Holocaust Memorial Day | Articles | the bombsite

Friday 27th January is designated as Holocaust Memorial Day. The Holocaust was a despicable act of barbarism inflicted by the Nazis on some 6 million European Jews during World War II. I believe it happened. I’m not one of those dumb pricks who deny it. I also believe that the Memorial day is vital and anything I say from now on is not in any way shape or form meant to contradict anything I have just said. I just thought I’d mention that before anyone gets the wrong idea.

Now whilst I believe that remembering this event is vital, I also believe that remembering is pointless unless we learn from the memory and, quite frankly, over the last 60 years I don’t think we’ve learned a bloody thing! And by we I mean everybody, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, whites, blacks, brown, yellows, whatever religion, whatever race, whatever colour. Everybody seems to have been absent for this lesson.

Britain, America, Russia and many other countries throughout Europe knew exactly what was going on and did absolutely nothing to stop it. Yes I know there was a war on at the time but that just isn’t a good excuse. I think that sending bombers out on special missions to specifically bomb the death camps would have helped the Jewish cause, even though it would have meant the immediate death of those in the camps. They died anyway but maybe, just maybe we could have saved many others. But no, we sat back and did nothing and we continue to sit back and do nothing when acts of genocide are perpetrated throughout the world even now.

I said “do nothing” but that’s not strictly true. The UN, in it’s oh so infinite wisdom, placed an arms embargo on the former Jugoslavia prior to the Serbian invasion and subsequent massacre of the Bosnian Muslims. Very clever. The Serbs were already very well armed. In Srebrenica, a supposed Safe Haven, U.N. peacekeepers stood by as the Serbs, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, systematically selected and then slaughtered nearly 8,000 men and boys between the ages of twelve and sixty – the worst mass murder in Europe since World War II. In addition, the Serbs continued to engage in mass rapes of Muslim females. It wasn’t until the Bosnians were supplied with arms by other Muslim countries that they were able to fight back. Of course they were Muslim so that doesn’t really matter does it? DOES IT?!

Last week the Palestinian people voted in a very democratic way and elected Hamas to government. “Well done Hamas” I say. Some people say they are a terrorist organisation. I am not one of them. President Bush, that oh so democratic leader of the most violent country on the planet, said that he wouldn’t deal with them and many European governments, including Britain, followed his lead like lambs to the slaughter. He then went on to say that he was considering withdrawing all financial aid to the Palestinians. Extremely clever. Punish the Palestinian people because they didn’t elect the government that HE wanted. Sod what the Palestinians want. If it isn’t what HE wants it just isn’t good enough. Well fuck him I say and all the anally retentive politicians around the world who haven’t got the brains to decide for themselves what they should do.

Long live Hamas and the Palestinian People. One day Palestine will be on the map again. Mind you, don’t tell the Israelis I said so. They don’t like the idea that Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map. I think that’s a little bit of “do as I say, not as I do” creeping over the horizon there.

Plus there is the point that for almost the last 60 years, nearly as long as we have been remembering the Holocaust, the Israelis have been systematically killing and forcing the Palestinians out of their own country. Most of those that remain have been forced to live in a narrow strip of land known as The Gazza Strip which is nothing more than a glorified concentration camp. So the Israelis have learned the lesson then.

Our own Foreign Secretary recently said in an interview, talking about Hamas, that a democratic government is one who does not use terror or violence as a means to an end. Exactly! I wonder if he’s thinking of imparting this gem of intelligence to the British, American and Israeli governments because I don’t think they’ve learned this one.

Aren’t the Palestinians mostly Muslim? Mmmm. They don’t really matter then do they? DO THEY?!

In Darfur, that’s in Sudan if you didn’t know, innocent civilians are being murdered in their tens of thousands and over 1.5 million people have fled their homes to avoid the conflict and now face starvation. The UN have said that it is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. What have they done about it? Indeed what has anybody done about it? Nothing! Lots of talk and statements but no action what-so-ever. The Sudanese government, using it’s air force and Arab “Janjaweed” rebels, are committing genocide on the peoples of Darfur.

Are the Sudanese Muslims then? Well actually, no. They are a diverse ethnic mix but can be generally, and I do mean generally, described as Arab Muslims to the north and in government, whilst to the south they are mostly African and predominantly Christian. So it’s the Muslims who are getting killed then? Erm, no it isn’t. It’s the Muslim militias who are committing the atrocity in this instance. So there’s a turn-up for the books.

In 1959, in Rwanda, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighbouring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees – many fearing Tutsi retribution – fled to neighbouring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and the former Zaire.

Now I wonder if you can guess what the rest of the world did about this? If you said “nothing” you hit the nail on the head.

Quite often I hear people say “but there were 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, none of these other atrocities compare”. Well personally I don’t think that the numbers are the point. It’s the act of genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the wanton murder, rape and torture that is the point. It’s the same crime regardless of quantity. Whilst we sit here through the years remembering the Holocaust there is no point to the remembering if we don’t learn from the memory, and we definitely haven’t learned anything. It makes The Holocaust Memorial Day a bit of a waste of time. We should either learn, or stop remembering. Which is it to be?