Recently there was a thread on Dave Farber’s Interesting People list concerning a report (later shown to be false) former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had said something minimizing the Holocaust. I responded. The item was not posted to the list, so you get it. (Lucky you.)
I’m not a Holocaust denier, but is it wrong to state that some people
under-estimate and mis-read the lessons of the Holocaust? (The image is from Holocaust-History.Org.)
Some 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust, most in the last few years of
the war, as part of the Final Solution. This is undeniable.
But so did untold numbers of gypsies. And gays. Communists. Slavs. Even
Catholics. As well as other perceived "enemies of the state."
There was a Jewish Holocaust, but it was part of a larger, uglier whole. Not
just in the Europe of the 1940s, but in the Asia of that time as well.
More important, when we say "never again," let us be clear about what we
should mean.
We should not mean, "never to Jews again." We should mean "never to anyone again." (Picture by Claire McEvoy for the Village Voice.)
Yet right now there is a Holocaust of similar motive, even similar size,
happening. Right now. In Darfur. Before that it was Bosnia. Before that
Rwanda. Before that Cambodia.
Mass murder, sponsored by the state, is far from unknown in our world.
Never again? What if we just stopped the Holocausts happening NOW?
The 20th century teaches this lesson above all others. Anyone can be a Nazi. Anyone can be the Jew. We are not chosen for these roles. Killing chooses them for us.
