If there is one thing in the world survivors and their families will not tolerate, it is somebody trivializing this terrible tragedy and loss they experienced - not to mention having anybody calling them “Nazis”! I know, as I, too, am a survivor. Most of my family members were murdered in the Nazi camps—and I, myself, was hidden from the Nazis throughout the war, relocated to 17 different hideouts. I was a child, too young to understand “why,” but definitely old enough to be afraid, traumatized, distressed—and definitely old enough to remember.

Trivializing that horror is one of the most offensive things one can do, but there is nothing offensive in the “Holocaust on Your Plate” Campaign. No trivialization of the loss and horror, but rather just the obvious, absolute reality. Ladies and gentlemen, please stop being led by the nose to bash PETA as a reflex. Open your minds, open your eyes, and look at the merit of things. And no, PETA is not saying we are all Nazis—though I am not surprised that some people, hostile to everything the animal rights movement stands for, are trying to present it this way.

Hate that leads to violence, and even genocide, is more common than any of us would like to admit—in all parts of the world. But the Holocaust in Europe is the one that hurts the Western world more. Why? Because it happened “here,” Not in Africa, not in Southeast Asia. Here, in the Western, civilized, world, and for many it is not just history, it is a personal tragedy. But it goes further than that, it had Western world characteristics: The Nazi ideology adapted a distorted, allegedly scientific argument of evolution and natural selection to justify itself. It recruited the industrial, efficient, Western methods to put [this ideology] into practice.

Apparently, all it takes is the efficiency, propaganda, and ideology or interest of a minority of people on the one hand; and the indifference or laziness to use self-judgment (and not following one’s moral obligation to do so) from the majority of people on the other hand. Europe was full of the silent majority—people who didn’t hate but were simply ignorant as to what was actually happening, or indifferent.

Here is the absolute fact: The methods used to transport, use, and kill humans in the 1940s are exactly the same—or closely equivalent—to those the Western society uses for animals. We kill animals by the billions a year, folks. And we make it in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible. This—of course—means putting them through hell—terrible conditions, pain and suffering, mutilation—and depriving them of their most basic needs from birth until death.

I know what you all say: “But they are just animals. Just chickens. How are they comparable to humans?!” Don’t tell me—I know: You actually have a “scientific justification” that proves how animals are inferior to us all, right? It sounds just so familiar, yet it is still just so wrong.
The human animal is different than other animals. Animals are different from one another. Animals are not intelligent in the way people are. People, on the other hand, really lag behind other animals when it comes to the sharpness of senses, and nonvocal communications. But neither of this is relevant. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to suffer when you are deprived of your basic needs, when you are torn in infancy from your mother, are crowded with thousands of your kind in tiny spaces, mutilated and aggressed routinely, and transported like a silent object to your final destination—the place where the stench of the blood and the cries of horror of others leave no room for error: You are going to die, nameless, overlooked, as part of the factory line you are a part of.

Animals fear. Animals suffer. Animals hurt. And this is all it takes to justify calling what we are doing to them, “The Holocaust on Your Plate.” The alternative is simple: People live happily and healthfully without consuming the flesh of other beings. It is only a matter of breaking the habit. There is no necessity in this killing; there is no excuse. And may I remind you all: Claiming “superiority” over others has always led to the most horrific deeds in history. Still does, obviously.

Alexandra Meshulam
Binyamina, Israel

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