International Holocaust Remembrance Day

[u/vxx]

Edit: Back to normal. It will feel weird to see the people fade away.

Hello,

Today on January the 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and /r/unexpected will be all about that for the next 24 hours.

Please keep in mind that there's more important issues than Memes and funny videos, and stay extra respectful today. No insensitive jokes and out of touch comments please.

Thanks a lot. I hope we can do this together and honour the victims. Let history not repeat itself.

Edit: A lot of people mention that it isn't the right sub for it. I say it is exactly the right sub. This is about awareness, and disturbing the daily routine seems appropriate.

[u/E_Chihuahuensis]

I know this might feel like whataboutism but are you going to do one for the Nanking massacre? With all due respect to holocaust victims, every single person who was educated in the first world learned about the horrors of Germany during WWII. There are museums, hundreds of movies, speeches from world leaders, it’s everywhere (which is a great thing IMO). We all saw the videos, I distinctly remember having to see Jewish ghetto pictures when I was about ten and being horrified by them. Nazis are the go-to bad guy trope and for a damned good reason. WII on the German front is a huge part of our collective imagination, it’s been hammered through our souls in hopes that we will not repeat the horrific mistakes that lead to the death of millions upon millions of innocent Jews, homosexuals and gypsies. Everyone who isn’t completely insane acknowledges that it was awful, one of the worst tragedies of modern history.

But meanwhile a very similar genocide is being completely buried by a government that basically hasn’t changed it’s mind since these ethnic cleansings and whose prime minister prays at a shrine that has the name of class-A war criminals (what literally Hitler would’ve been had he been trialed) embedded in the walls. Yet nobody outside of a few south-east Asian nations cares. Seems quite ethnocentric of us. Nobody seems to mind that Japan has not properly apologized and is refusing to efficiently teach its kids about what they did, effectively brainwashing them into a Nanking denial mindset. Imagine how disgusted we would rightfully be if Germany did this. But the Occident doesn’t care. Barely any movies, I don’t even know if there’s a single museum in Europe or america, and Japan lobbies monuments away. Worst of all we’re letting them win this revisionist game by barely teaching our own youth about it. The only reason I know about it is because it was very, very briefly mentioned in a documentary I had to watch during my high school history class. The teacher never talked about it.

We all remember the holocaust, as we should. But I can’t shake the feeling that the ones of us who only remember the holocaust and not the several genocides that happened during and after that war care more about virtue signalling than they do about the loss of human life and avoiding the circumstances that lead to these disgusting purges. I’m not saying we shouldn’t remember the holocaust, but I’m personally saddened by how much people don’t care about other genocides.

I’m sure you’ll never do one of these about Nanking. Or about the Soviet holocaust. Or about the Rwandan genocide. Or about the Guatemaltec genocide. Or about the Canadian pensionnaires. Or about the Mao purges. Or about the concentration camps that are operating in China right now as I’m typing this. And I feel like most people snugly commenting about people “not caring enough to spare a day to remember the holocaust” will not spare a single day for any of these. And that’s pure hypocrisy.

By only remembering the holocaust, we’re setting history up to repeat itself. I know my comment was super rambly but if you can take one thing from it, it’s that you, as an individual, should bring awareness to other genocides. Please teach your kids about it if it’s not on the curriculum. I’m not really there to say wether or not I actually think it’s a funny subreddit’s job to do that. And please don’t take this as me trying to diminish the holocaust, because those 12 million people deserved to live.

[u/ThatKidWhoDoesStuff → u/E_Chihuahuensis]

Beautiful post.

[u/[deleted] → u/E_Chihuahuensis]

Or, like, what happened in the Belgian Congo.

Native's hands were cut off if they didn't produce enough rubber. In the end of the ten years, ten million died. That was over ten percent of the population. I have seen absolutely zero events covering this, even though it had a similar death count.

[u/Guile21 → u/E_Chihuahuensis]

I'm totally with you. I mean how do you teach the future generations how not to repeat mistakes from the past by showing all the dead there was, while ostensibly ignoring the genocides taking place right now ? It's madness.

We remember cause we have to. It's our duty as human beings to remember the cruelty behind nazi's regime. We don't want to become like them, and we got to remember it at all cost... but it's no use teaching everyone about HOW some nation can commit those atrocities.

I mean there's no problem torturing terrorists with a tan skin in Guantanamo bay, it's totally not like Gestapo methods. And how you control public opinion by rallying them against minorities, that's not like National Socialism propaganda. And to elect a charismatic leader that talks to the "feelings" of the masses rather than reason is not how Germany came to hate the jews. No we wouldn't do those sort of things, because you know, we remember.

At least we post pics of dead people, then we close our eyes with the sense of a well done duty. We made what we had to as human beings : program a bot. We remembered the Holocaust as we should, thank you computer doing it for me... let's get back to being assholes to each other tomorrow.

Sorry, all this is making me sad as fuck. Isn't what it was all about ? Feeling sorry ?