So not necessary! People have been spinning off the discussion everywhere and that is a good thing. More later when not reading lj via this blasted blackberry
first, I did read the post, and I assumed (correctly or not) that you were sincerely grappling with how to deal with having non-Jewish relatives who perished in The Holocaust.
i don't know what you think now, but yes, that is largely why i made the post. also because i am fascinated by genocides and their aftermath, because i am entranced by the arguments that can develop when history, History and memory come into conflict, and because i wanted to know if i was detracting from someone else's experience by claiming it as mine - if there was some sort of cosmic balance - if too many people say they have ties to something, does it negate the personal?
i don't mind that you linked at all - if it is a public post, then it can be seen by anyone. i know this, as i largely don't post publicly. i wanted to see the discussion, if any, that came out of the question, because i really, honestly, wanted to see what people would say
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am i allowed to "claim" part of this history? as part of my history? or is the holocaust really just a jewish memory? would your answer be different if i did not have a family member who died there? can the holocaust belong also to the people of europe, who did not want to lose their neighbors and friends, who lost their sons and daughters, not for being part of a religion, but for other reasons? i know the systematic extermination of a certain people makes it a genocide. i am not trying to claim that this was a hungarian genocide - far from it. i am just wondering if it would be offensive, if what i am saying is offensive? because these ARE my people, in a very real way. except for the fact that they aren't - that my family went to church while they went to the synagogue.Some of what you're saying is offensive and some of it isn't. I don't know if I can untangle it, but I'll try
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And you're focusing on the sexy victimhood and not on the fact that in the privilege exercise, you didn't have to step back beyond that line.but in the exercise, *i* did. my great-grandmother did NOT choose to come to america - she would have much rather died by the shores of lake balaton. (or at least, so she repeatedly said, and to be fair, she was pretty darn miserable.) and my father's family came over for purely economic reasons - because they couldn't afford to feed the kids, so they sent them to other relatives in america, the land of the plenty, the land of opportunity. and every single one of my italian relatives would move there in a second
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Goodness. My first thought looking at all the responses was "oh no, poor S!" because I felt it must be terrifying to have real fierce discussion break out in your lj in response to a question. But then I thought about it for a sec and figured that real fierce discussion is definitely something we can all do with in our public posts as long as we're careful and respectful and willing to look long and hard at ourselves. so hrm... embarrassing first response
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I have to admit that I've been watching this conversation, and find it very strange. No one owns history: it is our common property as human beings, and as such we all have a responsibility to preserve it. That includes the responsibility not to misuse it for our own purposes or tell lies about it.
On the topic at hand, I would suggest that you consider the problem of scale: the nation of Hungary survived the many traumas to which it was subjected in the 20th century. The Hungarian Jewish community, despite the efforts of many individual Hungarians, did not.
The top paragraph is me speaking with my professional historian hat on; the second with my descendant-of-Hungarian-Jews hat. Two-thirds of my grandmother's family (that's the side we know most about there) still lived in Hungary in the 1930s. One of them survived. Does that negate your family's suffering? Not at all. But there it is.
but i think that people do "own" history - History with the capital - at least, in a way we don't want to often acknowledge. japan's war narrative was basically rewritten by the americans after the WWII ended - and japan was fine with that, because they didn't then have to focus oon the individual japanese motivations. oh, it was the nasty military who took over. forget the comfort women, forget nanjing, forget forget forget
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I'm really ambivalent about how you framed the questions in your original post, and I appreciate the context and clarification which you've been offering
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it is very useful. i hadn't really considered the idea of reversing the question and asking the claims that history makes - which i immediately think of stereotypes, and perhaps that's the point (or not).
i also really regret not clarifying a lot of the language i used, or at least giving context - i forget, sometimes, that some concepts aren't largely taught or whatnot because my educational experience (throughout) was so driven by this question of power. i forget that political science wasn't the foundation of every subject for most people. i didn't even bother to clarify what i thought the difference between history and memory was, much less history and "History" - and the "History" (meaning the state-sponsored narrative) is largely what i was talking about. and what i meant when i asked if the Holocaust could be used as a political tool. (because i do think all history can become History, which is why it's important to know
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i was pointed here because of the controversial comment, but i also did want to comment on your entry.
my first point would be that the holocaust resulted in the murder of 13 people, not 6 million. so, by virtue of that alone, the jewish community cannot claim sole "possession" of the holocaust - although we have tried to, in some ways. however, the holocaust is certainly part of the history of gypsies and homosexuals and mentally handicapped persons, etc. - the key difference being (except for gypsies) that there is no "mentally handicapped" culture that replicates itself through the generations. i think that's one of the reasons it's been so easy for jews to claim the holocaust as our own - i can certainly say that my mother's father's cousins, etc., were murdered in gas chambers in europe in the early 1940s.
and of course, the holocaust was largely aimed at jews - we did make up the bulk of the 13 million, as far as population divisions go. more jews were executed, for example, than gypsies or catholics
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i don't know what you think now, but yes, that is largely why i made the post. also because i am fascinated by genocides and their aftermath, because i am entranced by the arguments that can develop when history, History and memory come into conflict, and because i wanted to know if i was detracting from someone else's experience by claiming it as mine - if there was some sort of cosmic balance - if too many people say they have ties to something, does it negate the personal?
i don't mind that you linked at all - if it is a public post, then it can be seen by anyone. i know this, as i largely don't post publicly. i wanted to see the discussion, if any, that came out of the question, because i really, honestly, wanted to see what people would say ( ... )
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but frankly, i'm depressed by it, and it takes a lot to get me depressed by something when it involves genocide.
i do think you got the reason for the post though, and that makes me happier.
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On the topic at hand, I would suggest that you consider the problem of scale: the nation of Hungary survived the many traumas to which it was subjected in the 20th century. The Hungarian Jewish community, despite the efforts of many individual Hungarians, did not.
The top paragraph is me speaking with my professional historian hat on; the second with my descendant-of-Hungarian-Jews hat. Two-thirds of my grandmother's family (that's the side we know most about there) still lived in Hungary in the 1930s. One of them survived. Does that negate your family's suffering? Not at all. But there it is.
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it is very useful. i hadn't really considered the idea of reversing the question and asking the claims that history makes - which i immediately think of stereotypes, and perhaps that's the point (or not).
i also really regret not clarifying a lot of the language i used, or at least giving context - i forget, sometimes, that some concepts aren't largely taught or whatnot because my educational experience (throughout) was so driven by this question of power. i forget that political science wasn't the foundation of every subject for most people. i didn't even bother to clarify what i thought the difference between history and memory was, much less history and "History" - and the "History" (meaning the state-sponsored narrative) is largely what i was talking about. and what i meant when i asked if the Holocaust could be used as a political tool. (because i do think all history can become History, which is why it's important to know ( ... )
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my first point would be that the holocaust resulted in the murder of 13 people, not 6 million. so, by virtue of that alone, the jewish community cannot claim sole "possession" of the holocaust - although we have tried to, in some ways. however, the holocaust is certainly part of the history of gypsies and homosexuals and mentally handicapped persons, etc. - the key difference being (except for gypsies) that there is no "mentally handicapped" culture that replicates itself through the generations. i think that's one of the reasons it's been so easy for jews to claim the holocaust as our own - i can certainly say that my mother's father's cousins, etc., were murdered in gas chambers in europe in the early 1940s.
and of course, the holocaust was largely aimed at jews - we did make up the bulk of the 13 million, as far as population divisions go. more jews were executed, for example, than gypsies or catholics ( ... )
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