REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST January 29, 2009
Posted by wmmbb in Peace.trackback
27 January was Holocaust Memorial Day. We must learn the lessons of history in so far as they can be learned.
Remembering terrible events is necessary, if not pleasant. The past can cast a shadow over current behavior. Yigal Bronner and Neve Gordon, via CounterPunch report:
Israeli soccer matches were suspended during the assault on Gaza. When the games resumed last week, the fans had come up with a new chant: “Why have the schools in Gaza been shut down?” sang the crowd. “Because all the children were gunned down!” came the answer.
Aside from its sheer barbarism, this chant reflects the widespread belief among Israeli Jews that Israel scored an impressive victory in Gaza – a victory measured, not least, by the death toll.
The Jewish Holocaust story is has been recorded in multiple ways, including family histories, such as Peter Singer’s, Pushing Back Time. And in this context it makes no difference people who suffered the effect of the Holocaust were the descendants of historical Jewish people or of later converts to Judaism, a question raised by When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand).
Most are aware of the harrowing experience of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis and their enablers, but less is known about others, for example, the Gypsies, who have been subject to discrimination in recent months to brutal discrimination in Italy. Recently, Delia Radu of the BBC spoke to people Vlasca, a village in southern Romania about their experience during the Second World War.
She reports:
The Roma people of Vlasca – traditional metal workers called Kalderash – are closed and inward-looking. They are reluctant to talk to anyone from outside the community.
It took weeks of negotiation to hear the accounts of Holocaust survivors in the village.
Historians often call it “the forgotten Holocaust”. Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers.
Recent studies have brought more of their suffering to public attention, but to this day little is known about the Roma targeted for persecution and extermination by the allies of the Third Reich on the eastern front.
The men are the first to speak – and later, when it is the women’s turn, they leave the room.
Their stories are about forced marches, starvation and extreme hardship, with details of terrible deaths.
The sequence of events, the processes, become important because by identifying dynamics like scapegoating makes us alert to what is happening. No doubt there are those who have made a thorough study of these events. I suspect that we as human beings find it too easy to get caught up in the cycles of violence, and at least for me it reiterates the point that peace and nonviolence begins with each of us. We should not allow ourselves to become conditioned to violence, whether it is expressed overtly or covertly. Then, some people are able to take the next step, the extraordinary one, of courage in the face of overwhelming violence.
Should all holocausts be remembered? While I appreciate the idea, as in never again, history is replete with such atrocities. I am not an advocate of remembering such, 911 included. Man’s inhumanity to man is not unique. I am an not much for the ceremony of such things, nor am I an advocate of the guilt often associated with them, whether it be the Jewish holocaust or slavery.
I think the answer to your question is yes. For every atrocity there are possible explanations with the advantage of distance, hindsight and consequences. It is not a question of quilt or victimhood, it a question of understanding and ultimately compassion for both the abusers and the abused, for they are us. And as human beings, with our individual and collective capacity for awareness, thinking and reason, we can do better.
If, for example, we acknowledge the reality of slavery in its origins and development, and in its historical and human consequences, we appreciate how the world has been formed, those that endured it and retained their humanity, and those of courage that opposed it to express their humanity. Most of us, are lesser human beings, and are simply broken and crushed by cruelty and oppression, which in my view is a truth that we need to consider.
As always, thanks for the question, Judith.