ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
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ALEXANDER KIMEL - HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR |
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 MAIN - SITE MAGAZINE-SITE HLC. INFERNO Inferno Children Survivors Forgotten Memor. The Last Sermon The Jumper Lovers & Enemies Shlojme Balagule The Fall of Sevast.
MEMOIRS -SURV.Autobiogr. Notes The Shtejtl World Collapses The Russians. Shtejtl survives First Kaddish. Out of the Grave Yom Kippur Action The Baby Bunker Building Bunker Collapses I Almost Killed ... Ghetto Escape In Hiding The Liberation.
POETRYPoetry Prayers Survivor Creed Archivist Poetry
HLC. EDUCATI0NFinal Solution What Happened? The Killings Why Jews? Organizers Collaborators War against Jews Anti-Semitism Victims of Antisem The Worst Camp Nazi Methods Hitler - Syphilitic Hitler the Man Hitler & Jews Perpetrators Himmler Heydrich Goebbels The Victims Hlc. Syndrome The Rescuers Jewish Resistance Church Silence Nazi Revolution Jews Abandoned Other Genocides Schindler. Courageous Christians Remebr. Day
POST-HLC . ISSUESHlc. Legacy Revisionism Jews & Germans Jews & Poles Other Victims Research Topics
MISCELLANEOUSHlc. Sites Links Our Mail & Press Bibliography
HLC. PLAYSThe Verdict
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Holocaust - Guild & Responsibility, Part 4by Alexander KimelI read carefully Prof. R's post, checked his site. Although I generally share his concerns with the extensive violence that plaques our civilization, I have serious reservations about his methodology, assumptions and conclusions. My reservations are as follows: CONCLUSIONS: Let's start with the conclusions: (6) The way to virtually eliminate democide and its component genocide is by limiting governments, and in this liberal democratic freedom is the answer. This alone is sufficient to claim that liberal democracy is a moral good. Liberal democracy is morally good, but is it sufficient to stop "democides"? How can we impose liberal democracy on one billion Chinese or 250 million of Indonesians? The era of gunboat diplomacy is over. What about the smaller nations like Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Vietnam? I also wonder if liberal democracy is the answer. Pope John Paul II, a liberal democrat, often decried the violence and materialism of our times. The N.Y.Times reported that Catholic priests took part in the Rwanda atrocities, but when the Pope visited Rwanda he refused to take a stand and punish the perpetrators. In democracies talk is cheap, action cost money. So let's not bet on it. Prof. R. also wrote: But in the interest of our theoretical and empirical understanding of the Holocaust and genocide, a singular focus on either or both can be misleading and morally confusing. It is presumptuous on the part of any human being to claim a "empirical" understanding of the Holocaust. I, a survivor, a product of the Holocaust, have only a slight (maybe 5%) understanding of this tragedy. I believe that statistics, stretched as they maybe, cannot not convey the immeasurable depth of this human tragedy. Prof. R. also wrote: (1) I can see no moral difference--no difference in evil--between the Holocaust, other genocides, and other kind of mass murder. Death is death. Suffering is suffering. As a survivor of Stalin's "paradise" and Hitler's hell, as a man who lived for years under the shadow of death, who almost died from hunger, when hiding undetected in German Military Police compound, I also declare myself an authority on morality, death and sufferings. The above sentence is, in my eyes, immoral. I wonder if Prof. Rummel ever visited Auschwitz? What was his emotional and moral reaction? How does this compare to the alleged killing of Germans in Eastern Europe? Was he impressed with the German technical genius in the service of democides? There is another aspect of the evil - the brutalization of the generation of the German youth, that learned how to kill, kill, kill. The Wehrmacht committed many atrocities. Many of the Germans so enjoyed their challenge, that some SSmen were court-martialed for excessive cruelty and pleasure derived in shooting children. I am not blind to the moral differences between death and sufferings. Prof. R. also wrote: (5) Genocides and democide more generally are not the product of any particular civilization, culture, religion, nationality, ethnicity, or region. All have committed genocide; all have their own kind of Holocausts, all have their democides. I beg to differ. The Germans jump-started the W.W.I, introduced the use of poison gas (mustard gas), were first to kill millions of POW, are responsible for the Holocaust, for using millions of slave laborers. Einsatzgroupppen, Night of the Long Knives, The SA thugs, Concentration Camps, Zyclon, Human Soap, etc.... The "achievements" of the German "civilization" are extensive but not coincidental. The Holocaust happened in one of the most militaristic nation, used to an authoritarian rule with a violent culture, expressed in their Teutonic mythology. Hitler's imperial court resembled in every detail Woltan's court from the Niebelungen. Woltan presiding over a retinue of Gods, Demigods and mortals, that rape each other in a fight for power and world domination. The link between the mythology and the killing is very obvious. It is the Wagnerian music like Wallkerian, that Hitler so admired and translated into real life. Holocaust, genocides and democides don't happen in a cultural void, but are a product of thousand years old civilizations.
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