On the holocaust and the use of negative thinking

It is Holocaust memorial day here, a year ago I have written in this Blog a story about my father and King Alfred. This story brought me a lot of reactions. This year, the holocaust memorial day for me is in the shadow of my recent research about the family history, which I have neglected to do until now. The picture above is the famous gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp. I never had uncles or first cousins from my father side. Unlike myself, my father has not been an only son, he had seven brothers and sisters, five of them ended their lives in a single day in this place, the other two ended their lives even before getting to Auschwitz in Ghetto Lodz. Until two weeks ago I did not know most of their names, ,my father rarely talked about his family. My family history research revealed me all the names. The Nazis were very thorough and documents everything, today one can find a lot of information on the Web, though some effort is needed. My father was the second of the eight children and the only survivor. His elder brother Yehuda, died in the Ghetto in the age of 19, another of his brother, Chanoch, died in the Ghetto at the ages of 12. In that day in Auschwitz, my aunts and uncles whom I never met, were poisoned in the Gas chambers, like the people in this picture who march to their death.

The names are: Chana who was 18 years old, Eliezer - 12, Roza - 11, Rivka -10, and Miriam - 8 years old.

I would like to take this opportunity and connect the holocaust to another thread of off-topic posts that gained a lot of reactions, the one that talked on positive and negative thinking. There are people with negative thinking who just waste their energy on looking at the world in a negative light, these people are often annoying, but the more dangerous people are those who use negative thinking in order to get support for their agenda. It is always easy to unite people behind negative message, behind common threats, whether existing or imaginary. People are getting support to their political agenda by turning people against groups of people, the negative sentiment is unfortunately very effective way to get people's support. This is what enabled the extermination of millions of people, in what is known as the holocaust. This is also a warning for the future.