Should we still be concentrating on the effects of the Holocaust 200 years from now?

Question

or will future generations be telling Jewish people to "get over it"..
.. and no my question is not anti semtic. African Americans are told the very same things about slavery - "to get over it because it ended 200 years ago"... "to stop focusing on something that did not affect them personally", etc etc

For all those who will say that the Holocaust should not be forgotten, I would like to ask why the same rules are not applied to the African slave trade. Why must we forget and dismiss one tragedy because it happened so long ago [and more people died during the slave trade by the way] yet forever focus on another tragedy....?

Mark and Rillaf - Who mentioned anything about behaviour? Now you are surreptiously implying that Black people use slavery to excuse bad behaviour whilst Jewish people do not. What you are saying is actually quite racist. Jewish people may not "excuse bad behaviour" [that by the way is another generalisation!] but what many do is mention the Holocaust at every opportunity. Every week it is on the tv screens on some documentary channel [Fact]. Moreover I have noticed that if anyone even says something contrary to a Jewish person they are accused of being anti-semitic. So Jewish people do play the race card I'm afraid!

Answer 1

I disagree that slavery should be forgotten or dismissed. We are discovering new facts about the slave trade, because of our continuing interest in it.

We must remember all the great tragedies and triumphs of human civilisation, which help us formulate better strategies to deal with our present situation.

Answer 2

We must never allow ourselves to forget the Holocaust, for if we do, then all too easily will the same thing happen all over again. It almost did happen a few years ago in what then remained of Yugoslavia.

I can still remember Tony Benn saying on TV that the people being starved to death behind the barbed wire in Kosovo had been our enemies in WW2 on the side of the Nazis.

This sort of trash response is just not good enough.

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

As we remember our own war dead at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month each year.

RIP

THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE

It is not forgotten and none of us wants ever for it to happen again or anything like it.

The slave trade continues all around us, yet we seem unable to do anything about it.

This time it's not so much Africans but women who are being forced into prostitution - the sex slave industry.

I read a police report from Munich which stated that during the 1972? Olympic Games, something like 45,000 women sex slaves were imported to the city for the duration of those games.

Nothing was done then and nothing much is being done now either, both here in UK and across the rest of Europe.

I have read a report which states that something like 25,000 American children are kidnapped from the streets of America every year and that these 'kids' some not yet in their teens, end up working in the sex industry abroad.

We should take a hint from the Holocaust and not just see it as an historic event, but a reminder of what can and is happened. No, not the death camps, but the same slavery which was employed by the Nazis.

Question everything. That cheap mobile phone, was it made by using child labour and were those children slaves?

Answer 3

I've never heard a Jewish person use the Holocaust to excuse bad behavior. We shouldn't forget slavery, but don't bring it up every time something doesn't go your way, especially since you're probably living better today than the slave owners lived 150 years ago.

Answer 4

If You are measuring the mortality rate , it hardly applies the slave trade did not deliberately kill slaves they were an expensive commodity and a lifetime of work was expected of them besides slavery on the modern era was small beer to compare with ancient Rome were slaves were killed for entertainment . which again hardly compares to the wholesale slaughter of six million people helpless men woman and children in a 5 year period . If ever an event needs to be kept to the forefront of human experience to warn that it must never happen again it must be that . to try to make small of that is criminal offence in many European countries , and rightly so . I suggest you visit Auschwitz or any of the many concentration camps still kept as they were at the end of the war and think again

Answer 5

there is a big difference between the the holocaust and slavery. the Jews are not using the Holocaust as an excuse to get their way they asked for one thing and they got that back their home land.slavery is thrown in our face every day. think not try looking at an application for employment under race. or any time Jackson speaks on a matter. we are not saying to forget we are saying stop rubbing it in our face to get the government to do what they want

Answer 6

I think in time the memory will fade as a new horror arises to surpass the holocaust. It will go the way of the persecution of witches and heretics by the inquisition, the victims of Stalins terror, and the countless children who died in the factories and mines of Britain during the Industrial Revolution. All horrors recede in the face of new horrors.

Answer 7

People should always remember their history but that means all of it not just the bits that are useful politically.
What happened to the jews and other groups during the 1930s and 1940s was horrific but the jews are the first people recorded to have racism at the centre of their beliefs, claiming to be god's chosen people and above all other races.
Their holy books record the mass murder that they carried out centuries ago to occupy the land west of the Jordan river and in 1948 their terrorist gangs were instrumental in founding the modern state of Israel.

Answer 8

It's an interesting question. I am Jewish but I can't answer it. I certainly don't use the Holocaust to excuse my, or any Jew's, or Israel's behaviour.

Answer 9

As far as the Jews go, we shouldn't let them try to play the card, but we should definitely study and try to stop the events. In many the memories are already forgotten, look at the genocidal maniac that was in Iraq, look at Darfur, look at Eastern Europe.

Answer 10

I don't think so. The major players by then will probably be India and China, and Hitler and the holocaust are no big deal to them.