Photo By Scott Sturkol | Gregory Wegner, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-La...... read more read more
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Fort McCoy held a special event April 21 in McCoy’s Community Center to observe the Holocaust Days of Remembrance and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
During the event organized by the Fort McCoy Equal Opportunity office’s Master Sgt. Ana Guzman-Gregory, guest speaker Gregory Wegner, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, gave insight to the history of the Holocaust.
According to the National Archives at www.archives.gov, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an international memorial day designated by the United Nations to mark the anniversary of the January 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau — the largest Nazi concentration and death camp. The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust is an annual commemoration designated by Congress to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. In 2022, Holocaust Remembrance Day was recognized on April 28.
Wegner discussed how the Holocaust began, and how it’s an ongoing effort to always remember what happened.
“Antisemitism and racism as a whole is unresolved,” Wegner said. “It remains one of our human problems.”
In an article by the National World War II Museum at https://www.nationalww2museum.org, the Holocaust is described as “Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and machinelike murder of approximately six million European Jews and at least five million prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims.”
The museum article also discusses some of the precursor actions of how the Holocaust was started.
“Antisemitism was a centuries-long phenomenon in Europe, but it reached its height in Germany during the Nazi era (1933–1945),” the article states. “The Nazis also claimed that Romany (Gypsies), Slavs (Poles, Russians), and physically and mentally disabled people were Untermenschen (subhuman) and did not deserve to live. On assuming power as absolute ruler of the German state, Hitler began a systematic campaign to strip Jews of their property and their jobs in academia, the judiciary, the military, and the civil service. Synagogues were defiled and burned. Jewish businesses were boycotted or shut down.
“The Nuremburg Laws of 1935 denied Jews their German citizenship, forbade Jews to marry non-Jews, and took away most of their political rights,” the article further states. “Jews became scapegoats for everything awful that had happened to Germany over the previous several decades: inflation, economic depression, the loss of World War I, and the punitive Treaty of Versailles.”
Wegner said he began to learn about the Holocaust as a boy and that teaching the “context” of the Holocaust helps others learn from it.
“I’m a historian, and my work is to try to understand the historical context,” Wegner said. “That’s the toughest part of being a story. It’s about getting your hands around the context. That helps us better understand what happened.”
Wegner said some of his perspective of the Holocaust came from people he interviewed who witnessed the atrocities firsthand.
“I’m standing before you also because my life was changed by an interview,” Wegner said. “I’ve interviewed over 15 veterans of World War II. … They taught me important things while spending time with them down in a park in Bangor, Wis.”
Wegner said he was 8 years old when he first talked to the veterans, and he said he learned much from their experiences — especially one veteran who was a concentration camp liberator.
“They became my teachers,” Wegner said.
Throughout his presentation, Wegner detailed the levels of the atrocities and showed many examples of propaganda the Nazis used in their campaign to further dehumanize Jews. He also relayed the importance of remembering what happened.
“We have to remember what took place to ensure it doesn’t ever happen again,” Wegner said.
In a release from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Instutite, it states the Days of Remembrance were observed from April 24 to May 1. The Department of Defense’s them for the 2022 observance was “Determination, Hope, and Honor.”
Learn more about the Holocaust by visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at https://www.ushmm.org.
| Date Taken: | 05.12.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 05.12.2022 14:57 |
| Story ID: | 420593 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WI, US |
| Web Views: | 44 |
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