OPINION:
I remember visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for the first time as a young girl.
Over a decade later, I am still haunted by the atrocities committed against Jews, the disabled, the LGBT community and other groups deemed to be ’inferior’ by the Nazis.
One of the most vivid memories I have of the museum is of a room full of shoes belonging to Holocaust victims.
Piled one on top of another: new shoes, old shoes, women’s heels, men’s loafers and even tiny baby shoes filled the room.
An incredibly small fraction of the personal belongings of the millions of lives lost, the museum’s mountain of shoes was beyond comprehension.
For so many, including myself, those shoes represent the blind eyes turned by way too many during WWII.
The fact that these horrors persisted for years was largely a result of the Nazis success in keeping the Holocaust a secret.
By avoiding written communication and relying on verbal death orders, the Nazis were able to keep people in the dark and prevent the media from spreading the news that could have put a quicker end to the Holocaust.
If the Holocaust had been widely reported by media outlets worldwide, millions of lives could have been saved.
Yet, less than 100 years later, Secretary of State John Kerry is advocating for this exact secrecy for terrorists both at home and abroad.
When discussing terrorism at a press conference in Bangladesh on Monday, Mr. Kerry said, “Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
How much more wrong could Mr. Kerry be?
Not knowing what is going on would do us no service.
In fact, history has proven the exact opposite.
It was not media coverage that encouraged and allowed the Nazis to go on killing millions of people for multiple years.
Rather, it was the lack of media coverage that allowed these horrific killings to continue.
This lack of coverage during WWII did not benefit the millions who died in death camps, and a lack of media coverage would certainly provide no justice to the victims of terrorism today.
We cannot let evil succeed in the 21st century by avoiding media coverage of terrorist attacks.
Instead, we need to encourage and aid the media in their pursuit to share knowledge and truth worldwide, no matter how atrocious the facts may be.
Our future may very well depend on it.
• Madison Gesiotto is a conservative writer and commentator who appears on Fox News Channel. She is currently in the final year of pursuing her J.D. at The Michael E. Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. You can reach her by email at contact@madisongesiotto.com or follow her on Twitter: @madisongesiotto.
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