To Holocaust Memorial Day

7 January 2010

I hope to attend the Exeter event. I am disturbed however that the killing of thousands upon thousands of Japanese people by US atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not included in the short list of holocausts on your web site. I should like to hear why these two holocausts are not listed for remembrance. I feel similarly about the genocide of the 20 million North American Indians, the Australian aborigines and the Armenian genocide.

For truth and justice

David Halpin FRCS

7 January 2010

Dear David

Thank you for your email and interest in Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK. I hope that you are able to attend your local event in Exeter

The HMDT website and national commemoration does not contain specific information on the Armenian genocide or other events pre-Holocaust, as Holocaust Memorial Day aims to commemorate genocides from the Holocaust to the present day, therefore, it's not covered within the timeframes of our remit. http://www.hmd.org.uk/about/statement_of_purpose_0000/ <https://secure.hmd.org.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.hmd.org.uk/about/statement_of_purpose_0000/>

Genocides cannot be ignored and forgotten. Hitler used the lack of recognition for the Armenian experience as a sign it was acceptable to try and wipe out millions of Europeans. It is vital we recognise situations where genocide has occurred whether it is the Holocaust or Armenia by remembering the past and reflecting on the lessons learnt, we can better understand how to react to issues that affect our society today.

Many events that take place around the UK to mark Holocaust Memorial Day will contain reference to and testimony from the Armenian genocide and we direct those looking for further information to the Aegis Trust website: http://www.aegistrust.org/ <https://secure.hmd.org.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.aegistrust.org/> you can also listen to a podcast on the HMDT website by Aegis Trust Founder and CEO, Dr James Smith where he talks about the term and definition of the term genocide and the work carried out by Raphael Lemkin following the genocide in Armenia. You can listen to this here: http://www.hmd.org.uk/resources/podcasts/dr-james-smith-what-is-genocide

We appreciate the strength of feeling about a number of international events however HMD is not intended as a day to commemorate all or any tragic events or conflicts, but to learn the specific lessons of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides.

We hope that this response is helpful to you, and thank you again for your interest in Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK.

Yours sincerely,

HMDT Team

8 January

Dear Louise,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I have been studying 'holocaust' in recent weeks. I see it means the mass killing of humans by humans. It seems the holocaust that was perpetrated by the Third Reich against the Jews (not all because some were serving the Third Reich in several ways - including as doctors), the Poles, the Roma, the socialists and the mentally impaired is spelled with a capital H, whereas other holocausts are not. These details probably have a good explanation.

I am disturbed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not included in your list. As you know, the 'caust' in holocaust has a Hebrew root and it means burnt. With the 'holo' - completely burnt - 'nothing but the smoke'. These terribly evil atomic explosions came after the end of the holocaust of the Third Reich, they were premeditated of course and these holocausts had a political purpose - a marker being put down by the US for the Soviet forces in the Sahkalin Islands in the north of Japan. The fact that most of the research scientists who designed the 'bomb' were Jewish should not affect the categorization of these mass killings and burnings as holocausts; there are no better examples.

I am very disturbed by this seeming selectivity Louise. I was going up to Exeter with 3 other friends, but I think the four of us will not attend now.

For truth and justice

David Halpin

Research shows


500,000 pounds income from Dept Communities and Local Government.


The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), an independent Charity, took over the responsibility of 'delivering' Holocaust Memorial Day for the UK from the Home Office in 2005. It became a registered
charity in June 2005. Now in its third year, HMDT employ 5 full time employees, including Christine Shaw, who was appointed as CEO in December 2006.

The work of HMDT is funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government. HMDT would like to take this opportunity to thank DCLG for their continued support.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stephensmith  chair
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/henrygrunwald  trustee  and on British board of Jewish deputies

Helfgott - is a trustee of four other Jewish charities inc the Holocaust Education Trust ( Pears) which receives DfES funding for children to visit Auschwitz etc.

http://education.hmd.org.uk/case-studies/ben-helfgott

Liverpool was the city selected last year to hold the main events.

28 January 2010


Silence.  Alluding to the active involvement of some Jews in the Third Reich might have upset but I understand it to be true.  There are always collaborators.  Think Chalabi, think Perle .. re Iraq.

I have just read that Howard Zinn has died aet 87.  He looks a happy man
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html
Speaking truth sustains youth?

This short piece by him is very much in tune with what I have said above

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/60/145.html

At the end 'The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany. Here millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business.'

I return to this often.  We are at 1942.  Many people sense this but they feel powerless in the face of psychopathic political power and the MSM onslaught which is symbiotic with that power.  See these words of Milton Mayer re Germany '38 >.  I regard them as very important apart from being very well written.  I picked up the quote like many from ICH. Pasted below.

For truth

David

A larger consciousness
By Howard Zinn, ZNet Commentary, 10 October 1999

Some years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-Eighties, and the United States government was supporting death squad governments in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be encircled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other genocides in history. It seemed to me that to remember what happened to Jews served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world.  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany?here millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. It is a frightening thought that the Nazis, in defeat, were victorious: today Germany, tomorrow the world. That is, until we withdraw our obedience.

They Thought They Were Free
by Milton Mayer, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
(Posted here: Jan 08, 2006)

 
"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated.....by the machinations of the 'national enemies,'  without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.....

"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.'  But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."