frgdr.com Blog

As a third generation Holocaust survivor I feel my connection to the subject differs from the previous generations’ connection - a matter I discuss from time to time on my blog. The show ‘Mabat Sheni’ (A Second Glance), on Israel’s TV Channel 1, featured an interesting segment this week called ‘Holocaust and Satire’. Directed by Michal Kafra, the segment discussed subversive and challenging interpretations of traditional Israeli Holocaust commemorations.

The segment has no English subtitles but I am not sure that is a bad thing. Here is part 1 of 2:

Click here for the concluding part.

As a third-generation Holocaust survivor, I find the subject surprisingly unresolved to me, often pondering about different aspects of it. One example is my criticism of the Holocaust commemoration in Israel, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the tragedy in a way that makes contemporary acts of genocide not really matter.

I find it refreshing to stumble upon art that tries to discuss the Holocaust, as the subject is somewhat of a taboo in Israel and intelligent discussions are often brushed-off with the ‘there is no comparison’ sentence, useful for all occasions. Noam Akotonas is an Israeli singer/songwriter whose debut album ‘Sweeter than Blood’ (2004) includes a song to my liking: ‘A Trip to Poland’ discusses the practice of sending high school students to WWII extermination camps to ‘bear witness’ quote unquote. Noam, like myself, is very critical of these programs, ran by Israel’s Ministry of Education, raising the oh-so-important question: What are we teaching our children?

Noam was kind enough to send me an ad-hoc English translation to the original Hebrew lyrics. Have a listen:

Noam Akotonas and the Salvation Army – A Trip to Poland – Lyrics:

MTV’s activist social network, Think, have launched two public service announcement videos. The videos were directed by Michael Franzini and I thought his approach to the subject was just brilliant.

Hat tip to The Viral Workshop.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Minister of Education Yuli Tamir, scraping the bottom of the making-the-Holocaust-cool-enough-for-our-apathetic-kids barrel, has declared a national project in which high school students will compete to gather the most glass marbles, in an effort to collect 1.5 million marbles, one for each Jewish child perished in the Holocaust.

Paper Clips is a 2004 award-winning documentary about middle school children from the city of Whitwell, Tennessee who tried to collect 6 million paper clips to commemorate the estimated number of Jews who lost their lives by the Nazis.
A young aid probably handed the minister a copy of the movie and she must have thought that this idea is, like, totally cool and stuff – and decided to create her own governmentally funded spin-off project.

I have watched the movie last year and thought it was very moving, so how can I be against a similar project this year? Am I just pro paper clips and anti marbles? Please watch the Paper Clips film trailer now before reading the rest of this post:

Okay, now let us examine the differences:
The rural community of Whitwell has a population of less than 2000 residents, all of them white, all of them Christians.
A middle school history class about the Holocaust made the children aware of the fact that they have never met a Jewish person, nor can grasp the notion of six million people.
The children started writing letters to some people, explaining their project and asking them to kindly send one paper clip.
The project continued for a number of years.
Without giving too much away I will just say that this simple idea started a chain of events and made a difference in the lives of the students, the school and the city.
As a Jewish person, I have found the movie to be inspirational, as it documented contemporary kids who were not obsessed with pop culture and shopping, who were not apathetic when taught about events that happened half a century ago in a country they have never visited to a people they have never met.
That is why I did not linger over the gut feeling that linking paper clips and people is a bit simplistic and might be considered in bad taste by some people.

Now let’s get back to Tamir’s idea:
The esteemed minister initiated a government initiative in which school children from all over Israel will compete with other schools, to see who collects the most marbles.
Most of the children will most likely buy the marbles, to increase their chances of winning.
The project will probably be time-restricted, to make sure the attention-deficit youngsters will not lose interest.

These children will not be encouraged to meet a Holocaust survivor and learn about his ordeals.
These children will not be encouraged to investigate how many of their own relatives perished in the Holocaust.
These children will not be encouraged to learn about recent incidents of genocide.
These children will not be encouraged to investigate xenophobia in their own environment.

Oh no, these children are encouraged in a government funded project to collect marbles, in an effort to quantify the suffering and prove once and for all that our Holocaust was bigger and better than everyone else’s, and being in the Holocaust^* was a total bummer.

I believe this is another clear sign the empire is sinking.

^*Israeli children may often say ‘he was in the Holocaust’, subconsciously referring to the Holocaust as a physical place.