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Awareness Wednesday :: Xenophobia, Part III — Never Again
January 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest extermination and concentration camp run by the Nazis. It is the place where about 1.1 million Jewish people were murdered; others were used as slave labor. As the second World War ended in 1945, the Allied soldiers found stacks of naked corpses in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. The few survivors were emaciated prisoners that looked more like skeletons than human beings. At the time of liberation, the prisoners had no food, no fuel, and no water. The Holocaust is one of the worst atrocities of humankind. It is a terrible reminder of our potential for evil. Sadly, the Holocaust was…
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Awareness Wednesday :: Xenophobia, Part II — Symptom of a Virus
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. — Chinese Proverb In the closing months of 2019, a novel coronavirus jumped from animals to humans and began spinning a web of infection, starting with the people of China and spreading with staggering speed worldwide. The virus, and its potentially deadly symptoms, are not the only thing being disseminated on a global scale. Xenophobia, particularly toward those of Asian descent, has seen a dramatic rise in the ensuing months, both here in the United States and around the world. A young woman from Brooklyn reported that while visiting Washington D.C., a man started making faces at her on the metro. She…
