Holocaust Rememberance Day
I know there are plenty of people who will disagree with me about this one, probably everyone from my community back in Melbourne, Australia but I really question the validity of this day.
Being called The Holocaust, implicitly denies or at least overshadows other atrocities that have happened before and since the Nazi attempt at exterminating European Jewry (and Gypies and others) - the other attempts or near successes at genocide.
Also, the place that The Holocaust has in our (western) culture reinforces the idea that Jews are victims, the ultimate victim.
I see us as a diverse people, with diverse histories that span the globe. Like all (minority) peoples, we have had successes and failures, persecution and tolerance, highs and lows, throughout history in different countries. We are too apt to see ourselves as victims, to reflect on the bad times and not on the good. We feed our stereotypes by seeing ourselves as the victim. I am not saying we are responsible for the stereotype, non-Jews are responsible for that. But we act up to it sometimes. By seeing ourselves only as victims, we also deny our responsibility as perpetrators - perpetrators for other atrocites such as those perpetuated in Israel towards Palestinian communities or our own individual feelings of racism and hatred towards others.
And one last issue that I have with Holocaust Rememberance Day is that, in its name, we are subjected to a rash of ill-conceived, badly produced, stereotypical dramas on TV and radio for the week leading up.
And all these dramas do, is reinforce a spurious idea that evil existed only in the Nazi regime, that evil is peculiar to Germans and/or Nazis and that we, today, in our civilised world, would never permit (that level of) racism, or inhuman treatment of people... Reality contradicts that myth.