Natalie Portman tells the Jewish community to stop focussing on the Holocaust

[bodenbiscuit]

www.independent.co.uk/news/people/natalie-portman-says-jewish-community-should-focus-less-on-the-holocaust-10465577.html

The Holocaust is proof of the unspeakable evil that human beings are capable of and I don't think anyone should ever stop talking about it and I don't think anyone should ever be allowed to forget it.

I think also it's quite understandable that people don't want to forget why they have gaping holes in their family history. What an insensitive thing to say IMO! That doesn't mean I don't think about the crimes that are committed towards others, like Rwanda for example. Arguably though, the sheer scale on which an attempt to murder an entire race of people was made is unparalleled.

I'd really like to know why research like this isn't done for the native americans and African descendents. How awful would it be to be a survivor and see your community and culture completely eradicated and live on a wasteland that no-one else wanted after they stripped the land of natural resource. I really don't understand why the holocaust is supposed to be the benchmark for human suffering and atrocities. Yes it was awful but it shouldn't be the benchmark. I wonder if it's because the other ones aren't white

The slave trade was certainly another holocaust, every bit as terrible.

Based solely on numbers I'd say it was far worse. No one really knows how many slaves were taken from Africa, but it's estimated at 20 - 100 million.

I don't know about numbers, or values placed on different types of suffering. , but it isn't really a competition.

The slave trade was a holocaust. What the nazis did was a holocaust.

One is in living memory, and the subject of ongoing scientific studies into epigenetics, one isn't.

One has an epigenetic effect on people living today, and in some cases maybe even on people yet to be born, the other doesn't.

So one is more in the forefront of peoples mind than the other.

I'm sure if genetic research was possible in the 1800s there would have been an epigenetic effect apparent in the descendants of slaves. But in those days, no one even knew genes existed, lest alone epigenetics.

Interestingly, there have been some studies done on the literacy levels on the descendants of slaves, an a suggestion of epigenetic reading problems, but you are going back to a time when there were almost no educational records, so we will never know.

I'm glad the Native Americsns have been mentioned, I'm part NA.

My Mum, my Grandad and his relatives have all been alive in my life time and still suffered the effects of that genocide/holocaust, but we're all supposed to be ok with the American celebrations and even on here, when mentioned, many posters called anyone who dared mention stollen lands/children/rapes/slavery/murder, as "Kill Joys".

India and Pakistan are told to shut up and get over what happened, with even the education system and media being allowed to lie and cover up.

Likewise, the Slave/African populations.

It's all selective mourning and fashionable politics, that no-one can disagree with.

Racism still exists today because of their holocaust. The economics of being poor still exist today in native Americans and black communities. That is all down to the almost extermination the first world did to them. You can't even compare the Jewish holocaust to the black holocaust the numbers are far more, the effects are still devastating to this day. Racism exists because of the slave trade. But black people are told to get over it and go back home and yet some are horrified at telling Jewish people to let go.

I'm sure it's because Jewish people aren't 'brown' why it's OK to still be horrified.

I'm glad birds mentioned the NA in this lifetime saves me googling the exact dates.

Slavery might of ended (well let's not go their about sweatshops,apple and the sextrade) but black people still didn't have rights! My dad was in the riots in the 60s for black people to have the same rights as white people. You know basic rights like working the same amount of hours for the same amount of pay as white people, being able to have lodgings ect or has the civil rights movement been completely in vain.

So yes slavery might of been abolished 148 years ago but black people having less rights then white owned dogs hasn't been around that long!

I don't know about numbers, or values placed on different types of suffering. , but it isn't really a competition.

Charis, your posts are thoughtful and I'm reading them with interest, but I take exception to this passage.

It seems to me that the issue at hand is that in so many words, people frequently say: "the Holocaust is the worst thing that has ever happened because 6 million Jews (and several million others) died". Genocide by any yardstick. But when one mentions relatively bigger instances of genocide, which are not consistently memorialised this is the standard response. Why is that?

I would say that reparations are not being made to African Americans and indigenous peoples because the expropriation of wealth (through people's life-chances, well-being, labour, bodies, lives) is ONGOING and vast. How is America - the West, frankly, going to repay that debt? The West is still reliant on it. Should it repay the debt? Well, yes, frankly. In some way: yes.

I suspect there are vast cultural and political impediments to a thoroughgoing analysis of the traumatic (and economic) effects of the slave trade. I don;t believe I will see a resolution of this in my lifetime, frankly.

I would say that one of the things we should reflect on vis a vis the Holocaust is the level of denial that operated as it unfolded: many people were able to live as though it wasn't happening. The Holocaust happened at the level of the state, and with the collusion of the world. While it was happening, Germany was not castigated as a "rogue state". There was protest but it was suppressed or minimised by the existing systems of authority - systems of authority which were able to name themselves as "civilised".

I would argue that we should pause a moment and contemplate how similar that is to the situation vis a vis African Americans (for example) in America today.

I don't think pitting African American experience against Jewish experience is helpful. I think looking at similarities is helpful. I would say that your posts actually bear my point out. The slave trade is, of course, an atrocity. It is an atrocity that has its own name, its own reality - it cannot, should not, be subsumed within some blanket term 'atrocity', and just be one incident among many - its singularity, its particular content of horror emptied.

Personally, I think the thing we need - with some urgency - to learn is how to think of these things both together and apart - and in way that help us fight and resist in the present. I guess that is what I mean by active remembering. And I, personally, would not choose one singularity over another in terms of importance. I think to do that actually plays into the hands of those who would like us to forget everything and learn nothing. I think that is the logic of a killing similarity - one that reduces these historical events of atrocity to a content-less identity-that-can-be-substituted-one-for-another.

We cannot fall into the logic of either the slave trade or the expropriation of resources from indigenous peoples or the Holocaust - we need to think about these events - and more - and link them to the present. That seems really clear to me when I look at what is unfolding in America at the moment and when I feel sickened by the dehumanisation of people by use of the term "migrants" in Europe. These are ongoing issues, right now. I don't think "the past" does just stay sitting there in the past. In a very real way, it here with us now, in the present. I think we need to make some sort of pact with it, to try and make it our ally in thinking through how we live now. And how we help others to live - not destroy their lives.

I wasn't going to post any of this because it is such a complex issue and I really don't want to derail a thread.

The Holocaust happened at the level of the state, and with the collusion of the world. While it was happening, Germany was not castigated as a "rogue state". There was protest but it was suppressed or minimised by the existing systems of authority - systems of authority which were able to name themselves as "civilised".

And, the same is true of slavery. I'm not sure if you're trying to draw a distinction here?

That's my point. Active remembering should make you think: "But that is true of this, and this, and this ... This is how power (in many situations) operates, what can I learn from this? What am I being asked to ignore right now? What am I going to do to resist right now?"

I think it is a way of dealing with history. There is a way of thinking about history that I would characterise as reactionary: "Oh, this happened a long time ago. It's a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. It meant this = X. It had these effect = Y. It affected these people = Z. It's over. Close the book. Switch on the television."

Another way of thinking about history is to accept that events are never "over". History connects with the present (and quite clearly this is true in terms of ongoing trauma). Historical events don't have neat boundaries but have many points of connection. : with events in the present; with other historical events that we may find ourselves urged to think of as quite different, as existing in quite other realities.

And clearly, it is also important to think of the points of dissimilarity, non-congruence, non-symetry.

I still think that this is what Natalie Portman is talking about and asking people to do. And I think that that is a very politically strong thing to urge. To be able to do that, without rendering events interchangeable and thus diminishing their horror, and the horror they should provoke in us, is really important.

Charis - this is the first time that I've heard about epigenetic effects of trauma - thank you for your posts about this.

I had never heard of epigenic trauma either. My grandparents had to quickly leave their village in Lithuania to escape the pogroms. Shortly after they left, the entire village was burned and everyone who was left, died there. I always thought that their extreme experience led to the severe anxiety and other issues my parents suffered from Our grandparents were crazy religious (out of fear that God would punish them even more if they didn't adhere to all the rules). Their strictness made my parents lives hell. they then grew up to be not great parents and we were all neglected. We all went on to have various health issues and my brothers both have panic attacks and generalised anxiety and I have a long term serious health problem that my parents failed to get treated when i was a child. My daughter also has, to a lesser extent anxiety issues. It does make sense that fears, anxieties etc get passed down to the next generation.

It makes me terribly sad to think of the people in Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Ukraine etc who are in the midst of conflict and the legacy they will pass down.

Epigenetic passing on of trauma (ie direct via genetic inheritance) is not necessarily the same as passing on of trauma. The study referred to re the holocaust is behind a paywall and I've not read it, but I've not seen any reporting that says how they differentiated the two. Anyone read the whole thing?

Sorry - I meant that children could also 'inherit' trauma that leads to certain problems via the environment created by the parents' trauma rather than direct inheritance of the epigenetic markers. Obviously they are still impacted though.

Right Binkybix so epigenic trauma is more to do with actually being born with certain genes that have been affected/imprinted by trauma, rather than being brought up by parents who grew up around anxious, fearful and damaged parents themselves?

Epigenetics is not a negative thing at all -

Epigenetics is a mechanism by which a child is born better adapted to the environment his or her immediate ancestors have been living in.

It is a very fast, very short term form of evolution, which has contributed to the survival of the species.

in the case of epigenetic trauma, it is largly the case simply that the more dangerous your circumstances are, the more alert and jumpy your offspring will be ( down the female line)

Other affects include the less food you have available, the less fussy eaters your offspring will be, the more food you have available, the more discerning your offspring will be in what they eat, other effects involve adaptation to cold weather, hot weather, large families, small families, ( this has an effect on parenting) gender balance in the community, etc etc.

Lets not lose sight of the fact that epigenetics is a GOOD thing! (mostly)