Sarkozy, Holocaust 1956 Versus Today

A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward edited by Isaac Metzker with foreword and notes by Harry Golden (1971) contains the following 1956 advice-seeking letter, which asks (pp. 189-190) whether and when to teach children about the Holocaust.

Worthy Mr. Editor,

 

When I read the "Bintel Brief" in the Forverts it reminded me of how they used to run to the rebbe in Poland with all kinds of problems. And now, to come to the point about my problem:

 

Years have gone by since the sharp fangs of the mad beast destroyed a third of the Jewish people. thanks to the Allied armies, the beasts in human form were defeated, but with those who were saved by a miracle the nightmares and aftereffects of the destruction remain.

 

When the living, the lucky ones, began to come out of their hiding places and regained a bit of their normalcy, they began to rebuild their shattered lives. So it was with me an my present wife. The murderers killed my first wife and our two children, and my present wife lost her husband and a child. When we met we decided to marry, establish a home, and start to build a new life, since this was the thing to do.

 

Now we are here in America, we already have two children, may the be well, who are eight years old, and my wife and I often discuss whether we should tell them about the tragic past. I mean, about our personal losses, because I have told them about the general destruction. I feel we should not tell them about the loss of our own children, but wait until they are older. My wife, however, thinks the opposite, and sometimes she comes out with a half statement and the children are disturbed.

 

Now I ask you, who is right, I or my wife? Should the children be told everything now, or is there time yet? I believe you will give us the right answer.

 

Respectfully,

H.S. Brooklyn

 

ANSWER:

Certainly we should tell our children about the holocaust, about the horrible massacres that the German murderers and those who helped them perpretrated on our people, and about the fact that the whole world was silent. Certainly we must see to it that the future generations know and remember what the German Amalek did to the Jews. But we agree with you that your little children, who are a great comfort to you after all your sufferings, do not need to be burdened yet with the anxiety and sorrow. It would be advisable for you and your wife to let it go until later, when they will be better able to understand the tragic history of the annihilation of six million Jews.

The difference between 1956 and now is striking. See ANALYSIS: Sarkozy's Holocaust education plan baffles Jews ....

 

Even in 1956 the history of Jewish radicalism, terrorism and assassination in the Czarist Empire was for the most part suppressed in American Jewish consciousness along with Soviet Jewish mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Yet, because of the red scare, the persistence of American Jewish radicalism, American governmental opposition to Zionist aggression against Egypt, and the Rosenberg trial, the general tendency of the American Jewish community was to keep a low profile about all matters Jewish.

 

Now when most of those issues have been completely forgotten we have Holocaust education for kindergartners and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

 

Edward T. Linenthal describes the true meaning of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Preserving Memory, The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum on p. 258:

The [USHMM] opening [ceremonies] committee decided not to invite [Israeli President] Herzog to speak at any event, but White House staff, continuing the tradition of understanding the museum in the manner of previous administrations -- that is, as an affirmation of American support for the State of Israel -- told Meyerhoff in early April that Herzog would speak.

Thus, the USHMM is an offense to all decent Americans and human beings committed to principles of democracy, anti-racism and support for human rights, upon which the Zionist state routinely tramples.

 

Because the USHMM has began a campaign to "save" Darfur Muslims from "genocide" in order to distract from Zionist crimes either committed against the non-Jewish population of Palestine or against Americans critical of Zionist Jewish racism, extremism and fanaticism, American Muslims have an obligation to demand representation on the USHMM council to work to make sure that the USHMM fully addresses the Holocaust in the context of Jewish crimes against non-Jews and dissenting Jews throughout Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Czarist Empire, the Soviet Union and the Middle East.

 

Sarkozy's Holocaust initiative is completely wrong, and it would make more sense to develop a national French pen pal campaign between French children and Palestinian children

1. in order to develop greater awareness among the French of the evil of Zionism and
2. in order to inoculate the French public against Jewish Holocaust indoctrination.

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