Holocaust possessiveness

Critics say Germany's Holocaust memorial forgets some victims

By Matthew Schofield, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Fri May 6, 6:28 PM ET

BERLIN - Kurt Julius Goldstein, a German Jew who survived 18 months of slave labor in the mines at the Auschwitz death camp, would seem to be the target audience for his country's new Holocaust memorial. So why does he despise it?

Goldstein, 90, survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald and lost 38 of 50 family members to Nazi murder. But he says he can't shake the feeling that the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe that will be unveiled here on Tuesday is unfair to the Nazis' many other victims.

"You know, I was here, and they (the Nazis) didn't begin and end with the Jews," he said. "How can we focus on our own suffering and ignore that of the physically and mentally handicapped, the gays, the gypsies, the communists, those who opposed them? This should be a place to unite us. Instead, just like before, it divides."

Still, as the honorary president of three survivors and resistors groups, Goldstein will attend the opening ceremony. "I thought about not going, but I have to pay respect to those who died," he said.

I could not believe I actually read that line.

Now before I everyone gets all uptight and starts screaming "fascist historical revisionism!" let me say one thing: The murder of nearly 6 million Jews during the course of Nazi tyranny will forever be one of history's darkest moments, and mankind's greatest atrocities---but the Holocaust does not belong solely to the Jews.

You never open a history book and look at pictures of the concentration camps and say, "My God...look at the terrible suffering of those ______ (insert Catholics, Protestants, homosexuals, Gypsies, mentally/physically challenged, intellectuals, communists, and plain anyone Hitler did not like)!"

It just doesn't happen that way.

I'll bite my tongue about how many Jews head big media and publishing outlets. You make up your own mind about that---but no matter how you slice it, most Jews tend to claim sole possession of the Holocaust rememberence and education efforts.

Jacob Schulze-Rohr, however, disagrees,

"There must be memorials to all who suffered, and they must be in Berlin," said Jacob Schulze-Rohr, a member of the memorial board of directors. "But they must be separate. A gypsy could become a Nazi. A lesbian could deny her sexuality. Jews were separated from the rest of humanity by the simple fact that they were born Jews. That alone was their death sentence."

Must be in Berlin, eh? Well how about building one in Moscow? Oh wait, because Marx was a Jew so the Soviets wouldn't dare harm one, right? Or was it because Stalin's arbitrary (read: paranoid) murdering execution of purging of anyone he feared was against him, including a predominantly-Jewish Bolshevik party is excused by the fact that it was just that, arbitrary, right?

I guess the only difference between Stalin's paranoia and Hitler's insanity (advanced Parkinson's? Syphillis? Drug-addiction? Who knows?) is that Hitler premeditated the slaughter of Jews, and everyone else falls under the domain of Stalinist collateral damage, right?

Posted by Kyer at May 7, 2005 02:13 PM