It was an enthralling moment to listen to Netanyahu’s speech in the Aushwitz death camp on the 65 anniversary of the liberation of the death camp. Hearing the sound of the Hebrew language in that environment was by itself an touching experience. Nevertheless, I had a certain feeling of discomfort, something rang false. Netanyahu, in his words, called the Holocaust a “Crime Against Humanity”. Netanyhu is not the first nor is he the only one to use this expression. The words “Crime Against Humanity”, when discussing the Holocaust, have turned into a routine expression, a cliché employed on almost every occasion. But this is simply not true because the Holocaust was NOT a crime committed against Humanity - it was a crime COMMITTED BY Humanity.

Not only Jews were murdered during the Second World War. The numbers of Poles or Russians murdered during that war exceeds the number of Jews murdered (that’s without counting soldiers killed in combat). There were other ethnic groups that were persecuted and murdered by the Germans (the Gypsies for example). The “Final Solution”, though, was aimed solely at the Jewish People. Only the Jewish People was destined to be the victim of the crime of Genocide (a term invented by an American officer of Polish origins, when Churchill pointed at a legal void by referring to the deeds of the Germans as “a crime with no name”). In the “New Order”, which the Germans planned for the world after winning the war, there was a place for other peoples, including ones that did not belong to the “Master Race”. Not the Jews. Jews had to be hunted and exterminated wherever they could be found. That was a duty of prime importance. Special elite units - the infamous Einsatzgruppen - were formed by the Germans in order to accomplish that mission which the German leadership regarded as a top priority mission. Significant amounts of man power and resources were diverted from the war effort in order to execute this “important” mission. This mission was carried out relentlessly during the whole war, even during the last days, when it was already obvious that the Germany has lost the war. That mission remained at the top of the priority list all the time. The trains carrying the victims to the death camps never slowed down, even at the expense of carrying soldiers and materiel to the front or wounded from the front. There was never a shortage of fuel for that purpose.

The Holocaust was a crime against the Jewish People, NOT a crime against Humanity.

Whenever I hear the expression “Crime Against Humanity” in relation to the Holocaust, I can’t help asking myself who exactly is that “Humanity” against whom that crime had been perpetrated? And that question is followed by another, not a less disturbing one, what did that “Humanity” do to prevent that crime from taking place? What measures were taken by that “Humanity” to prevent that crime or at least to make its execution more difficult?

No one doubts that we are dealing with a horrendous crime, a crime without precedence in History, neither in its dimensions nor in the execution. Yet no one did anything in deed or in talk against this crime. How is that possible? Where was that “Humanity” against whom that crime supposedly was perpetrated?

No one went to war against Germany because of the Holocaust. Preventing the Holocaust, or even just mitigating it, was NOT among the goals of any of the nations taking part in the war. In contrast to the Germans, for whom it topped the priority list, The Allies did not attach any importance to the Holocaust, and refrained from making even a token effort to prevent it.
It was not for lack of knowledge.

Repeated pleas from Jewish leaders to the Allies to bomb the railways leading to the death camps fell on deaf ears. Such an action might not have halted the Holocaust, but it would have made it more difficult to execute.
It was not for lack of capabilities or resources.

At the end of the war the United Nations organization was established. That organization is literally founded on the ashes of the Holocaust. It was established in order to prevent a recurrence of what had happened in the war, to make it a one time event in the History of Mankind, an aberration. If the Holocaust was indeed a “Crime Against Humanity” why was it necessary to wait 60 years before the term Holocaust was mentioned for the first time in the UN general assembly? And even that first time met with objections from a large number of the member states. The prime minister of Iran, a man who calls for the extermination of the State of Israel from every possible platform, is received in the UN with full honors, and is lauded by the member states. The Secretary General of the organization (both the present and the previous ones) shakes his hand and embraces him warmly. If, heaven forbid, that guy will manage somehow to accomplish his goal we shall hear again about a “Crime Against Humanity”?

It looks differently from the perspective of a “Crime Committed BY Humanity” rather than a “Crime Committed AGAINST Humanity”. The issue is not semantics. It has practical implications. Just like the criminal who returns to the scene of the crime, Humanity is nowadays on the way back to the scene of the crime. Repeated calls to exterminate the Jewish State, to “wipe it of the map”, unqualified support given by the progressive liberal intellectuals to the terror organizations in the war they are waging against the Jewish State, all these serve as clear indications as to where Humanity is headed. The one time event, the historical aberration, is reincarnated before our eyes. The frame of mind that made the Holocaust possible is nowadays instilled among wide circles.

In the previous round, leading the perpetration of the crime was a nation that had been regarded by one and all as the epitome of enlightenment. In a similar fashion, nowadays the leading voices calling for the extermination of the Jewish State, the “Zionist Entity” in their parlance, are enlightened liberals, the intellectual elite (it is worth noting in that context that members of the infamous Einsatzgruppen, all volunteers, also comprised educated enlightened men - teachers, musicians, writers etc.).

No. The Holocaust was NOT a crime against Humanity. No way.