Paris
8 February, 19h30, au CICP
21ter, rue Voltaire 75011
(métro Rue des Boulets)
Lyon
9 février à 20h
Maison des Passages
44 rue St Georges, 69005
(métro Vieux Lyon)
Strasbourg
10 février à 20h
Maison des associations
1a Place des Orphelins
Vienna
Mittwoch, den 17. Februar, um 19 Uhr 30
Festsaal der Bezirksvorstehung Alsegrund
1090 Wien, Währinger Strasse 43
Geneva
February 18, 20h
(read more...)
Below are videos of two of the presentations made on the tour, one by Haidar Eid, one by Hajo Meyer. There bios are below. Meyer presented at each of the locations on the tour. Eid is in Gaza and was unable to travel or to join the tour in person. His presentation was taped because video conferencing was also not feasible. The video below is one of four that were pre-taped and shown on the tour - despite power outages and disruption to internet access. The other videos will be available soon.
The tour reached over 1200 people-most audiences were100-150 per a night. Eid and Meyer received a standing ovation at each.
Hajo Meyer
Dr. Hajo G. Meyer wasborn in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany.Not allowed to attend school there after November 1938, he fled to the Netherlands,alone. In I944, after a year in the underground, he was caught and subsequentlysurvived 10 months at Auschwitz.He lives in the Netherlands,where he works as publicist and essayist. A member of IJAN, Hajo Meyer is onthe board of the Dutch group "A Different Jewish Voice", part of thecoalition of European Jews for Just Peace. He is the author of three books, onJudaism, Holocaust and Zionism.
"My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanise any other, must first be dehumanisedhimself. The oppressors are no longer really human whatever uniform they wear."
Dr. Haidar Eid is a refugee whose parents were expelled from the Zarnouqavillage in 1948. Dr. Eid is a member of the PACBI Steering Committee and aco-founder of the One Democratic State Group. He currently lives in Gaza,where he is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University.
"Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' The UN, EU, Arab League and the international community by and large remained silent in the face of the atrocities committed by Apartheid Israel. They are therefore on the side of Israel."
Remembrance and Responsibility
A campaign to rejoin the Jewish history of resistance to genocide with those currentlystruggling for survival, self-determination, emancipation and liberation
TheInternational Jewish Anti-Zionist Network’s Remembrance Campaign aims tochallenge the presentation of the Nazi Genocide in which the history of thedecimation of Jews is disconnected from the millions of other victims whoperished in the same war, even in the same camps. It also challenges theexceptionalizing, falsifying and exploiting of this memory in an effort tojustify and dismiss the colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid inPalestine. Such exceptionalizing, along with the violence committed by asanctified Israel in the name of all Jews, isolates the Jewish experiences ofracism, displacement and mass murder, and separates Europe’s history of Jewishpersecution from other peoples’ experiences with—and strugglesagainst—persecution, racism and genocide. In opposition to this separatism, forus the history of the Nazi genocide demands that we never stand aside as anypeople faces such violence. And, far from an exception, the racism, sadism anddehumanization that facilitated the Nazi genocide, and governments’collaboration with it, has long roots in Europe’s history of imperial conquest,slavery, genocide and Christian supremacy.
D'abord quelques remarques terminologiques.
Pour éviter toute discussion juridique inopportune, nous proposons de parler de massacres de masse au XXème siècle plutôt que de génocides ou decrimes contre l'humanité. Ces deux derniers termes ont été l'objet de définitions juridiques après la seconde guerre mondiale, le terme "crime contre l'humanité" ayant été défini dans le cadre du procès de Nuremberg . S'il peut être intéressant d'avoir une intervention sur les aspects juridiques, cela ne nous semble pas ici le point le plus important.
Cliquez ici pour lire la logique derrière le IJAN France Never Again tour.
Dates pour Paris, Lyon, et Strasbourg qui sera annoncée bientôt.
Mass murders of the 20th century
First off, some remarks on terminology.
To avoid unnecessary juridical debate, we propose to speak of mass murders of the 20th century rather than genocide or crimes against humanity. These two last terms have been the object of judicial definitions since after the Second World War; the term “crime against humanity” was defined during the Nuremberg Trials. While it might be interesting to intervene on these judicial debates, this seems to us to not be the most important point for the moment.
The use of the terms “genocides” and “crimes against humanity” leads to interminable debates between those who support the legal definitions in place and those who want to rely on the facts, the latter group divided between those who try to stick to the facts and those who would add their political or ideological interpretation, hoping that the use of a particular term would reinforce the political condemnation.
The Armenian Genocide of 1915 is an example. Speaking of “genocide” means for some that the Turks had planned this massacre, while for others it means less a planned massacre than a consequence of a deportation that the Turkish government had organized for security reasons, Armenians being considered potential allies of the Russian enemy. The question, then, is less to find the best term than to focus on the fact that there was a massacre.
Read the rest of the IJAN France rationale for the Never again tour
Never Again
Today is my birthday and I feel thankful to be here.
Today is my birthday and if I am here it is because my grandmother survived.
She was from Istria, a land contended by Italians and Yugoslavians.
She escaped the killings and tortures that happened over there, killing and tortures no one wants to talk about.
She named my father after her dead cousin, they both were young. He got tortured to death, put in a barrel filled with iced water.
Her brother also perished, shot by soldiers.
She fled with her sister and married an Italian man.
She was not allowed to speak her language and she was forced to change her last name.
When the bombing started in Naples, over one hundred strikes during 47 months of war from the 10th of June 1940 to the 14th of May 1944, she decided to return home to Istria. She thought it was better to stay there with two kids and one more on the way.
Upon arrival, she discovered that her father was deported to a camp. Only later, I discovered that that place was called Auschwitz.
In the meanwhile, the Istrian situation reversed, and the Italians were killed.
My grandmother had to protect three children, one of them just born over there. Obviously, her babies were half Italians.
Grandmother crossed war zones to have her life spared. She chose not to return, always fearing a threat to her integrity. Dread remained in her heart and she decided not to talk about the past, as it was to be forgotten.
Today, I am thankful to my grandmother because she paid for us to be here. She paid a high price for me to be here today.
I am here to say what she did not want to say.
People should not forget what happened to the Roma, to the Serbs, to the Serbian-Roma and to all the other innocent civilians, including the Italians that were executed because of their ethnic origins.
The Samudaripen, the Holocaust, did not happen only in the camps, in Auschwitz and Jasenovac (present-day Croatia), which is rarely mentioned. It was everywhere: in the fields, in the streets, in minor prisons, in the Foibe sink-holes.
But the worst part of this process did not terminate with the end of the war.
Roma were divided, scattered, dehumanized and assimilated… These are the results of the Pharraimos, the great devouring.
Inhuman and degrading treatments are still affecting Roma nowadays. A dehumanization process is still developing now, in European Member States like Italy.
Roma are called “Nomads”, “Clandestines”, “Criminals”. They are portrayed as infant abductors, killers, heartless parents or simply, as a population that did not want to live in homes, work or go to school.
Today in Italy, Roma are objects of ad hoc “Nomad Emergency Decrees” as in the Fascist era.
Roma are still segregated in “camps”.
Romani minors cannot have “home arrests” granted because it is believed by a Court that “persons of Romani culture have a disposition to face a concrete danger of recidivism”.
On January 27th 2010, I would like to commemorate all the victims of genocides despite their affiliation but I would also like to recall the ones who remained and their descendants not to forget that it is a duty, our collective duty, to avoid similar situations in order to make that “Never Again” equal for ALL!
Thank You
To take action, go to: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#!/group.php?gid=197717376119&ref=ts
Kon mangel te kerel tumendar roburen chi shocha phenela tumen o chachimos pa tumare perintonde
Translation: Who wants to enslave you will never tell you the truth about your forefathers
| Anti-colonialist Israeli citizen appeals to UNESCO to revoke Israel's membership |
Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid
for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel
