Opinion  Sever Plocker
Who owns the Holocaust?
Sever Plocker
Published: 21.04.19, 08:13
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4 Talkbacks for this article
1. "Forgive"?
Robert Kabakoff   (04.21.19)
It's not for us to "forgive". Ours is to support the IDF. The rest is commentary.
2. I really feel it's come this allready
(04.21.19)
3. "Israel" is many people, not one person
David Siegel ,   Haifa   (04.21.19)
I am sure that the people called by the name of ISRAEL hold many different feelings and thoughts on the Sho'ah. To say that "Israel forgave Germans for the Holocaust years ago" is a nonsense phrase. I hope we can, each one of us, know the Divine gift of forgiveness. Yet being able to forgive does not preclude being wary, and uncertain of the other fellow.

Have we forgiven the Americans and Canadians and Australians with their huge land masses, refusing to give even war-time refuge to millions of Jews? The anti-Semitic reality is the elephant in the room when talking about "forgiving Germany."

If anyone is going to teach about the Sho'ah, then teach it openly and honestly. It was always much bigger than Germany. And of course "never again" is a ceremonial incantation by now. And often the ceremonies are poetry readings, less inspiring than they are brief emotional tugs.

The Sho'ah, or Holocaust, was an episode only. The overarching event of anti-Semitism has not been defeated, and never will be by laws, programming, poems, or pedantic analysis. Divine intervention must play a role. Exactly what, is for no man to suggest or demand on his level and inside the limits of his sensibilities. And the Divine end of it all will be good for all Gentiles who either did not participate or did not feel any kinship with the crimes of commission--or omission--of the Sho'ah.

We meanwhile engage in Real Politik when we deal with Germany. We make business and military deals. And no doubt many Germans toady have absolutely no taste or sympathy whatsoever for the genocide of the 1930s and 40s. Yet crude and cruel remarks about Jews and the Holocaust come from all over--including the US. Never was just German. Only convenient to make it so.
4. Ownership rites
douglas klein ,   ft lauderdale   (04.23.19)
No one owns the dead. If there is any claim to the horror of the Shoah... then it is a shared responsibility that we Jews never forget and never forgive that generation and for sure teach all our kids that Jewish lives have value. If this ever happens again, we pick up a gun and go down fighting. No more singing in the showers.
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