Concentration camps

Jim Fujii jafujii at uci.edu
Mon Apr 13 21:41:38 EDT 1998


 Response to Birgit Kellner's response to Alan Kita

 In her zeal to "correct" Alan and to "restore" the Jewish holocaust as
singularly worthy of the terms "concentration camp," Birgit Kellner ends up
sounding ethnocentric and offensive at the same time.  I share the
importance of distinguishing among different, specific forms of atrocities,
coercions, etc., but, perhaps paradoxically, there is in her response to
Alan Kita's post something of a knee-jerk impulse to continue privileging
the Nazi death camps as the quintessential atrocity of the century.  I might
take similar umbrage that in shifting the focus to "extermination" as the
primary issue that separates the Japanese-American "relocation and
internment" from German concentration camps, Ms. Kellner did not  mention
the genocide of millions of Armenians, or to refer to a more current
example,  what has been aptly described as the U.S. government's present-day
"weapon of choice"--the invocation of economic "sanctions" and "boycots"
that have led to the systematic extermination of over a million Iraqi
children over the extended term of these sanctions.  
    A thoughtful response to Alan's points would surely have avoided a
dismissive euphemism like "containment", used by Ms. Kellner in referring to
the "internment" of Japanese-Americans. "Containment" surely effaces the
reality that people were wrenched from their everyday lives, having to sell
and get rid of virtually all of their belongings, including land and
property--in the span of 24 hours--in addition to a wide range of by now
well documented indignities suffered, lives unalterably changed, . . . .
    It's more than naive to think that the list subscribers you are
presumably addressing cannot distinguish the particulars differentiating
these two crimes against humanity.  As important as it is to be able to make
particularized distinctions, a simplistic and formulaic attempt to
hierarchize injustices seems to be wrongheaded.  As important as the lessons
of history are, the most significant atrocities are the ones that we
ourselves are living through--in some degree of complicity, if even through
ignorance or the choice of remaining silent--as these are the ones that we
can presumably do something about.

     Jim Fujii
  



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