Page 118
Last July, a conference was held in London and Oxford to discuss racial genocide outbreaks that have been taking place in various parts of the world since the end of World War II.
The following letter was received from the Executive Chairman of the conference, Dr Elizabeth Maxwell.
To The Exilarch's Foundation
One of the outstanding papers presented at the conference was by Dr Mark Levene, Dept of History, University of Warwick, Coventry. Speaking at a session of the conference, Dr Levene told academics and survivors: "It seems to me to be a paradox. For 50 years no-one was really interested in the Holocaust; now it is everywhere."
Dr Levene questioned the uniqueness of the Holocaust. He considered the invocation, "never again" as hollow and crass.
Dr Levene admitted that the focus on the Holocaust was not necessarily a bad thing, but wondered where do we go from here? How does knowledge of the Holocaust make genocide more difficult? We probably don't have an answer for that yet.
Scribe: The extermination of millions of Jews in the German gas chambers is unique because these Jews died as hostages for the free world. In 1939, Hitler threatened that if world Jewry would embroil Germany in another world war, then all the Jews of Europe would be exterminated. That was the price that the Jews of Europe had to pay, so that people everywhere could live in freedom and peace. Students of the Holocaust are perplexed by its significance because they miss this point. Moreover the Holocaust was aided and abetted by oil interest and by Arab influence in the axis countries which needs to be highlighted.
While "Remembering for the future" and "never again" may be useless in preventing another Jewish Holocaust as there are too few Jews in Europe for that, it may also be useless in preventing smaller outbreaks of genocides elsewhere. But the victims of the Holocaust died for the free world and must be remembered and honoured as such. That is the uniqueness and that is the importance of the Jewish Holocaust.
If you would like to make any comments or contribute to the scribe please contact us.