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 Guilt & Responsibility - Part 5by Alexander KimelI would like to thank Prof. R. for his extensive and detailed response. I do believe that we are discussing one of the most important aspects of the Holocaust Legacy. Prof. R. wrote: If one raises any one of these evils above the others, then the >others must be a lesser evil. I cannot accept this. What was done to Jew, Armenian, Hindu, Muslim, Overseas Chinese, Christian, Hutu, Tutsi, > and so on and on, disgustingly so, are evil. Period. Otherwise we start equating evil with numbers (more Armenians were killed then...), with quality (the Chinese were more culturally and social advanced than...), or depth (all Jews were singled out, whereas...). I believe that "murder is murder" pertains to violence committed against individuals. When discussing violence committed against groups such as genocides, one has to take into consideration the intensity of the violence and the damage done to the group. The above is best measured by the Rate of Survival. For example Prof. R. found that about 170 million of people were murdered in the last century. Accepting the number of people that lived in this period to be equal to 10 billions, we calculated a survival rate of 98.3%. In the Nazi occupied areas the survival rate was below 5%. There is an immeasurable quantitative and qualitative difference between those figures. Prof. R. wrote: Let murder be what it is, murder. Let us fight them all, wherever and to whomever they occur. I agree with the above statement. Question. How are we going to fight murder? With statistics? If we deny the fact that the uniqueness of the Holocaust tragedy indicates the general breakdown and failure of our civilization, we deny ourselves a window of opportunity to identify the faulty genes of this civilization. Without action, words coupled with statistics remain wishful thinking. Prof. R. wrote: This again depends on the political system, not necessarily the culture/ civilization. For example, it is widely accepted that one of the worst cases of democide/genocide in this century was the four years under Pol Pot's rule in Cambodia. Yet consider how Cambodia was viewed before the civil war and victory of Pol Pot. It had been a French colony and thought to be one of best exemplars of a peaceful Buddhist culture. About one-third of the population was murdered. And by fellow Cambodians brought up in this culture. Can a political system be divorced from the culture? No. Unless a political system, such as communism, is imposed by an outside power. Even then the political system is deeply intertwined with the culture. For example, the Italian fascism had a more humane face then the German fascism. Why? Because the Italian people tolerate their authorities while the Germans were servile to their authorities. The famous "Jawohl Herr...." In consequence the Italian Army sheltered and saved Jews in Yugoslavia and France, while the Wehrmacht committed atrocities killing many Jews, Russians, Ukrainians or Poles. Another example is Japan. The Japanese capitalism, influenced by Confucianism, shows signs of social responsibility lacking in the free wheeling American capitalism. I believe that all Genocides: Armenian, Serbian, Rwanda, Kosovo, including the Cambodian are CULTURALLY INDUCED. CAMBODIA The Cambodian Killings were not caused by the Cambodian culture but by an alien Stalinism imported from Russia through Vietnam and China. It is an universal tragedy that a Western idea of social justice, was realized in a backward, authoritarian country with a Byzantine civilization. The basic premise of the Byzantine culture is that all the subjects exist for the power and the glory of the absolute ruler. Stalin's communism was supported and accepted by the submissive Russian people, with an unlimited capacity for sufferings. The Russian Soul, extolled in the writings of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Tchechov. After W.W.II. this cancerous system spread throughout the world and is responsible for all the killings in Korea, China and Cambodia. Even the downfall of communism was caused by the clashing cultures, the Western versus the Byzantine, as seen in the Hungarian uprising (1956), Prague uprising (1967), Solidarity movement in Poland. Prof. R. wrote: As is obvious, I am not a moral relativist. I do believe that some governments are better than others; that the current German government is morally superior to Hitler's, contemporary Russia's to Stalin's, and Japan's to its militarist government of WWII. Indeed, I believe >that the government that best promotes the development of its people in >terms of their own interests and capabilities, while minimizing internal and foreign violence and democide, is better than those that don't. This is my prejudice and sense of social justice. So what? Does Saddam Hussein or Muhammar Ghaddafi really care about their morality rating? Hitler was the greatest mass murderer that ever existed, but upon his death requiems for his "soul" were said in the German Churches. Isn't our morality rating system an exercise in futility? CONCLUSIONS I believe that statistical analysis is not an effective tool in preserving the status quo, but it could be extremely valuable for finding the faulty gene of our civilization. Foe example, I would like to know what is the percentage of people that died, in this millennium, in religious wars, victims of the Inquisition, Crusades, Reformation, Witch Hunting, pogroms, heresies etc.
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