July 17, 2007

On Hitler

I was really disturbed yesterday, when I found that one of my young cousins in India holds some admiration for Hitler. The young man is impressed by Hitler's power (!!!). I think the problem is that since India has a comparatively small Jewish population, the full horrors of the Holocaust remain comparitively undiscussed there. Additionally, students in Indian High schools learn an overview of Western History, which familiarizes them with broad facts, but not the details of what really happened.

When I came to California some years ago, I made many friends, some of whom are from the Jewish faith. Two of these friends, who I deeply cherish because they are both 65+ years of age (and hence have oodles of experience I lack), are from families of Holocaust survivors. This has given me some degree of insight into, and has turned me extremely intolerant towards Hitler and his beliefs. The argument may be made that he should be studied since there is much we can learn from his life, which may prevent such cruelties from ever being repeated. To which I say- the murder of approximately 6 million people is a fact that does not require any deep study to horrify. Murder is murder- made even more horrendous when 1.5 million (approx.) of the dead were children. I think we can all easily remember these numbers and warned forever.

But maybe the Holocaust was not enough- since we don't appear to have learnt our lesson yet, and there we see history being repeated in Darfur and Kashmir.

That was my tirade for today- a huge deviation from my usual blogs, but I was really agitated.

2 comments:

babaganoush said...

very true. there is however another reason, and its a sort of historical legacy arising from freedom struggle days.

Netaji was supported (to a minor degree) by the Germans and the Japanese in his quest for armed struggle against the colonial British. This may have prompted his supporters to have a favourable view of Axis powers.

I hope this view was limited to that period and no Indian actually supports the Nazi policies!!

Important thing to note that despite all the show of sympathy for Jews the Allies hardly ever did anything except displacing Arbas and propping an artificial state of Israel based on historical (more mythological) claims!!

I also sadly agree with you agin that maybe holocaust was not enough!! More closer home... a partition was not enough!!

Shweta Mehrotra Gahlawat said...

Good point Babaghanoush- I hadnt considered the Netaji angle at all.