| RIP Simon Wiesenthal |
[Sep. 20th, 2005|10:31 pm] |
Simon Wiesenthal Dies at 96
Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust survivor who dedicated most of his life to tirelessly tracking down Nazi war criminals and making sure they were prosecuted. He was the loudest voice there was to "never forget", to stop neo-Nazism and its offshoots from gaining any ground, to stop anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice. I did at times disagree with him, most notably on what I believe to be minimising the effect of true anti-Semitism by equating it with disgust at the actions of the Israeli government and refusing to consider that any modern genocide could be as terrible as the Holocaust; but there were other times when he took unpopular stances such as not condemning everyone who took part in the Nazi war effort where my respect for him, always great, grew ever deeper. With his death, I have to wonder who will now be the voice for six million murdered Jews and who will continue to remind us not to forget.
Unfortunately, my keyboard can't do Hebrew letters, so this transliteration of the Mourner's Kaddish will have to suffice:
Yit-ga-dal ve-yit-ka-dash she-mei ra-ba be-al-ma di-ve-ra chi-re-u-tei,
ve-yam-lich mal-chu-tei be-cha-yei-chon u-ve-yo-mei-chon u-ve-cha-yei de-chol beit Yis-ra-eil,
ba-a-ga-la u-vi-ze-man ka-riv, ve-i-me-ru: a-mein.
Ye-hei she-mei ra-ba me-va-rach le-a-lam u-le-al-mei al-ma-ya.
Yit-ba-rach ve-yish-ta-bach, ve-yit-pa-ar ve-vit-ro-mam ve-yit-na-sei,
ve-yit-ha-dar ve-yit-a-leh ve-yit-ha-la!
she-mei de-ku-de-sha be-rich hu,
le-ei-la min kol bi-re-cha-ta ve-shi-ra-ta, tush-be-cha-ta ve-ne-che-ma-ta,
da-a-mi-ran be-al-ma, ve-i-me-ru: a-mein.
Ye-hei sha-la-ma ra-ba min she-ma-ya ve-cha-yim a-lei-nu ve-al kol Yis-ra-eil, ve-i-me-ru: a-mein.
O-seh sha-lom bim-ro-mav, hu ya-a-seh sha-lom a-lei-nu ve-al kol Yis-ra-eil, v-i-me-ru: a-mein. |
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| Holocaust Memorial/Remberance Day |
[Jan. 27th, 2005|06:18 pm] |
Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in Poland.
The Final Solution failed. I am a testement to this; a Jewish-Slavic, bisexual, liberal, godless woman artist who grew up in America and now lives in Europe. I am what the Nazis hated and wanted to destroy. In that, in the lives of my mother and my father and my cousins and any future children they or I may have, they failed.
But they did ensure I would have less family. They killed upwards of twelve million people, six million Jews and the rest Gypsies and homosexuals and liberals and Catholics and Slavs and more, making sure a lot of people would have less family. In the obliteration of eight-hundred plus years of Jewish-European civilisation they succeeded, and only a few more lifetimes will tell what that ultimately did to Jewish culture -- but the outlook is dim. In that, they achieved their goal.
Behind the cut is a letter written by a Polish Jew, Zalmen Gradowski, just before he died in a camp revolt in October 1944. His account was discovered buried near the ovens.
From The Independent:
( Read more... )
We said 'never forget.' We said 'never again.' Yet, as the last survivors pass away, in the single lifetime that has passed since 1945, millions of people in hundreds of countries have no clue that such a terrible event occured. Yet, genocide still occurs all over the world, every day of every year, in Africa and even Europe again and more besides, and we drag our feet and decry the cost in terms of money and our own countrymen and diplomacy, and we do nothing.
From our pedestals of relative safety we watch. Some of us may ignore, may avoid, may reject the truth because it impinges our comfort; others may wring their hands in empathy, may pay close attention, may know the truth. Either way we do nothing, and that makes us culpable.
We watch our own leaders commit war crimes and we do nothing. Would we act if they changed their language of hatred and fear and demonisation of the 'other' (Muslims and Arabs, now) into killing? If we cannot act now, when we've already seen proof of torture, when we know what dehumanisation of the so-called 'enemy' leads to, how can we say we would act if it was to get even worse? We are responsible. Auschwitz was part of modern times; it happened to people like you and me, perpetuated by people like you and me -- it was an elaborate, bureaucratic genocide using the paraphenalia of modernity, because of a self-induced, obsessive, racial fear and hatred from the basis of a people who believed that their one nation, their one race, had absolute wisdom and absolute rights that were superior to those of other races or religions.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics
and I did not speak out
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
- Pastor Martin Niemoller (1937)
First they came for the Muslims,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim.
Then they came to detain immigrants indefinitely solely upon the certification of the Attorney General,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant.
Then they came to eavesdrop on suspects consulting with their attorneys,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a suspect.
Then they came to prosecute non-citizens before secret military commissions,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a non-citizen.
Then they came to enter homes and offices for unannounced "sneak and peek" searches,
and I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide.
Then they came to reinstate Cointelpro and resume the infiltration and surveillance of domestic religious and political groups,
and I didn't speak up because I had stopped participating in any groups.
Then they came for anyone who objected to government policy because it aided the terrorists and gave ammunition to America's enemies,
and I didn't speak up because... I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me...
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
- Stephen F. Rohde, Esq., constitutional lawyer and President of the ACLU of Southern California (2002) |
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