Teaching the Holocaust in an Age of Terror
Making Connections: September 11th and the Holocaust
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Teaching the Holocaust in an Age of Terror
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Yehuda Bauer was the 2002 Distinguished Ida E. King Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, I spoke at a Yom HaShoah Memorial Service honoring victims of the Holocaust. Many of the survivors and their families from the Atlantic County, New Jersey area participated. In my closing remarks, I chose to address the connection between the Holocaust and the events of September 11th.
In my view, National Socialism, Communism and contemporary militant Islamic fundamentalism (not Islam, as such), though very different from each other, have some important common characteristics:
- All of them aim or aimed to control the world for an absolute dictatorship based on their
religious or quasi-religious (Nazism or Communism) ideology.
- All three groups use or used violent means to attack civilizations and individuals that would not bow to their will. To different degrees all three groups target or targeted Jewish
people for partial or total destruction.
September 11th has shown that terror (the murder of civilians to achieve the collapse of the targeted civilization) is an instrument used by militant fundamentalism that has to be fought ideologically, economically, politically and militarily.
Discussion Questions
1. What do National Socialism, Communism and contemporary militant Islamic fundamentalism
have in common?
2. How should we fight terror?
3. Do you see any contrasts or similarities between the Holocaust and September 11th?
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