Victimhood Competition Ukes Beat Jews Young

The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, by James E. Young. 1994

Babi Yar Memorial Park in Denver: Ukrainian-Americans Push Back Against The Holocaust Monopoly. Also Jewish Cemeteries in Poland, With Unsubstantiated Accusations Against Poles

This book includes details on the early-postwar memorialization of what became known as the Shoah. It also provides details on the post-1970’s boom in Holocaust promotion.

THE CULT OF THE HOLOCAUST–INDEED

In common with many other authors, James E. Young alludes to the fact that the Holocaust has become a substitute religion for American Jews (at least). He quips, “In fact, without the traditional pillars of Torah, faith, and language to unify them, the majority of Jews in America have turned increasingly to the Holocaust as their vicariously shared memory…Over time, the only ‘common’ experience uniting an otherwise diverse, often fractious, community of Jewish American has been the vicarious memory of the Holocaust. Left-wing and right-wing Jewish groups, religious and secular, Zionist and non-Zionist may all draw different conclusions from the Holocaust. But all agree that it must be remembered, if to entirely disparate ideological ends. As a result, while Jewish day schools, research institutes, and community centers run deficits, millions of dollars continue to pour into Holocaust memorial projects and museums.” (p. 348).

All this is fine for the Jews. But, as elaborated below, when this causes the slighting of others’ sufferings, it then becomes a problem.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM

This is also called the Jewish “triumphalism of pain”, and it has led to competitive victimhood and Victimhood Olympics. How could it not? In fact, Young quips, “Where are the national monuments to the genocide of American Indians, to the millions of Africans enslaved and murdered, to the Russian kulaks and peasants starved to death by the millions? They barely exist.” (p. 21). [No kidding].

BABI YAR PARK IN DENVER: COURSE OF EVENTS

Not surprisingly, initial plans, for a memorial of the Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) Nazi-German mass-shooting site at Kiev, called for Jews only to be recognized. What subsequently happened can serve as an inspiration to all who recognize Genocide Recognition Equality.

Let author James E. Young tell what happened, “But when the model and inscriptions were publicly announced, representatives of the local Ukrainian community rose to protest. There was no mention of the massacre of Ukrainians that took place at Babi Yar in 1942, they argued, which included the martyrdom of the nationalist poet Olena Teliha, among others. After several rounds of negotiations between the Babi Yar Foundation and a newly formed committee of Ukrainian Americans, the foundation agreed to change the monument’s inscriptions to reflect the Ukrainian dimension of the killings at Babi Yar between 1941 and 1943. In return, the Ukrainian group would contribute $25,000 to finish the memorial. Two massive, polished chunks of charcoal granite at the entrance of the Babi Yar Memorial in Denver now commemorate the ‘Two Hundred Thousand Victims Who Died [at] Babi Yar, Kiev, Ukraine, U.S.S.R., September 29, 1941—November 6, 1943. The Majority Jews with Ukrainians and Others.’” (pp. 295-296).

OLD JEWISH CEMETERIES IN POLAND: FACTS AND INSINUATIONS

There is assorted information on the long-unused Jewish cemeteries in Poland. The reader also learns that Jewish men and women separately buried. (p. 200).

The Germans destroyed countless Jewish cemeteries. When the Gestapo commanded the dismantling of one Jewish cemetery and ordered that the matzevah (tombstones) be reused as paving stones, Polish laborers put these matzevah upside-down in order that the pedestrians’ feet and wheels of carts would not erase the inscriptions. (p. 200). However, some imaginative Polonophobes have turned this around, levelling the accusation that the matzevah were buried upside-down so that the Poles could forget what they are walking on. [This makes no sense. How could a Polish laborer under the German occupation foresee the fact that his act was permanent–that most of Poland’s Jews would actually be wiped out by the Germans (with nearly the remainder emigrating soon after the war), and would never return to reclaim and rebuild the cemetery? He must have had a very effective crystal ball.]