This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Arrived in Innsbruck, on the outskirts, surrounded by mountains. So amazing, the mountains, especially for someone who grew up around water and who once again lives there. Both times I’ve been here is in the summer. Winter must be amazing. The falling snow, mountains right outside your window.
Dawn. The first light appearing is different in the mountains than by the ocean. Defining place by how the first light appears. Home is first light.
My flight was uneventful, except for the food service. As a vegetarian, I usually find the food adequate to quite good, though the vegetarian food served is sometimes difficult to identify. It seems that for food services, vegetarians eat vegetables slapped together with some sauce and – voila! – it’s finished. I complained about dinner and after breakfast was served I complained again. It seems that the airline industrial chefs think that vegetarians eat broccoli for breakfast.
On the plane I sat next to a young German who had just finished a business internship in Ocala, Florida. She liked the people but found Ocala provincial. She’s quite taken with America, especially its innovative product placements. She told me of her visit to Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Arkansas and its innovative business techniques. Among the products featured were Easter egg packets which she loved. In Ocala, she breakfast every morning at Panera. She hails from Berlin, the city of her dreams but will miss Panera.
Missing Panera and Wal-Mart – Berlin. Easter eggs will never be the same in her mind. And no she wasn’t interested in her Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust. I didn’t even broach it.
That was about it on the discussion front. I started in on my Lufthansa history lesson and found her uninterested. We joked about the airplane meal situation. She told me her family eats Italian style. Old fashioned German food is way too heavy.
It turns out that the Rwanda genocide report I gave a few days ago was true enough – truer than true it turns out – and worse. Our intrepid Victoria Fontan was visiting genocide commemoration sites outside of Kigali. Mostly they are housed in churches where thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered. The exhibits are simple and chilling. Skulls everywhere, bodies exhumed and clothes representing the dead on church pews. I have to get a fuller picture to be sure but it seems that Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum, is involved as an advising institution in these memorials, as no doubt the Holocaust museum in Washington is.
It’s not surprising, then, that the Rwandan government fashions itself as the new Israel or, rather, the Israel of Africa, and is using genocide commemorations to buttress its own interventionist policies. Those policies include its presence in the Congo as a way of assuring that Rwanda will – never again – experience another genocide.
Never again. Sound familiar? Most Jewish thought and action is based around what might be called Second Holocaust Prevention. Who can question policies whose express purpose is to prevent a repetition of a second Holocaust/genocide. Even if it places others in harm’s way or places the Holocaust/genocide heirs in dangerous situations either immediately or in the near future.
Second Holocaust/genocide Prevention policies are forever and entangled. Empire wherever you are located on the map is essential. Such programs can never end, by definition.
Meanwhile those countries that were complicit in Holocaust/genocide have such difficulty admitting it that the Austrians and even the French still can’t fess up almost seventy years later. They continue to play the victim of Hitler’s “forced” entry into their lives. After arriving, this was the first discussion I had with one of the Austrian program organizers.
Thoughts about exporting the Holocaust as I begin teaching today. Strange, before I even present the “exporting” argument I have to argue that the Holocaust is relevant to consider. That’s how far the exporting theme has gone, unnamed of course. Now, with the Rwanda commemoration situation coming to my attention in a new way, I think of how we’ve colonized the Holocaust. How we need to decolonize the Holocaust. And what colonizing and decolonizing the Holocaust actually mean.
Can Wal-Mart help in my thinking here? The proverbial Easter egg hunt is being ramped up and exported around the world. I’m surprised that Wal-Mart hasn’t packaged the Holocaust. I wouldn’t be surprised if it now comes to my attention that they have. Or, at least, tried. Would the Wal-Mart clientele be interested?
Introducing the Holocaust. Do I make it immediately relevant to the students by saying its key to how Jews view Israel? Do I have to export the Holocaust before I begin my deconstruction on how it is used by Jews and others in the proliferating Second Holocaust/genocide Prevention (political) programs?
Have you noticed that I capitalize Holocaust and don’t capitalize genocide? I just noticed it myself. A colonial statement?
I’ve already told you that the Holocaust was different. At least I think it was. Prejudice? Has to be, I think. Still want to be upfront about it. Can I confess this to the students without blowing my Jew of Conscience cover?
Treading carefully, a Jew abroad. It isn’t easy for me or them. On all fronts. Jewish has never been easy. Isn’t now. If we think and act carefully about it.
When the Other hears a Jewish voice – on the Holocaust, on Israel – what do they hear? When I speak in a Jewish voice – on the Holocaust, on Israel – what do I hear? When Jews hear a Jewish voice – on the Holocaust, on Israel – what do they hear?
Part of the problem, even in BDS, Jews speaking, others hearing. Others speaking, Jews hearing. Same words, heard differently?
A long history of Jews speaking and Jews being spoken about. Mostly Jews and non-Jews were on different pages. Now that Jews and non-Jews are on the same page, we hear the same words the same way, right?
I doubt it.
A (new mutual) solidarity isn’t above history.
The question is how the past (un)hearing is used in the present. As a way of distancing and unaccountability or as a challenge to probe the gaps and to walk forward with the dissonance.
Whites and Blacks, male and female, gay and straight, do they hear each other’s voice in perfect harmony?
On this Jews and Christians have a lot to learn and have also advanced in many directions. I think we can say the same about Jews and Palestinians – at least in some circles.
The movement toward justice is also about speaking and being heard.
Strange, when we had less power, Jews were great listeners – and interpreters. The more power the less we hear and understand.
Wal-Mart to be of help? They’re full service. Perhaps in the future they’ll branch out into translation. Of justice. When the suffering assume power.
” Most Jewish thought and action is based around what might be called Second Holocaust Prevention.”
Really? Substantiate.
“Really? Substantiate.”
Hophmi’s comment archive can be accessed by clicking his name. Comment archives can be word-searched. And that’s all I can type before I laugh.
Mooser’s comments can be accessed by searching the archive. As you’ll see, almost none of them are substantive in any way.
Why we need a court jester here is anybody’s guess. I’ve seen left-wing comedy. It’s always entertaining. Not the comedy. The watching political extremists laugh at things only they could find funny.
Ever notice that Mooser and Rush Limbaugh have never been seen together in the same room? Coincidence? I think not.
Pot kettle black there hophmi. Mooser knows his stuff which is more than one can say for you.
“Why we need a court jester here is anybody’s guess.”
For truth.
That is what a court jester does — shame us with truth until we can only laugh at ourselves to survive.
The court jester had a spot at the table with his master and could say whatever came to his head. The Jester was the privileged member of a court. Every royal household employed one…..until the Reformation and Puritanism took hold.
We need them back.
“As you’ll see, almost none of them are substantive in any way. “
Now, now Hophmi, don’t you think it’s only fair that a site which features the comments of somebody who knows everything can make room for a fool who knows very little?
And really, Hophmi, I would think that a guy like you, who knows everything and knows it, could be a bit more tolerant. I know, it’s just your innate modesty! I’m so stupid, I make you look so smart you’re a little embarrassed sometimes. Only natural, and very comendable.
But I accept my fate, Hophmi, as soon as you tell Phil how much I bother you, I’ll be banned, so I might as well enjoy myself in the meantime.
“Ever notice that Mooser and Rush Limbaugh have never been seen together in the same room? Coincidence? I think not.”
Whatsamatter “yonah”? That dyslexia support group (The National Association of Backasswards People. They used to call it the National Association for the Advancement of…. but that became a real problem, so they decided standing still was the best tactic) not doing you any good?
“But I accept my fate, Hophmi, as soon as you tell Phil how much I bother you, I’ll be banned, so I might as well enjoy myself in the meantime.”
You don’t bother me, Mooser. I don’t pay attention to vast majority of what you write, because I’ve found it’s a huge waste of my time.
“Mooser knows his stuff which is more than one can say for you.”
Sorry, but I have to correct that impression whenever it comes up. I know, on purpose, very little about it. As little as I possibly can. I made my mind up years, 30-40 years ago, based on what I knew then: You don’t turn your religion into a nationality, especially the Jewish religion. It’s madness, and the shortest route to destroying whatever is good about it. It’s not an answer to anything, and right after the Holocaust was the worst time to make those decisions. And I was right. I have no desire to know any more than that, and I consider reading and commenting on Mondoweiss a bad compulsion, which’ll do me more harm then good. Until I read Mondoweiss, I was pretty much ignorant of the Israel Lobby and the Settler’s Lobby in the US. I wasn’t having the cruelty and illegality of Israel’s actions thrown in my face every day, and I could at least retain some comfortable bits of Jewish exceptionalism. That’s all gone, no thanks to Phil Weiss and Mondoweiss.
But no, I don’t “know my stuff” But I know one thing: if Hophmi, Yonah, giladg, dimadok, tokyobk, proudzionist (and how many others) is what you become by becoming Zionist, I want no part of it. And it doesn’t take a detailed knowledge of the situation to come to that conclusion. And if that makes me a fool, well, just call me Gimpel.
“Ever notice that Mooser and Rush Limbaugh have never been seen together in the same room? Coincidence? I think not.”
Ever notice that Yonah and Wondering Jew have never been seen together in the same room? Coincidence? I think not.
did you miss the g-hyphen-dsend joke from yesterday? a day without mooser is sometimes a day sans bellylaugh.
“You don’t bother me, Mooser. I don’t pay attention to vast majority of what you write, because I’ve found it’s a huge waste of my time.”
How nice. Most of what you write doesn’t bother me much, either, but I have a hose and a “Scrusher” by the front door, so I can get most of it off.
“did you miss the g-hyphen-dsend joke from yesterday? a day without mooser is sometimes a day sans bellylaugh.”
Yes, but you didn’t find it, well, a little insubstantial? But look, you’ve got to understand, I can’t speak for Jews (ancient and/or modern), or Israel, or Zionism, or America, nor do I know everything. So unlike Hophmi, I run a little short of material sometimes, and resort to humor. I mostly keep it clean, anyway.
Nice.
183 results found
second/third/etc. holocaust prevention equals what should have been done (but wasn’t) to prevent that very first holocaust (be it of the early christians, africans caught in the slave trade, jewish victims of nazi persecution); specifically, compassionate humanity uniting on the side of the dehumanized to defeat the dehumanizers.
When did the first start? You decide: The World War I “Holocaust” Claim @ link to nizkor.org
Actually WWI was referred to as ‘The Great War’ until the second happened. Will WWIII therefore be remembered as ‘The Last War?’
“And no she wasn’t interested in her Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust. I didn’t even broach it.”
I was going to comment that for a woman who must have been at least 70 years old, she seemed attuned to current commercial activities (since she’d have to be about 70 to have present awareness of “her Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust”), but I noticed that you said she is a “young woman.”
That being the case, did you discuss the complicity of Germany in facilitating Israeli belligerence against Iran by providing Israel with nuclear-capable submarines? How about any possible culpability of German corporation Siemens in the melt-down at Fukushima, given that Siemens provided the doorway for infecting Iranian computers with Stuxnet, and the virus got out.
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the subtle subtext is, Marc, in case it glides past you down a snow-covered Innsbruck slope, get over yourself.
Really.
get over yourself.
i like ellis’s reports. they remind me of phil in his unguarded moments when he thinks he’s baring his soul, but really engaging in an autoerotic interlude with his ego. but they both make important points, even while stroking their chins a bit too vigorously for public display. like this nonsense.
Our intrepid Victoria Fontan was visiting genocide commemoration sites outside of Kigali. Mostly they are housed in churches where thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered. The exhibits are simple and chilling. Skulls everywhere, bodies exhumed and clothes representing the dead on church pews. I have to get a fuller picture to be sure but it seems that Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum, is involved as an advising institution in these memorials, as no doubt the Holocaust museum in Washington is.
who cares? is this what the world needs, another epcot worthy exhibit on mass murder, the surreal supplanting the real? does ellis think that this is at all relevant to survivors or that the exhibit will play any part in preventing further atrocities?
I too feel a bit like one Pavlov’s dog when Phil and those like marc indulge in Jewishness and holocaust specialness.
Ring the bell on the uniqueness of the Jewish holocaust— and see how the dogs respond.
Ring the bell on ‘Jews’ as those having special consciouses –and see how the dogs respond.
Ring the bell on the guilt of Christians in the Jewish holocaust —and see how the dogs respond.
Yep, keep ringing those bells and taunting the dogs until they get fed up with the psycho game and jump your ass.
Not very prophetic if your goal is world peace and Never Again and all that jazz.
“who cares? is this what the world needs, another epcot worthy exhibit on mass murder, the surreal supplanting the real? does ellis think that this is at all relevant to survivors or that the exhibit will play any part in preventing further atrocities?”
You don’t think that’s exactly what Ellis just said? That those are the same questions he is asking?
“when he thinks he’s baring his soul, but really engaging in an autoerotic interlude with his ego.”
Remember, marcb, a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first stumble! And when I fall flat on my face, I remind myself I’m almost five-and-a-half feet closer to my goal !
You don’t think that’s exactly what Ellis just said? That those are the same questions he is asking?
having taken the time to re-read the post, you’re right, mooser. my apologies to ellis on this point. not being able to quit when i’m behind though, i would re-raise my earlier argument: the growth of the holocaust memorial industrial complex shouldn’t come as a surprise to ellis as he spouts on about the various jewish monopolies on critical thought, ethics, artisanal goat cheese production, etc. etc. that’s the sort of juvenile relativity that results in debates over whether the armenian slaughter is worthy of admission to the genocide hall of fame or not.
“having taken the time to re-read the post”
Thanks, I was beginning to wonder if maybe I had gotten it all wrong! Although I gotta say one thing, Ellis’ discursive, referential (if not reverential) somewhat convoluted steam-of-consciousness (you can see vapor over his head when he writes) style isn’t the easiest to decipher.
And looking at the post again one is almost forced to ask: if he had a river is made from two different sizes of the husked and crushed, but unground, semolina of hard wheat using water to bind them, would that be a stream of couscousness? Just asking.
would that be a stream of couscousness?
hisss. booo. catcalls. babies crying. *rotten tomatoes being thrown*
“the subtle subtext is, Marc, in case it glides past you down a snow-covered Innsbruck slope, get over yourself.”
I guess the “I didn’t even broach it.” passed you by?
“Among the products featured were Easter egg packets which she loved.”
Well, I think coloring eggs is fun, and they look pretty with the Walmart packets:
link to southside101.blogspot.com
When you write: “Missing Panera and Wal-Mart – Berlin. Easter eggs will never be the same in her mind”, it sounds like you mean Easter eggs won’t be the same because she can’t make them that way in Germany. Did she say that, or are you using humor? It sounds like an exaggerated feeling to me, since making pretty Easter eggs just takes food coloring and vinegar. You can make bright colored eggs just from koolaid packets. And they make Easter Eggs in Germany. This one guy in east Germany decorated a tree with 10,000 eggs!
link to in2eastafrica.net
link to sharing.wthitv.com
I must admit that I missed packets of marzipan Easter potatoes that you can get in Germany for something like one Euro per packet. The color was dull gray, but they were delicious (also, vegetarian, and quite possibly kosher).
I investigated Caucasian war songs on YouTube and I found out about Fedayin Hayk, Armenian Fighters. Armenia had their own holocaust and it has their own policies which resemble Israel to a small degree (except that the videos about brave Jewish fighters would not have a sub-caption “true Aryan fighters”). Another post-Holocaust nation is Paraguay. The War of Triple Alliance killed a larger percentage of Paraguayans than the percentage of killed Jews, Armenians or Tutsis. Paraguay had scant chances to colonialize anything (but the little chance that they had, they took and thus they won the War of Gran Chaco). Its survival in the face of crushing superiority of Argentina and Brazil required unusual and rather undignified measures: not picking unnecessary fights.
As I was checking the name of the last war fought by Paraguay, I found that it was described in a book Crónicas heroicas de una guerra estúpida by Augusto Céspedes of Bolivia.
“On this Jews and Christians have a lot to learn and have also advanced in many directions. I think we can say the same about Jews and Palestinians”
Jews/Christians = true(ish) dichotomy
Jews/Palestinians = false dichotomy
I thought “dichotomy” is the study of circumcision.
Jews/Christians is not a true dicotomy, because there are hundreds of thousands of Christians of Jewish ethnicity. The first Christians were Jews and a big portion of Palestinian Christians have Jewish ancestry.
Marc Ellis wrote:
“I’ve already told you that the Holocaust was different. At least I think it was. Prejudice? Has to be, I think. Still want to be upfront about it. Can I confess this to the students without blowing my Jew of Conscience cover?”
Here’s my thesis: It’s precisely people like Mr. Ellis—jewish, non-jewish, whatever—who have vastly contributed to the use of the Holocaust as an excuse to do whatever.
If indeed they were universalists, or had any intellectual modesty, or dare I say with some if they weren’t interested in making money or fame off of it, the answer is clear: The Holocaust shows what humans are capable of.
And if that wasn’t more than obvious enough to persuade them to not go trying to slice the baloney this way and that, in ways inevitably infected with special pleading and bias and etc., then you’d think that what the Bolsheviks did in the Soviet Union (many of them jewish) and what Mao did in China would have convinced them.
And indeed, what motivation could there even be *aside* from trying to sneak in some special pleading either for or against some group trying to slice that baloney at all?
But no, you see, they think that can slice that one clear ugly chunk of baloney to make it … smarter, or to grind this or that axe, or to make themselves seem smarter or more caring, or because it’s a good gig going around being a Holocaust “studies” expert or etc.
So whaddya end up with? All this oh-so-somber talk about how … the Austrians and the French have yet to fully fess up to their contribution to the Big H (as if some Austrians and French haven’t and some have), and then talk about how Christians feel about it and their responsibility or not, and how the Bantus perhaps might be criticized for not really realizing the full significance of the Big H in their literature, or art, or dance, or tic-tac-toe playing, and … on and on and on in great big never-ending sickening and utterly vacuous roil.
All secretly premised on the idea that oh, *some* humans (“me me me of course!”) could never never never never do that to others. (Obviously in Mr. Ellis’ case, jews, or “Jews of conscience” at least, or whomever.)
And what’s the result? Of course! This group priding itself on being two molecules less “responsible” for the Holocaust than that group, and that group noting it actually lost a few more members in the Holocaust than yet another group, and yet another group or two saying nobody in its group was involved so meaning their group walks on a higher plane than everyone else in the world, and on and on in a great mad stupid game ignoring that we are one species and long before the Holocaust we displayed our potential and all the Holocaust shows is that we haven’t lost it.
But you keep hacking away at this, Mr. Ellis. Indeed, plow some of that ever-new ground out there! What about the Eskimos/Inuit people, for instance? I’m sure that you keep whacking away and at first you can make ‘em feel special because there were none as camp guards at Auschwitz, but that later you or your later Holocaust Studies children will be more than willing to go on endlessly about how, because the Eskimos/Inuit know about the horrors of cold, they should have been *especially* concerned about the stories of unheated camps that leaked out early in Hitler’s days, and so dilate endlessly and happily about the new chi chi revisionist view of the *special* “responsibility” of the Eskimo/Inuit for jewish suffering and blah blah blah blah blah.
What a joke. What a … cultivating precisely that which you purport to be against joke.
“…Here’s my thesis: It’s precisely people like Mr. Ellis—jewish, non-jewish, whatever—who have vastly contributed to the use of the Holocaust as an excuse to do whatever.
If indeed they were universalists, or had any intellectual modesty, or dare I say with some if they weren’t interested in making money or fame off of it, the answer is clear: The Holocaust shows what humans are capable of…”
Good post. At the end of the day, almost every other use the Holocaust is put to is illegitimate, one way or another.
Of course, precisely what set of beliefs make something like the Holocaust seem reasonable to the perpetrators is something that is potentially useful to investigate.
What events are included within the Holocaust? When did the Holocaust end?
The Holocaust began on 22 June 1941, when the Einsatzgruppen entered the Soviet Union with a set of rather vague mandates which they swiftly ascertained through a process of trial and error boiled down to killing as many Jews as they could. It ended on or about 8 May 1945 — whenever the last German concentration camp containing Jews or Gypsies was liberated or the guards just ran away. While the Nazis certainly killed plenty of other people, the only two groups they sought to exterminate completely solely on the basis of their race were Jews and Gypsies.