To remind people it is Holocaust Memorial Day

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We should remember and teach our children to remember.

Holocaust Memorial Day in the U.K. explicitly seeks to include information about so many other genocides as well. In the candle lighting, the formal celebrations included representatives from Bosnia and Burma and Rwanda and others. The Holocaust still stands out because of the numbers of people killed, and the modern mechanisation and bureaucracy which feels closer to our own existence than many of those mentioned above, but our national commemoration makes clear links with mass murder for reasons of prejudice all over the world and through history.

We need to keep linking up all these horrors precisely so any of them can't be minimised by describing them as isolated, or only having reference to one people or country. Any of these diminishes us all as people, not just those they affect.

I have to broadly agree with itsnot - there are countless atrocities that we choose to forget. Of course we should remember the holocaust, but considering similar crimes against humanity have been committed since then - sometimes by ourselves - makes the whole remembrance ring a bit hollow.

The holocaust was in recent history

Not as recent as the Mau Mau atrocities (to give but one example) when the British - having just defeated the Nazis - put hundreds of thousands of Kenyans in concentration camps, then tortured and murdered them in incredibly gruesome ways.

there are countless atrocities that we choose to forget. Of course we should remember the holocaust, but considering similar crimes against humanity have been committed since then - sometimes by ourselves - makes the whole remembrance ring a bit hollow

Comments like this are on a par with people who try to minimise the slave trade by declaring 'black people were perpetrators too'. So incredibly insulting. I think the systematic murder of millions of people is worthy of having its own rememberance day, without necessarily having to acknowledge other terrible periods of history. These can also remembered. Why try to minimise or add a caveat by saying that other terrible things have happened?

My family died in the Holocaust and some survived...I can tell you it feels very recent to me...I knew these people. Like slavery, the effects trickle down through the generations.

formerbabe the only one who seems to be minimising atrocities here is you. I think the holocaust should be remembered, it's there in my post. I don't think we should forget other atrocities, and sadly we do. So when it comes to remembering the holocaust how can we say with any sincerity that we will not allow history to repeat itself when we, ourselves, committed war crimes almost immediately afterwards and pretty much refuse to acknowledge our own mistakes?

Newsround had a good piece on the Holocaust. I looked through it yesterday and was planning to show 10yr old DS today.

Gosh.

I was agog at the amount of antisemitic trope and whataboutery on so many public Holocaust posts on Facebook yesterday that it shook me to the core.

Can people not just be respectful? Remember those who suffered? The innocents who were tortured, maimed, experimented on, had to dig each others graves, be buried alive, be gassed to death, thrown in ovens to burn, etc etc etc ad infinitum...just for being who they were? Jew, Pole, homosexual, disabled...it totalled over 11million poor souls - 6 million of whom were Europe's Jews. This did not take into account unborn babies of course.

To what about on a thread like this is in such poor taste it begs how low human morals have sunk.

If anyone is on twitter there is an account called Stl Manifest tweeting my name is x I was turned away from the US border in 1939. I was murdered in france/aushwitz/belsen etc. Very powerful.

I've been to Auschwitz several times, also met different Holocaust survivors through the Galicia museum in Krakow. The official website of HM Day remembers all victims of genocide not just the Jews, it's just that 27 Jan is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Itsnoteasy, which tv programme was just about 'one pogrom'?

It's hard to tell if it'snoteasy and Sparta are the sort of people who get furious at womens day or black lives matter or if they are the sort of people who write 'gas the jews', 'hitler was right' all over the Internet.

Either way, they know nothing. I was going to say cunts but I didn't want this to be deleted.

I'm not minimising other atrocities...I just really dislike the "oh, but other terrible things have happened in the world" rhetoric.

How dare the fucking Jews remind us that one and a half million Jewish children were stripped and sent into showers to be gassed by the then most civilised, educated people on earth?
They think they're so fucking special, right...

I am part Jewish and have many relatives who died. One of my parents lost most of their extended family though their own parents survived.

I cried yesterday reading about the memorial for the kinder transport parents who according to some of the surviving children yesterday interviewed by the BBC put a brave face in to wave them all off at the station in Prague. She said she could still see the mums and dads waving in her mind's eye, even now.

I myself would have been a target if I was in Prague then. I thought of how I would feel putting my primary school aged children on the train never to see them again. Then I thought of all the children too small to go like my baby why would have been there waving as well, only to die along with their parents due to irrational evil hatred.

Yes this was one of many many inhumanities but the right way is not to say let's not remember this, we should be remembering all genoicides.

Also horrified tbh to read this was on CBeebies and aimed at such tiny children. I won't be talking to my children about this until they are much much older. I feel I was almost traumatised to some extent by knowing about what happened to my family much too young.

Also horrified tbh to read this was on CBeebies and aimed at such tiny children

I'm sure it would have been age appropriate.

My DH and his siblings were told age appropriate things at a young age.

But they did happen, and there's a determined effort to turn our faces away when they are held up to us. And how dismissive do you think you sound when you say "oh, but other terrible things happened"? We swear we will never let history repeat itself then we orchestrate that repetition. I think asking why the hell we do this is a damn good question.

the right way is not to say let's not remember this, we should be remembering all genoicides

This thread is proof that people are pretty hostile to that suggestion.

What upsets you so much about holocaust Memorial Day? Dig deep slarti - go on- take a little time out from your campaign to remember the mau-may massacres- and think why you won't let us remember our murdered families in peace?

I can't find the segment online or I'd link, but we definitely saw it!

I'm Syrian, and I feel a strong responsibility to keep my children at least vaguely aware of the war, refugee camps and the awful conditions that children like them are living in. I do feel guilty that I haven't felt this before with atrocities that have affected others, but I guess it is human nature to feel things more keenly when they affect people whom you perceive to be like you.

Therefore as a result of the above I suppose I'm more inclined to tell them about the Holocaust amd other events of the same nature (in an age-appropriate fashion). I am half-hoping that if they learn to view such events with sadness and repulsion at a young age, they will be more inclined to be socially responsible when they're older. Depends on the child though I guess - mine are not especially sensitive.

LaContessaDiPlump The thing with my DH and his siblings were that they saw the horrible marks and scars that his DGF had.

He was always in the camp of give age appropriate answers rather than lie.

I can't believe people are protesting about Memorial Day!

It's one day to remember the atrocities that happened.

You don't complain about remembrance day. No "what about" then.

Respect the dead today. They should never have suffered like they did

What upsets you so much about holocaust Memorial Day?

Nothing, as you can see from my posts. Now let's turn that question around: what is so upsetting about remembering all atrocities that we actively try to discourage it and are hostile to people who suggest it?

I can't be arsed to argue with people like you anymore.

You must have read hopalongcassidys much more coherent post but still you decided to go on a thread where people are discussing the holocaust and deliberately sided with someone who minimised the holocaust calling it a pogrom ffs and you continue to harangue the people on there.

At your families funerals, I hope someone tells you whatever it is you are doing is not good enough.

birdybirdywoofwoof

Applauds.

MyBeloved
I deactivated my FB account last year.
It was nice to log on and see friends holiday pics etc, but I was shocked to see so posts on my "newsfeed" that can only be described as anti Semitic.
If I flagged them up to FB, I would get the standard reply saying it didn't break any FB rules etc. I stopped logging on for weeks at a time, and then decided I would feel better if I deactivated FB all together.

Slarti, why don't you start another thread and a campaign to commemorate other atrocities on other days.

My ex is Armenian and there seems to be very little knowledge of that terrible genoicide.