Jenny Beth Martin opens on what she saw after October 7: a terrorist attack by Hamas, followed around the world by the blaming of Israel and of Jewish people rather than of the people who did it. Robert Ratonyi says what came after was terrible, and that he had to rewrite the speech he gives to students, because he had come to see the Holocaust as one genocide among many, and October 7 as another.
So he studied them. By his count there were 34 genocides in the twentieth century, on every continent, and the Holocaust was the third largest, behind Mao's Great Leap Forward in China and Stalin's starvation of Ukraine's farmers in the Holodomor. He built a spreadsheet of motive and method, looking for what they had in common, and found nothing, except one thing: not a single genocide took place in a country with a Western, liberal democracy.
His conclusion is the one he leaves with every audience. There is good and evil in every human heart, and a thin line between them. Most people in Europe knew what was happening to the Jews and turned away; that was apathy. The people who did the executions had crossed the line and become murderers, and that, he says, is what happened with Hamas. The only moral difference he can find is that the Nazis tried to hide their crimes, and Germany later admitted them and paid reparations, while Hamas filmed its own and laughed. He has watched the footage Israel compiled. Twice.
Guest: Robert Ratonyi, Holocaust survivor, author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, and a speaker for the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in Atlanta.
In this segment:
• After October 7: blaming Israel instead of the terrorists
• Why he rewrote the speech he gives to students
• 34 genocides in the twentieth century, by his count
• The Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, and why nobody talks about them
• A spreadsheet of motive and method, and one common thread
• Not a single genocide in a Western democracy
• Good and evil in every human heart, and the thin line
• Apathy: the people who knew and turned away
• The one moral difference: the Nazis tried to hide it
• The footage from October 7, and the people who crossed the line
Read Robert Ratonyi's memoir, From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, available on Amazon. All of the royalties go to an educational charity that helps families send their children to college.
Share this with a young person who has never heard a Holocaust survivor speak.
Subscribe for daily analysis from Tea Party Patriots Action, and watch the full October 7 anniversary conversation with Robert Ratonyi on The Jenny Beth Show channel.
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00:00 — Why telling these stories matters, three years after October 7
00:49 — Blaming Israel instead of the terrorists; rewriting the speech
01:02 — The Holocaust was a genocide; October 7 was a genocide
01:24 — 34 genocides in the twentieth century; the Holocaust was the third largest
01:37 — The Great Leap Forward, and why nobody talks about it
02:00 — The Holodomor
02:44 — A spreadsheet of 34 genocides, looking for a common thread
03:07 — Not a single one in a Western democracy
03:46 — Good and evil in every human heart, and a thin line
04:20 — Apathy: the people who knew and turned away
04:43 — The executioners crossed the line; so did Hamas
04:56 — The one moral difference: the Nazis tried to hide it
05:34 — Hamas did not hide; the footage Israel compiled
06:04 — The people who crossed the line and became murderers
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