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INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY: PREJUDICE AND PRIDE
Tiberman Sajiwan Ramyead
Mauritius Times
http://www.mauritiustimes.com/250108ramyead. htm
Jan 25 2008
Mauritius
Like many students I read The Diary of Anne Frank during the 1950s,
at an age when the eyes moistened easily. Then during the early
1960s I read my first non-fiction book on the horrors of the Second
World War. I had taken it on loan from the Municipal Library of Quatre
Bornes. There were several such books in that library, all hard covers
illustrated with black and white photographs. Over the next two or
three years I read most of them. To this day I can still see those
photographs: lampshades the Germans had made with human skin, cakes
of soap from human fat, the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration
camps, Nazi soldiers with swastika armbands and indifferent faces,
emaciated Jews, piles of dead bodies, the gas chambers and the
crematoria. Jugement a Nuremberg, a black and white film on the trial
of the surviving Nazis, based on the actual trial held just after the
war, was shown in the cinema halls during those years. It was one of
the most poignant films on the Holocaust but I think it missed the
attention of many Mauritians at that time. It would be appropriate
for the MBC-TV to broadcast this film on next Sunday 27th.
>From those early impressions my interest in the Holocaust has remained,
and as a Mauritian my sentiment for the German people has been a
mixture of resentment, acceptance and reconciliation.
In 1979 I was on a study tour in China, around three decades after the
Holocaust. One member of the delegation was a tall and well-built young
German. In my imagination I placed his face with those Nazis in the
concentration camps, and it fitted well. He was after all a German,
and the cruel superiority prejudice of his nation, then split into
the Federal and Democratic Republics, could not have been transformed
over one generation. But he was friendly and easy to get on with;
a reminder of the change that time inscrutably brings among people,
although this was not my contemplation then.
The rapport among nations have changed indeed - my cousin and her
spouse, both Mauritians, are settled in Germany, and till recently
my son occupied a senior position in a London based bank of German
origin. In today's unified Germany there are around 45,000 Indian
citizens and 20,000 persons of Indian origin; and during the Second
World War, the 950th regiment of the German army was made up of Indian
soldiers. It was an idea of Subash Chandra Bose and Adolf Hitler!
Is Nazism effaced from the surface of the globe? Football amateurs will
recall the open demonstration of neo-Nazis during a match, in France
I think, three or four years ago. Sporadic signs of Nazi revival have
been apparent here and there in Germany. Time magazine of 20 January
2008 reports the aspiration of one young, present-day German: I see
myself again, running along beside our tanks, waving my men onward,
marching, fighting, advancing - eastward or westward, I don't care,
but fighting in a war which will make Germany great again.
A few years ago, genealogy and the search for graves of earlier Indian
immigrants took me to the Saint Martin cemetery, and there I stared
in disbelief at 127 graves of Jews. A Jewish section in a cemetery in
Mauritius! One's feelings during such moments are difficult to convey
to those who have not experienced them. They passed away in the Beau
Bassin prison, then the Barkly Asylum, between 1941 and 1945. Geneviève
Pitot has written a book on the touching story of those 1600 Jewish
detainees who arrived in the island in 1940 (Reference). Another
Mauritian, Jacques Desmarais, maintained that section of the cemetery
at his own expense until his death, out of a sense of duty and homage.
1889 - Enter Adolph Hitler
It was the year when God bequeathed to the earth one of his
unexplainable creations. A baby boy, Adolph Hitler was born in
the then Austria-Hungary. Nineteen years later, the Art Academy in
Vienna unwittingly contributed to the making of a leader, the future
architect and engineer of modern history's most massive genocide. It
turned down the admission of Hitler who wanted to be an artist. The
frustrated young man wandered about aimlessly for some time, and then
joined the army. Like most Austrians, he despised the Jews. Then there
followed a series of events which culminated in the extermination of
six million Jews. Had the Academy admitted young Adolph, humankind's
modern history would certainly have been different. The story of the
Second World War and Hitler's inglorious schemes to exterminate this
race are well known.
What is the Holocaust?
Websites abound with information on the Holocaust. Although not
commonly used, 'Holocaust' is an important word in modern human
history. Dictionaries generally provide convergent meanings of
the word, although with a few interesting nuances. In general terms
holocaust means destruction or slaughter on a massive scale, and 'the
Holocaust' (capital letter) denotes the mass murder of Jews under
the German Nazi regime in the Second World War (1939-1945). Around
nine million Jews lived in German-occupied Europe and by 1945 two out
every three European Jews had been killed. The 1960 edition of Petit
Larousse, for instance, provides a historical insight of the word:
Sacrifice en usage chez les juifs, et dans lequel la victime etait
entièrement consumee par le feu. This dictionary does not refer to
the mass slaughter of the Jews and mentions the fact in its 1990
edition. Not all dictionaries indicate the scale of the slaughter --
around six million. The exact number will never be known; in certain
extermination camps one gas chamber could contain over a thousand.
In Jewish use the Holocaust equivalent is 'Shoah'. Genocide is
one synonym of holocaust, but 'the Holocaust' is specific to the
extermination of the Jews.
Sunday 27 January - International Holocaust Remembrance Day
It is astonishing that this Remembrance Day, in memory of THE most
barbaric genocide in mankind's modern history, was designated by the
United Nations General Assembly only two years ago. 27 January 1945
was the liberation date of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death
camp. It was the shock and awe brought about by the Holocaust that gave
birth to the United Nations Charter, replacing the League of Nations;
representatives of 50 countries agreed to keep peace, encourage
co-operation between nations and defend human rights. There does not
seem to be clear primary information sources explaining the reasons
that took the parliament of the world -- the UN general Assembly -
60 years after its coming into being, to designate the International
Holocaust Remembrance Day. The more so being given that it was the
Holocaust itself that triggered the setting up of the UN.
At its sixtieth session, on 21 November 2005, the General Assembly took
note of "the fact that the sixtieth session of the General Assembly
is taking place during the sixtieth year of the defeat of the Nazi
regime." It honoured "the courage and dedication shown by the soldiers
who liberated the concentration camps," reaffirmed that the Holocaust
"will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred,
bigotry, racism and prejudice," and resolved that the 27 January
would be an "annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of
the victims of the Holocaust."
The General Assembly urged Member States "to develop educational
programmes that will inculcate future generations with the lessons
of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide."
It is hoped that the Mauritian government, as a Member State of the
UN, will organise some sensitisation programme on the Holocaust;
even on its website, which the young probably peruse more than the
written press. The lessons learnt from this genocide are not altogether
disconnected from our multi-ethnic realities.
Reactions to the Holocaust
Opposing views to the commemoration of the Holocaust serve as yet
more reminders to the continuing messy relations among nations. Last
year the Iranian President publicly called the Holocaust "a myth"
and called for the State of Israel to be "wiped off the map". The UN
resolution rejects denial of the Holocaust.
Francois Gautier, born in Paris in 1950, arrived in India when he
was 19. He was a writer, journalist and correspondent for well-known
publications in France, but he fell in love with India and became a
staunch supporter of Hindu nationalist movements. His observation,
wrongly or rightly, contribute to some food for thought on other past
massacres: "The massacres perpetrated by the Muslims in India are
unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the
Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive
even than the slaughter of the South American Native populations by
the invading Spanish and Portuguese."
But that does not mean that the Holocaust Remembrance Day should not
be observed with all the dignity it deserves, by all nations.
[email protected]
Notes and References
- Websites on the Holocaust
- The photograph shows a group of Jewish children just before execution
- 'The Mauritian Shekel - The story of the Jewish Detainees in
Mauritius, 1940-1945.'Geneviève Pitot. 1998
- 'The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora'. General Editor Brij V.
Lal. Editions Didier Millet, Singapore. 2006. Page 358
- 'The Modern World since 1870'. L.E. Snellgrove. Longman Group Ltd,
London 1977
- Adherence to the UN started in 1945. Mauritius joined in April 1968
and Germany in September 1973. The last to become a Member State has
been Montenegro in June 2006. There are 192 member states
--Boundary_(ID_5amfAoIm+PNDyERkTsUoYg)--
Tiberman Sajiwan Ramyead
Mauritius Times
http://www.mauritiustimes.com/250108ramyead. htm
Jan 25 2008
Mauritius
Like many students I read The Diary of Anne Frank during the 1950s,
at an age when the eyes moistened easily. Then during the early
1960s I read my first non-fiction book on the horrors of the Second
World War. I had taken it on loan from the Municipal Library of Quatre
Bornes. There were several such books in that library, all hard covers
illustrated with black and white photographs. Over the next two or
three years I read most of them. To this day I can still see those
photographs: lampshades the Germans had made with human skin, cakes
of soap from human fat, the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration
camps, Nazi soldiers with swastika armbands and indifferent faces,
emaciated Jews, piles of dead bodies, the gas chambers and the
crematoria. Jugement a Nuremberg, a black and white film on the trial
of the surviving Nazis, based on the actual trial held just after the
war, was shown in the cinema halls during those years. It was one of
the most poignant films on the Holocaust but I think it missed the
attention of many Mauritians at that time. It would be appropriate
for the MBC-TV to broadcast this film on next Sunday 27th.
>From those early impressions my interest in the Holocaust has remained,
and as a Mauritian my sentiment for the German people has been a
mixture of resentment, acceptance and reconciliation.
In 1979 I was on a study tour in China, around three decades after the
Holocaust. One member of the delegation was a tall and well-built young
German. In my imagination I placed his face with those Nazis in the
concentration camps, and it fitted well. He was after all a German,
and the cruel superiority prejudice of his nation, then split into
the Federal and Democratic Republics, could not have been transformed
over one generation. But he was friendly and easy to get on with;
a reminder of the change that time inscrutably brings among people,
although this was not my contemplation then.
The rapport among nations have changed indeed - my cousin and her
spouse, both Mauritians, are settled in Germany, and till recently
my son occupied a senior position in a London based bank of German
origin. In today's unified Germany there are around 45,000 Indian
citizens and 20,000 persons of Indian origin; and during the Second
World War, the 950th regiment of the German army was made up of Indian
soldiers. It was an idea of Subash Chandra Bose and Adolf Hitler!
Is Nazism effaced from the surface of the globe? Football amateurs will
recall the open demonstration of neo-Nazis during a match, in France
I think, three or four years ago. Sporadic signs of Nazi revival have
been apparent here and there in Germany. Time magazine of 20 January
2008 reports the aspiration of one young, present-day German: I see
myself again, running along beside our tanks, waving my men onward,
marching, fighting, advancing - eastward or westward, I don't care,
but fighting in a war which will make Germany great again.
A few years ago, genealogy and the search for graves of earlier Indian
immigrants took me to the Saint Martin cemetery, and there I stared
in disbelief at 127 graves of Jews. A Jewish section in a cemetery in
Mauritius! One's feelings during such moments are difficult to convey
to those who have not experienced them. They passed away in the Beau
Bassin prison, then the Barkly Asylum, between 1941 and 1945. Geneviève
Pitot has written a book on the touching story of those 1600 Jewish
detainees who arrived in the island in 1940 (Reference). Another
Mauritian, Jacques Desmarais, maintained that section of the cemetery
at his own expense until his death, out of a sense of duty and homage.
1889 - Enter Adolph Hitler
It was the year when God bequeathed to the earth one of his
unexplainable creations. A baby boy, Adolph Hitler was born in
the then Austria-Hungary. Nineteen years later, the Art Academy in
Vienna unwittingly contributed to the making of a leader, the future
architect and engineer of modern history's most massive genocide. It
turned down the admission of Hitler who wanted to be an artist. The
frustrated young man wandered about aimlessly for some time, and then
joined the army. Like most Austrians, he despised the Jews. Then there
followed a series of events which culminated in the extermination of
six million Jews. Had the Academy admitted young Adolph, humankind's
modern history would certainly have been different. The story of the
Second World War and Hitler's inglorious schemes to exterminate this
race are well known.
What is the Holocaust?
Websites abound with information on the Holocaust. Although not
commonly used, 'Holocaust' is an important word in modern human
history. Dictionaries generally provide convergent meanings of
the word, although with a few interesting nuances. In general terms
holocaust means destruction or slaughter on a massive scale, and 'the
Holocaust' (capital letter) denotes the mass murder of Jews under
the German Nazi regime in the Second World War (1939-1945). Around
nine million Jews lived in German-occupied Europe and by 1945 two out
every three European Jews had been killed. The 1960 edition of Petit
Larousse, for instance, provides a historical insight of the word:
Sacrifice en usage chez les juifs, et dans lequel la victime etait
entièrement consumee par le feu. This dictionary does not refer to
the mass slaughter of the Jews and mentions the fact in its 1990
edition. Not all dictionaries indicate the scale of the slaughter --
around six million. The exact number will never be known; in certain
extermination camps one gas chamber could contain over a thousand.
In Jewish use the Holocaust equivalent is 'Shoah'. Genocide is
one synonym of holocaust, but 'the Holocaust' is specific to the
extermination of the Jews.
Sunday 27 January - International Holocaust Remembrance Day
It is astonishing that this Remembrance Day, in memory of THE most
barbaric genocide in mankind's modern history, was designated by the
United Nations General Assembly only two years ago. 27 January 1945
was the liberation date of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death
camp. It was the shock and awe brought about by the Holocaust that gave
birth to the United Nations Charter, replacing the League of Nations;
representatives of 50 countries agreed to keep peace, encourage
co-operation between nations and defend human rights. There does not
seem to be clear primary information sources explaining the reasons
that took the parliament of the world -- the UN general Assembly -
60 years after its coming into being, to designate the International
Holocaust Remembrance Day. The more so being given that it was the
Holocaust itself that triggered the setting up of the UN.
At its sixtieth session, on 21 November 2005, the General Assembly took
note of "the fact that the sixtieth session of the General Assembly
is taking place during the sixtieth year of the defeat of the Nazi
regime." It honoured "the courage and dedication shown by the soldiers
who liberated the concentration camps," reaffirmed that the Holocaust
"will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred,
bigotry, racism and prejudice," and resolved that the 27 January
would be an "annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of
the victims of the Holocaust."
The General Assembly urged Member States "to develop educational
programmes that will inculcate future generations with the lessons
of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide."
It is hoped that the Mauritian government, as a Member State of the
UN, will organise some sensitisation programme on the Holocaust;
even on its website, which the young probably peruse more than the
written press. The lessons learnt from this genocide are not altogether
disconnected from our multi-ethnic realities.
Reactions to the Holocaust
Opposing views to the commemoration of the Holocaust serve as yet
more reminders to the continuing messy relations among nations. Last
year the Iranian President publicly called the Holocaust "a myth"
and called for the State of Israel to be "wiped off the map". The UN
resolution rejects denial of the Holocaust.
Francois Gautier, born in Paris in 1950, arrived in India when he
was 19. He was a writer, journalist and correspondent for well-known
publications in France, but he fell in love with India and became a
staunch supporter of Hindu nationalist movements. His observation,
wrongly or rightly, contribute to some food for thought on other past
massacres: "The massacres perpetrated by the Muslims in India are
unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the
Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive
even than the slaughter of the South American Native populations by
the invading Spanish and Portuguese."
But that does not mean that the Holocaust Remembrance Day should not
be observed with all the dignity it deserves, by all nations.
[email protected]
Notes and References
- Websites on the Holocaust
- The photograph shows a group of Jewish children just before execution
- 'The Mauritian Shekel - The story of the Jewish Detainees in
Mauritius, 1940-1945.'Geneviève Pitot. 1998
- 'The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora'. General Editor Brij V.
Lal. Editions Didier Millet, Singapore. 2006. Page 358
- 'The Modern World since 1870'. L.E. Snellgrove. Longman Group Ltd,
London 1977
- Adherence to the UN started in 1945. Mauritius joined in April 1968
and Germany in September 1973. The last to become a Member State has
been Montenegro in June 2006. There are 192 member states
--Boundary_(ID_5amfAoIm+PNDyERkTsUoYg)--