There’s more than one kind of Holocaust denial
Bookworm on Dec 17 2006 at 10:08 pm | Filed under: Holocaust
Holocaust denial about the Nazi death camps is gaining traction in part because witnesses are dying. After all, the camps were liberated more than 60 years ago, and both the camps’ victims and their liberators are an increasingly shrinking breed. There’s not much left of the world that bore witness to the staggering scope of the Nazi genocide. (Although newly released documents should help convince rational people that what happened actually happened.)
It turns out, sadly, that the West is not the only one with that memory problem, and that there are even shorter memories in the Far East. I’m one of those who remembers the first reports coming out about the Khmer Rouge massacres. That is, while I’m not a direct witness to that horrible piece of history, I am a witness to contemporaneous reports about the slaughter in those far away Killing Fields. Living on the West Coast, I also grew up knowing people who had escaped the Killing Fields, or whose parents or grandparents had escaped. Apparently, though, even 30 years ago is too far away to sustain belief:
A documentary film dealing with the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime is opening in Cambodia.The film, Waiting To See The Truth, includes interviews with Cambodians who describe the forced labour, starvation and mass killings under Pol Pot’s rule.
But it also shows footage of young Cambodians who do not believe stories of the atrocities of the late 1970s.
The period is not taught in schools, and the producers plan to screen it to children to boost awareness.
The Khmer Rouge regime killed, starved or worked to death up to two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
The BBC’s Guy de Launey, in Phnom Penh, says the 35-minute film makes for occasionally staggering viewing.
Throughout the film older Cambodians describe the horrors of life under the Khmer Rouge, when up to two million died because of the regime’s brutality.
The camera then pans to giggling teenagers who declare that they do not believe a word of what their relatives have just said.
You can read here the rest of the story about a complete absence of memories of things past.
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7 Responses to “There’s more than one kind of Holocaust denial”
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I am not a witness of any kind to the Holocaust. But it is real. It actually happened. Jewish people are doing a good job of keeping the memory alive. In the same vein, African Americans must keep alive the memory of slavery and Jim Crow America. Not because “my pain is greater than your pain” makes any sense, but because in both instances, we must stand with resolve and cry, “Never again! No. Never again.”
I’m entirely in agreement with reminding people of the terrible things that can happen when the thin veneer of civilization slips. What saddens me is that a generation of African Americans, rather than stopping with “never again,” which I think is a timeless message, appends to that reminder the accusation that “it’s all your fault,” with is an alienating message.
In that vein, I do not hold modern Germans responsible for the Holocaust. I think that would be a terrible and unfair burden to place upon them. However, I do admit that, when I’m in Germany, I look askance at those who look old enough to have been adults during WWII. I always wonder “what were you doing then?” These are not questions we can ask living Americans about slavery, of course. These are questions we can ask a fading generation of Americans about Jim Crow, but I’m not sure to whether those questions serve a useful purpose, beyond trying once again to figure out, whether the person is an aged German or an aged White person what they were thinking that let them to commit acts ranging from actively inhumane to passively immoral.
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What is most admirable is how the Israelis learned from the Holocaust. They didn’t whine or claim victimhood. They picked themselves up and built a powerful, democratic country that extended human rights to ALL it citizens, and went on to produce many scientific and technological wonders in the face of non-stop adversity. Perhaps others could use Israel’s example as a model for success and, say for example, turn Gaza into another Singapore, Macao or Hong Kong.
Helen,
As Dagon pointed out, slavey is currently going on in every continent of the world so instead of wasting time crying “Never again! No. Never again,” why not actively do something to stop it? You seem to be fixated on black slavery in particular so I would suggest maybe focusing on Sudan?
I think it is very hard for people who live in prosperity to comprehend true suffering and ruthlessness. Not impossible, but low amounts of wisdom doesn’t really grease the wheels of comprehension.
I once took care of a boa constrictor (snake). We would feed it live rats that would be totally oblivious to the snake’s presence. When the snake struck, it was far to late for the rat to reassess its world view. I often wondered if there was psychological mechanism in the rat’s brain that forbade it to think unpleasant thoughts and to rationalize why there really wasn’t a danger, after all. Kind of like many peoples’ attitudes to the Islamic Jihad, actually.