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The Holocaust's Significant Difference

(Ha'aretz) Amnon Rubinstein - The Jews of Europe were not murdered in an outburst of intercommunal violence or in the rage of battle, but rather in a planned and systematic way, by the government of one of the most cultured nations in the world. At the Evian conference, which convened on the eve of the Holocaust to try to find a solution for Jewish refugees who were fleeing for their lives, a conscious decision was made by the democratic states not to provide refuge to people who could have contributed much to these countries, some of which were urgently in need of immigrants. The refusal to receive the refugees was based only on the fact that they were Jews. The fact that this ancient hatred refuses to die out, even after nearly all of the Jews of Europe were murdered, also underlines its uniqueness. Jews have no refuge from this hatred - neither by changing their religion nor establishing a Jewish state. The magnitude of this uniqueness is what explains why Holocaust Day refuses to disappear from the Jewish-Israeli consciousness.
2004-04-19 00:00:00
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