A Time to Assess How Many!

And the word went forth unto all the land that there should be a census taken – a counting and registration of the Jews!
by Charlie Leck

The most disturbing piece of news that I read this morning – that I’ve read for so very long, comes out of Budapest, in Hungary: Thousands attend anti-Nazi rally in Hungary to protest lawmaker’s call to screen Jews. It is as if there is a return in time to the late 1930s. How absolutely frightening!

On one hand I say: “One cannot imagine!” Yet, in truth, it allows one to imagine how it must have started then, with one official word and with a crazed acceptance of the word; and the word became real. And then there were the camps, like Auschwitz (one-third of the victims there were Hungarian Jews).

Marton Gyongyosi, a member of the far-right Jobbik party, rose in the Hungarian legislature on Monday to say that it was time “to assess… how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.”

Oh, my! What must it have been like to be a Jew, sitting among the legislative representatives, listening to the word – the word so like the word spoken decades ago. Though Gyongyosi later apologized, to that admission he added another word, still affirming that Hungary needed to be wary – wary of “Zionist Israel and those serving it also from here!”

It is as if some people cannot hide the fear and hatred – it is so infused in them that it cannot be covered even by silence. There must be lines; and people must be registered; and, perhaps they must also be marked so that we know.

Oh, how I exaggerate! Such hyperbole!

Antal Rogan, of the Fidesz party, which governs now in Hungary, addressed thousands who gathered in protest: “I came because in this situation I cannot stay quiet!”

The word must be addressed! It must be stripped of its clothing and bared – made naked for all to see as it is!

On 1 September 1939, Hitler advanced against Poland. He had already taken control of Austria and most of Czechoslovakia. Great Britain and France had looked the other way. They wanted no repeat of the Great War. Before five o’clock in the morning, the German troops entered Poland. The press called it a Blitzkrieg (a lightening attack). More than 60 divisions of the German army entered Poland. Hitler’s troops attacked Polish soldiers and citizens alike. They did not discriminate. It had begun! The word had become real!

On 3 September 1939, France and Great Britain declared war and the likes of the German sin became such as nothing the world had ever before seen. Jews across all of Continental Europe were screened – identified and registered for a time soon to come.

One never forgets such atrocity! Or does one? Is it possible to rise before a legislative body in a European nation and call for a “screening of the Jews?”

The story was filed by the Associated Press! I shook my head in disbelief! I went back to read the short piece again, to be sure!

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