Martin Fletcher: Honoring victims of genocide, a universal need
[Fletcher is the Tel Aviv bureau chief for NBC News.]
The blog I posted last week "Holocaust survivors always 'survivors'" provoked so many interesting -- and contradictory -- comments that I’d like to respond.
Many readers shared memories, others sympathy, but a surprising number either denied the Holocaust ever happened or basically took the line: You weren’t the only ones, and stop whining already!
Now there’s nothing new about that. Martin Gilbert, the historian and Churchill’s official biographer, noted that in 1942 a British Member of Parliament stood in the House of Commons, and in response to growing rumors of the slaughter of Jews in Nazi concentration camps, complained about "those whining Jews."
Clearly genocide has not only targeted Jews, yet some readers raise the question, why do the Jews uniquely make such a meal out of it? Why can’t they get over it?
Personally I think it’s a stupid question, but since it appears to be a frequent one, I will try to give an answer.
The way I see it, remembering, and honoring the victims of genocide, is not a Jewish thing, it is a universal need.
'Never forget'
On a hill on the edge of Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is a squat concrete building that will tear your heart out. It contains photographs of victims, as well as the tools of their murder, and is built on the tombs of thousands of slaughtered Tutsis. When the Rwandan government wanted to build its own memorial to its 800,000 dead, it came to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust in Jerusalem, for advice.
And the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh is just one of many memorials in Cambodia that consists mostly of smashed skulls, a fraction of the million to two million killed by the Khmer Rouge during their deadly regime.
Nobody wants to forget, despite the efforts of perpetrators, their sympathizers and the ignorant. Why is the pain of Armenians still so fresh? Because Turkey still will not admit that it slaughtered a million Armenians early last century. Turkey still insists they were victims of war, and that only a fraction of that number really died....
Read entire article at MSNBC
The blog I posted last week "Holocaust survivors always 'survivors'" provoked so many interesting -- and contradictory -- comments that I’d like to respond.
Many readers shared memories, others sympathy, but a surprising number either denied the Holocaust ever happened or basically took the line: You weren’t the only ones, and stop whining already!
Now there’s nothing new about that. Martin Gilbert, the historian and Churchill’s official biographer, noted that in 1942 a British Member of Parliament stood in the House of Commons, and in response to growing rumors of the slaughter of Jews in Nazi concentration camps, complained about "those whining Jews."
Clearly genocide has not only targeted Jews, yet some readers raise the question, why do the Jews uniquely make such a meal out of it? Why can’t they get over it?
Personally I think it’s a stupid question, but since it appears to be a frequent one, I will try to give an answer.
The way I see it, remembering, and honoring the victims of genocide, is not a Jewish thing, it is a universal need.
'Never forget'
On a hill on the edge of Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is a squat concrete building that will tear your heart out. It contains photographs of victims, as well as the tools of their murder, and is built on the tombs of thousands of slaughtered Tutsis. When the Rwandan government wanted to build its own memorial to its 800,000 dead, it came to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust in Jerusalem, for advice.
And the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh is just one of many memorials in Cambodia that consists mostly of smashed skulls, a fraction of the million to two million killed by the Khmer Rouge during their deadly regime.
Nobody wants to forget, despite the efforts of perpetrators, their sympathizers and the ignorant. Why is the pain of Armenians still so fresh? Because Turkey still will not admit that it slaughtered a million Armenians early last century. Turkey still insists they were victims of war, and that only a fraction of that number really died....