The 2011 session of Camp Good Times of Charleston, a recipient of an Autism Speaks Baker Summer Camp Scholarship Fund, was activity oriented, fun, child centered, and safe for the 130 children who attended this past June. Our camp includes not only children on the autism spectrum, but neurotypical peers who come to camp, have fun, be campers and friends with everyone.

A note to my readers: The following is a political post.

If you believe that it is permitted: to walk into a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv and blow yourself up,  to blow up a school bus full of children in Jerusalem, attack a Jewish center in Argentina, Seattle or the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. If you think its OK to: deface a Jewish cemetery, synagogue, or attack people because they wear the Star of David. If you think that the Holocaust did not happen and call it a war crime to teach the Holocaust to children. If you think that it is ok to send over 10,000 rockets into civilian areas, while calling for genocide against another 6 million Jews. If you think there is a vast jewish conspiracy to control the world and that the Jews and/or the United States caused 9/11. If you think that the only nation on the planet that can't defend itself is Israel. If you repeat anti-semitic blood-libels and and if you think it is ok to behead people in the name of God. You are NOT welcome here.

This week marked an interesting international event. January 27th was the commencement of an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. Now the Jewish people have annually marked this day on Yom HaShoah every spring for decades. In many respects it was nothing new for me to see the services and speeches dedicated to the remembrance of genocide. But what was interesting was that you had an Israeli President speak before the German parliament in Hebrew. The grandson of holocaust victims speaking in the revived ancient language of the Jewish people to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who sought to obliterate the Jewish people from the face of the earth, a truly poignant and redemptive moment in history.

I have written before about the Holocaust. Its meaning for our children and why it is so important to remember such evil. Never forget, that before the Nazis began their campaign of mass murder against the Jews of Europe, they practiced on the disabled. Yet, while a large part of the western world stood in silent contemplation on that day, the overwhelming majority of college campus worldwide ignored this day’s significance. Even collegeman’s school which houses one of the largest holocaust libraries in the country had no ceremony of remembrance. I think it bodes an ill wind that the future leaders of our world are taught to protest, speak out, and march in solidarity against every global rights violation but cannot bring themselves to commemorate one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I leave it to my readers to wonder why, on college campuses, the world’s inhumanity to its Jewish citizens goes unnoticed. 

A quick note: it is also important to remember that most colleges also do not offer appropriate accommodations to meet the needs of autistic students. It seems that the liberal world of academia is the last beachhead in the war against ignorance towards those with unseen disabilties.