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Jan. 21, 2005 A week or so ago, I wrote a piece asking you to remember on this Holocaust Day both the Jews and non-Jews who perished. It seemed straight forward enough to me - 11 million people died in the death camps or were exterminated by death squads - 6 million Jews and 5 million of other creeds. Holocaust Day is intended to remember them all. One person emailed me over the article. I tried to get her to write something for Useless Knowledge, to let us all know how she felt, but she seems to have refused. So I will print our email exchange as it happened. The gist of what she was saying is that the Holocaust belongs only to the Jews and that the 'Final Solution' as applied to Gypsies or Sinta or homosexuals or Jehovah's Witnesses was somehow different Elli: Yom Hashoa does not commemorate the Warsaw ghetto uprising; that day is April 19. Yom Hashoa,as commemorated by certain countries, marks the day Auschwitz was liberated. Yom Hashoa in Israel is fixed by a Hebrew date that has no particular significance, except it is in the same month as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (which took place 12 days earlier on the Hebrew calendar) Eric: Thanks for that - I know nothing about Jewish festivals. I took the quote from a Jewish religious site.... Still, it is a shame that remembering the Holocaust has come to mean remembering only its Jewish victims. There were so many others as well. Elli: Remembering the Holocaust means only its Jewish victims. That's what the word is referring to. It doesn't discount the other victims, it just notes the singularity of the Nazi war against the Jews. Eric: I am surprised at your answer. So the world is meant to have a special day only for Jewish victims? And ignore the rest? Or are you proposing another day for non-Jews? Please - write what you feel on Useless Knowledge so we can all understand what you are getting at. By- the-way, in many (most?) countries the day is for all the victims, but the because of the publicity surrounding the Jewish victims, they tend to forget the rest. In Poland they are careful to remember all victims and especially the 6 million Poles of all creeds. Please write that article. Elli: It would take too long to write, but let me say this to you, as a Jew, an American and an Israeli: it doesn't make a difference to me if the world has a Holocaust memorial day - more appropriately, Shoah, the Hebrew word that is also used by the pope - because the world will forget it in 50 years no matter if they have memorial days or not. The other victims should be remembered, absolutely, though they too will be forgotten. Do we remember the dead of WWI? How much so? How about the dead of the Spanish- American war? The Boer war? History is filled with war dead, and we could have a memorial every day of the year for every war in history. The point is only that the Shoah was a singular event, specifically, the "final solution". THAT history never saw before. And that singularity is, to me, what the word "Holocaust" represents, which is why remembering all dead at the same time dilutes its meaning. So a separate memorial day would be more appropriate, but again, all will be forgotten in 50 years. Eric: I was in a little village in southern Slovakia where they remembered their dead from the Holocaust on a memorial plaque. Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses together. What mattered to them was that they were people from the village - not this sort of people or that sort. They were people and they had been taken from the village and killed. I utterly reject any distinction between dead Jews and dead Gypsies or labour leaders or homosexuals. They were all murdered by the same system. To set aside a day to remember only 55% of the victims is to support (in a small way) the same concept that Hitler had - Jews are different from other people and should be treated differently. That is racist. Permit me to criticise you; you have an concept but you refuse to share it because "it would take too long to write"? That is unworthy. Either your concept has a validity that is not widely recognised and should be explained, or that concept is flawed and you are afraid to look at it closely. Please take the time to put 200 words together. Elli: That's exactly what I was trying to tell you - it wasn't the same system. The "final solution" was a system only about Jews. ------------ About the author: Eric lives in tropical Queensland and writes books - some naughty, some nice - that can be found through Renaissance eBooks (renebooks.com) He reads widely and when he is not thinking about lunch, worries about the state of the world. Email: ericge@westnet.com.au Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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