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Post by Montegriffo on Dec 14, 2022 19:30:28 GMT
He's also refusing to click on my link to a list of memorials to the potato famine. On the contrary, I noted the Liverpool memorial which I hadn't been aware of. But I also noted it wasn't an official government commemoration.
So it still begs the question: why a memorial to Jews murdered in a foreign place far away and not to Irish people to whom we have a close ancestral and geographic connection?
You're moving the goalposts to government commemoration now are you? It was ''physical memorials'' earlier. |
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Post by Dan Dare on Dec 14, 2022 21:32:44 GMT
No goalpost moving at all. If you knew anything about the matter at all you'd know that all H-Memorialisation is essentially a government-sponsored (and financed) activity. Very little of it has happened as a result of spontaneous public reaction.
And it wasn't just physical memorials either - in the OP I referred to a 'veritable explosion of Holocaust-related memorials, museums, 'educational' projects, seminars, symposiums, exhibitions and commemoration'.
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Post by Toreador on Dec 14, 2022 21:38:32 GMT
I think I may have had a post wiped on this topic.
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Post by Dan Dare on Dec 14, 2022 21:40:15 GMT
Has anyone sought to officially remember the treatment of ethnic Germans after WWII when, people who’d been established for many years in countries around Germany, were uprooted and forced out of their homes and transported to Germany, with a million or more dying? Or was this thought to be deserved because of what their kinsfolk had meted out to Jews, Poles, Serbs, Slavs, etc, from the mid ‘30s…? No and yes.
There is no official commemoration, for example, of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a refugee ship that was sunk in the Baltic by a Russian submarine in January 1945 with the loss of almost 10,000 lives.
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Post by Pacifico on Dec 14, 2022 22:55:39 GMT
So it still begs the question: why a memorial to Jews murdered in a foreign place far away and not to Irish people to whom we have a close ancestral and geographic connection?
Well the obvious answer is that one was a deliberate attempt to exterminate a whole race of people, and the other was a result of bureaucratic bungling. |
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Post by Orac on Dec 15, 2022 10:56:29 GMT
My theory is that it is part of the ww2 'victory lap'. This is why some of the hideous events in the soviet union don't get much cultural attention - the Soviets were an ally in ww2 and so the whole thing is painted over substantially.
One observation I will give to Dan's question is that, while people generally are being encouraged to 'forget ww2 and 'move on' (ie the commonly heard accusation, 'all the brits do is talk about the past glories of the war'), this area seems to be amplified and encouraged as time moves on. Brits are being encouraged remember an activity they had no real hand in and forget their role in bringing it to an end. I find this mixture of pressures is a bit odd.
Perhaps in thirty years most brits wont even know that the uk was in a war with Germany, they will just know about the holocaust and perhaps just assume we were partly instrumental
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Post by Dan Dare on Dec 15, 2022 21:31:59 GMT
The salient question is in the thread title: Why here? Why now?
Radio silence for almost half a century and now the communication channels and western culture in general are saturated with Holocaustiana.
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Post by johnofgwent on Dec 16, 2022 0:44:12 GMT
I don't frankly see this as being a sufficiently important issue to wish to research an external report Dan Not sure if I have interpreted your post correctly It rather seems as if you are irritated and perhaps see as undesirable any attempt to educate our children about arguably the worst crime committed by humanity in the last 100 years, its underlying causes of political exploitation of racism and hatred for power and its relevance to today's world where such political exploitation seems again to be on the rise. It's possible I may have misinterpreted you of course. Perhaps you could clarify? As noted we agree that the Westminster memorial may not be the best way to go about it but lets just understand the principle. Do you think it acceptable for my generation not to have been told as children in school that the jews shared their concentration camp accommodations with homosexuals, and political prisoners and Romany Gypsies. I was well into my forties before I ever heard anyone admit that. Why might that be ? |
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Post by Dan Dare on Dec 16, 2022 6:31:26 GMT
With common criminals too.
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Post by jeg er on Dec 16, 2022 8:31:17 GMT
I don't frankly see this as being a sufficiently important issue to wish to research an external report Dan Not sure if I have interpreted your post correctly It rather seems as if you are irritated and perhaps see as undesirable any attempt to educate our children about arguably the worst crime committed by humanity in the last 100 years, its underlying causes of political exploitation of racism and hatred for power and its relevance to today's world where such political exploitation seems again to be on the rise. It's possible I may have misinterpreted you of course. Perhaps you could clarify? As noted we agree that the Westminster memorial may not be the best way to go about it but lets just understand the principle. Do you think it acceptable for my generation not to have been told as children in school that the jews shared their concentration camp accommodations with homosexuals, and political prisoners and Romany Gypsies. I was well into my forties before I ever heard anyone admit that. Why might that be ? im in my 50s, and i knew that at school |
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Post by johnofgwent on Dec 16, 2022 9:05:50 GMT
im in my 50s, and i knew that at school I find that interesting. I’m 65 and was never told this at school. Also, when my two daughters age 36 and 32 were forced to study Nasty Nazism and The Atrocities of White Slavers along with The American Dustbowl as the only three things that matters to the Marxists, nobody told them either. I applaud the openness of your educators. However those charged with educating me and my children seem to have had other agendas. Why do you think that might be ? |
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Post by Toreador on Dec 16, 2022 9:15:39 GMT
im in my 50s, and i knew that at school I find that interesting. I’m 65 and was never told this at school. Also, when my two daughters age 36 and 32 were forced to study Nasty Nazism and The Atrocities of White Slavers along with The American Dustbowl as the only three things that matters to the Marxists, nobody told them either. I applaud the openness of your educators. However those charged with educating me and my children seem to have had other agendas. Why do you think that might be ? I'm much older and don't recall any references to the German extermination policies or particular events regarding Jews or anyone else. |
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Post by jeg er on Dec 16, 2022 11:28:46 GMT
I find that interesting. I’m 65 and was never told this at school. Also, when my two daughters age 36 and 32 were forced to study Nasty Nazism and The Atrocities of White Slavers along with The American Dustbowl as the only three things that matters to the Marxists, nobody told them either. I applaud the openness of your educators. However those charged with educating me and my children seem to have had other agendas. Why do you think that might be ? I'm much older and don't recall any references to the German extermination policies or particular events regarding Jews or anyone else. it was part of world war two studies when i was at school believe me, there was nothing special about my school. mostly its teaching standards were appalling |
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Post by Toreador on Dec 16, 2022 12:09:49 GMT
I'm much older and don't recall any references to the German extermination policies or particular events regarding Jews or anyone else. it was part of world war two studies when i was at school believe me, there was nothing special about my school. mostly its teaching standards were appalling I didn't do WW2 studies, the war was barely over. Nearest I got was in year five at grammar which was history 1901-1945 but no mention of the holocaust. However, studying that period made me well aware of nonsense that was called politics. |
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Post by dappy on Dec 16, 2022 12:43:00 GMT
The vast majority of people killed in war time concentration camps were jews but it is absolutely true that other groups including gay people and romany people were also targeted.
It is also true that many ethnic Germans and indeed German nationals for example in parts of Germany that became Poland were treated appallingly. (I know better than most because a close family member was one of them) . Again though not on the same scale as Jews suffered in the Holocaust.
I answered Dan's question "why here why now" earlier in the thread. . I suppose the argument for a Holocaust Memorial now might be that the sheer scale of it made it arguably the worst crime committed by humanity in the last 100years, the root cause of the crime was political exploitation of racism and hatred and that those similar factors seem to now be on the rise in our society. It is perhaps appropriate to attempt to teach the newer generations about what happened in relatively recent times and encourage them to learn the lessons of that time. I trust you wouldn't disagree with any of that sentiment but perhaps you could just confirm, Dan. A little odd that he repeats the question but avoided answering the point I asked him to confirm. Almost baffling to come up with a reason why......
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