Brethren in Suffering. By Eric Smith

Every African American has a moral duty to speak out loudly in condemnation against the likes of Louis Farrakahn & other individuals of whatever race or creed who are either Holocaust Deniers or seek to mitigate its horrors. We people of color of all the people in the world should be among those in the forefront of keeping the horrible memories of the Nazi's evil persecution of Jews forever fresh for future generations for we have lived through such a history ourselves in this country. Don't tell me that because the skin of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust was white that neither the survivors of those camps or their heirs cannot possibly relate to the horrors visited upon we people of color here because they can and the vast majority of them do.

Genocide by any other name is still genocide whether or not it is committed by the hangman's noose or the gas chamber. To be burned alive is to be burned alive; whether one is set afire after being tarred & feathered while tied to a tree or roasted in an oven. Burning human flesh smells the same. The screams of the dying sound the same. We people of color are united with our Jewish brothers & sisters through the crucible of shared suffering; of mutual persecution, and common injustice. Again it matters not the color of the person on the outside; what matters is the person on the inside for it is human beings who perished in these maelstroms of evil, not a color.

The black man hanging from the tree was the Jewish man in the gas chamber. That is what forever ties the American and Nazi Holocausts together. That shared historical horror is what binds us and why we as people of color must mourn equally for those who perished in Nazi occupied Europe as we mourn for those lost to the same kind of evil within our American borders.

So as we remember the Kunta Kintes of America, let us also remember the Ann Franks of Europe. Let our shared history of suffering through unspeakable injustice forever bind us in the cause of justice so that at some future time, our combined strength will one day be strong enough to forever break the chains of a still shackled nation and world.