Holocaust Supremacism Slights Gypsies Barsony

Pharrajimos: The Fate of the Roma During the Holocaust, by Janos Barsony (Editor). 2007

Holocaust Supremacism: The Same Arguments Used to Marginalize the Poles’ Genocide (POLOKAUST) Now Reused to Marginalize the Gypsies’ Genocide (PORAJMOS)

This Hungarian-based work, now in the English language, provides interesting perspectives on the PHARRAJIMOS (PORAJMOS), the Nazi-German genocide of the Sinti and Roma peoples during WWII. Editors Barsony and Daroczi belong to one of the original organizers of the Romany civil rights movement in Hungary. One striking feature of this work, which I emphasize in this review, is the recycling of old arguments to justify the supremacy of the Shoah over all other genocides, this time against the Gypsies. I elaborate on this.

IF YOU DISAGREE WITH THE STANDARD NARRATIVE, YOU ARE A BAD BOY NATIONALIST

The bogeyman of nationalism has often been conjured, in recent years, in conjunction with the governments of Hungary and Poland (PiS: PRAWO I SPRAWIEDLIWOSC), and towards anyone who values patriotism. That is, anyone who does not fall in line with the LEWAK (leftist) and Judeocentric ways of thinking gets dismissed as a nationalist. This is nothing new. In this book, the editors, Barsony and Daroczi quip, “The editors of this volume have been called Gypsy nationalists, fundamentalists, and functionalists. We were labeled well before those who labeled us thought about our arguments, and the fact is that not much is known about the PHARRAJIMOS.” (p. ix).

JEWS CONTINUE TO MONOPOLIZE THE TERM HOLOCAUST

Most of the authors of this book state that the term Holocaust should encompass the Nazi genocides of the Gypsies as well as those of the Jews (e. g, Barsony, p. 240). In contrast, Jews usually want the Holocaust to mean only their genocide. These are the “exclusivists”, and include one of the authors in this book—Laszlo Karsai. (p. 1).

Again, this is nothing new. In the 1980’s, at the height of the debate about the content of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Polish-American spokesmen wanted the term Holocaust to include the Nazi German genocide of ethnic Poles, while the Jews, adhering to a Jews-are-special mentality, maintained that the term Holocaust should refer exclusively to Jews. The USHMM ended up adopting the exclusivist Judeocentric definition of the Holocaust, and to engage in an almost-comical exercise in Orwellian doublespeak in order to pay lip service to the genocides of non-Jews. See my review of PRESERVING MEMORY, by Linenthal.

THE SAME RATIONALIZATIONS FOR A JUDEOCENTRICALLY-DEFINED HOLOCAUST

Laszlo Karsai, Professor of History, asserts that the overwhelming majority of the Gypsies of France, Belgium, etc. survived the war; that the Nazis never intended to exterminate all the Gypsies, that Gypsies were targeted for alleged crimes (and “asocial” conduct) rather than out of purely racial motives, etc. (pp. 227-229). Other scholars, in this volume, rebut Karsai’s PORAJMOS-delegitimizing contentions.

Exactly the same genocide-belittling canned arguments had been used against Poles: That “only” 10% of Poles died during WWII; that Hitler never intended to exterminate all the Poles, and that Poles were targeted merely “because it was war” and to “forestall resistance”.

Of course, these arguments, besides being fallacious, tacitly assume that a total planned genocide is more meritorious than a partial planned genocide. SAYS WHO?

A RATIONAL (ECONOMIC) MOTIVE FOR THE SHOAH AFTER ALL

Interestingly, Barsony presents evidence that undermines the argument that the Nazis had no rational motives in their killing of Jews (and this is supposed to make the Jews’ genocide qualitatively different from all other genocides and therefore worthy of special recognition). Barsony suggests that, after Nazi Germany directly invaded Hungary in 1944, Hitler did not target the Hungarian Gypsies for death as comprehensively as he did the Hungarian Jews, in part because the Roma, unlike the Jews, had few possessions worth plundering. (p. 249).

Enough slighting of the genocides of Poles, Gypsies, and other peoples.

Genocide-Recognition Equality Now!