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Exterminated? Doesn't the United States alone have the 2nd largest number of Jews on the planet?.
It does now. It didn't before the World Wars. So what's your point? Extermination is relative? The Nazi death machine wasn't such a bad thing because the Jews living outside Europe would have survived? What kind of reasoning is that?!
Exterminated? Doesn't the United States alone have the 2nd largest number of Jews on the planet?
Now we do, largely because the US took in Jewish refugees after WWII (and during the Pogroms of the 19th Century). But the other poster said they TRIED to exterminate the Jewish people, not that they succeeded... and I think the murder of over 6 million, which was IIRC about half of the worldwide Jewish population at the time, counts as a nearly successful attempt. Just think, if this genocide had never occurred, the Jewish population would probably be 3-4x what it is today. Rough estimate, but you get my point I'm sure.
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I've always wondered, why do Jews reserve the right to call that specific experience "the holocaust"? There have been lots of "holocausts" throughout the history of the planet. Therefore, a more appropriate term for it would be "the Jewish holocaust".
How do we "reserve that right," exactly? I'm Jewish, and couldn't care less if you want to use "Holocaust" in regards to other genocides - like the ones in Africa, for example, which many folks already do refer to as Holocausts. It's just most closely associated with the genocides of WWII, during which the primary targets were the Jewish people. Also, there aren't many (if any?) other genocides where more than half of a multimillion-person ethnic group was wiped out in under a decade. Therefore it is significant, especially given how recent it was. My great-aunt survived Auschwitz and is still alive today, so this isn't exactly ancient history we're talking about.
But if you really want to get picky about it, most of us (Jewish people) refer to it as the Shoah or HaShoah. That is Hebrew for "catastrophe," and is known to refer specifically to the extermination of Jews in WWII. Does that make you feel better? And no, we should never FORGET what happened, or history will be doomed to repeat itself... we should not dwell either, but failing to pass down these stories could prove to be dangerous.
I'm lost. What recent holocaust is going on today in American lives?
Why don't you ask my great-aunt, who lives in New Jersey, and survived Auschwitz after being taken from her home in Lodz (Poland) - or you can ask the other survivors, many of whom also live in the US. They won't be around for much longer, but RIGHT NOW there are still people living who witnessed/suffered these atrocities. I assume that's what the other poster was referring to, as this is a recent enough event to where survivors and their children are here today.
Thank God that in the Caribbean, African descendants are not told to forget their histories. Too many Americans are so backwards, excepting AAs to do such and minimizing the experiences of their people. This is part of the reason why many AAs are the way they are.
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Originally Posted by kgordeeva
The Jews went through something much worse than black people did during slavery. Hitler was trying to wipe out their entire ethnicity. But you don't see them rioting and destroying their own neighborhoods...why do you think that is?
REALLY? Newsflash. "Black" is not an ethnicity. That was a made up term to lump together myriads of ethnic groups during slavery and colonialism. The people that you call "blacks" today came from diverse ethnic groups about which they and you have no knowledge. They practiced religions of which they and you generally have no knowledge. They spoke languages that are completely lost. All of the above were beaten out of them during slavery, particularly in the U.S.
At one point, 70% of the African slaves in Virginia were Igbo. Where is the Igbo language in VA? Where is the culture? Where is the religion? Where are the names? Oh wait, they were beaten out of all the Igbos. They are just "blacks" now.
The next you see someone that you want to call "black," remember that you are using a slavery/colonial based term for a person who really has a specific ethnic group/s, religion and language that they would have known had it not been for slavery.
Just for your info, African descendants who came through the middle passage are found not just in the United States but across the Caribbean and Latin America. The slavery and the holocaust should NOT be compared in any way, shape are form. They are VERY DIFFERENT.
Excuse me? In my experience, Jews do not at all talk about the Holocaust "every chance they get." They generally only talk about it occasionally in connection with relevant things like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or neo-Nazi rallies. Unlike African-Americans, they don't tend to mention it as an excuse for problems or in terms of general discrimination. I don't believe that Jews as a whole received any reparation from the United States, either. Of course, African-Americans did have, if not compensatory payments, at least had some problems to specifically benefit them in the U.S. The "forty acres and a mule," affirmative action, etc.), which Jews probably did not.
AAs did not receive forty acres and a mule? Where did you get that foolishness? It was never given to them.
Affirmative action is afforded to all Americans and white Americans represent the biggest number of recipients. They always have.
American history isn't even my personal history and even I know that. Statements like the above are why many AAs have little patience for others. They make up things about their ethnic group that aren't even true.
Last edited by ReineDeCoeur; 08-28-2014 at 04:52 AM..
This is a spin off of the thread on whether African Americans should forget Jim Crow and Slavery and just "move on".
Should the jews do this as well?
Even though they were nearly exterminated a good 60/70 years ago, should they just "forget" about it now and stop talking about it every chance they get? How about the reparations they've been receiving? Should they stop getting it now as all those people who participated in violence against them are "no longer living" like they tell blacks (who've never received any reparations or even a bag of rice)?
Let's discuss.
I don't think people should forget as they want to make sure this type of thing never again happens to their group of people.
I don't think people should forget as they want to make sure this type of thing never again happens to their group of people.
IMO, they should remember it within their own group instead of reminding the rest of us about it constantly. Especially here in the U.S. that kind of thing would never happen. Mass murderers won't be swayed from their heinous deeds from reminders of the atrocities of the past anyway.
Well, if they can't forget the the Pharaoh enslaving them thousands of years ago they sure won't forget the Holacaust.
For the other thread as we become more mixed it's going to be a matter saying moms relative enslaved dads relatives. Or as in another post Obama's mom's relatives owned slaves and his dad's relatives being African Muslims could have possibly sold slaves.
During the Holocaust, Jews were almost totally annihilated in areas under Nazi control.
During the period of Chattel Slavery for Blacks in America, the Black population expanded quite a bit.
A while back, I read a study which asserted that the average Black in America enjoyed a higher standard of living than did the average Swede in Sweden.
It is perhaps also worth noting that the Civil Rights Movement was, following the Civil War, largely a Jewish creation. I believe that one Black activist, in the '60s, visited the NAACP Headquarters, and afterward indignantly complained that it was really "a Jewish organization". Maybe, while Jews are "forgetting" about the Holocaust, we should also "forget" about a century of work toward equality for African Americans?
Is it pertinent to ask about massive Black involvement in work to end oppression of other, non-Black, groups? Are America's Blacks involved in movements to end slavery elsewhere in the world? (Jewish women work, today, to end the enslavement/trafficking of Slavic women in the "Holy Land", for example...). Maybe African Americans are volunteering to help rescue the Mexican children trafficked into America as sex slaves?
Are African Americans involved in ending the slavery associated with the Chocolate Industry in Africa? Are they heavily involved in freeing the hundreds of thousands of 'Restavec' slave children in Haiti?
Absolutely not. No one should forget their past. At the same time, what to do with that remembering? There it depends on a whole bunch of factors including context, propriety, and the bigger picture. But that a group pursues justice on behalf of those who were taken so horrifically? No way. Jews should never forget their past.
S.
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A few random thoughts and questions
