Article

2005-01-20 Europe

Holocaust lessons meet Muslim rebuff in France

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Posted by tipper 2005-01-20 9:02:20 AM|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11134 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Such tension has prompted Jewish pupils in these areas to switch to private Jewish or even Catholic schools. heh...the crushing antisemitism of the catholic church.

It's all the same mindset, a socially acceptable group of "others" that it's ok to sneer at and to blame for your ills. In American society - the only groups that it is PC to be bigoted against are Christians and very fat people. If you want to blanketly slur all Christians are narrow minded - that's not bigotry, that's a fact. Two people are standing in front of you, one is grossely obese mother on her way to the PTA, the other is a skinny, drug addict. It's ok to slur the mom.

One way to get around this could be to introduce pupils to survivors of other mass killings, for example in Cambodia or Rwanda, Singer said. He has already arranged one such meeting for teachers to help them understand the problem of genocide.

"The Shoah cannot be allowed to hide all the other horrors concerning other groups," he said. "Thatâs not our goal here."

This has to be done carefully, Singer said, because inviting witnesses to other genocides to speak with Jewish survivors runs the risk of diluting the unique nature of the Holocaust.

"We must not make comparisons," he said firmly

Christian, Muslim, Communist and pagan massacres need not apply.

Posted by 2b 2005-01-20 9:42:19 AM|| 2005-01-20 9:42:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 continued:

"We must not make comparisons," he said firmly

And why not? By saying this I submit that this man fails to understand the lesson of the Holocaust. It's not just about hating Jews - but about hating. The lesson is that we must see peoples as individuals and we must resist demagogues who whip up divisions among using hate as a tool. It doesn't matter if it's about religion, race, sexuality, or abortion. If you confine the lesson only to your very own group - then you aren't grasping the nature of the problem - stereotyping and blaming anonymous "others" for what's wrong in your world - even if it's just the fat lady in front of you.

Posted by 2b 2005-01-20 9:54:19 AM|| 2005-01-20 9:54:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 I have to question the axiom of the need to teach the Holocaust, as a singular subject, to anyone, even Jewish children. Its rationale is flawed, and it often creates more problems than it solves. First of these is "why teach it?" Is it (a) To convey a sense of inherited guilt to the non-Jewish children?; (b) To imply that Jews are special among the peoples who experience hatred and persecution?; (c) To identify their persecutors *in this case* as being special?; or (d) As a general introduction and ethical opposition lesson to genocide? Second, why is it a *good* thing for Jews to remember this massacre? What *good* has it done other peoples to spend part of their lives fretting over past injustices? For example, the Armenians against the Turks; or, just today, the Moors agonizing over the lack of a Spanish apology from 500 years ago? With the death of the last Holocaust survivor, and the last real Nazi, shouldn't it just become another history lesson, another tragedy in history like so many others? More importantly, shouldn't teachers instead work to prevent such things from happening in the future? For example, Moslems have been slaughtered and enslaved by other Moslems; isn't it more to the point that their teacher teach that *nobody* should slaughter or enslave *anyone* else?

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-01-20 1:01:20 PM|| 2005-01-20 1:01:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 Why do the Jews remember? Well, in my case, it was my mother and her family who were involved. My father's family was wiped out, so there isn't much to talk about there. But it isn't about imposing guilt on those who were born after -- more about being aware of the warning signs, and what can really happen. Only a few years after WWII ended, the Jews of the Middle East were expelled en masse. They don't complain about it though, because those that made it to Israel at least see the alternative possibility in the numbers etched on the skin of their neighbors' forearms.

Should other holocausts be taught? Yes, of course. And their causes, as an object lesson (dehumanizing hatred (Jews, Gypsies, Croats), desire to remove the entire class containing political opponents to the gov't in power,(Kulaks in Soviet Russia, bourgeoisie in Viet Nam)).

But the extermination of the Jews was the only time such a thing was undertaken by practically the entirety of the nation, and executed with factory-like precision. This wasn't one people attacking their neighbors with machetes and machine guns. The concentration camps were designed by the factory efficiency experts of Ford and IBM, among others, and with the passive acceptance of much of the world. Remember, one reason so so many died is that they had nowhere to escape to; Hitler's original plan was to strip the Jews of their wealth, then expel them to pollute (as he saw it) the territories of his enemies such as Britain and America. It was only when the other countries refused to accept the mass of German Jews that Hitler decided that extermination was his only option to achieve the necessarily Judenfrei nation he desired. He didn't even bother to try that with the Gypsies, as nobody wanted them then, as now (and so 90% of European Gypsies were murdered, and much higher percentage than that of the European Jews).

Posted by trailing wife 2005-01-20 2:01:00 PM|| 2005-01-20 2:01:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 But it isn't about imposing guilt on those who were born after -- more about being aware of the warning signs...

Exactly-many of which are springing up unchallenged today.

So much hatred has been extended towards the Jewish people-for centuries and on many different continents. This is a fact that many Muslims (and Christians as well) ignore in their arguments about the injustices done to Palestinians. Hatred towards Jews is a singular hatred that surpasses in time and scope the hatred shown towards Christians and Muslims and most other religious groups in the world.

I don't think dragging the US into the anti-Semitic camp will help much, though, TW, because so many from the "US" died making sure Hitler didn't succeed. The "US military industrial complex as a puppet of anti-Semitism" argument is one that unncessarily alienates those who fight for justice for Israel and the Jewish people today.

Posted by Jules 187 2005-01-20 2:17:25 PM|| 2005-01-20 2:17:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 I will step out onto the ice here, mindful of my embarrassing comments from yesterday. (I'll leave drunk blogging to Stephen Green in the future).

I agree with both well stated comments above. But I'm going to extend an argument that I make consistently on all subjects. There is no such thing as negative publicity.

The danger of specifically focusing on the Jewish Holocaust, and not on the unjust blame and hatred that caused it, is that it reinforces the very ideas that Hitler worked so hard to spread - Jews are different, Jews are bad, elders of zion blah, blah, blah.

Reinforcing it puts those ideas into the heads of a whole new generation that could have been blissfully unaware of them.

I think it far more beneficial - rather than to keep reinforcing the ideas that Jews are hated by many - - to keep it in context - that it's not about Jews - but about the use by tyrants and demagogues to rise to power using the demonization of "others, not me" to blame.

I understand it's not that simple - but my point is valid and it's one I make consistently. There is no such thing as negative publicity - and if you publicize that people hate Jews - you are spreading the very ideas that you wish to counter.

Posted by 2b 2005-01-20 3:07:41 PM|| 2005-01-20 3:07:41 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 meant to say all comments above - not just "both".

Posted by 2b 2005-01-20 3:21:42 PM|| 2005-01-20 3:21:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Actually, 2b, I saw 49 yesterday, and that was very sweet, drunk or not. :)

Posted by Jules 187 2005-01-20 3:28:10 PM|| 2005-01-20 3:28:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 I agree with 2b's posts, especially #1.

I think that the article shows some attitudes that are not very flattering to Jews, quite frankly. Mr. Singer's worry about "diluting" the significance of the WWII Holocaust by referring to other genocidal events is an obnoxious self-centered, self-delusional sentiment. To suggest that Jews have only been victims as well as the only victims in modern history is sad.

Even if one considers the WWII Holocaust by itself, Hitler systematically murdered 3 million Christians, primarily Catholics, in addition to 6 million Jews. Three million is not an insignificant number, and all we read in this article is about Hitler's focused hatred for the Jews. Fyi, the 3 million executed Christians vastly outnumbered the combined number of Gypsies (400,000), homosexuals and handicapped( 10,000 -15,000)killed.

In the early years, most prisoners at Auschwitz were Poles, not Jews. As historian Martin Gilbert pointed out, of the first 611 people who died at Auschwitz, 591 were Poles and 20 were Jews. In the vast body of Holocaust literature little sympathy is ever extended to those 591 victims, and the subsequent 2,999,409 Poles who followed them to their graves. Polish Nobel Prize-winner Czeslaw Milosz expressed his concern about the forgotten victims, lamenting, âwhen the meaning of the word Holocaust undergoes gradual modifications, so that the word begins to belong to the history of the Jews exclusively, as if among the victims there were not also millions of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and prisoners of other nationalities.â Echoing the sentiment, William Styron warned, âTo ignore the existence of these victims -- even if it is certain that Jews suffered more than the others -- is to minimize the Nazi horror. It is to underestimate dangerously its totalitarian dimension.â

Furthermore,has Mr. Singer ever considered the contribution of Russian communist Jews to the planning and execution of 2 digit millions of Christians prior to WWII as the Bolsheviks and Stalinists consolidated their power in Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine?

Holocausts are evil blots on human history and we should recognize evil whenever it appeared and not exercise selective memories about such atrocities. To focus only one holocaust diminishes the memory of other human beings who have lost their lives in the course of "purges." Also, not to recognize that evil exists in every sector of humanity is to be intellectually dishonest.

Posted by 2xstandard 2005-01-20 5:11:28 PM|| 2005-01-20 5:11:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 I made my initial comment with a strange purpose: not to diminish the Holocaust, but to advance what should be its lesson. To explain, let me go further back in history, to Napoleon Bonaparte. For almost a hundred years, Bonaparte was villified throughout Europe for his conquests. Indeed, many of his methods were vile, and after he was beaten there was an insistence that he be remembered and hated, even by the French, themselves. He is the second most biographed figure in human history after Jesus. Entire libraries exist with only books devoted to his life and wars. But the incredible destruction he brought to a continent has been popularly forgotten--in France he is now seen as a hero, with school teachers becoming teary-eyed when telling their students of "Le Emperor". Even though the truth is still there, in intense detail, it is ignored. Someday, I predict the same shall happen to Hitler, and the Germans will rationalize away everything they can and proclaim him "The Last Kaiser". So where does this leave the Holocaust? As a lesson to monsters like Milosevic, as to *how* to conduct "ethnic cleansing", without making the same mistakes the Nazis made? Instead, the opportunity of the Holocaust must be the literalization of the expression "Never Again!"--the internationalization of "Never Again!", for any genocide, or "ethnic cleansing". Since WWII, there have been several more "holocausts", tyrants still murdering millions because they think they can get away with it. And for a time, they are right. Only the US seems to be willing to bust up such parties, and then only in some countries. But the rest of the world is still content to "deplore", and do nothing more. To change this must become the sole goal of remembering the Holocaust. Not self pity, nor anger at the now-extinct Nazis, but outrage at the neutrality, the indifference or tacit support, given to tyrants who do such things. Only when a military division is immediately deployed to stop a genocide *at its onset*, will rememberance of the Holocaust bear great meaning.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-01-20 6:59:46 PM|| 2005-01-20 6:59:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Anon, I don't think any holocaust should get short changed in history texts nor should facts be omitted or evil people white washed for PC reasons. As I explained in post #9, I am offended by the attitude of some Jews, per the article, who seek to promote their ordeal in WW II as the worst holocaust or the only holocaust in the 20th century. That is a false presumption.

The best defense against evil "purges" is for everyone to recognize that the all people have the capacity to do evil. No group is perfect or always the only victim. Jews as well as Christians as well as Muslims all have blood on their hands with regards to purges in recent history if we look at holocausts prior to WWII, during WWII, and after WWII.

The definition of "holocaust" is an act of great destruction and loss of life. Mr. Singer would like people to believe that holocaust only applies to the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.

Posted by 2xstandard 2005-01-20 7:57:39 PM|| 2005-01-20 7:57:39 PM|| Front Page Top