World Holocaust Memorial Day

[mikemarshall]

One of my Jewish friends sent me this link.

The title is thought-provoking - Lessons Learned?

[mikemarshall]

And this is a link for the Romani victims of the Holocaust or as they call it 'porajmos':

[Deleted]

When I lived in Maryland the Holocaust Museum opened.One only needs to go there once,very sad.The museum has an actual piece of rail that led into I believe Treblinka death camp.

[♫anna♫]

I'm glad the German government gave a pension to those who survived the horrors of being enslaved in the concentration camps!

Those who survived the Soviet gulags and Mao's death camps have been forgotten!

[toby]

Toby comments.;- Let us never forget the 7 Million Ukranians who starved to death in 1937, you don't see any memorials to them do you ? it's always Holocaust this, Holocaust that !

[mikemarshall]

It's the responsibility of all of us as human beings to feel compassion for and empathy with the victims of suffering worldwide.

It in no way ignores or downplays the suffering of others to remember and honour the victims of genocide.

As someone who is married to a Romani and whose wife's family lost relatives in Auschwitz and one of whom was a porajmos survivor I know perfectly well that misery is no respecter of ethnicity or gender.

It in no dispraise to other victims of tyranny to honour those who were slaughtered in cold blood as a result of a deliberate policy of genocide.

Stalin was a monster and his crimes were appalling but unfortunately since his time the Russians have only had one leader with any degree of compassion - Gorbachev - and he did not last long. Putin is simply a more sophisticated variant of Stalin.

If it comes to that how many memorials will there be the victims of Mugabe? How many are there to those of Mao or Pol Pot?

No one with any genuine empathy regards the death of other people as unimportant.

But only the Jews and gypsies were murdered solely because of their ethnicity and even the victims of Stalinism and Communism more generally were on the whole victims of politically rather than racially motivated barbarity.

Nothing excuses cruelty and any decent human being condemns it utterly.

We as humans ought to remember and honour all the victims of oppression and brutality.

That includes remembering Holocaust Day but of course in no way implies that only such a date deserves recognition, remembrance and honour.

I am sure that you will also honour that as well as all the other similar days, Toby.

[Deleted]

Jan 11, 2013 23:09:46 GMT mikemarshall said:

If it comes to that how many memorials will there be the victims of Mugabe? How many are there to those of Mao or Pol Pot?

No one with any genuine empathy regards the death of other people as unimportant.

But only the Jews and gypsies were murdered solely because of their ethnicity and even the victims of Stalinism and Communism more generally were on the whole victims of politically rather than racially motivated barbarity.

.

Pol Pot was certainly accused of ethnic cleansing, though I accept that most of his killing was motivated by other factors:


The Khmer Rouge also classified people by religion and ethnic group. They banned all religion and dispersed minority groups, forbidding them to speak their languages or to practice their customs. They especially targeted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christians, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who had contact with Western countries or with Vietnam, disabled people, and the ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese. Some were put in the S-21 camp for interrogation involving torture in cases where a confession was useful to the government. Many others were summarily executed.[citation needed


Mugabe targetted white farmers (though other whites are probably relatively safe). But what about Rwanda? There are many recent examples of genocide in other countries too.