To the editors:
I am a “child of the Holocaust”: all four of my grandparents, several aunts and uncles, my older sister, my father’s first wife, and many other relatives died in Hitler’s concentration camps, and my parents became refugees, stripped of their citizenship and property by the wartime German and Polish occupation government because of their Jewish background. I share many of the same experiences that those profiled in this week’s cover article had [July 6]. Having read both that article and the article that appeared a couple of months earlier on the Skokie Holocaust Museum [Our Town, May 4], however, I have a very different reaction than you might expect.
I am, frankly, sick of the self-involved whining and self-absorbed demand for attention concerning the Holocaust. Yes, many people were unjustly murdered by the fascist German government–half a century ago. Unfortunately, evidently some of the survivors of their victims learned NOTHING from World War II.
They are just as hate-filled and reactionary as the Nazis who once persecuted them. The comments in the article on the Holocaust Museum concerning their supporters’ opposition to German reunification and hope that the German people “suffer” further was just one indication of this. For years now, Jewish religious, political and cultural organizations have been engaged in a shameful ongoing crusade to persecute 70, 80 and 90 year old retired janitors and the like who served as concentration camp guards, 50 years or more after these men were forcibly drafted into the German army during the war–serving no conceivable rational purpose at this late date. Where once the Nazis tried to impose some kind of collective or “racial” guilt on Jews, today many of these “Holocaust” fetishists similarly try to impose a collective or “racial” guilt on the entire German people, including millions who weren’t even born before Hitler came to power.
Yet the German people were themselves really among the greatest VICTIMS of Hitler’s regime, dying in an immoral war, having their country torn apart, having their democratic rights and organizations suppressed, etc. A number of years ago, while I was no fan of President Reagan in general, I was very moved by his visit to a German cemetery and his speech recognizing that the German soldiers of World War II were also among Hitler’s victims. It is long past time to both forgive and forget!
When the Nazis attempted to simply hold a march in Skokie, some of the same people today promoting the “Holocaust Museum” were among the forces pushing most strongly for fascist measures to suppress their free speech–ranging from undemocratic and unconstitutional parade permit laws, quickly struck down by the United States Supreme Court, to threats of mob violence. Evidently, the only lesson they learned from the experience of the Nazis was how to be like the Nazis.
And then there is that modern atrocity the so-called “State of Israel,” a bandit regime currently imposed by force of arms on occupied Palestine. Where once the Nazis tried to create an “Aryan Christian” state based on “racial purity,” the Zionists today have created a theocratic fascist state which denies the Palestinian people every possible democratic and human right in their own homeland. People like the “Holocaust” fetishists profiled in the recent two articles in the Reader are by and large apologists for this maniacal regime which shuts schools and hospitals, stones and buries alive children, and imprisons and tortures any who even dare to display the proud colors of Palestinian independence. And when the brave Palestinian people–harried beyond human endurance–resort to self-defense–they are branded “terrorists” by the Zionists. American Zionist apologists for Israel even demanded that the U.S. government break off even “talks” with the PLO for failure to “condemn” acts of armed struggle by the Palestinian people, and continue to whine about “Israel’s right to exist”–somewhat akin to a rapist’s fan club complaining about victims who have kicked him in the balls. Luckily, more and more people are seeing through this and the day will soon come when the PLO can took forward to “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
Here in Illinois, they even demanded that more Zionist propaganda be placed on a Chicago Public Library reading list on the Middle East after a good librarian dared to put some objective material on the list. Again, learning from the Nazis, the Big Lie is always the best.
And when anyone criticizes the Zionists–such as Minister Farrakhan–automatically they are labeled “anti-semitic.” Whining about “anti-semitism” is a convenient way not to deal with the much more real issue of the continued subjugation of the African-American people. These “Holocaust” fetishists could care less if thousands of black babies die of malnutrition in Woodlawn or Harlem–they are more concerned about whether they still have slight difficulties gaining membership in an expensive country club. As Farrakhan recently pointed out in The Final Call (newspaper of the Nation of Islam) p. 12 (June 22, 1990), “According to the late great scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, a conservative estimate of Black lives lost in the middle passage [of the slave trade] was from 50 to 100 million Black lives. We don’t need to minimize the Jewish Holocaust. Six million lives is a lot of lives, but are you telling me that six million white lives are more valuable than a hundred million Black lives?” In Illinois, the Zionist/”Holocaust” fetishist lobby procured the passage of legislation mandating special classes in public schools concerning the Holocaust. What have they ever done to get the public schools to teach the truth about the history of how black African people were kidnapped from their homelands, put into chains and brutally murdered in the tens of millions in the slave trade–or in the 400 years of unpaid slave labor which followed?
In all these ways, the “Holocaust” fetishists dishonor and spit on the memory of all the millions–of whatever background–who died in the battle against the fascists of World War II. They are truly the new Nazis and fascists of today.
You won’t very often see or hear opinions such as mine coming from persons with Jewish backgrounds–although I know that I am far from alone in the comments I have made in this letter. Many of us learned long ago that if you dare to honestly express yourself about the Zionists, you can face ostracism, disinheritance, job loss, and even physical assault and death threats. It is for that reason that I normally just keep my mouth shut. Frankly, reading all this garbage in the Reader twice in recent months was just too much for me, and I couldn’t remain silent. I hope that you will print this letter, to let your readers know that not all “Children of the Holocaust” are like the self-centered reactionary bastards portrayed in your articles, that some of us support justice, freedom, and the African-American and Palestinian struggles with all our hearts. And also to let other “Children of the Holocaust” who feel as I do know that they are not alone.
Please sign me “Name Withheld.” Unfortunately, we still live in a country where, while you theoretically cannot be thrown in jail for your opinions, you can still be persecuted for them by the Zionist scum.
Name withheld