How we remember Shoa and other atrocities

[in stitches]



There really aren't that many deniers, to be honest, virtually all of them are in Muslim tyrannies or soon to be tyrannies, outside those realms they have no influence at all.

Sadly, I've met two young, otherwise quite pleasant, people who doubt the Holocaust and try to minimize it. Pretty awful. A third insinuates they brought it on themselves. I mention it literally everytime I see them to try to shame them. I live in a pretty liberal town (called the "Berkeley of the South" at one point) and it's still a small sample but I wouldn't be surprised if the Holocaust gets the revisionist treatment at some point in our lives.

i have had similar experiences to FLMM, sadly. the deniers may be the minority, but there are some very vocal ones, and in some pretty well thought of american academic circles.

I agree.
My kids' school, which is a Jewish School but pointedly NOT a Yeshivah Day School is really into the Holocaust and has all sorts of programming about it. I am mostly uninterested in the Holocaust. Horrified, but uninterested. My wife is more connected because her father was a survivor and she grew up around lots of survivors. She takes my kids to an all night "reading of the names" of the murdered (it is staggering, they can only cover one region or large city a year).

i would not say that i am uninterested, but i think that in some cases, the way it is addressed, and how it is framed, is not something i agree with.

If it makes you feel better, I was using the word in the academic sense - an important, shared story that binds a group together and gives it identity. In that context, historical truth or non-truth is really irrelevant. What matters is that the story is shared and used to create identity.
re the Inquisition, think how much the trauma of the murders during the Crusades has passed. Do you ever get upset about it? Yet it was so horrific that memories of it entered the liturgy in many places, even the Kin'os. That is barely happening yet, if at all, for the Holocaust (in the Orthodox community(.

yes, that makes me feel better.

when i read about it, yes i get quite upset about it. same for the pogroms. particularly chmelniki (sp?) and how his legacy is viewed. but it is certainly not something on the forefront of my mind, or even something that comes up, nearly as often as the holocaust. surely time lapse is the major contributing factor.

 

[dopey]

Ooo

 

[globetrotter]

1. I have met a lot of "deniers", mostly arabs and muslims, a couple of germans, and a few others.
2. what pisses me off a lot more are the ones that fully believe that something happened, but completly minimalize it. I am convinced that a lot of well educated americans and westerners fall into this catagory.
3. I find the whole thing interesting in two ways - as a jew, and frankly just the whole idea of how the german people, who were so civillized in 1900, did such an incredible ******* barbaric thing a generation later. that to me is fascinating.
4. I can see what manton means about jews who are concenred about the world, but I can see there point, too. I firmly believe that **** will happen again, and that we are fools to ignore it. it might not happen for 300 years, but **** will happen again to the jews. that doesn't mean one has to be disloyal to the state, but it does mean that one has to be careful.

 

[in stitches]

good points GT. have you ever read the book, hitlers willing executioners?

 

[acidboy]

great thread guys! shoa's have a gripping effect on me, and whenever I get the chance to watch, read stuff on this I do.

sadly, I don't think this part of the world are, uhm, familiar with this other than perhaps they watched schindler's list or some documentary on nat geo channel. and the atrocities made by the japanese at the same time weren't really dealt with the same fervor.

what gt said about "**** will happen again" fascinates me. please explain why you think that, z?

 

[lasbar]

Pogroms have been around for centuries and Jews have been expelled from many countries since the 15th century...

There was a strong animosity in the Christian world due to the belief they sold Jesus Christ to the Romans..

They were also lending a lot of money to Kings and nobility who were more than keen to get rid of them (Spain for example)...

Jews have been perceived as outsiders ,living on the fringes of Western society and political spheres were quickly to see them as scapegoats for monetary and political gains.

Tsarist Russia had terrible pogroms for centuries and many Eastern European countries ostracized them...

In Western Europe , such ultra nationalistic Catholics spheres were extremely antisemitic and very keen to develop propaganda against them .

Poland,Ukraine , Hungary ,the Baltic states were also bedrocks of antisemitism during WWII willingly helping the Germans in local massacres..

In the States, antisemitism was always very strong ...

Holocaust deniers are a fringe but their dogmas have been quite popular recently with younger generations with the rise of nationalistic views...

Are the Arabs the new Jews?

That's the question..

 

[globetrotter]



good points GT. have you ever read the book, hitlers willing executioners?

yes, there is a 3 book series about the 3rd riech that is fascinating, called, I believe, the coming of the 3rd riech, the 3rd riech in power and the 3rd riech in war. those are great books. firstly, people like to talk about how it was the "nazis" - bullshit, the german people did some horrific, unbelievable things. even taking the jews out of the equation, the german people were killing thier old people, their handicaped people, their handicaped kids before the first run of jews were being killed systemicaly. everyone was ******* involved or knew what was going on.

what gt said about "**** will happen again" fascinates me. please explain why you think that, z?

the shoa is about the worst thing that has happened to the jews, but there have been dozens of cases where the jews have been targeted over the years. in every case for different reasons - they didn't assimilate, they tried to hard to assimilate, they were too close to the leaders, they weren't close enough to the leaders, they were too religious, they weren't religious enough, they killed jesus, they pissed off mohamed.

remember, history cycles - much of the world is secular and liberal today, that doesn't mean it will be in 300 years. the jews were welcomed into poland with open arms to help modernize the country, and then poles begged the germans to let them kill the jews themselves 200 years later. the arabs talk about how great it was to be a jew under the arabs, but pograms and humiliations were the norm for much of that period.

my maternal grandfathers family was completly wiped out. he came to canada in 1930, worked and sent tickets to his family to come. they sold the tickets, because they were so comfortable in poland. my mother has a letter from her grandmother discribing how she had to dig graves and bury her (adult) children because they were shot near her house, probably by a german reserve unit. days later she, herself was killed. none of my grandfathers family made it out. they had served in the army, they had been good citizens, they were educated and relativly secular. they assumed that they were safe.

in general, I think its silly to assume that the US will last forever in the shape it is. when the intelectual and commercial leadership outsources defense to a miolitary caste, the system can't last indefinatly.

it would be irrisponsible to think that it won't happen again.

 

[globetrotter]



Are the Arabs the new Jews?
That's the question..

99% of the worlds muslims live in countries with a muslim majoirty, so that would be a silly question.

 

[acidboy]

thanks, guys. very enlightening..

 

[FLMountainMan]



In the States, antisemitism was always very strong .....

Relative to whom? Canada? Anzac?

And great examples, but I would point out that pogroms have been going on since well before the 15th century.

 

[M. Bardamu]

As a Canadian, I'm still ashamed of my country's role in the SS St. Louis debacle. I can understand why EL72 would feel the way he does.

 

[in stitches]



the shoa is about the worst thing that has happened to the jews, but there have been dozens of cases where the jews have been targeted over the years. in every case for different reasons - they didn't assimilate, they tried to hard to assimilate, they were too close to the leaders, they weren't close enough to the leaders, they were too religious, they weren't religious enough, they killed jesus, they pissed off mohamed.
remember, history cycles - much of the world is secular and liberal today, that doesn't mean it will be in 300 years. the jews were welcomed into poland with open arms to help modernize the country, and then poles begged the germans to let them kill the jews themselves 200 years later. the arabs talk about how great it was to be a jew under the arabs, but pograms and humiliations were the norm for much of that period.
my maternal grandfathers family was completly wiped out. he came to canada in 1930, worked and sent tickets to his family to come. they sold the tickets, because they were so comfortable in poland. my mother has a letter from her grandmother discribing how she had to dig graves and bury her (adult) children because they were shot near her house, probably by a german reserve unit. days later she, herself was killed. none of my grandfathers family made it out. they had served in the army, they had been good citizens, they were educated and relativly secular. they assumed that they were safe.
in general, I think its silly to assume that the US will last forever in the shape it is. when the intelectual and commercial leadership outsources defense to a miolitary caste, the system can't last indefinatly.
it would be irrisponsible to think that it won't happen again.

scary to think about, even scarier how true this all is.

 

[Eason]



Are the Arabs the new Jews?
That's the question..

Arabs? You mean muslims? People in the ME? Nope because there are like a billion of them and they ******* kill anything that smells like they don't like it. The Jews were a docile bunch, and except for the Israelis, still are.

 

[in stitches]



Arabs? You mean muslims? People in the ME? Nope because there are like a billion of them and they ******* kill anything that smells like they don't like it. The Jews were a docile bunch, and except for the Israelis, still are.

yeah, i do not get the comparison at all.

 

[dfagdfsh]

There are actually a lot of Holocaust deniers in the west. While they don't deny that there was a genocide, they argue that the scope of it was very small (100,000 Jews or so), and that the majority of Germans had no knowledge or involvement in it. That being said, I don't really favor the European restrictions on Holocaust-denial: even though I find it abhorrent, I don't think it's a crime.

From a historical perspective, I've always found it interesting at how many people really shy away from exploring the extent to which most Germans knew of, and participated in the Holocaust. I'm not defending the Goldhagen thesis, but there seems a continual reluctance by all parties to really explore who exactly knew what and what they could've done. I think this will probably happen in the next 10 to 20 years, as the last of the people who were personally involved die off.