Cupich: 'Never forget' policies that led to Holocaust began with words

Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the policies that led to the Holocaust all began with words, including words that targeted "the other," Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago wrote in a July 24 commentary in the Chicago Catholic, the archdiocesan newspaper.

The "calculated stages" the Nazis carried out that ultimately resulted in the Holocaust began with bigoted language against minorities that the majority soon came to accept as credible, said the cardinal, adding that these lessons from history must be recalled today when many in society target immigrants, refugees and various groups of people as "the other."

Cupich noted the "dramatic increase in anti-Semitism and hate speech" today. He also pointed to the "barbaric assault on a synagogue in Pittsburgh (last October), the desecration of Jewish cemeteries in Europe marred with swastikas ... the hate speech that speeds across the internet linking like-minded bigots and in the delusional minds of those who continue to deny the reality of the Holocaust."

The cardinal made the comments as he reflected on his July 4 visit to Auschwitz with Fritzie Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois – and a survivor of the Nazi death camp in Poland.

Cupich said that shortly after they arrived, Fritzshall asked him: "How could this happen? How could people turn on their neighbors?"

"My first reaction was to say there really is no response to how members of the human race could be so callous and brutal, to the point of targeting people for extermination because of their heritage and religion," the cardinal wrote.