On Holocaust Memorial Day, Why Aren't The German People As A Whole Left With The Same Stigma That British And American People Are Over Slavery?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11370854/Holocaust-Memorial-Day-survivors-return-to-Auschwitz.html

[Old_Geezer]

Maybe they don't have individuals who feel and go on about how the present citizens should be breast beating and wailing about what their ancestors thought was right, as we do ?

[Gromit]

I feel no stigma about slavery, it has never struck me that you do.

I is daft to blame present day Brits for slavery just as it is to blame present day Germans for the atrocities of the Nazis. But some people do.

We should not deny our past, but we shouldn't feel burdened by it either.

[naomi24]

We create the stigma by beating ourselves up over the past. The Germans don't do that.

[beso]

I have no time for the Holocaust Memorial Day when the glorious history of the Hebrews features so much genocide.

I am not saying that the Holocaust wasn't deplorable but the reality is that they wrote the script.

The similarity of the Hebrew invasion of "The Promised Land" and the Nazi action against them is one of the great ironies of history.

[BlackadderV]

Nothing like sticking your irons in the fire and see how hot they get. Like the way you substitute the the word Hebrew for Jew. I await with interest further responses.

[sp1814]

AOG

Perhaps it might be down to the fact that the Germans acknowledge the shameful acts of their forebears, whereas the moment slavery is mentioned, some British people and Americans try to shut down any discussion?

Even here on AB there were people who said that excellent films (which they had not even seen!) such as '12 Years a Slave' shouldn't be made because they stir up

[sp1814]

(Bloody poorly placed 'Submit' button)

...because they stir up I'll-feeling.

But I'm not sure that the Germans have escaped the stigma yet.

What leads you to believe they have?

[naomi24]

sp, //the Germans acknowledge the shameful acts of their forebears, whereas the moment slavery is mentioned, some British people and Americans try to shut down any discussion?//

That’s not entirely true. There have been many acknowledgements of the shameful acts of our forebears, Just waiting for similar acknowledgements from the descendants of the African slave-traders who were involved - or shouldn't we mention that?

[sp1814]

naomi24

Unfortunately, it's virtually impossible for the descendents of African slave traders to acknowledge their forebears guilt - for obvious reasons!

European and Ameican slavers kept records of their 'purchases', so we all know the families concerned. No such records exist pinpointing the actions of African slave traders.

However, it is a subject which has been fervently discussed in Africa, and it's been going on for over 20 years (see Howard French's piece on the Cape Coast Journal from 1994).

Just because we don't hear of these discussions, doesn't mean they don't happen.

[Peter Pedant]

.

I have to say I have british afro Caribbean relations
and yup whenever I see them I don't first say
o god I am sorry for my forebears enslaving you

they do call their father the white honky tho....

it is different oop north

[naomi24]

Oh, well we don’t know who they were so that’s alright then. I honestly don’t know what black people who bang on about the slave trade expect. We are no more culpable for the actions of our predecessors than people of African descent are culpable for the actions of theirs.

[Old_Geezer]

I think guilt is only relevant to a discussion if, at the time, what is being done was agreed to be wrong. Otherwise it is about the values of one generation allowing them to look down on another.

[Old_Geezer]

And even if it was agreed wrong the guilt belongs to those concerned not their descendants.

[sp1814]

naomi24

Hell yeah!

I mean, no-one on here would even be discussing it, if the tenuous link between Holocaust Day and slavery were 'established'.

However, I believe that if slavery (in the U.S.) had been abolished and there were no lingering after effects, then it would have indeed been consigned to the dustbin of history.

But I think you'd have to be naive to believe that.

Slavey defined American law, social attitudes, housing. Job prospects, health, living standards and the whole Ameican 'psyche' for hundreds of years.

It didn't just end and that was that.

[-Talbot-]

I don't feel any guilt, it was *** all to do with me.

How do we know what the lefty Germans are saying in German newspapers?
How some ABers get to know what is going on in other countries sometimes amazes me.

[Peter Pedant]

// Oh, well we don’t know who they were so that’s alright then.//

O that's why people destroy records ! so they cant be blamed later !

I really really had never realised that

[New Judge]

"...but the reality is that they [the Jews/Hebrews] wrote the script [for the Holocaust]."

Yes that seems a fair enough justification to wipe out 6million people purely on the basis of their religion.

[naomi24]

sp, //It didn't just end and that was that.//

We know – but what do you want? All the apologies in the world from people who weren't there – black or white - won’t change history.

[sp1814]

naomi24

This might shock you, but did you know that the Jim Crow laws were not abolished until 1965?

Yeah...1965.


So, in the year before I was born, these laws were on the statute books of a large number of Southern States.

Here's a few of them (when you read this ask yourself whether these were a direct product of slavery):

Examples of laws that caused these extreme tensions in the country included the following:

Marriage - "All marriages between a white person and a ***, or between a white person and a person of *** descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited." (Florida law)
Marriage - "All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void." (Wyoming law)
Hospitalization - "The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients [in a mental hospital], so that in no cases shall Negroes and white persons be together." (Georgia law)
Nursing - "No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms or hospitals, either public or private, where *** men are placed." (Alabama law)
Barbering - "No colored person shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls." (Georgia law)
Toilets - "Every employer of white or *** males shall provide for such white or *** males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities." (Alabama law)
Buses - "All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races." (Alabama law)
Restaurants - "It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment." (Alabama law)
Beer and Wine - "All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to two races within the same room at any time." (Georgia law)
Amateur Baseball - "It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the *** race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race." (Georgia law)
Burial - "The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons." (Georgia law)
Libraries - "The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals." (North Carolina law)
Teaching - "Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored races are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined..." (Oklahoma law)
Schools - "Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and [when] said rooms are provided, such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent." (New Mexico law)
Schools - "[The County Board of Education] shall provide schools of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children." (Texas law)
Prison - "The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the *** convicts." (Mississippi law)

[naomi24]

sp, I know - and thankfully those laws were abolished 50 years ago - but you're still banging on about apologies that are not going to erase history.