Last night, I was positively riveted by a TV show called Engineering Evil on the holocaust. I then thought, if I were a person in 1942 with knowledge of the death camps, what could or should I have done given that knowledge?
More importantly, given the vast amount of behaviors essentially the same as the holocaust occurring all over the world today, what as individuals should we be doing?
Step 1: Publicize the hell out of it. Don’t let what is happening go unnoticed by the world at large.
Well, I guess if I had myself a media outlet, that would be an idea. I am thinking that maybe I paper the local newspaper to provide coverage and hassle our congress/senate types. Seems pretty lame, but as an individual, my personal power rates pretty low.
It is widely known and accepted that this sort of thing is currently going on in North Korea.
So what’s step 2?
RE “Publicizing”: Well, IMO, in 1942, people are going to think that those kinda stroies is propoganda (like stories of the Kaiser’s troops bayonetting babies in Belgium during the Great War.
RE “Doing Something”: Germany, in 1942, was at it’s most powerfull. It was still on the advance into the USSR, for example, and Rommel was in Egypt. The western Allies are not ready to open a serious second front. What do you think could be done? Drop more bombs on Berlin?
Good point. In all reality, unless the US, NATO or the like are prepared to get involved, not much really happens.
change your facebook profile picture to raise awareness
Get it to Russia. They’ve got a better chance of getting there first, and it gives the leadership further political justification for anything goes tactics.
You think Russia was holding back?
Yes. Lazy sods. It was the Kazakhs and Moldovans doing all the heavy lifting.
But seriously…first of all putting aside general malaise and any knowledge people may have already had…wtf can I do? Even if I were Roosevelt, there’s not a lot I can do outside of drastic measures like bombing camps or threatening to nerve gas Berlin if the genocide doesn’t immediately stop. Something along the lines of, “Hey, we’ll play by your ‘rules of war’ but this death camp stuff is right out.”