Understand history so it’s not repeated.

We’ve all heard variations of that edict many times. The biggest event it is paired with, of course, is the Nazi Holocaust.

When major news events happen, I like to search for news photos, and that’s exactly what I did when the mob descended on the U.S. Capitol a couple of weeks ago.

I am always amazed by the bravery of photographers who knowingly put themselves in the middle of precarious situations. The in-the-moment intensity of a still photo speaks to me. For me, it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words.

One thing that shook me — the picture of a man at the protest who was wearing a shirt that said “Camp Auschwitz.” On the bottom of the shirt read “Work Brings Freedom,” a translation of “arbeit macht frei,” which appeared at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The image still burned in my head days after seeing it. I decided it was time for me to do some research on perhaps the darkest chapter in human history.

I wanted to feel it.

I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum when I was a teen, and earned a minor in history in college. But it had been awhile since I had truly, deeply paused to consider what happened in Nazi Germany in the years leading up to D-Day and the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in the mid-1940s.

So I spent some time looking at photos far more disturbing than a yahoo wearing an anti-Semitic shirt. I read and watched a couple of documentaries. I was shocked. I was angry. I grieved.

What happened was a grim reminder of what humans are capable of, and how ethnic groups and other outcasts were dehumanized during that time.

It truly is a cautionary tale.

I was fascinated by the political scene of Germany during the time between World War I and World War II. Frustration and disenchantment gave rise to a group that was convinced fierce nationalism was the only way to get out of their challenging time.

I am thankful to live in a society that clearly recognizes the atrocities of the Nazi regime and views that sort of behavior as nothing less than horrific. There are very few people on this planet who would look at that man’s shirt and approve.

In fact, it’s great that local entities continue to tell the important truth. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day Wednesday, Tiffin’s Heidelberg University hosted a discussion titled Speaking Across the Divide: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Holocaust. It featured Noemie Lopian, daughter of parents who survived the Holocaust, and Derek Niemann, author and grandson of an SS officer.

I am thankful for the foundation of America and believe that the balanced system of government put in by our founding fathers ultimately wins out over challenges and uncertainty.

But I watch the way of the world with caution.

I am shocked by the divisiveness of the current political and social climate. I am dismayed the words “civil war” have been breathed by some — in many cases in a cavalier fashion. I am frustrated that uncertainty has given rise to some degree of extremism on many sides of the political spectrum.

In my research, I was struck how quickly Adolf Hitler rose to power, and realized how the political climate of the day fueled the meteoric rise of Hitler and his party. My biggest take of researching Nazi Germany and the Holocaust at this point in my life is that I always assumed that it happened in a vacuum, a seemingly random, evil event.

But there were very real reasons that dark chapter of history lined up like it did, and evil, struggling economies, political fanaticism and anti-Semitism are all concepts that are alive and well today.

We must always be on guard.

I think it’s good for us all to study the Holocaust and similar genocides. Chillingly, at its core, it is human beings dehumanizing other human beings.

No matter how much we dislike the actions of a person or a group of people, let us never forget that we are all from the human race and are created in God’s image. We are someone’s son or daughter. Someone’s friend. Someone’s neighbor.

May we remember atrocities that have occurred in history, so that we never repeat them.

Jeremy Speer is the publisher of The Courier in Findlay, Ohio, The Advertiser-Tribune in Tiffin, Ohio, and the Review Times in Fostoria, Ohio. He can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com or jspeer@advertiser-tribune.com.