HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses." -Edward Abbey

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Great post, Diane.

I tend to agree with dyslexia's post, but with a twist. Bureaucracy.

Let me cite one of my favorite authors, Umberto Eco, in an open letter to his son, he advocates giving guns to children... "Because a gun isn't a game. It is the inspiration for play. With it you will have to invent a situation, a series of relationships, a dialectic of events", in which Eco promises he will play battle with the boy Stefano: they'll be with Sitting Bull against Custer, with the Arabs against Lawrence, with the partizans -of course-, with the Celts against the Romans.
Eco ponders his own childhood as a "war game orgy" and compares it to Eichmann's.
"I imagine Eichmann's childhood. With the glance of the accountant of death, he'd be over the puzzle, the Mecano, following the manual's instructions, eager to open the many coloured case of the Little Chemist, sadistic while disposing over plywood his happy carperter tools, with the little 20 cm. seesaw. Fear the young men and their small cranes! In their cold and contorted minds of little mathematicians lies the horrible complex that will agitate their mature age. In any little monster who actions the rail changes of his miniature train I see the future director of a concentration camp!".

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When I look at Cheney here

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,430991,00.jpg

how he was clothed at the main event in Auschwitz - just another stupid European party, perhaps he was told.

Between the somber, dark-coated leaders at the outdoor ceremony sat Cheney, resplendent in a green parka embroidered with his name and featuring a fur-trimmed hood, the laced brown boots and a knit ski cap reading "Staff 2001."

"The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower," Robin Givhan, The Washington Post's fashion writer, wrote in the newspaper's Friday editions.

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Dear Walter:

Diplomacy blunders aside, on this side of the Atlantic very few know how to dress properly.

Please forgive us.

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Oy.
I must admit, Cheney looks like a dork.
Wrong for the Vice President of the United States.
Bad Choice.
Deserves to be chatised.
However,
I have read much over the net and listened on the radio to the memorials on the liberation of Auschwitz, but I did not add anything, for I am resigned to the ignorance people generally have for history and a larger historical perspective.
NPR (National "Palestinian" Radio) summed it up for me when they did their brief news story commemorating the "people" that died at Auschwitz.
Most news commemorations were not so egregious, but nonetheless, the Germans, the French, NPR, etcetera, have learned nothing.
Know nothing.
Are blind to history.
Most of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust had nowhere to go. The countries of Europe had murdered them and did not want the survivors back. Many were murdered when they tried to do so.
So, the final solution for many Jews was to try to get to Israel. G-d or Not G-d had decimated the Jewish people as He promised (or didn't promise - most of the new Israelis were not religious - why would they be...) and therefore, it was time for the Land of Israel.
There was nowhere else. No other response to the massacre of millions upon millions.

Then, what is most striking, is that the world never stopped trying to wipe out the Jews.
Sixty years later; only today; there is a brief glimmering in some places such as the United States, that perhaps Israel needs to exist and be strong.
The State of Israel is indeed the only sane response to Auschwitz.

I do not believe that those German and French statesman memorializing Auschwitz this week have a clue as to this fact.
I believe that they merely consider Israel a Jew State that needs to be "dealt with."
Remorse; regret; repentance; means understanding the evil that you have done and doing everything to ensure that it can never happen again...
This is why their "ceremonies" depress me.
They have learned nothing.

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Moishe3rd wrote:

This is why their "ceremonies" depress me.

With no word I was rederring here to "their ceremonies", but to the one in Auschwitz.

Obviously, you have neither listened to nor read about that:

'The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp' was organised by the "Council for Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom". The only "European connection" (besides, of course, that Europeans took part) was that it was held under the patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski.

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Moishe3rd wrote:

Sixty years later; only today; there is a brief glimmering in some places such as the United States, that perhaps Israel needs to exist and be strong.
The State of Israel is indeed the only sane response to Auschwitz.

I do not believe that those German and French statesman memorializing Auschwitz this week have a clue as to this fact.

I appreciate much of the feeling in your post, Moishe. I do not agree with Israel's occupation of the Palestine territories, but surely you're right: the foundation of Israel is rooted in it having been the only refuge for Jews after the WW2, when even Holocaust survivers were received back with hostility, sometimes even agression (think of the post-war pogroms in Hungary and Poland).

On your particular paragraph here, though, I would like to observe a wondrous thing. Berlin now again has a larger Jewish population than any time since WW2. Furthermore, I believe (Walter?) it now actually has the largest Jewish population in Europe.

fbaezer wrote:

Diplomacy blunders aside, on this side of the Atlantic very few know how to dress properly.

Please forgive us.

Cheney certainly knew how to dress properly at Bush's inauguration ... thats no excuse.

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I can't confirm that Berlin has the largest Jewish population in Europe, but it is the fastest growing Jewish community worldwide.

170.000 Jews lived in Berlin pre-1933; today 13,000 are members of one of the seven synagoges [pre.1933: 16], the Jewish community of Berlin is organised as an umbrella community.
About 1,500 belong to Adass Jisroel and several thousands (between 20,000 and 50,000) to none of the above nor do they attend services.)

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nimh wrote:

Moishe3rd wrote:
Sixty years later; only today; there is a brief glimmering in some places such as the United States, that perhaps Israel needs to exist and be strong.
The State of Israel is indeed the only sane response to Auschwitz.

I do not believe that those German and French statesman memorializing Auschwitz this week have a clue as to this fact.

I appreciate much of the feeling in your post, Moishe. I do not agree with Israel's occupation of the Palestine territories, but surely you're right: the foundation of Israel is rooted in it having been the only refuge for Jews after the WW2, when even Holocaust survivers were received back with hostility, sometimes even agression (think of the post-war pogroms in Hungary and Poland).

On your particular paragraph here, though, I would like to observe a wondrous thing. Berlin now again has a larger Jewish population than any time since WW2. Furthermore, I believe (Walter?) it now actually has the largest Jewish population in Europe.

fbaezer wrote:
Diplomacy blunders aside, on this side of the Atlantic very few know how to dress properly.

Please forgive us.

Cheney certainly knew how to dress properly at Bush's inauguration ... thats no excuse.

Subjectively speaking, it's great that Jews feel safe and secure in Berlin.
Objectively speaking, Jews felt safe and secure in Berlin 75 to 100 years ago too. It was the "new Jerusalem" for tens of thousands of Jews.
That didn't work out too well.
The fact is, I have very good friends who are fellow Americans who believe that "it could happen here." I vehemently disagree in that I consider the United States unique in the history of man (it has, since its inception, never persecuted Jews by either law or custom), but I also believe that it would be very difficult to institute Jewish pogroms in any country due to the fact that I believe Israel would attack.
And that is my main point.
Berlin may be wonderful today.
But if a new Anschluss ever came directed against Jews, I believe that Israel is the only answer to Auschwitz.
And, although I disagree with my friend vis a vis the US, based on the current state of events in the world, there is no reason to believe that some country in the world couldn't suddenly decide to pack up all of its Jews in cattle cars again.
I do not believe Israel would ever let this happen.

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I understand.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

When I look at Cheney here

how he was clothed at the main event in Auschwitz - just another stupid European party, perhaps he was told.

Between the somber, dark-coated leaders at the outdoor ceremony sat Cheney, resplendent in a green parka embroidered with his name and featuring a fur-trimmed hood, the laced brown boots and a knit ski cap reading "Staff 2001."

"The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower," Robin Givhan, The Washington Post's fashion writer, wrote in the newspaper's Friday editions.

He looks like he wants to run out of there. Laughing

I don't blame him

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