Morning Joe viewers were likely surprised to see Joe Scarborough open Friday’s show from the site of the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A sober and respectful Scarborough did not co-host the entire show from Auschwitz but instead offered a thoughtful essay that recounted the events that led to the genocide of six million Jewish people, but did suggest some dot connection — particularly with regards to the “Big Lie” from the 1930s to today.
He did not indicate that we were on the precipice of another authoritarian-led genocide; he threaded the needle between honoring the past and noting today’s political turmoil quite deftly.
Read the full text of Scarborough’s opening essay below:
Well, it is noon here at Auschwitz on this commemoration day. And, you know, Mika, in the age of social media and 24/7 news channels, we’ve become accustomed to the daily barrage of grim news reports and depressing stories from Uvalde, to the Ukraine. Conditioned to compartmentalize, we somehow digest the bad news and move on throughout the day.
But for anybody who has set foot on the grounds of the Auschwitz death camp, there is no compartmentalizing of emotions. There is no moving on throughout the day. And there’s no grasping the unparalleled evil that happened here and culminating in this systemic slaughter of six million Jews. How exactly does one comprehend how a country, an army, a single person performs such daily depraved acts and other human beings, and how the scale of these evil actions led to six million deaths? It’s impossible. We simply cannot.
But history does provide an understanding of how such horrors began. It began with a lie. And then more lies. And then the big lie. And in this tragic case, the lie was that Jews lost the First World War for Germany. These lies spread all too easily among Germans and led to Jewish homes and businesses being vandalized, led to Jews being singled out in those businesses and in schools and led to a permissive attitude toward creeping anti-Semitism. Until the lies and the stigmatism of Jews led step by step by step to deportations, to executions and to extermination.
This first chapter of the Holocaust against the Jewish people is why we’re here to remind ourselves that anti-Semitism can never be allowed to find safe harbor again in polite society, whether on elite college campuses, on social media platforms, or in country clubs with former presidents. Passive Acceptance Invites Violence.
Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal warned that, quote, Violence is like a weed. It does not die. Even in the greatest drought. And he warned President Carter in the White House in 1980 that Hitler and Stalin are alive today. They are waiting for us to forget because in forgetting, we make possible the resurrection of these monsters.
So it is that on these grounds, in this gathering today, this Holocaust Museum bears daily witness to what happened here and across Europe not so long ago. Mr. Wiesenthal wrote at the end of his life that his entire life of hunting down Nazis was driven by a singular focus to send a warning to the murderers of tomorrow. You will never rest, and neither should we. Never rest, never forget.
Watch above via MSNBC.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
For more latest TV News Click Here