Ordinary People

 

Today is International Holocaust Memorial Day, this morning I went to the civic event in Croydon Town Hall marking the day. It was a very poignant and somber couple of hours but I'm so glad I attended. I have always thought it important to mark the day, and to remember throughout the year between just what can happen when we allow hate and exclusion get out of control.

This year the theme is Ordinary People, and we are reminded that it was (and is) ordinary ~ people just like us ~ who suffer and are killed. It is ordinary people who are the victims of hate. When I hear that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust of course it appalls and saddens me, but I find it difficult to appreciate 6,000,000. It's a big number! But we were reminded through individual testimonies that these were 6 million individuals. Not one big number, but a lot of individuals! Ordinary people, individuals just like us. Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Fathers, individuals and families wiped out through hate. Irrational, unfounded, all consuming hate. It is hate that leads to exclusion, to demeaning, to belief that one group is superior to another, to othering ordinary people, people just like us. And today reminds where that can lead.

Yes, ordinary people were the victims of the holocaust and all the other genocides, but it was also ordinary people who committed these atrocities, ordinary people taken in by propaganda, carried along by popularist movements, ordinary people just like us who wielded the sticks, threw the bricks, fired the guns. Some were fearful of being stigmatized themselves, some were following orders, some I suppose just enjoyed the violence and the power, but mostly just ordinary people.

It was ordinary people who rounded up Jews in Europe, and ordinary people who drove the trains, ordinary people who kept the records, and, I suppose, ordinary people who guarded the camps. 

It was also ordinary people who helped, who hid Jewish families, who helped others escape, who helped feed forced workers. Ordinary people who put themselves at risk by standing up for what is right, for friends, neighbours or just other ordinary people who were being oppressed simply for who they were.

As ordinary people we all have to make choices, we choose who we vote for, we choose our work, we choose our food, our clothes, our partners. If we are not the victims of hate then we also have a choice of how we react, we can join in the victimisation, we can stand aside and hope that we are not next, or we can intervene. It can be a bit scary, but sometimes it just takes someone to say "hey, not cool dude". Or maybe someone to educate the ignorant, to correct the misunderstanding. We all have a choice, which side are you going to choose?