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Notícies :: antifeixisme |
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60 años después de Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel continúa su lucha
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per Antiterrorista |
25 gen 2005
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"Si alguien me hubiera dicho en 1945 que debería luchar contra el antisemitismo en 2005, jamás lo hubiera creído. Y aquí está de nuevo el peligro". |
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Guardián de la memoria judía e infatigable defensor de los derechos humanos, Elie Wiesel aborda con particular emoción el 60 aniversario de la liberación de los campos de concentración nazis, desafiando cada día la indiferencia, que para él es "lo contrario del amor".
Sobreviviente de Holocausto, el Premio Nobel de la Paz de 1986 intervendrá este lunes en una sesión histórica de la ONU, antes de volver a Europa, primero a Davos y luego a las ceremonias en Polonia.
Para él, esta conmemoración tiene un significado particular.
"Los sobrevivientes sentirán que sin duda es su última gran ceremonia. Es una especie en vías de desaparición", dijo en una entrevista con la AFP. "Se veían en los funerales, en los nacimientos de hijos, luego en las bodas de hijos y ahora se reencuentran en los funerales".
Para el escritor, ciudadano estadounidense que piensa en yiddish, escribe en francés y vive su vida cotidiana en inglés, este aniversario trae también el vivo recuerdo del fin de su propia detención, en Buchenwald, en abril de 1945.
Nacido en una aldea de Rumania, el joven Elie fue separado de su madre y sus hermanos en Auschwitz antes de ser transferido a Buna y luego a Buchenwald, donde su padre murió de disentería.
"Estaba convencido de que no saldría vivo", recordó. Para él, la liberación sobrevino como "un accidente".
"Éramos 400 adolescentes en esa barraca. Todo llegó de golpe. (...) No fue un momento de alegría. Porque con la libertad nos dimos cuenta de que éramos huérfanos. Estábamos simplemente reunidos para decir el kaddish, la plegaria por los muertos".
"Con cada sobreviviente que se va, hay un fragmento de la memoria que es enterrado", agregó. Sin embargo, no cree que la memoria esté amenazada.
"No temo olvidar, tenía miedo al principio, no ahora, porque sé que esta tragedia es la más documentada de la Historia (...). Siempre he creído que quienquiera que escucha un testigo se convierte en testigo a su vez: los hijos de los sobrevivientes, los amigos, los lectores, los alumnos...".
En cambio, "tengo miedo de la banalización de esta memoria, sobre todo cuando se hacen películas", agregó.
¿Ha aprendido algo el mundo en estos 60 años? A sus 76 años, Wiesel duda, sopesando optimismo y pesimismo.
"Las Naciones Unidas tienen una sesión especial (este lunes), es la primera vez, y los jefes de Estado se molestarán en ir a Auschwitz", afirmó. "Pero si alguien me hubiera dicho en 1945 que debería luchar contra el antisemitismo en 2005, jamás lo hubiera creído. Y aquí está de nuevo el peligro".
Para él, el Holocausto seguirá siendo "un acontecimiento único" e incomprensible. Pero ve un elemento que hasta hoy gangrena el mundo: "la indiferencia".
"La indiferencia, ese es el mal para mí. Lo contrario del amor no es el odio sino la indiferencia, lo contrario de la educación no es la ignorancia sino la indiferencia, lo contrario de la belleza no es la fealdad sino la indiferencia, lo contrario de la vida no es la muerte, sino la indiferencia a la vida y la muerte".
La indiferencia es para él también el gesto del británico príncipe Harry, que se vistió de nazi para una fiesta de disfraces. O los británicos, de los cuales, según una encuesta. 45% ignora lo que fue Auschwitz.
"Puede ser que no hayamos trabajado lo suficiente. Al mismo tiempo, me dije, '¡Este príncipe Harry, qué idiota, pero qué idiota!' Si quiere escandalizar, que busque otra cosa", afirmó.
"Eso es ignorancia, pero más que eso, es indiferencia, verdaderamente. Eso hace reír, pero es muy duro". |
This work is in the public domain |
Comentaris
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"I won't lie down and take the insults"
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per NORMAN Finkelstein |
25 gen 2005
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"I won't lie down and take the insults"
"Not only does the '6 Million' figure become more untenable but the numbers of the Holocaust industry are rapidly approaching those of Holocaust deniers."
The Holocaust Industry, page 127
NORMAN Finkelstein is the nearest you can get to a Jewish heretic. He is a Jew but an anti-Zionist; the son of Holocaust survivors but a ceaseless critic of what he terms "the Holocaust industry"; a left-wing historian whose views are often praised by revisionist right-wingers such as David Irving.
He is a pugilist by inclination, never missing an opportunity to fire insults at his enemies among Jewish organisations in the US and Israel.
They, it must be said, are not slow to respond in kind. Insults flew within minutes when Finkelstein appeared recently with an Israeli government spokesman on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland, and Cathal Mac Coille, the presenter, had to call the two off each other and beg for calm. "You're supposed to lie down and take the insults, and I'm not going to do it," Finkelstein says. "The level of arrogance of these people just boggles the mind."
He believes Jewish organisations are "huckstering" the Holocaust by extracting huge sums in compensation that never get to the survivors. "What they have done, by turning the central tragedy of Jews in the 20th century into a weapon for shaking down people for money is pretty disgusting; it's wretched." He denounces some of the campaigns for reparations against Swiss banks and claims that more than $20 billion (E17.5 billion) has been collected in compensation claims arising from the Holocaust.
Because he is Jewish, Finkelstein gets away with the kind of language others would never be allowed to use. He accuses Jewish organisations, for example, of conducting themselves "like a caricature from Der Sturmer", the notorious Jew-baiting magazine of the Nazis [see samples on the right]. He repeatedly refers to the organisations as "crooks" and has even called Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the "resident clown" of the Holocaust circus.
The roots of his anger lie in his parents' experience. Finkelstein's father survived the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz concentration camp; his mother lived in the ghetto and ended up in Majdanek camp. He describes both as confirmed atheists.
His father received compensation from the German government. "I still remember the blue envelopes that came in every month. At the end of his life he was getting $600 a month, or a grand total of about $250,000. Even though there was no love lost between my father and the Germans - he hated them all - there was never any complaint about the money. The Germans were always very competent and efficient."
In contrast, his mother's compensation was channelled through American Jewish organisations. "Even though they went through the same experiences, she got a grand total of $3,000 and no pension. That's what you get from Jewish organisations."
THE line he takes on the Israel-Palestine conflict is similarly controversial, at least within his community. "A colossal wrong has been inflicted on the Palestinians, and no amount of rationalisation can justify that. There are possibilities for peace, but the Israeli elite won't allow them to happen."
Finkelstein's latest book, a second edition of Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, is a scholarly attempt to undermine the popular image of Israel and its dispute with the Palestinians. He situates the creation of Israel firmly in the colonial tradition and seeks to debunk writers who claim the Palestinians never existed historically.
He compares Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to apartheid South Africa's attitude to its blacks or US settlers' view of native Americans.
"All these settlers used the same language. What was left out of the picture was that there were people living there before they arrived. We were told there was a wilderness, that it was virgin land and that every once in a while there were these savages, slightly above the level of the fauna, who would attack the settlers."
A New Yorker by birth, Finkelstein admits he has very little direct experience of Israel, although he has visited the occupied territories more than 20 times. "When I'm there no one even cares less that I'm Jewish. In the first year I was a novelty; by the third or fourth it was just, hey, Norman's back."
So is he, along with other solidarity workers who spend time with Palestinians but enjoy freedom of speech and personal security back home in the West, just a meddler? "I don't want to be there. I'm a complete coward. My hat comes off to those young people who work in difficult circumstances, who help Palestinians dig a well or who come to aid of people who are being shot at. If that's meddling, I say we need a lot more meddling in the world."
Asked if Israel can be considered a democracy, he responds: "Was South Africa a democracy in the old days? It was a democracy for whites, for the 'superior people'. Similarly, Israel, for the larger part of its history, has been a society where half the population has all the rights and half the population has none."
But what about the democratic rights of Palestinians under Yasser Arafat? "How can you have a democracy under occupation? People there have no rights without the approval of Israel. How democratic is Alcatraz? Or a concentration camp?"
There is a solution, he insists. "I don't think the way out is so complicated. People constantly try to shroud the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in all kinds of mystification. They say it's about ancient enmities, it's about the Bible or religion or it's about the clash of cultures. But when you go to live there you see it's not complicated at all. The fact is that there's a military occupation, and that has to end." And then what? "Then you hope Palestinians and Israelis will live together in peace."
Although Finkelstein enjoys the security of being a US citizen, he has paid a price for his views. His four books have been popular successes in Europe - The Holocaust Industry sold 130,000 copies in Germany in three weeks - but in the US he has been shunned and his books have been savaged.
The New York Times, he once commented, gave a more hostile review to The Holocaust Industry than it did to Hitler's Mein Kampf. This clearly rankled, and he returns to it. "I don't want to play the martyr, but if you look at my history I didn't make out so well. I didn't get the headlines. I'm in exile in [DePaul University in] Chicago because I was thrown out of every [university] school in New York.
"I'm not happy to be in Chicago. I want to be at home. That's why I keep an apartment there. I'm still praying for a miracle. I've had a hard time." |
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Re: 60 años después de Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel continúa su lucha
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per * |
25 gen 2005
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En Spain hay una organización, Falange Española, que colaboró activa y pasivamente con los nazis y se han ido de rositas. |
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Re: 60 años después de Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel continúa su lucha
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per Antiterrorista |
25 gen 2005
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como tantos otros que siguen en la más absoluta inmunidad fruto de la transición española. Pero, cuidado que también los hay en la izquierda, por desgracia |
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Re: 60 años después de Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel continúa su lucha
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per . |
25 gen 2005
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a l'esquerra l'única crítica possible es al capitalisme israelià, antiterrorista, que t'agrada fer de la intoxicació i del relativisme la teva bandera
que tingueu un feliç vol |
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