First, I want to emphatically denounce any association with the necessity to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to that of Nazi Germany. Any comparison of the two is grossly inappropriate and offensive — not just to those who practice, love, and respect Judaism but to the whole of humanity.
17 million people lost their lives by the Nazi regime: mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters — families destroyed. Dreams, visions, hopes — lost to the ages. This we can never forget.
Moreover, nor can we make light or incorrect and dangerous comparisons to such tragic events. Are our memories short? Survivors still live. Those days of brutality and hate aren’t in some distant past and we must protect at all costs that those sentiments never rise again in mass as they did before.
One of the highlights of my time as a Chicago Police Officer is our police academy visit to the Illinois Holocaust Museum. It was in this space that my colleagues and I learned the dangers, especially given our role as police officers, of failing to speak up and our moral responsibility to always act. It was also in this space that we were reminded by the late Elie Wiesel that “our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.”
Respectfully,
Julius Givens
Chicago Police Officer
My opinions are my own and are not associated with my department or any other officer on the department.
