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

thanks for writing this - very articulate and well expressed I agree with
you 100%

Sylvia

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 6:02 AM, Attiyeh <rea_at_ucsd.edu> wrote:

> 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]
>
-snip-
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Received on 2009-07-10 13:19:49