory takes on a concrete meaning, which escapes from the abstract of our synapses in order to materialize in a painful historical moment. A period in which the world seemed crazy and the cradle of European civilization - Germany, but it is good to print it in the head NOT ONLY Germany - became prey to an uncontrollable demonic force.
Every January 27 we all remember the Shoah, the extermination of the Jewish people, but not only: in the list of the martyred by the Nazi barbarism there are, in fact, all those people who do not conform to the canons dictated by the regime. Homosexuals, political adversaries, Gypsies, psychiatric cases, free thinkers, everyone could fall victim to the machine tritium men set up by Hitler and his loyal SS dogs (with all due respect for dogs).
Around the Shoah the Jewish people has carved yet another facet of its complex identity, whose form derives from a suffering that has united and made them stronger.
The systematic elimination of the Jews in the Second World War was certainly an irrefutable immense tragedy, although today they still resist controversy and blatant affirmations among the deniers and those who struggle to find an alibi for those murderers, appealing to an elusive "sense of duty" "Of the Nazi rogue. But even worse are the few fanatics who praise those moments as the maximum expression of the defense of a utopian racial purity whose science is worthy now the best stories of science fiction. For many, racial laws and discrimination are a model for inspiration to really show what it means to strengthen national pride!
Yet like every year we are here to ask ourselves why we should continue to remember this day, because we can brush up facts that are not convenient for anyone, but that everyone would like to cancel or forget for political opportunism or for a simple sense of modesty.
The deportation and extermination have had a political color, although every time that this event is mentioned, the nostalgic "Nazis next door" are unleashed, reminding the world of the massacres committed by the Communists. They do well, of course, they are right to affirm that even the Stalinist dregs committed equal wickedness, and we want to do so, thus supporting their thesis, by aberrating decisively all nationalisms and totalitarianisms. It is sacrosanct that all the political faiths, in equal measure, sprinkle the head of ashes to expiate their faults.
Apart from the bizarre theses of idiotic denialists, it is more appropriate to dwell on those who still today blame guilty Jews, generalizing on issues that do not compare with the Shoah, they point the finger at Israel and the Palestinian question. In the Arab iconography it is increasingly common to see the Star of David equated with the Nazi swastika: an improper, banal, meaningless coupling. First of all it is good to specify a very important concept: the combination of Judaism and Israel is not absolutely obvious. Jew does not mean Israeli and Israel is not just the homeland of the Jews. They are two similar but different entities, since many Arabs are Israeli citizens and certainly do not want the extermination of the Palestinians. Here we are talking about a pluralist context, where within a government (on several occasions favorable or not to dialogue with the other party) there is a minority that speaks, gets angry and argues with Israeli politics in the territories.
There is also a second order of issues, this time linked to problems closer to Europe and the resurgence of many far-right parties who proudly wave the hooked cross in their parades.
From 1939 to 1945 not a thrill of voice arose in defense of those who were about to be massacred by the Nazis: they were the years of extermination, but above all were the years of silence in which everyone knew, many were accomplices and nobody did anything (even between the Western Allies). The greatest shame was this: the silent assent that many satellite states to Nazi Germany - Italy in the first place - applied for their own convenience and foolish subjection. But it was not just a government problem, as this condescension mixed with fear involved all the people who were aware of what was done in the extermination camps: he turned his head, aware that it was probably the only way to get better.
Why the Jews? Why gypsies or homosexuals? Why different?
The holocaust has a deep and ramified root, which must be sought in the malaise of a humiliated people and forced to struggle with problems such as occupation, daily survival, and an offended national pride. Adolf Hitler and his proselytes masterly exploited these feelings, seeking practical solutions, but above all offering the Germans, on a silver platter, the culprit of all their misfortunes, the one on which everyone could vent their repressed anger. For the Nazis, the return to the glory of Germany was possible only through the physical annihilation of the opposition and the Jews. The reconstruction of a national pride - a legitimate perception of itself - took on extreme connotations, with the denial of every right and human principle of coexistence and tolerance; even the powers that had won the war were considered puppets in the hands of the Jews.
Then the Jew - who likewise gave to Catholics or Protestants his blood for the Kaiser in the trenches on the Marne - turned into a sinister conspiratorial rat, which concealed his alleged riches in dismal sewers. The propaganda algorithm devised by Joseph Goebbles did the rest, proving to be a winning and terribly perfect one.
From the 1939 onwards, all the territories trampled by the Wehrmacht's boots assumed the status of "hunting reserve" for Himmler and his henchmen who set up an impressive death machine, managed by as many ruthless and frustrated bureaucrats who found theirs in Nazism. reason for social elevation. The great Hannah Arendt has summarized this twisted and diabolical psychology in her masterpiece on the Banality of evil according to which demons do not always have the face of monsters, but often hide behind an anonymous and disconcerting banality.
The thing that makes you more angry is that nothing that has happened has served anything, since the extermination and deportation still today continue at global level. Walls to be erected, or already erected, on which rise politicians animated by hatred, waving in favor of the flocking people dreams of peace, security with happy families that feast on green fields.
But be careful, because the false promises and the creation of the enemy inevitably generates a reaction, even among those who, apparently, would not hurt a fly. Moreover, the presence of an "enemy at all costs" forges a generation of cowards ready to shy away from confrontation, but intent on seeking an improvement of their conditions through the elimination of obstacles rather than personal growth. This is why we have a moral duty to remember, but above all to spread the meaning of what it means Shoah. The affirmation of a people, of a national will and of collective well-being can not take place at the expense of someone else, although often it is much easier to criminalize a different than to face the ghosts of their own incompetence.
What we are asking today is not so much the strength of the Memory, but the courage not to lower our gaze more in the face of such horrors.
Photo: Giorgio Bianchi
