The Times says this front-page report by Nicholas Kulish about murderous attacks on Gypsies, or Roma people, in Hungary is the paper's second-most-emailed story. As well it should be. Attacks on Gypsies recall the Holocaust, when as many as 600,000 Roma were exterminated by the Nazis.
As Isabel Fonseca and Norman Finkelsteinhave demonstrated, the Holocaust Memorial/Elie Wiesel had trouble making room for the Gypsy victims of the Holocaust. Per Finkelstein, one memorial official said the idea was "cockamamie." (In Night, Wiesel said Roma attacked his dying father in Auschwitz.) Daniel Goldhagen's book on the Holocaust all but completely leaves out the Roma.
I have a sense Jewish official attitudes are improving (Mitchell Bard's virtual library seems to honor the Roma experience). The Holocaust Memorial states:
The fate of Roma in some ways paralleled that of the Jews.
Now when the Roma are facing pogroms and terror in eastern Europe, Jewish groups should express solidarity with their fellow-victims, and be in the forefront of condemning the violence.
I doubt the Roma want public sympathy from Jewish groups. The Zionists and Neocons/Neolibs have (deliberately) made organized Jewry so increasingly verboten, such recognition would likely make the attacks worse. In fact, I’ve got to wonder if populist rage against Zionist abuses is feeding the atmosphere of intolerance. Other minorities might want to distance themselves from the Zionists, as well. Zionists are racists anyway, so why should other minorities want to make common cause?
Maybe other minority groups should have a litmus test: we'll only make common cause with Jewish groups that have forsaken Zionism. Accepting help from Jewish supporters of Zionism is merely a short term infusion in exchange for the betrayal of other minorities elsewhere, hence a cynical betrayal of conscience in the name of comfort and expedience. We already get too much of that out of Washington.
Holocaust ®
I read an anecdote on this (I believe it was in the online resource "When Victims Rule.").
Jewish historian Hannah Arendt was speaking at a mixed community center about the plight of Gypsies and others in the Holocaust death camps. She said many elderly Jews in attendance came up afterword to chastise her for the inclusion of the non-Jewish victims in this forum. She said they understood what she said was accurate, but the rule of thumb for such observations was, "not in front of the Goyim."
Some thoughts on what it took to get included:
from: http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/18holo2.htm
With Elie Wiesel originally at the helm of the museum planning commission, despite a number of requisite feints towards democratic universalism and the inclusion of non-Jewish victims of Nazis commemorated at the site, the edifice is Jewish in conception, attitude, focus, control, and funding. One Jew present at a planning conference became "almost hysterical" at the thought of having Polish [non-Jewish] victims represented with Jews. [MILLER, p. 257] On February 13, 1991, at a museum committee meeting where the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks in 1915 was being discussed for possible inclusion in the Holocaust Museum, "a prominent [Jewish Holocaust] survivor and council representative lost control and screamed [at the Museum Director], 'ordering' him not to mention Armenians in his presence again." [LINENTHAL, p. 234] An early planning report for the Museum, warned advisor Seymour Bolten, could be understood as "patronizing and condescending toward the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust — particularly Polish-Americans." [LINENTHAL, p. 40] "Despite the overwhelming amount of documentation relating to the fate of the gypsies in Nazi Germany," says Ian Hancock (himself of Gypsy descent), "which has been examined during the fourteen years the United States Holocaust Memorial Council has been in existence, that body, more than any other, rigorously persists in underestimating and under representing that truth." [HANCOCK, p. 40] What is this Holocaust museum's essential perspective? "People had to grow," the Museum Director, Michael Berenbaum, told Newsday, "Jews had to learn to be sensitive to non-Jewish victims and they, in turn, had to learn to be sensitive to the uniqueness of the Jewish experience." [HANCOCK, p. 41]
RE: "Now when the Roma are facing pogroms and terror in eastern Europe, Jewish groups should express solidarity with their fellow-victims, and be in the forefront of condemning the violence."
MY COMMENT: And the rest of us need to protest these pogroms as well!
My grandfather was a Polish Sinti. (My other grandfather was Jewish).
Mengle used Roma for his "experiments".
One of my favorite stories is about a Jewish resistance leader in one of the concentration camps (can't remember which one right now – I think this story is in Hilberg's or Lifton's book), and he along with a few other friends managed to escape. He then took the name of a Romany friend he had made in the camp who was murdered.
When people asked him why, he said it was because while his fellow Jews who survived would make sure the world would never forget the holocaust against the Jews (which I agree with, but not in the way it has been grotesquely politicized and exceptionalized to the detriment of the suffering of others), he took his friend's name because he knew the world would forget what happened to the Roma. It was his modest (but to me heroic) way of showing remembrance and to memorialize what happened to the Roma in WWII.
I really appreciate the research and detailed reports of the European Roma Rights Centre (people should go there for more info if they are interested in this topic), but I remember a few years back when one of their directors expressed solidarity with Israel, and I blanched. Unfortunately, the treatment of Gypsy communities in the Middle East is not good, so I am afraid this has hurt what should be a natural solidarity with the Palestinians (like they have with many Native American and indigenous rights activists in other countries).
But Palestinian director Michel Khleifi made a nice film, "Tale of Three Jewels", starring Muhammad Bakri, which centered around a Gypsy boy in Gaza and his father. It was a sensitive treatment.
The references are found in the main index of the link provided (navigation at the bottom).
Hancock, Ian. Responses to the Romani Holocaust. in Rosenbaum, p. 39-64
Linenthal, Edward T. Preserving Memory. The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum. Viking, NY, 1995
The Miller citation could be any one of these:
Miller, Alan C.; and Morris, Dwight. Political Gold Rush in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1992, p. A1
Miller, Eric. Up-and-Comer Down and Out for Swindles. Arizona Republic, June 22, 1997, p. A1
Miller, Jack; Editor. Jews in Soviet Culture. Transaction Books; New Brunswick, USA and London, UK, 1984
Miller, John. Talking with Terror's Banker, ABC News, June 9, 1998 [abcnews.go.com/sections/world/dailynews/terror_980609.html]
Miller, John J. The Unmaking of Americans. How Multiculturalism Has Undermined the Assimilation Ethic. The Free Press, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore, 1998
Miller, Judith. One, by One, by One. Facing the Holocaust. Simon and Schuster, NY, London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, 1991.
Miller, Judith. UJA Nominates a Chief with Links to Cigarettes. New York Times, May 7, 1997, p. B3
Miller, Lisa. Titans of Industry Join Forces for Jewish Philanthropy. Wall Street Journal, May 4, 1998, B1
Miller, Marjorie. Israel Rejects Citizenship Claims of U.S. Teenager. Los Angeles Times, Oct. 20, 1997, A:4
Miller, Randall M.; Edited by. The Kaleidescopic Lens. How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups. Jerome S. Ozer, Publisher, Englewood, New Jersey, 1980
http://jewsagainstzionism.com/news/currentarticle.cfm?id=167
Netanyahu: We Will Prevent Second Holocaust
AP
Apr 22, 2009
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday not to allow Holocaust deniers the chance to carry out a second Holocaust against the Jewish people.
He spoke at the ceremony marking Israel's annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, but the event fell under the shadow of a U.N. anti-racisim conference in Geneva perceived in Israel as anti-Semitic.
Netanyahu criticized the president of Switzerland for meeting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the conference. Netanyahu said the Iranian leader, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, has denied the existence of the Holocaust.
"We will not allow the Holocaust deniers to carry out another Holocaust against the Jewish people. This is the supreme duty of the state of Israel. This is my supreme duty as prime minister of Israel," Netanyahu said, speaking at Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial and study center.
Earlier Monday at the conference in Geneva, the Iranian president accused Israel of being the "most cruel and repressive racist regime" and the West of using the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians. His comments prompted European diplomats to walk out of the conference.
Israeli President Shimon Peres slammed Israel's detractors for the anti-Semitic overtones that emanate from their criticism of Jerusalem's policy.
"Criticism of the Jewish State is also tinged with chilling anti-Semitism," Peres said. "Among those who collaborated with the Nazis, and those who stood by and let the Holocaust happen, there are those who criticize the one state that rose to grant refuge to Holocaust survivors. The one state that will prevent another Holocaust."
TRUE TORAH JEWS:
Netanyahu and Peres pretend to be leaders and spokesmen of the Jewish people, but we are not fooled by their arrogant rhetoric. They and their state, they say, will prevent another Holocaust. Actually, their strategy is to use the Jewish people and the Holocaust to further their own political goals. The Jewish people cannot not be saved or protected by those who have another agenda, which they place higher than the survival of the Jewish people. Those who know the history of the Holocaust know that that the Zionists did nothing to help the Jews escape from Europe at the time, and actually worked to prevent Jews from escaping to any land except Palestine.
Far from protecting Jews, Zionism puts Jews in danger by concentrating them all in a small corner of the world where they are surrounded by enemies. They then proclaim themselves saviors and protectors of their Jews, and undertake military actions with the pretext of protecting them. Actually these actions only serve to provoke their enemies further and place Jews around the world in danger.
The AP reports in the same article quoted above: “In its annual report on anti-Semitism, The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University found that anti-Jewish incidents dropped 11 percent in 2008, including 560 cases of violence, compared to 632 in 2007.
But Israel's military offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip reversed the trend. The researchers estimated that there were 1,000 incidents during January, more than 10 times the number in January 2008.
The study counted both violent incidents and verbal and visual expressions and said that 90 of the January incidents fit the violent category, three times the number of the previous January. While violent attacks dipped in February and March, verbal and visual anti-Israel and anti-Jewish expressions had not subsided.”
The lessons of all this should be clear: Only someone who has the Jews’ best interest at heart and no other agenda has the right to say that he is protecting Jews. And the only path to safety is for Jews to reject Zionism and to make that rejection known to the world.
How wise were the words of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, spoken at a gathering of American rabbis and congregations in 1961: “I remember fifty or sixty years ago, many famous rabbis said that after all the Zionists did to undermine Jewish-gentile relations, it would be a miracle if destruction did not come upon the Jews of Europe… It is a serious danger to the Jewish people if we point to those who do not keep the Torah and deny G-d and call them the leaders of the Jewish people. All the nations are thereby misled to think that they speak in the name of Jewry, and thus they are transformed into anti-Semites. And really, if it were possible, even at the risk of our lives, to let the nations of the world know that these wicked men are not the representatives of the Jewish people, and that observant Jews have no connection with them, it would be one of the biggest religious obligations to do so.”
"However, they have been kept so undereducated it is no wonder that they make stupid decisions, in between drinks, of course"
Zio-caine, running all round my brain!
They say ziocaine's for horses, not for men,
They tell me it'll kill me, but they won't say when.
Zio-caine, runnin' all round my brain.
Hey, Chris, you ever think of going into public relations work? I bet you would clean up. At winning friends and influencing people you are a regul;ar mayven!
As far as I know, it is not Jews who are attacking Roma. So the majority should stand up against these attacks which are indeed reminiscent to what happened to Jewish people and Roma before WWII.
"Experts on Roma issues describe an ever more aggressive atmosphere toward Roma in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, led by extreme right-wing parties, whose leaders are playing on old stereotypes of Roma as petty criminals and drains on social welfare systems at a time of rising economic and political turmoil.As unemployment rises, officials and Roma experts fear the attacks will only intensify."
In the US, the target group for such stereotypes are recent immigrants.
A month ago, I read the third volume of Richard Evans's history of the Third Reich, The Third Reich at War, which was recently published. He describes in great detail what was done to the Gypsies by the Nazis, but then he denies that what was done was a true genocide, on the basis of some quibble that was so silly I don't even remember what it was.
The Holocaust is about Jews, it doesn't cover the other 5.6 million victims of the camps. Basta.
"Pogroms!?" You gotta be kidding me. The Roma are among the dregs of society in Europe. They are the most violent and threatening. The numbers they kill per year, would make for a triple pogrom against Europeans. You want to have your walet stolen or threatened with a knife – best bet is a gypsy…and then a pole.
Pure BS the New York times piece.
As for yourself, you always need a mission eh? Now your going to protect the gypsies that you know absolutely nothing, I mean NOTHING, about. What does that give you, a purpose in life?
Shows intelligence – you read one article, and you've got the truth and bang, here you are posting for "solidarity". I hope this doesn't reveal too much about your incessant attacks on Zionists and Jews, and Israel. If its based on equally superficial knowledge of the conflict, then I pity the anti-Zionist left. Same goes for the commentators, who are incapable of reading a source, and apply some critical thinking.