Posted on 11/28/2009 3:24:12 AM PST by Androcles
Tags: Israel News, Jewish World "And the Rat Laughed" is an exquisitely wrought meditation on the present and future of Holocaust memory in Israel after the survivors are gone. Integrating story, legend, poetry, dream, science fiction and diary, Semel's novel begins in 1999 and pivots on testimony given by a nameless Tel Aviv grandmother to her 12-year-old granddaughter interviewing her for a school project. When she was 5, the grandmother was hidden in a potato pit by an anti-Semitic Polish couple who were paid to do so. The eponymous rat whom she befriends is her sole companion in the darkness of her cell. The trauma of isolation and abandonment turns into terror when she is repeatedly raped by the farmer's son...CUTDistortion of the grandmother?s tale increases as it is divorced from its historical mooring.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
There are others in Academia who are anti-Jewish,and they are the ones who do not discuss the Holocaust, but then there are those few who are insane enough to make statements “there was no Holocaust”.
Families need to sit down with their children and teach them values, educate them on civics and let the children know about US History. When most students take my basic US History class (college), most have to be taught the basic history in order to get them on the right path to learning about US History.
So, did the United States do what you want or not?
Here’s a suggestion - GROW UP.
Not to in any way belittle the Holocaust but in my reading of history the holocaust is but a variation on a theme.
Man is a brutal and vicious animal. There have been countless examples throughout history were entire cities have been wiped out by invaders (Rome destroyed Carthage).
The Jews are unique in that they are a perennial scapegoat in the world but man’s in humanity to man is not in anyway limited to them.
It is the priest in the story that is remarkable not the rapist. When one man risks his life to help the oppressed that is the failure of the system (meaning the normal order of the world).
bookmark
Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge happened after the Vietnam war when America was in real upheaval with the end of the Nixon administration, the Ford administration and especially the Carter administration. For the most part, it was ignored by the world so I’m not surprised that people don’t know about it.
I wonder if knowing that so many people were killed on his watch is what drove Carter insane, not that he had far to go.
Not applicable - contrary to your mindset, the world is larger than that. Sometimes (Mainly in fact for 6 billion people) the US is just a background factor. Admittedly, it can be large, mesy, liberating or intrusive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has a right to be involved.
Revolting - I'm quite happy to defend a holocaust denier's right to hold that view as long as he's willing to debate the evidence publically...
I do agree, actually. “Man’s inhumanity toman makes countless thousand mourn...” be the victims, Jew, Kurd, Greek, Albanian, Turk, Bosnian, Serb, Croat, Polish, etc...
The Jewish experience is unique in terms of the documentation and their own strength of nationhood. First what other group without a nation can survive such hatred over the centurie (apart from the Gypsies, but also, while many of the brutalities vistited upon the Jews were not new under the sun, what was new was the record-keeping allowing them to be captured as abominations. I wish we had half the records for Serbia or Cambodia we had for Auschwitz....
You make a good point - and one that I’d failed to note - regarding the priest.
There are others in Academia who are anti-Jewish,and they are the ones who do not discuss the Holocaust/bingo
Most Americans do fail to note how unusual is goodness and self sacrifice.
It is not surprising that they would because there really is not that much need for it in the United States. In the United States goodness and (minor) self sacrifice is fairly common and the government is not oppressive (generally speaking) so we do not need great heroism.
But this lack of knowledge by the general populace of this country about the true nature of most of the real world is how Obama can get away with denying the exceptionalism of the United States.
Because most of the population of this country is left ignorant of world history and the US in context with that history Obama and the hard left academics who supposedly educate our youth are free to say that the US is guilty of all sorts of evil deeds. The Left has devalued evil. They have purposefully downplayed the meaning of the word evil so that they can muddy the reputation of the United States.
And at the same time the Left excuses, ignores or cover up the truly horrific deeds of the Leftist dictators like Castro and Chaves.
Ignorance is the greatest ally of the Left.
Stepan12 would like you to remove that posting made by mistake.
Yes, I would! I swear that I use free republic to put pictures and hyperlinks on other boards and this one was posted by mistake.
I got it removed.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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The article is very incoherent. To be honest, I had a very hard time following what the author was trying to say.
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