The world’s gaze turned once again to Auschwitz last week when Holocaust survivors, their liberators and heads of state convened there to commemorate the legacy of Nazi brutality on the camp’s 60th anniversary of emancipation. It was a solemn affair, serving as a stark reminder of the failings of humanity to those who experienced such evil first-hand.

An evil, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon countered, brought about not only by Hitler, but by Allied inaction.

Instead of recognizing the efforts the Allies had in saving Europe from itself, Sharon turned the conference on its ear and blasted them for preceived ineffectiveness. “The sad and terrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being killed,” he said. “At the time of the most terrible test, friends and benefactors didn’t lift a finger.” Israeli officials also voiced their dissatisfaction with the ceremonies because Russian President Vladimir Putin paid tribute not to Jews but to the roughly 28 million Russians who lost their lives during World War II.

Isn’t fighting Hitler “lifting a finger?”

The insinuation that Allied forces relished the murder of Jews during World War II is insulting and perpetuates some bizarre notion of victimhood. Millions died in battle combating the rise of fascism in Europe. There isn’t a family in Britain, France, the United States or Russia whose lives weren’t affected in some way by their country’s commitment to stamping out Hitler’s expansionist agenda, and it wrongs the memories of those who sacrificed to condemn them as unfeeling and uncaring.

It’s also wrong to ignore the millions of non-Jews who perished in the camps. Political dissidents, priests, homosexuals, the handicapped – all were part of the Final Solution as well. Let’s also never forget the Roma, who suffered the worst holocaust of all – less than one percent of gypsies are still alive today – yet Sharon cries out that Jews were all but ignored by Allied forces. Unbelievable.

Of course, the prime minister fails to acknowledge that the task of administrating and transporting Jews to concentration camps was often carried out by Jewish collaborators. The 1954 Kastner Affair revealed Rudolph Kastner, a prominent Israeli policy-maker, “had provided indispensable assistance to SS Lieutenant Col. Adolf Eichmann in the latter’s efforts to ship a half-million Hungarian and Transylvanian Jews to the extermination camps.” Professor Israel Shahak, himself a survivor of the Holocaust, had this to say about the genocide:

Nearly all the work of administration, and later the work of transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths, was carried out by Jewish collaborators.

Before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the planning of which only started after the extermination of the majority of Jews in Warsaw), the Jewish underground killed, with perfect justification, every Jewish collaborator they could find. If they had not done so the Uprising could never have started.

The majority of the population of the Ghetto hated the collaborators far more than the German Nazis. Every Jewish child was taught, and this saved the lives of some [of] them, “if you enter a square from which there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, and then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew.”

This article isn’t an indictment of war complicity, however. I merely find it appalling that Ariel Sharon, himself up on war crimes charges for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, would charge other nations with failing to stop genocide when he presides over a nation that is visiting the same madness upon the Palestinians.

It is hypocrisy at its finest.

The state of Israel is one of apartheid, not democracy. Separate license plates denote whether you’re Israeli or not; if you happen to be Palestinian, the plates segregate you by towns. An Israeli “security fence” presently cuts deeply into Palestinian territory, severing communities from their livelihoods. Children are routinely shot with little or no justification, often inside benign locations like schoolyards. Men and women are held without cause in detention centers.

Are these the actions of a government that has learned from the Holocaust to embrace life and diversity? To not hate an entire race of people based on their religion, language or color of skin?

No. They are the actions of a government that embraces death and destruction while wrapping themselves in the trappings of previous tragedy. The indifference to Palestinian life is just as two-faced and evil as the nonchalance of the average German whose apathy led to the deaths of millions of Europeans.

Why should I care that a bigoted blowhard puffs himself up by proclaiming others as cowards? I care because people actually take Sharon’s words with merit. After his argument, the same tired headlines wondering if “we did enough” played throughout print publications around the world. It not only diminishes the evils of the Holocaust, it further diminishes the roles everyone but Jews played in it. After all, where are the museums dedicated to preserving the memories of gypsies murdered by Hitler?

We are taught to “never forget,” and I will not and cannot. The Holocaust was a showcase of humanity at its worst, but it’s not (or shouldn’t be) a trump card for a political agenda, nor is it a rallying cry in defense of Zionism. It’s murder, plain and simple. That horror alone should serve to remind people of the evils of hatred.

But the Holocaust happened 60 years ago, and there are other more pressing human rights disasters happening right now. There are new concentration camps detaining political dissidents and men and women for no discernable reason. Torture is now condoned, not condemned, by the American government. Instead of living in the past forever, those that truly honor the legacy of the Holocaust should redouble their energies in combating the evils of today, not the shadows and memories of the past.

Instead of commemorating Auschwitz, let’s stop the atrocities happening at Guantanamo. Gitmo, Bergen-Belsen, Abu Ghraib; the meaning’s the same no matter the name. If we don’t act now, we’ll never be able to forget because the same crimes will continue to play out over and over again – without the clarity of hindsight as a warning.