Genocide

It is Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is the time we remember the 11 million people (including he 5 million non-Jews too often left out of our remembrance) who were killed by the Nazis in WW II.

Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freight Car

Here, in this freight car,
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
If you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of Adam,
tell him that I…

--Dan Pagis, as quoted in Ariel Hirschfeld’s chapter in Cultures of the Jews, David Biale (ed.)

I read this poem, evoking the emotions of a woman crammed into a freight car on her way to the death camps during the Holocaust, right before I read Elie Wiesel's most recent edition of his book Night, describing his own experiences in the Holocaust. His book is, needless to say, chilling. But the additions in the latest edition make it even more so. If you read earlier editions, you might want to read the intro to the new one because he mentions things edited out of the original.

In Night Wiesel describes in considerable detail the experience of the freight car taking him to the Auschwitz. Everything about the experience was dehumanizing, mile by mile stripping away the humanity of the Jews not only in the eyes of the German guards, but even in the eyes of the Jews themselves. In many ways Dan Pagis’ poem is rehumanizing those who went through the experience, by framing it in terms of a Biblical incident that supposedly frames human origins. When I read the description of the freight cars in Night I kept returning to this poem, contrasting these two portrayals of the same experience in my mind. Both are born of the same experience but in many ways they are mirror images: the dehumanizing, “humans as freight” experience, and the experience that encompasses all of humanity, thus rehumanlizing those who experienced those freight cars. They are not contradictory versions, but are two sides of the exact same experience: the narrow one of what the experience meant right at the time to those directly involved, and the expansion of that highly personal experience to put it into the context of human nature and human history in general. What we do to each other now replays the family tragedy of the Biblical myth.

This is one of the most powerful speeches I have ever seen given (I was able to catch the whole speech in bits and pieces as people were reporting about it through YouTube) and it is even more powerful once read.

Why? Rudd enacts with this as law an acknowledgment that white privilege is founded on government policies that sought to make Aborigine Australians extinct.

Here's the quote :

The uncomfortable truth for us all is that the parliaments of the nation, individually and collectively, enacted statutes and delegated authority under those statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful.

There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation - and that value is a fair go for all.

There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that, for the stolen generations, there was no fair go at all.

There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that says that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs.

It is for these reasons, quite apart from concerns of fundamental human decency, that the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology - because, put simply, the laws that our parliaments enacted made the stolen generations possible.

We, the parliaments of the nation, are ultimately responsible, not those who gave effect to our laws. And the problem lay with the laws themselves.

As has been said of settler societies elsewhere, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors; therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well.

Therefore, for our nation, the course of action is clear: that is, to deal now with what has become one of the darkest chapters in Australia's history.

In doing so, we are doing more than contending with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public debate.

In doing so, we are also wrestling with our own soul.

Full text after the jump

Australia Says Sorry to Stolen Generation

Apology Speech by Kevin Rudd 13th February 2008 to the Stolen Generation.

Part 1. A little History
Part 2. Personal Interviews
Part 3. Footage from Australian supporters
Part 4. Apology Speech by Kevin Rudd

The Stolen Generation is a term used to describe the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions, under various state acts of parliament, denying the rights of parents and making all Aboriginal children wards of the state, between approximately 1869 and 1969. The policy typically involved the removal of children into internment camps, orphanages and other institutions.

I have been moved to tears by the incredible gesture of Australia's Parliament under their new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

Eleven years ago a study was published under the title Bringing Them Home | "Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families". The study was the height of a coalition of Aboriginal groups and human rights organizations who had fought for years to force the Australian government to blow the lid off the years of its genocidal policy against Aboriginal Australians.

The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that “the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves,” and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we’ll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 117th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Crossposted at Progressive Historians &
Native American Netroots

Black Kettle, his wife, and more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho had just been exterminated, and Custer’s 7th was burning the lodges and all their contents, thus stripping them of all survival means. Sheridan would wait until all their dogs had been eaten before “allowing” them into subjugation, then Custer would rape the women hostages in captivity.

Jerome A. Green. “Washita.” p. 126.
Far across the Washita Valley, warriors observed the killing of the animals, enraged by what they saw.

What did they see, feel, and think?

QUOTE SOURCE
And so, when the Chiefs gathered to decide what the people should do, Black Kettle took his usual place among them. Everyone agreed Sand Creek must be avenged. But there were questions. Why had the soldiers attacked with such viciousness? Why had they killed and mutilated women and children?

It seemed that the conflict with the whites had somehow changed. No longer was it just a war over land and buffalo. Now, the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves.

See it? Feel it?

They witnessed and felt the Sand Creek Massacre happen, again.

Consequently, a number of Cheyenne who were present at Washita helped defeat Custer at Little Bighorn.

So, let us proceed from the Sand Creek Massacre,

Why does this say Battle Ground after there was a Congressional investigation?

and from the genocide at the Washita “Battlefield” –

No, it was a massacre.

Petition to Re-name
The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site toThe Washita National Historic
Site of Genocide

AND WHERE AS:

According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

WE, the undersigned members of the Native American community and the public at large, request that this site of the attack by the United States military against 8,500 Plains Indians camped as prisoners of war along the Washita River in 1868 be designated as the Washita National Historic Site of Genocide.

- to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

Harjo: Burying the history of Wounded Knee

But Wounded Knee was 14 years after Little Bighorn. Would the soldiers have held a grudge that long and why would they take it out on Big Foot? They blamed Custer's defeat on Sitting Bull, who was killed two weeks before Wounded Knee. The Survivors Association members had the answer: ''Because Big Foot was Sitting Bull's half-brother. That's why Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa people sought sanctuary in Big Foot's Minneconjou camp.''

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890

The first intention of the U.S. Army in part was to detain Chief Big Foot under the pretext that he was a "fomenter of disturbance," remembering that Native Americans did not have equal rights at that time in the Constitution.

In addition, the real intention was doing a "roundup" to a military prison camp, which would have become an internment and concentration camp in Omaha after they were prisoners. Colonel James W. Forsyth had orders to force them into going there.

Speculating, I bet at least part of the rationalization for the massacre was so the soldiers wouldn't have to transport them to the military prison in Omaha. Murdering them would have been easier. Then, they could've had another whiskey keg, like they did the evening right before this massacre, when they celebrated the detainment of Chief Big Foot. The soldiers may have even been hung over, depending on amount consumed and tolerance levels; moreover, if the soldiers were alcoholics, tolerance levels would have been high.

massacre:

n : the wanton killing of many people [syn: mass murder] v : kill a large number of people indiscriminately;

"The Hutus massacred the Tutsis in Rwanda" [syn: slaughter, mow down]

[editor's note: While I am on vacation I am reposting some of my earlier diaries that I consider particularly important, interesting or well read. This was originally posted on Columbus Day]

I experienced an odd sensation today as I was on the subway today. Today was Columbus Day but I had to go in to work for part of the day anyway. The book I am currently reading is King Leopold's Ghost, a pretty horrifying history of the Congo under colonialism.

Reading about colonial genocide in Africa on Columbus Day. Had a kind of irony to it.

I have been ambivalent, in the litteral meaning of the word, towards Columbus Day for years now. I celebrate America and Columbus' "discovery" of the "New World" because the result of his discovery and the ultimate founding of America is that my family, myself included, is alive and thriving today. Without America, my family would have been exterminated in the genocide of Nazi Germany if not before that in the genocide of the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and later Stalin's genocide in the Soviet Union.

But I am reminded every Columbus day of the genocides on which the founding of America was based. My family had a refuge from genocide because of a previous genocide committed against the natives of America. How's THAT for ambivalence?

King Leopold II set out to turn the entire Congo basin into his own personal colony. It wasn't a colony of Belgium until later. It was a colony held by a single man. According to some estimates, ten million people were killed so that one man could make the modern equivalent of $1 billion. Those people were killed to keep costs down in production first of ivory, then of rubber. Eventually, outrage from Britain, the US, France and Germany led to the transfer of the Congo from Leopold to Belgium...without much change in the genocidal practices.

It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting, with his legs crossed like a Turk, on the top of a high wall -- such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance -- and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure, after all.

`And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.

`It's very provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, `to be called an egg -- very!'

`I said you looked like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. `And some eggs are very pretty, you know,' she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of compliment.

Ssssh. Can you hear us? The sounds we make our muffled. There is not much room for us here in these mass graves. We are stuffed together, face to face, arms strewn across one another, feet covering bellies. We are the dead of 1915. The smell of our rotting bodies has long ago dissipated; the flies have moved on. There is grass over the places where we were thrown into the earth.

But, if you listen closely, you can hear our murmurs. It is not so much justice we want. Justice is for the living. What does it benefit the dead to be granted justice after we are gone?

What we want is to be acknowledged. We are here. And we did not get here on our own.

So what would you have it be called?

Armenians claim that as many as 1.5 million of their ancestors were killed between 1915-1923 in an organized campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey and have pushed for recognition of the killings around the world as genocide.

Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died, but says the overall figure is inflated and that the deaths occurred in the civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Don't call it genocide, the Turks say, and if you do, you shall be jailed. It insults "Turkishness" to say that they were capable of killing us like that. You cannot even talk about it in your fiction:

As a follow up on my recent article on Columbus Day and my thoughts about it I offer you a statement made by the Indigenous Democratic Network about Columbus Day. I want to emphasize that my viewpoint on America and Columbus is as someone whose family would have been killed in Europe had America not been here to receive us. But Native Americans will not have that viewpoint. Their viewpoint is just as legitimate as ours and should not be forgotten:

It’s Columbus Day – What are we celebrating for?

“We shall take you and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, … and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, … and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault …”

-Christopher Columbus

Each October children in classrooms around the nation will dutifully recite their Columbus Day “facts”: the ships (“the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria…”), the year (“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...”), and even the fruit that the explorer thought best resembled the Earth (that would be the orange ). Our national leaders take time out of their busy schedules – raising money and covering up scandals – to commemorate the man who “found” America.

I experienced an odd sensation today as I was on the subway today. Today was Columbus Day but I had to go in to work for part of the day anyway. The book I am currently reading is King Leopold's Ghost, a pretty horrifying history of the Congo under colonialism.

Reading about colonial genocide in Africa on Columbus Day. Had a kind of irony to it.

I have been ambivalent, in the litteral meaning of the word, towards Columbus Day for years now. I celebrate America and Columbus' "discovery" of the "New World" because the result of his discovery and the ultimate founding of America is that my family, myself included, is alive and thriving today. Without America, my family would have been exterminated in the genocide of Nazi Germany if not before that in the genocide of the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and later Stalin's genocide in the Soviet Union.

But I am reminded every Columbus day of the genocides on which the founding of America was based. My family had a refuge from genocide because of a previous genocide committed against the natives of America. How's THAT for ambivalence?

King Leopold II set out to turn the entire Congo basin into his own personal colony. It wasn't a colony of Belgium until later. It was a colony held by a single man. According to some estimates, ten million people were killed so that one man could make the modern equivalent of $1 billion. Those people were killed to keep costs down in production first of ivory, then of rubber. Eventually, outrage from Britain, the US, France and Germany led to the transfer of the Congo from Leopold to Belgium...without much change in the genocidal practices.

Interesting campaign from Human Rights First:

Dear blogger,

We thought you might be interested in an online gallery that organizations from all around the world have put together to promote September 17, the global day for Darfur. We’re hoping you’ll encourage your readers to add their faces to the gallery of people wearing a blue beret, the internationally recognized icon of U.N. peacekeeping forces, to send a message to their governments to pressure the U.N. Security Council and the government of Sudan to deploy U.N. troops to protect the people of Darfur. Thousands of people around the globe on September 17 will join in a unified call for an end to the mass slaughter in Darfur at over 40 events being held in at least 20 countries, including a rally and concert in NYC Central Park. People are also being asked to wear a blue hat on the day. To add a photo of oneself to the gallery (one can adjust the blue beret to fit the photo) and for more details on the events in each country, please go to http://www.dayfordarfur.org. These pages are being constantly updated.

Background:

Marc Perkel is one of those old school bloggers a lot of people have not heard of but should. I've been a daily reader of his stuff now for ages; especially since he was able to create and incorporate the very real and legal Church of Reality.

His take on religion and politics is quite refreshing because it's a lot of the time incendiary. I would call his style as not so much neo-atheism as more like un-religioning with a sledgehammer. Which is why his following post ought to create a lot of controversy.
[via Marc Perkel Rantz: The Jewish State Experiment is a Failure]

When I listen to what the country of Israel is saying they have no regrets about the number of Lebanese they kill and these other people are in the way of Israel's goals. Israel complains about kidnapping of it's people but when they kidnap 1/3 of the Palestinian Parlament they call them "detainees". Like Islamic terrorists Israel has its own death squads that hunts down and kills people who don't support their agenda, including their own leaders like Yitzhak Rabin.

The problem isn't with Judaism itself as much as it is with the idea of having a society with a superior class and an inferior class. It creates the illusion that they are actually better people and it create an imbalance that tends to lead to war as the oppressed rise up against the oppressors.