ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 12, 1996 TAG: 9608120106
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT F. BOYD
A JULY 31 letter to the editor (``Holocaust must not fade from memory'' by Kim LaBrecque) recommended that the Holocaust not fade from our memory. Having been on this planet for more than 60 years, I'm beginning to understand the hostility that so many of the generations following World War II have expressed for Jews.
Our country's population is continually bombarded in the press, television and in print by the horrors of the Holocaust. On public-television stations, it isn't unusual to see three or four programs per month devoted to some aspect of the Holocaust. We now have Holocaust memorials, and the 27th annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust is being prepared for 1997, sponsored by the University of South Florida.
We have a large and vocal contingent of Jews who demand that their Holocuast was unique because it was designed to exterminate a single group of people. Listen up, folks! What happened to the Jews in World War II also happened to many others before and since that period in history.
At the turn of the century, the Turks practiced their form of genocide on more than 1 million Armenians. Stalin killed more than 20 million of his own people during his reign of terror in Russia. The Gypsies, who were interred with Jews in World War II, were also singled out for extinction. In the early history of the United States, I consider our treatment of the American Indian a form of genocide. Only recently, Gypsies were expelled from Germany, and subjected to a nationwide campaign of terrorism and murder in Romania. Do the names Bosnia and Rwanda ring a bell?
I, like many others, have sympathy for those who lost loved ones in World War II concentration camps. I don't, however, wish to be continually blackmailed by a group of people who are unwilling to recognize that others have also suffered such inhumanities. Case in point: Recently, Israeli government officials and Jewish lobbyists joined with Turkish officials in blocking U.S. recommendations to commemorate the Armenian genocide. This type of behavior only serves to denigrate the memory of other genocides.
The argument that we must remember the atrocities of World War II so we'll not repeat history is off course. Similar horrors are being carried out this very moment. Constantly resurrecting their memories only serves to inflame others. Consider the parade of Irish Protestants through Catholic Irish neighborhoods in Ireland.
I'm forced to believe that until humans have evolved into a more compassionate and understanding animal, it may be better to temporarily forget some aspects of history.
Robert F. Boyd of Wirtz is a retired science writer.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB