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I guess I read it just the other way around.  Not that we should STOP talking about the genocide of the Jews, but acknowledge that systematic genocides have occured throughout history and that no one group of victims deserves attention/sympathy/studying more than others.

I actually commend the way the Jewish people have been able to keep their history alive as a constant reminder, as a narrative we can all use to learn some valuable lessons.  So I don't think we should just move along now from their story.  No way.  From a purely psychological point of view, they have accomplished an amazing service to us all by telling their story over and over, forcing the rest of us to listen to them rather than move along to the next news story, making their plight not just an unfortunate chapter in human history, but crucial to our understanding of ourselves, what we are capable of both at our very worst (genocide) and our very best (survivors).  The process they have gone through in trying to heal has, I hope, made us all better people.

So, if I say that my people were also victims & survivors of systematic state-sponsored genocide, that doesn't make the Holocaust any less important.

It's not like we have a quota of sympathy, lessons to learn, history to be told and that the Holocaust leaves no room for the rest.  Or that all genocides are bad but the Holocaust is extraspecial bad.  They are all equally horrific for those who experience them.  And everyone who has been on the receiving end of them deserves our attention, sympathy, and our help to ensure it never happens again.  

The Jewish people have been remarkably successfull in getting their story told, no small feat.  But there are those whose stories have been relegated to the history books or burried deep in the newspaper.  That says more about the people who write our history than the people who've been victims of it.

(Full disclosure: My great grandmother was Cherokee.  My boyfriend is Jewish.)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

by p------- on Thu Jan 19th, 2006 at 01:19:50 PM EST
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