[LETTERS] Why it is important to keep talking about the Genocide

Editor, RE: “To talk or not to talk about the Genocide?” (The New Times, May 23). The difficulty to talk about atrocities is a common thing among the victims and their families. I am from Israel and I ran into this article while looking into local coverage of our Prime Minister’s visit to Rwanda last week. The Holocaust relates to me from the side of my mother (RIP) who was a Holocaust survivor. Much of her family was shot by the Einsatzgruppen in the present day Ukraine, with very active participation of their Ukrainian neighbours. She was 5 years old at the time and she survived because my grandmother (RIP) had the courage to escape from the ghetto to the woods and walk hundreds of kilometres with her sister and two little kids (my mother and my uncle) hiding from everyone and stealing food everywhere until they crossed into safety. My mother was a child, but she remembered the terror, the hunger and the cold in the woods. She didn’t speak much about it, but anyway she did it. In the 1960’s, Adolf Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted to Israel by the Mossad and brought to face justice in Jerusalem. One of the highlights of the trial was the testimony of Dr Buzminsky, about a Jewish boy, sentenced by a Nazi officer to 80 lashes, a sentence whose enforcement he witnessed. He was then asked by the prosecutor if he recognizes the boy in the court room. The doctor pointed to Police Captain Michael Goldman who was now a member of the prosecution team. The boy, Michael Goldman, after the ordeal in the ghetto, was later sent to Auschwitz concentration camp and survived it. After the testimony by Dr Buzminsky, he was asked by a journalist about the disbelief his story was received with, after he arrived in Israel. Then that journalist called it the “81st lash” he received and these are effects of keeping such stories buried for long. In the first years of Israel, a lot of people had difficulty to comprehend the scale of the horror. Survivors kept silent, others had a problem to listen. That was the general public mood. Only during Adolf Eichmann trial, more than 15 years later, people started to open up... My heart is with the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi and the survivors. Only time will heal the traumatised souls of those who survived. My advice: You must keep talking about the Genocide, for the sake of the survivors and for the sake of future generations, so it will never happen again. Eli. S

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[LETTERS] Why it is important to keep talking about the Genocide