Of course, even if Roosevelt was of Jewish origin, it has no bearing on his attitude to Joseph Stalin, whom some contend was also of Jewish origin. And then there are those who suggest that the maiden name of Winston Churchill's mother was Jacobson.
Would that also go for the thousands of Jacobsens/sons in Denmark,
Norway & Sweden..? And how far back does it go..?
If the name Jacob is all that suggests Jewish origins, I too am a Jew!
Marc, people outside of France have heard of Descartes, y'know
I did live in the Alpes for a couple of years though.
Seriously though, this is a good point. Why has there been no formal apology? Christ, Khruschev got closer to apologising than Gorbachev ever did, and that was over 40 years before.
It's a situation that people need to open their eyes to, and it it becoming slightly hypocritical that this situation still gets ignored where the holocaust is still remembered, arguably, with great bias.
Stalin killed all the Jews he could find too. If he had got the Jews of Poland and Germany first, he would have done the same thing.
We definitely need a little clarity on the 20th century.
I would go back to my earlier point: Historical apologies are meaningless unless given by the perpetrators. For example, Blair's apology for British participation in the slave trade was entirely vacuous. Any apology on behalf of the USSR would be equally vacuous, as would any given by modern Germans for the more extreme activities of the Third Reich.
Ideally, what successor societies should do is;
1) Pursue criminal charges against individual perpetrators whilst they still can. (Russia has totally failed in this).
2) Publicly recognise the full enormity of what happened. (Turkey and Japan have failed in this.)
This unburdens them of any historical baggage.
The question is, who can now appropriately be held to account for it and how?
It can go back as far as it wants, but unless it is the actual perpetrators making the apology, it is effectively meaningless.
And if the perpetrators are still available, it would surely be far better to punish them. No ex-KGB Gulag thug should be sleeping easy, even in his nineties!
It can go back as far as it wants, but unless it is the actual perpetrators making the apology, it is effectively meaningless.
And if the perpetrators are still available, it would surely be far better to punish them. No ex-KGB Gulag thug should be sleeping easy, even in his nineties!
Cheers,
sid.
I agree with your second statement and in that case I would then agree with your first statement.
Blairs apology for slaving was meaningless. It doesn't change history or even change how people view that period of history. Should those countries of the Barbery states apologise for the White slavery that saw nearly 1million persons enslaved?
Regards
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
And so as I patrol in the valley of the shadow of the tricolour I must fear evil, For I am but mortal and mortals can only die
Good points. I agree totally, but would you not agree that in the case of Russia, a case of 'collective guilt' could be beneficial?
IE, Acknowledge what they already know, that the wronged, and wrong, still walk amongst them. In the absence of physical defendants, could one have a collective case against a system, a process, a cult of personality? Have a "trial" against Stalin, Beria and the rest of the gang?
I seriously believe a trial/investigation/show of that nature would do a huge amount for Russia's healing process, which, IMHO, is a long way from complete.
Blair's apology for British participation in the slave trade was entirely vacuous.
Blair's apology might well win him political capital in Africa today, so I don't see the harm. Besides, Britain abolished slavery in, I believe, 1837, which is more of an apology than I've heard from the U.S. or even a modern Muslim state like Mauritania or the Sudan.
Just to put it all in some sort of historical perspective.
Cheers,
~D, the EviL
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
Britain should be apologising for their much more recent actions in the 50's in Kenya.Some Kenyans are attempting to have a class action suit heard,and are still meeting resistance.
Truth is, all nation-states, by definition, have done great evils. Get them started and there would be no end of apologies. For instance, what would Italy or Greece have to apologize for, over the centuries, and to whom????!!!
Apologies are only necessary or usefull when there is something to gain in the modern world by them!
Judge not, that ye shall be judged.....
Best,
~D, the EviL
Death is lighter than a Feather, Duty is heavier than a Mountain....
Given that Russians suffered enormously under the USSR as well, and didn't seem to benefit much by Western standards, it is very difficult to make a case for collective guilt against them.
I am all in favour of serious historical investigation or documentaries, but I think that retrospective trials on TV in the absence of perpetrators would be no more than theatre.
Technically all the Mau-Mau baggage was signed away at independence and falls within the jurisdiction of the successor Kenyan Government.
Has the Kenyan Government pursued any internal cases against either African security force members or Mau-Mau members?
If it has, then I can see no objection to pursuing implicated Britons as well.
There is a major problem in that a recent book (entitled something like "Britain's Gulag") closes with vague and unsubstantiated allegations that the Mau-Mau death toll was as high as 100,000. This has heightened the public profile of the issue.
Another complicating factor was that there were two recent court cases in which Kenyan women alleged rape by British forces on exercise and other Kenyans alleged injury from unexploded ordinance after exercises were over. These were provoked by a couple of compensation hand outs that drew attention to HMG as a milch-cow and resulted in hundreds of apparently false claims.
Blair's apology for British participation in the slave trade was entirely vacuous.
Blair's apology might well win him political capital in Africa today, so I don't see the harm. Besides, Britain abolished slavery in, I believe, 1837, which is more of an apology than I've heard from the U.S. or even a modern Muslim state like Mauritania or the Sudan.
Just to put it all in some sort of historical perspective.
Cheers,
~D, the EviL
David,
The Slave Trade Act was first passed in 1807 (200 years ago, which is why Blair made his “apologies”). This act didn’t abolish slavery itself, but effectively prohibited the Slave Trade within the British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act itself came later in 1833.
The 200 year passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807 was widely celebrated in Kingston-Upon-Hull (my home City) as William Wilberforce, a leading abolitionist and the man responsible for pushing the 1807 Act through parliament, was born and raised in the City and was their MP in Westminster.
Many years ago (before the wife came onto the scene) I used to live in an apartment in the old town of Hull that was directly next door to William Wilberforce’s house, which is now a museum. My kitchen window overlooked his lovely gardens!
I am pleased to say the museum is currently undergoing a (badly needed) revamp and will open again in 2008. Typically, Hull City Council couldn’t get organized enough to have it fully re-opened for the bicentenary .
Not sure that Stalin targeted Jews as such. Given that the majority of the Bolshevik executive was Jewish, the fact that Stalin had many of them killed or exiled should not be taken as any indication of anti-semitism on his part. Stalin's three wives were Jewish. Many of his NKVD killers from Beria downwards were Jewish. Many of the people responsible for Bolshevism as opposed to Menshevism were Russian Jews.
As an article 4.4.1919 in the Jewish Chronicle stated: "There is much in the fact of Bolshevism itself, in the fact that so many Jews are Bolshevists, in the fact that the ideals of Bolshevism at many points are consonant with the finest ideals of Judaism."
Winston Churchill, writing in the Illustrated Sunday Herald of 8.2.1920, remarked: "With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of leading figures are Jews. Moreover the principal inspiration and the driving power comes from Jewish leaders."
In 1920, the Moscow correspondent of The Times (London), Robert Wilton, published a book Les Derniers Jours des Romanoffs, in which he described the ethnic make-up of the Soviet government. The book was in French and Wilton was ostracised as a result. Later editions in English omitted Wilton's identification of Jews in the Bolshevik regime. Of twelve members, for instance, of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, nine were Jewish.
Stalin himself has been described by anti-semite as Jewish. Not that it is an issue in itself but it is worth bearing in mind when one discusses alleged anti-semitism in Stalin's USSR. I think anti-semitism in Russia only showed its public face once Stalin was gone. It is now fairly rampant and appears to be a consequence of a general feeling, right or wrong, that Jews were behind Bolshevism and the atrocities against Russian Christians in the 1920s and 1930s.
PK
Last edited by Paddy Keating on Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Not sure that Stalin targeted Jews as such. Many of his NKVD killers from Beria downwards were Jewish. Many of the people responsible for Bolshevism as opposed to Menshevism were Russian Jews, Stalin himself was probably Jewish. Not that it is an issue in itself but it is worth bearing in mind when one discusses alleged anti-semitism in Stalin's USSR. I think anti-semitism in Russia only showed its public face once Stalin was gone. It is now fairly rampant and appears to be a consequence of a general feeling, right or wrong, that Jews were behind Bolshevism and the atrocities against Russian Christians in the 1920s and 1930s.
.
