THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

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So familiar and yet so far removed from us, from the historical humanistic values ofthe Jewish people. The history of the Herero is not part of the mandatory curriculaof Israeli high schools. The Herero are not a subject for discussion in the Shoah tripsto Poland, and not mentioned at the fast-growing Shoah museums. The hair-raisingsimilarity between the two holocausts does not end with torture and death. Thehumiliating laws governing both the Jews and their brethren in southwest Africa weresimilar: banned ownership of firearms, land, and cattle. All adult Herero, fromfourteen years of age, were forced to wear a metal plate bearing a serial number.Inside the camps, the German carried out medical and “racial” experiments. Corpses,skeletons, and skulls were scrubbed clean by forced Herero women and sent to“racial anatomical” research labs and museums in Germany. The geneticist Dr. EugenFischer, who “investigated” local Herero children, concluded that they were of“inferior racial quality” and that “interracial breeding” degenerates the “superior race.”Sounds like an introduction to the Nuremberg laws, does it not?What was the political, cultural, scientific, and intellectual backdrop in Europe thatallowed this to happen? What are the sinister forces in the European first world thatburst in such a force against the black third world?The superiority that healthy and well-to-do individuals felt over the less luckyothers translated into the feeling of collective German national superiority. It waspossible then, explains Kershaw, that:More than anything, the national resolve grew out of the feeling ofgrandeur that was attained through occupations and was based oncultural superiority—the feeling that Germany was a great andexpanding power, and a great power needed and deserved an empire. . . ideas of territorial expansion to the East at the expense of thesubhuman, the Slavic Untermensch. 11Thus an amalgam of race theories were created based on arrogance, political andterritorial aspirations, illusions of worldwide grandeur and blatant disregard for the lifeof others. Africa was the distant test ground. Eastern Europe was the coveted prizeclose to home. A line of destruction and killing was drawn from the African Herero tothe unwanted Germans who were handicapped or mentally ill to the “inferior” Slavsto the Jews. The latter were at the top of all these theories and the ultimate victims ofthe extensive German know-how that had been acquired forty years earlier.
In 1918, Germany was a defeated nation. World War I ended, and so didcolonization overseas. Humiliated, Germany yearned for glory. The Right-wingpropaganda machine took advantage of this yearning and spoke out against theunfavorable terms of surrender at the end of World War I, which had provided thefertile ground on which the extreme right, including the National Socialists, soonflourished.In 2004, on the hundredth anniversary of the Herero Holocaust, the twentiethcentury’s first mass killing, Germany sent an emissary to Namibia, HeidemarieVitchurk-Zoil, minister of development aid. “We, the Germans, admit our historicaland moral responsibility,” she said, in the first public and official admission byGermany.“An apology, where is their apology?” The Herero descendants demanded fromthe crowd.“All I gave was an apology for crimes that were committed in the period ofGerman colonialism,” the German minister replied.Unlike the German press, the Israeli press coverage of the event was minor. Thiswas in stark contrast to the very detailed coverage of “our” Shoah, which ismentioned daily in newspapers in various, sometimes strange, contexts. It seems thatonly Haaretz was interested in the subject. Aviva Aviram wrote about it extensively:The German historian Jürgen Zimmermann is right to view theannihilation of the Herero as “the writing on the wall” and “Nazism’sprehistory.” Naturally there are vast differences between WilhelmianGermany and Nazi Germany. But Nazism was fed also by colonialism,and much more than others are ready to admit. The annihilation of theHerero was another red line that was cut through colonialism’sparameters. Many Europeans and North Americans believed then insocial Darwinism, according to which “inferior races” should beextinct. Yet many others who did hold these views believed that Blacksare not exactly human beings, and that crimes against them are notreally the same as crimes against humans in every sense. 12The circle that opened in distant Africa came to a close inside Europe and itsextermination camps. Few know that Dr. Heinrich Göring, Herman Göring’s father,
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THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER; WE MUSTRISE
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THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER; WE MUST RISE
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In loving memory of my late parents
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Notes 243Index 247
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none of this could have happened.An
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word “former” is attached to yo
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This is how I explain the fierce pu
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eternal renewal of the world. But n
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CHAPTER 1
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I WAS BORN IN JANUARY 1955 IN GERMA
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When I finished writing my first bo
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I had heard her say that more than
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of my late father. We traveled far
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CHAPTER 2THE HOLOCAUST, EVER-PRESEN
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youngest son, Noam, did not join th
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Bank; New Age and Buddhist experime
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CHAPTER 3
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WHERE TO BEGIN? HOW DO YOU START CL
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ight, and Eban, if the 1967 boundar
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CHAPTER 4
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MY NEIGHBOR RAMI’S PARENTS CAME F
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When he woke up, he continued the c
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power. The local leadership of Ben
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How could it be that everything “
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As the Zionist movement aspired to
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everything changed dramatically and
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“Masada will not fall again” be
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So, three traumatized communities c
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CHAPTER 5
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WHAT COLOR WAS THE HOLOCAUST? PROBA
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seemed to side with me and my frien
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into ploughshares and wait patientl
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When my initial courtship of Yael c
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only during the long incubation per
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liked to compare the Palestinian Na
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Fanon is an expert witness worth li
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prevention.” How targeted could i
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themselves to speak words that shou
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followed the war? If not, how did h
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war, therefore they should not know
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CHAPTER 6LESSONS FROM THE HOLOCAUST
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“nationhood,” including its int
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in anger over the Dreyfus Affair, b
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1943, upon hearing of the Warsaw gh
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is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed b
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ad fortune, to express anger, to re
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e the cause of constant political f
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use the refugee problem to denounce
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Almost everywhere the Shoah serves
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with the moral parity among the chi
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CHAPTER 7
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THE HIGH POINT OF MY SEVENTH GRADE
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at least, before the Warsaw ghetto
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than a million Jews who had walked
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ebels and the disciples of the yout
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exterminated. A group of Jewish you
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grenade. Natan Rapoport, the sculpt
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we will not respond. We will sacrif
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against Us.” It is self-evident,
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of now we got lost. We need to retu
Page 126 and 127: CHAPTER 8
Page 128 and 129: BECAUSE OF ADOLF EICHMANN, I CAN’
Page 130 and 131: discussion about garbage technology
Page 132 and 133: gap between my father’s world and
Page 134 and 135: independent Jewish Commonwealth, th
Page 136 and 137: Eichmann harmony at the right pitch
Page 138 and 139: the victors at Nuremberg presented,
Page 140 and 141: the highest order. Without people l
Page 142 and 143: The landlady did not lie, and never
Page 144 and 145: of whom only one was a non-Jew, a g
Page 146 and 147: The Grunwald trial had become the K
Page 148 and 149: Canaanite left, and the yearling of
Page 150 and 151: to shape a new Israeli generation t
Page 152 and 153: trial . . . he would use expression
Page 154 and 155: light to humanity. But they continu
Page 156 and 157: suspended daily, and not just to ev
Page 158 and 159: minister who came from “there,”
Page 162 and 163: “WHO REMEMBERS THE ARMENIAN HOLOC
Page 164 and 165: . . . an ideologue with firm belief
Page 166 and 167: Today we are armed to the teeth, be
Page 168 and 169: and Romanians. We would have shut o
Page 170 and 171: It turned out that the Dalai Lama,
Page 172 and 173: War II, an estimated half a million
Page 174 and 175: An empire without colonies launched
Page 178 and 179: was the first governor of southwest
Page 180 and 181: mention other states, the Jewish wo
Page 182 and 183: square and deserted the universal h
Page 184 and 185: peoples’ holocausts. In a world i
Page 186 and 187: we raise our guests and force-feed
Page 190 and 191: JUDAISM IS A CIVILIZATION THAT IS T
Page 192 and 193: the Jewish Pantheon, namely in the
Page 194 and 195: dogma are the most dangerously viol
Page 196 and 197: His words express no condolences an
Page 198 and 199: most meaningful clash to take place
Page 200 and 201: Korah’s racism lacks the mechanis
Page 202 and 203: aka HaRambam. All of them belong to
Page 204 and 205: lecture, a professor stood up.“I
Page 206 and 207: The revolution that did not happen
Page 208 and 209: the deceitful war in Lebanon, for t
Page 210 and 211: and not in Le Monde, in French? His
Page 212 and 213: a new prayer book, a Siddur, in whi
Page 214 and 215: CHAPTER 11MAKE GOD SMILE AGAIN
Page 216 and 217: Does it really matter who is guilty
Page 218 and 219: Divine intervention did not come to
Page 220 and 221: enemy-brethren? My Shoah question i
Page 222 and 223: wept, and kept watch; but when the
Page 224 and 225: acceptance of those who were discri
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and impatient beliefs win over many
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Chinese tyranny.The sum total point
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—Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund
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and outlooks. It was not just a dif
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CHAPTER 12
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HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD A MAN DIE? H
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Israelis made a motion. So I starte
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innovation that included my sister
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heard this melody at any other home
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nations that do not know you and on
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I never made secret of my opinion t
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admissible. I am sorry, but this do
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prime minister with Germany’s pre
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only synagogue where the cantor Mei
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3. An official press release by Net
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6. Yehuda Elkana, “In Defense of
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INDEXAbraham, 107, 158, 178, 184, 2
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British Mandate of Palestine, 99-10
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faith, 206-9, 211, 213, 240Finkielk
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198, 203-16, 226, 231-3, 239; color
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Jonas, Hans, 205-6Jordan, 67, 82-3,
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Namibia, 161-5, 174Napoleon III, 52
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Rwanda, 86, 144, 151-2, 155, 158, 1
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Ukraine, 29, 32, 36, 74United Natio
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