[Cz-L] Lessons from the Report on the Holocaust in Romania

After reading compulsively into the wee hours the Report on the
Holocaust in Rumania, thanks to Irene Fishler's link, I am struck by
how easily the warped, prejudiced thinking of an Antonescu was
translated into widespread, devastating action against the Roma and
the Jews alike between 1941 and 1944. Several factors had to be in
place for this to happen: slavish compliance with political
objectives couched as protection from supposed "terrorists" and
conspirators; concentration of military and political power in the
hands those who capitalized on fear and ignorance and the underlying
biases of a demoralized populace; an organized, systematic
identification process by which targeted peoples could easily be
located; and the naive blind eye of our own leaders that could not or
would not envision the steam-rolling potential consequences of acts
they were complicitly enabling. Somehow in our post 9/11 world these
all sound eerily familiar to me.

One can obviously name other factors, as well. But it is unsettling
to note parallels with conditions in today's world. These same
factors could potentially combine and lead to similar consequences
today even in democratic countries. Racial tensions and cultural
conflicts are currently everywhere and economic and political
instabilities abound, creating fertile ground for hate-speech and
hate crimes. Political and religious movements use slogans and
rhetoric to make new alliances and spread their messages. Jews remain
a favorite scapegoat. But we are not the only group against whom a
modern-day movement can be manipulated to turn by ideologues or the
power-hungry. I can't help but think that as Jews we have a special
responsibility now to use our own experience and the reminders of
such documents as the Report on the Holocaust in order to be vigilant
and outspoken against any groundswell of rhetoric or actions that
could result in doing to others in the present what has been done to
us in the past.

[Jessica Attiyeh]

>Subject: RE: [Cz-L] Massacres in Bucovina and Czernowitz in 1941
>From: Irene Fishler <irenef_at_netvision.net.il>
>Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:17:07 +0300
>X-Message-Number: 4
>
>Dear Mimi and all,
>Here is the link to the Report on the Holocaust in Rumania .I don't know if
>it contains all this information.
>You may try. It is very interesting anyhow.
>http://www.inshr-ew.ro/pdf/Final_Report.pdf
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Received on 2009-07-10 10:02:21