Recently, we joined friends in watching the movie Conspiracy, a fictional re-enactment of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Stanley Tucci was a perfect, affectless Adolph Eichmann, while Kenneth Branaugh portrayed a reptilian Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the Final Solution.

It was a stunning, 90-minute re-enactment of the fateful meeting of Gestapo, SS, army and Nazi bureaucrats as they were led by a sly Heydrich into agreeing to a “resolution” of the Jewish question.

All minutes of the meeting were to be destroyed and no official records kept. Only because one Martin Luther (!) left his copy in an archives do we know what transpired. The minutes reveal the subtle way in which the group was led to agree that Europe’s Jews – beginning with German Jews and then those in the east, finally including those they thought would be found in a defeated England – would be “evacuated” and killed by gas.

Food, drinks and cigars were abundant for the participants in the meeting. The only thing missing was a voice calling on them to halt their plans. Fear for their own futures and loathing of the Jew drove them forward. And we know the result.

It was an auspicious time to see this film, as we are about to begin the three weeks between the 17th of Tammuz and Tisha b’Av, the time ben hametzarim. The 17th of Tammuz marks the beginning of the end for Second Temple Jerusalem, as the Romans breached the outer walls and began fighting their way into the city toward the Temple Mount.

These two things connected in my mind: days of destruction 2,000 years ago and the years of death and horror more than half a century ago. Both armies were ruthless and merciless in their efforts to destroy the Jewish nation. In fact Rome could be – from today’s perspective – seen as, if not more merciful, then more limited in its intent, since Rome wanted only to destroy the nation-state. Jews in other parts of the empire – indeed even in the capital city of Rome – weren’t molested.

The Nazis were much more thorough in their planning and efforts.

Years ago, on Tisha b’Av night, we walked the route that the Roman armies took, beginning with the pitiful remnants of the outer wall and winding our way into the Old City of Jerusalem until we stood at the Kotel. We imagined the mountain burning with such fierce heat that stones burst out of the supporting walls and fell around its base, where some can still be seen today. Lamentations could be heard on all sides as youth groups as well as old men in gabardines wept for the destroyed city.

So Jan. 20, I think, should be a second 17th of Tammuz. As the latter day sealed the fate of the uprising 2,000 years ago, so, too, did Jan. 20, 1942, seal the fate of European Jewry.

But these catastrophes don’t define who we are, although they did shape us. After Tisha b’Av come the Haftorot of consolation, leading up to celebration of a new year. After the destruction of the Second Temple came scholars who created the rabbinic Judaism that we now practice. After the Holocaust came the chance to build a  Jewish state.

One more thing: the rebellion against the rule of Rome brought no other community into its ranks. The Jewish fighters stood alone (in fact, they often quarrelled with one another, but that’s another matter). There is a telling moment in Conspiracy when Branaugh as Heydrich reminds the group that emigration – letting Jews leave Germany – had been tried. “No one wanted them!” he exclaims triumphantly. See? They are alone and we can do with them what we wish.

It’s all too true. There were few refuges on earth from the Nazis. We know that Canada’s own homegrown anti-Semites kept the doors firmly locked against the victims.

But today, Israel has allies and the means to defend itself. In Canada, there is no comparison with those dark days of F.C. Blair’s and W.L.M. King’s willingness to see Jews die.

We now have power and allies. Let’s use that ability to assure that others can be rescued before they, too, perish.