Showing posts with label Holocaust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holocaust. Show all posts

Tuesday 28 January 2020

Men Kek Bissa

         Sorry a day late for Holocaust Day, January 27th. However I thought it was worth remembering that the holocaust was not a one ethnic group cleansing. It included others the regime found not suitable for their distorted vision. Different ethnic groups and those whose political views didn't fit, were also eliminated, though are seldom mentioned on this memorial day.
This from Travellers Times:
 
The Gypsy Camp at Auschwitz - a poem by Raine Geoghegan 24 January 2019

         February 1943: At Auschwitz-Birkenau, a family Gypsy camp was set up in a wooden barracks. August 2 1944: Over 4,000 Roma and Sinti men, women and children were murdered in the gas chambers. January 27 1945 at 3pm, Soviet soldiers reached the camp and found only one Rom among the survivors.

The Gypsy Camp at Auschwitz
the branches on the trees bend and sway
leaves fall and settle on the ground
sunlight seeps through mottled clouds
and all is quiet 

a woman with long red hair
picks a blade of grass
holds it up to the light
remembering her husband
the shape of his mouth
how he spoke her name, Narilla 

men kek bissa: we will not forget 

an old chal with silver hair
takes his hat off, feels the warmth of the sun
on his head
his chavo was four years old when they were imprisoned
a year later he was taken and was never seen again
he had dark curls and hazel eyes 

a chavali runs into the arms of her mother
who remembers she once had twelve chavies
all had hair the colour of the darkest earth
and eyes like wolves 

men kek bissa: we will not forget 

winter birds mourning on the branches
the earth remembering
how it has given refuge to the dead 

no longer dead leaves trampled underfoot
they have become wild breathing flowers
growing in the dust.

       “Except for a few survivors, a whole people unique in its life-style, language, culture and art, was wiped off the face of the earth. The death of the Gypsy Nation was more than physical; it was total oblivion.” Azriel Eisenberg, Witness to the Holocaust, 1981 (New York) taken from Danger, Educated Gypsy, selected essays by Ian Hancock.

      (Romani jib: Men kek bissa – we will not forget; Chal – man; Chavo – boy; Chavali – girl; Chavies – children).

Raine Geoghegan

To mark Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27th, 2019.

(Main photograph: Roma children during the Second World War. The photograph would have been taken by a German soldier somewhere in the Balkans around 1942-3. Outcome unknown. Picture courtesy and (c) Bob Dawson) 
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Sunday 16 March 2014

From Victim To Thug, A Sad Journey.


      It is always good to see dissent surface in Israel, more and more Jews are speaking out against the inhumane treatment inflicted on the Palestinian people, by the Jewish state. Sooner or later the barbarity, land grabbing, apartheid and genocide, the people of Palestine are subject to, will blow up in Israel's face, and it will not be a pretty sight. From the sufferers of the Holocaust, to the perpetrators, is a sad and tragic journey, which will reap its justice.

 
The vanishing country of Palestine.

This from Socialism or Your Money Back:
       ----Entitled We Refuse to Serve in the Occupation Army, the letter charges that this dehumanization hurts Israelis as well. "The problem with the army does not begin or end with the damage it inflicts on Palestinian society. It infiltrates everyday life in Israeli society too: it shapes the educational system, our workforce opportunities, while fostering racism, violence and ethnic, national and gender-based discrimination."
      "We refuse to forsake our principles as a condition to being accepted in our society," reads the joint letter, penned by people aged 16 to 20 who are eligible for compulsory service in the Army. "We have thought about our refusal deeply and we stand by our decisions."----
Read the full article HERE:

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Sunday 11 August 2013

Holocaust Mark2.


        Day and daily the repression and the genocide goes on and on. It couldn't go on without the American support and the rest of the Western world turning a blind eye. There is no rhyme or reason to the policies of the Israeli state, except the creation of the Greater Israeli State by expanding its borders and the banishing of the people of Palestine. Victims of the Holocaust are the perpetrators of the new Holocaust.




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Tuesday 23 July 2013

Twin Fangs Of The Serpent.


      Money and religion, a very dangerous cocktail, like the twin fangs of the serpent, they poison our world, they divide our brothers and sisters, they fester relationships.




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Friday 19 July 2013

The Leader Has Spoken.


     The following is a statement that I think a very large segment of the population might agree with, "saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps, be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza".
       It was spoken by a LibDem MP, David Ward, However, the Holocaust Educational Trust. thought fit to complain to the LibDem leader Nick Clegg, who withdrew the party whip from the MP. Is this a case of the LibDem party leader being ignorant of what is happening in that part of the world, or was it a case of him bowing to a powerful Israeli lobby group? Either way it shows the uselessness of that establishment, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, where an elected representative can be silenced by an unelected bunch with vested interests, and where a widely held opinion can be silenced by the authority of the "party leader".
        Democracy can never be born through the party system, party lines throttle individual opinions. However capitalism thrives in the party system, the corporate world simply buys the parties and things are shaped to suit that corporate world. Any hierarchical system is an anathema to democracy. Democracy demands horizontalism, equality among individuals, the right to voice your opinion free from the over-riding power of "the leader". As long as the people support a party political system, the longer our freedom will be in chains.

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Tuesday 28 May 2013

A Cull Of The Working Class.


 This from "brickburner":

The Cull of the working class.


        As we all know by now, the dreaded Bedroom Tax has arrived. This of course is the latest of a long list of attacks on working class people. We must be careful not to view these attacks in isolation – they constitute a coordinated assault on working class people particularly the most vulnerable members of society; the sick and disabled. It has been estimated that eight in ten people affected by the Bedroom Tax are disabled. Many of those have already been through a work capability assessment conducted by the French firm Atos, on behalf of the Department of Works and Pensions, which has resulted in them losing their benefits.

      Michael Meacher M.P. led a commons debate on the 17th. January this year in which he criticised almost every aspect of Atos’s operations including the thousands of people who have died after being declared fit for work. You can see his speech on You Tube. Atos has been widely and repeatedly criticised by the British Medical Association, and is subject to constant lobbying by disabled groups throughout the country. This callous treatment of the sick and disabled goes hand in hand with the emergence of a new and sinister trend of political thought has developed over the term of the present Government, which sees welfare benefit claimants and those at the very bottom of society as lazy, dishonest stupid scroungers who are less than human.



       The Government’s sustained attacks on the weakest in society are reminiscent of the Nazis treatment of some of their own citizens prior to the beginning of the Second World War when they “assessed” the sick and disabled to see if they were physically and mentally fit to live. Those human beings whom they termed Lebensunwertes Leban-“life unworthy of life”, and “useless eaters” were callously exterminated. The German authorities managed to persuade the population at large through written and pictorial propaganda, that this extermination was morally acceptable and that the sick and disabled were a drain on the economy. They managed to do this by “dehumanising” people.

      An article in The Guardian on 11May 2013, reported on research carried out at the University of Louvain by Jacque-Philippe Leyens which suggests that low status groups including the poor, homeless people, drug addicts and welfare claimants are seen by others as less than “fully human”. Leyens has coined the term “infrahumanisation”- the infra for “below”, as in below or less than fully human to describe this development of everyday dehumanisation. As Robert de Vries in the Guardian article puts it, “The Government’s cuts to welfare benefits are causing real harm to a lot of innocent people, nevertheless, remarkable numbers seem to be willing to support them”, and, “People struggling to get by in their own lives will find it hard to sympathise with those they feel are getting a free ride”.

     The Government propaganda about “shirkers” and “strivers not skivers” seems therefore to be working. Unfortunately, on programmes such as “Question Time”, these phrases have been enthusiastically adopted by many members of the audience. This of course is a classic example of the “Divide and Conquer” strategy being employed against the working class.

      Another ruse used by the Government to justify their unremitting attacks on the working class is the mythology that cuts are necessary, and “that we are all in this together”. The idea that those at the top of society will suffer just as much as those at the bottom would be laughable if it were not so insulting and contemptible; the very people who decided to cut the living standards of working class people are in the process of voting themselves a pay rise of between £10 to £20 thousand pounds a year. Most of us would be delighted to live on just the pay rise, but in fact MP’s will now get more than £75,000 a year-some of them want £100,000, - yet they have the nerve to say that we all have to share the pain! And of course the Bankers still get their bonuses and Multi-nationals manage to dodge paying tax.

     The claim that cuts in public services are necessary at all is a complete lie. As Tony Benn once said, “If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people”. According to U.K. Government figures Britain spent at least £9.24 billion in Iraq and £11.1 billion in Afghanistan between April 2001 and March 2010, and that’s not taking into account what has been squandered from 2010 till now. The so-called Ministry of Defence lost £74 million pounds of taxpayers’ money recently on a cancelled order for fighter jets. (Richard Johnstone, Public Finance 10 May 2013). So it would seem that there is plenty of money to wage illegal and pointless wars, but not enough money to create a caring peaceful society.

       There is another war going on at the moment; it is the class war. A war waged by those at the top of society against those at the bottom. We are the victims of this war. For generations working class people have had to endure poor wages, bad and often dangerous working conditions, industrial illnesses and long periods of financial hardship. Working class people are still being killed daily in this war. Literally thousands of people die every year after Atos has passed them fit for work. People have been forced to work for benefit money; before long regular workers will be sacked then they too can work for slave wages and will join the millions of others living below the breadline. Warren Buffett an American billionaire business magnate once said, “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class - the rich class that’s making war, and we’re winning!”

      Through these measures, the Government has upped the ante in their war against the disabled and unemployed. If you aren’t in work, or are sick or disabled you don’t deserve to live, - you are a useless eater! In this war against the working class the sick, the disabled and the unemployed are being culled. The Government are killing working class people. If this seems far fetched, you only have to remember this, the entire Nazi extermination programme which culminated in the Holocaust, started in 1939 with the T4 euthanasia program which targeted sick and disabled people. If the German people had resisted at this stage the Second World War may never have happened.

      The only way we can prevent history repeating itself, is for ordinary working class people to organise and fight back. We have to combat the Bedroom Tax and all the other cuts that the Government and their friends in big business are trying to impose on us. We have to rely on ourselves and not on politicians; they are part of the problem not the solution! Above all, we have to overcome the State’s attempts to divide and rule us; we need to show our fellow workers that we have nothing in common with the boss class and that we must build our own organisations and strong communities to unite against them.

Only then can we hope to win the class war.

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