A good NY Times story says the Steven-Spielberg-initiated Shoah Foundation in southern California has broadened its focus to include other victims of genocide, notably Rwandans. And there have been demurrals. Ian Lovett writes:
Menachem Z. Rosensaft, a vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants who also teaches about law and genocide at Columbia Law School, said ….“My concern would be that we not blur the individual experiences of survivors of the Holocaust, or survivors of Rwanda, into one large blur. Every genocide is a separate act, and must be remembered and chronicled as such.”…
But even designating the atrocities in Rwanda or Cambodia as genocide can become a flashpoint in discussions about how the Holocaust should be remembered and commemorated.
Some historians argue that the Holocaust — in which the Nazis slaughtered 6 million Jews, many in gas chambers designed specifically for that purpose — was the only genocide in history, the only systematic effort to wipe an entire race of people from the earth. In Rwanda, around 800,000 people were killed during a few bloody months in 1994, many of them with weapons like machetes. Steven T. Katz, a professor of Judaic studies at Boston University, calls the killings in Rwanda “mass murder,” not genocide.
And while Professor Katz, too, supports scholarly efforts to document all cases of mass atrocities, he said the drift toward studying the Holocaust primarily alongside these other mass murders risks misunderstanding the Nazis’ attempt to eradicate the Jews from Europe as just one case of mass murder among many.
“With certain kinds of events, one needs to be able to say, this is new, or singular, or unprecedented,” he said.
Still, the trend to contextualize the Holocaust has continued. Some institutions, like the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, now address other genocides, and the Washington museum has set up a commission devoted to stopping future genocides
The attitude of people like Rosensaft and Katz is disgusting. For pete’s sakes, the murder of the Jews by the Nazis wasn’t even the only “systematic effort to wipe an entire race of people from the earth” that was going on by the Nazis at that time, let alone in history, and the attempted genocide of the Roma and Sinti people.
People like Rosensaft and Katz should be ashamed of themselves. The world rightly knows the word “Shoah.” It is, in part, because of people like Rosensaft and Katz, and their disgusting attitude, that the word, “Porajmos” is not as widely known.
Yes, every attempted genocide is different. That does not mean that any one is an attempted genocide and the others something different.
“800,000?! You call that a holocaust?! Call me back at 6 million”
That’s what it sounds like they are saying. Notice how they make no mention of the non-Jewish holocaust victims? Why not? There was roughly just as many non-Jewish victims. Just because they weren’t all one group is no excuse to make them a footnote, that is if they even are mentioned at all. These guys didn’t.
>> Some historians argue that the Holocaust … was the only genocide in history …
Really? The only one? EVER?
>> … the only systematic effort to wipe an entire race of people from the earth. …
>> … Professor Katz … said the drift toward studying the Holocaust primarily alongside these other mass murders risks misunderstanding the Nazis’ attempt to eradicate the Jews from Europe as just one case of mass murder among many.
Attempting to “eradicate the Jews from Europe” is not the same as efforts “to wipe an entire race of people
off the mapfrom the earth.”Does this mean the Holocaust represents “just” another horrific episode of man’s mass-murderous inhumanity toward man? No, sir! It is “The bestest damned genocide ever!” (TM) – a badge of honour, a source of pride, and a scar of shame which can only be healed by the “manliness” of terrorism, ethnic cleansing (“currently not necessary”) and the establishment of a religion-supremacist state!
And don’t you forget it! :-)
Until I came to England I never realized that my family members killed by Nazis were worse sort of victims – their deaths, while regrettable, did not approach in importance the deaths of Jewish people from Eastern Europe.
When Germans entered Polish Towns they rounded up intellectuals, lecturers, leaders and politicians using pre – prepared lists. These were first inmates of the first camps.
Then their continued killing Polish citizen, of variety of religions, for anything from singing protest songs, doing anything without permit, to military resistance against occupier.
I refuse to forget their suffering.
As far as I can see the attempt to separate the Jewish holocaust from other holocaust is once again the idea that Jews are worth more than non Jews.
Frankly, mass murder is mass murder, a person is a person and a dead person is a dead person, period.
In Rwanda Hutus and Tutsis were forced to use ID cards which specified an ethnic group. Skin color was a general physical trait that was typically used in “ethnic” identification. The lighter-colored Rwandans were typically Tutsi, the minority group, while the darker-skinned Rwandans were typically Hutu, the majority group in Rwanda. It was the Hutu government in power that “planned” the genocide of the Tutsis.
If planning to wipe out a ethnic group isn’t genocide what is? What does it matter if it’s half the Jews or a third of the Tutsis–it is what it is.
I’d say the Hutu government put the Germans to shame in the efficiency of their killing….800,000 in 100 days. If it had kept on they would have killed 2.6 million in one year alone.
The more I see of this effort to stuff down the world’s throat that Jewish deaths should be elevated above all others the more revolting I find the whole holocaust
“industry. Which is a shame because survivors and those who lost family deserve some sympathy..but it’s enough already……the ‘special and only’ is a turn off and people are sick of it.
If the holocaust poobabs want to discuss their Jewish holocaust fine, let them go to their cubicles and discuss it….but they have no business trying to say what is and isn’t a genocide where it regards other groups and particularly have no business trying to lessen or minimize the importance of other mass murders and holocaust.