We Must Never Forget: Remembering the Holocaust

[lemit]

Alexander,

We are not talking about wartime events. Kristallnacht was not a by-product of war. The definition of the Holocaust includes the imprisonment of innocent people as early as 1933: Concentration Camps, 1933-1939.

It is too easy for us now to start to develop intellectual arguments about who was right and who was wrong in WWII. There have indeed been some unfortunate results: total-war victors tend to be arrogant. Soldiers who saw what the soldiers entering Germany in 1945 saw had trouble being humane. But that, again, is not a discussion of the Holocaust. That is WWII. The Holocaust, which began earlier, would have been worse if not for WWII.

Thank you for illustrating the danger of forgetting.

(I wrote and deleted much more. It is sometimes hard to maintain focus, but there is still work to be done.)

--lemit

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by lemit

I am an American of German descent, so I have some of the genetic responsibility and some of the genetic guilt for the Holocaust. In third-year college German, I discovered the post-war German authors and became caught up in their dilemna: how do you live with your sense of shame? How do you sleep, or eat, or breathe when you know you are part of a group that deprived many other groups of those privileges? (Yes, privileges is what you thought they were for those other groups, so that is what you must think they are for you.) And how do you make sure the world never forgets that you yourself are evil?

What balderdash
There is no such thing as genetic guilt.
There has been genocide on a regular basis though Human history. The Germans just did it efficiently keeping detailed records and to a very powerful group/religion.
who mournes for the gypsies and other minorities, the disabled and mentally ill he killed. tThe tousands of young men killed in both wars 1&2 by our insanity. Have you read what happened to German troops at Stalingrad?

What about the

• Spanish and European annihilation of maybe 100 million natives in N and s. America.
• Slavery
• the inquision
• Salem
• The countless thousands of aborigines killed by the British invaders of Australia.
• the Armenians
• The Japanese in China in 1930's
• Pol Pot
• Africa 10 to the power of what 30?
• Russia today with some minorities.
• The Chinese in Tibet.
• N. Korea playing brinkmanship with nuclear weapons
• Israel and the Palestinians?

.

We need to remember that scratch us all and there is a racist underneath.
We are deigned for group membership and behaviour, protection of that group and rejection of difference. Something we need to re-programme by education and social and economic and legal means.

We are not forgetting the past that is why footballers were sacked and or fined this week in Australia because they made racial slurs in a professional football game. Surely a long used football psychological tactic. Any racism must be nipped in the bud.

Get a life. Individual Germans can't feel solely responsible for the holocaust--that way madness lies. We are all responsible not just the Germans. No, we should never forget, nor should we dwell on it and see it as our own personal racial heritage.

[pamela]

my dear lemit, i can see that you feel deeply and have a great love for humanity. Very admirable indeed. You however, should not be bearing any guilt in this.Now i may share some genes with the Mafioso, but does that make me a mobster? of course not. i could never bring myself to to commit these type of actions much less have the thought enter my mind. We are individuals. And as individuals each one has the choice whether or not to indulge in group think or allow ourselves to be swayed by it. You cannot chain yourself to the "sins" of your forefathers, it is not fair to you. This type of thinking is common in a few religions that i am familiar with. And it is this thinking that would strip the very heart of you and leave you cold, destitute and broken. Not so disimilar than those who have survived the likes of Bergen-Belsen

[modest]

Originally Posted by lemit

We are not talking about wartime events. Kristallnacht was not a by-product of war. The definition of the Holocaust includes the imprisonment of innocent people as early as 1933: Concentration Camps, 1933-1939.

The Soviet holocaust also started pre-WWII and cannot be considered a consequence of war.

~modest

[lemit]

Originally Posted by modest

The Soviet holocaust also started pre-WWII and cannot be considered a consequence of war.

~modest

Yes, the Pogroms are often overlooked, and are not in my area of study for that matter. But they are of the same period and possibly of the same racial identity movement. I don't know. The main thing I do know about Russian history is that it is richly textured and often volatile. I have spent too many nights drinking with friends who are experts on Russian history and being corrected pretty much every time I said anything. Without knowing which sources to trust, I won't barge into it.

Any help?

Thanks.

--lemit

[lemit]

The shooting today at The Holocaust Museum is a reminder why we need to remember the Holocaust. There are many people who want to remember it because they think it was the right thing to do.

The rest of us have to remember so we can isolate and defeat those who remember for the wrong reason.

--lemit

[enorbet2]

Lemit I have a direct connection to the Holocaust and I'm hoping I can give you some words that in pondering may help you release yourself from the poison of undeserved guilt while encouraging your underlying drive to try to insure such never happens again, even while it is going on right now, somewhere,

My connection is an odd one. While in elementary and junior high school Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley were heroes to me since I was fascinated with flight, especially Space Flight. In High School this continued and expanded when I began to see WWII through flight technology eyes and held great respect for the ME-262 and other firsts in progressive, even breakthrough aircraft design. As is often the case for the young, possibly even especially young males, looking for a suitable path and view of the world I even wondered if such a black and white approach to the world wasn't correct given such monumental achievements. That sense was short-lived for a couple reasons.

I first read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" as a sophomore in High School and in the early pages became appalled at how the Treaty of Versaille sought to punish the German people to a degree that seemed like slow murder. For a time I despised the Weimar Republic. I said so to my Father who had fought in WWII and who was horrified by my views.

Then two things happened in quick succession. I got to the second half of the book and began to question what I had concluded in the first half and immediately got "Mein Kampf" from the library. The more I read the more complicated and conflicting it seemed. How was it possible for both greatness and monstrosity to exist in one man? Remember I was young and fairly innocent. It was then that my Father told me that he'd marched into two camps and had seen with his own eyes the bodies stacked like cordwood, the mass graves, those walking skeletons with haunted eyes and the nearby townspeople in abject denial.

It was also then that I learned that while my Grandfather was Irish Catholic, my Grandmother, possibly the single most important person in my life, came from a Jewish family and I was shown the documentation of some 30 distant relatives who had been murdered in camps in 3 countries. Obviously my viewpoint did an "about face!". However it only took a little more History and life experience to realize that all men have both "angels and demons" inside so I never came to blame the German people any more than those Jews that failed to see the writing on the wall and leave. I even learned that the two greatest "justifications" for the Holocaust for Hitler, Himmler and the rest came from the reaction, or lack of it to the Armenian Genocide and, of all things, Darwin! They bent the Theory of Evolution to their own means as Social Determinism so we can't blame Darwin. We can however blame the world community that ignored the Armenian Genocide since that crime was at least as bad as that of the original perpetrators.

So yes we can't forget or let such things slide but there is no benefit after the fact to the blame game. The greatest tool or weapon is education and political involvement, Write a book. Make a film. Write a government official or 10 and express your concern that such things get glossed over, or paid no more than lip service. Write to the Vatican protesting the reinstating of the group of Nazi sympathizers who had previously been excommunicated if you think that is proper. Teach your children and your grand children of what you have experienced as my Father and Grandparents did for me. Just please learn to expurgate the guilt. It is as surely poisonous as Zyklon-B and serves you no good purpose, IMHO.
Promote Peace, friend, in yourself first

[lemit]

Well, a few weeks ago I got a lot of help in getting people to remember the Holocaust. That memory seems to be waning now, so I guess it's time to go back to work.

The postwar German authors are remarkable to me because they see devastation everywhere and see the possibility of their own responsibility for that devastation. Their response is to be the first voices of postwar Germany and the beginning of a theme all German school children were taught: "We must never forget."

Alexander, thank you for the family history. Don't feel bad about the difficulty in remembering. That's what family history is. That's cultural transmission. That's what I want here.

James von Brunn is an illustration of the problem the postwar German authors wanted to preclude. They thought (naively) that if the world never forgot the Holocaust, maybe the world wouldn't be tempted to repeat it. The world has shown its ability to ignore them many times, in Cambodia, Bosnia, Darfur, and all the places I'd like Hypographers to help me help other people to remember.

It is only by continuing the debate that we will continue to raise the level of discomfort with events like the Holocaust. We should never feel comfort after such an event. All the thorns in our sides serve their purposes.

So thank you Alexander, for your story and your challenge. They are both part of the intricate fabric we need to weave as long as we are capable. There are so many whose memory needs to be preserved.

--lemit

[GAHD]

We forget too soon, to often.

I see lots of talk about WW2, but rarely how concentration camps were used by Canada, the USA, etc... It's always the Germans prosecuting the Jews, no one cares to speak of the Japanese and Chinese in north america and how they were treated.

Kosovo had some horrible things happen not too long ago, infact I went to school with some of the refugees who came to Canada. Rare is the day I see someone talking about recent and relevant events of this nature, and that I think is where our focus needs to be; not on something that happened generations in the past.

[alexander]

Gahd, i am on your side, though i have to say, remembering even the recent past can just be so depressing...

But, you know, one thing i learned from my great grand mother, my grandfather, and other people who remember a lot of what happened? Actually I'll sum it up in an old russian saying, "Кто старое помянет, тому глаз вон" (approximately, "who recalls the old, shall pay with his eye" (obviously this drives from the tzarist russia and the punishments)) And, I think the saying is very good at saying that we should be looking at the problems today, not recalling and replaying the past. Though to be fair there is the second part of that saying "а кто забудет, тому оба" (approximately, "and who forgets, will pay with both") The whole point of the saying is, remember, but don't get stuck in it, learn from the past.

I dunno, there are just so many things we would have to remember, so many people killed for so many different reasons, all regions of the world, many nations, it's depressing just thinking about it...