Disabled people were the first to die in the gas chambers. Holocaust Remembrance is more than anti-semitism.

As a descendant of holocaust survivors, I have always been aware of the powerful lessons this period in history teaches us #WeRemember and #NeverForget. But I think it can be easy to oversimplify this narrative as I often see on social media as just antisemitism.

Don't get me wrong, antisemitism is a huge issue that we need to acknowledge the continued presence and danger of.

But in my opinion, Holocaust Remembrance Day is about so much more than just my Jewish heritage. In fact, were I living in 1940s Germany today my bisexuality and disability would be just as prevalent causes for me to be targeted. The lesson of the holocaust is not that Jewish people need protection. It is that all minorities when scapegoated and villainized by the ruling class can become seen as so inhuman as to allow for mass executions.

Jewish people have been and continue to be a minority around the world. But they are not the only one. I stand with the legacy of Holocaust survivors not just in preserving Jewish culture but preserving a message of anti-fascism and the dangers of dehumanization.

It can easily be forgotten just how firmly the basis of the holocaust was planted in eugenics. A movement that started with and continues to harm the disabled and chronically ill community. Long before Hitler's final solution was envisioned, gas chambers were tested on the severely disabled. Their lives are justified as expendable for science. Aspergers was coined by a Nazi scientist in order to differentiate intelligent "worthy" autistic people over the "disposable" disabled ones.

Even racism and antisemitism rests on ableism. It rests on the foundation that "lesser races" are less worthy because their innate ability is lower. That only the most able-bodied models of German heritage deserve the right to life.

Following this year's holocaust remembrance day, I ask you to consider the ways people in your community are dehumanized. From justifying the deaths of those with comorbidities as inevitable to calling undocumented immigrants illegal. Never forget where this trail leads, never accept it, fight while you can.