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NOTE: A few links are not working as we failed to transfer the information from our old site foundation for pluralism to the new Center for Pluralism. We are working on it and hope to restore the links to pictures and videos soon.


Saturday, December 22, 2012

Reflections on Holocaust and Genocides - 6th year

PRESS RELEASE
December 21, 2012
VI Annual Reflections on Holocaust and Genocides
4:00 PM - 7:00 PM Sunday, January 27, 2013
Unity Church of Dallas, 6525 Forest Lane, Dallas, TX 75230
Rsvp to: ConfirmAttendance@gmail.com 

www.HolocaustandGenocides.com
 
ANNUAL ANCHOR EVENT: Holocaust
HIGHLIGHTED: Sikh Genocide

Every year we have reflected on different aspects of Genocides and Holocaust, this year, we will highlight the Sikh Massacre of 1984 and address Rape, Stereotyping, Human Rights, Oppression, Bangladesh Mass Rapes and the idea of standing up for others. All Grim subjects, but we have to face them, at least once a year. It keeps our humanity intact. Holocaust continues to the be anchor event.

There is a shameless cruelty in us, either we shy away or refuse to acknowledge the sufferings of others, worrying that it will devalue our own or somehow it amounts to infidelity to our own cause. Shame on us that we justifying massacres by believing and propagating that the victims deserved it or asked for it, or simply turn the face.
To paraphrase Sir Edmund Burke, “evil continues to flourish not necessarily because of evil men, but more so because good men do nothing about it.”
The Massacres we witness against a group of people, are pent up frustrations and unresolved issues that reaching a boiling point and hurt everyone involved.  As civilized societies, we need to bring a closure to the issues, which happen through forgiveness, apology and restoration of justice.
Education is the purpose; we have to learn, acknowledge and reflect upon the terrible things that we humans have inflicted upon each other, and to we have to understand that our safety hinges on the safety of all others around us. It is a comprehensive event where all human failings, massacres, genocides and Holocaust will be addressed in one fashion or the other.

We invite sponsors, facilitators, speakers, writers from individuals and organizations to make this happen. It is an initiative of American Muslims striving to build responsible civic societies, where justice and co-existence are our values.

We sincerely hope the attendees will walk out with the following understanding:

·        Other people’s suffering is as legitimate as mine;
·        It is easy to see ourselves as Victims, but we must also see the perpetrator in us;
·        When we strip the politics out of a conflict, we see hope;
·        We can value others suffering without lessening our own;
·        The overriding desire to highlight our own blinds us from other’s suffering.
·        A sense of responsibility for creating a better world is awakened
·        Ultimately co-existence and every one's safety and peace should be the driving thought.


To all those, who have endured holocaust, genocides, massacres, bombs, annihilation, land mines, hunger, rape, torture, occupation and inhuman brutality, we say you are not alone. The least we can do in the process of healing is to acknowledge every one's pain in one voice.

We have begun the process of coming together as one people, to stand with you, we are indeed one world and a single humanity, and caring for each other brings safety and peace to all of us. I cannot be safe if the people around me are not, and I will not have peace if people around me don't. It is in my interest to seek a peaceful world for one and all.

We are working on initiating a course on tolerance education, so one day; we all can learn to have a heart that opens to the pain of every human, yes, we can do that.

Every organization that is willing to subscribe to the idea of co-existence is invited to participate, sponsor, and volunteer.

We invite you to submit a 250 word essay on the issue that agonizes you; please offer your solutions with co-existence in mind in another 100 words. Selection will be based on the comprehensiveness of the thought.

Please send an email to:
HolocaustandGenocides@gmail.com

Dr. Harbans Lal, Event Chair
 (817) 446-8757
email: japji@tx.rr.com

Mike Ghouse,  President (214) 325-1916 -
email: SpeakerMikeGhouse@gmail.com
America Together Foundation
Foundation for Pluralism
2665 Villa Creek Dr, Suite 206
Dallas, TX 75234

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Rally against Shia Genocide in Pakistan

This should be classified as Massacre, rather than Genocide. Each life is precious, but each collective punishment is different. 

Mike Ghouse

The Universal Muslim Association of America encourages all momineen to participate in this important rally to protest the killing of innocent momineen in Pakistan. Buses from across the country are being organized. UMAA has sponsored a bus to leave from the Idara-e-Jaferia in Maryland. Please contactSoulsMarch@gmail.com for information about transportation from you area. 

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Hitler's annihilation of the Romanis (the Gypsies of Europe)

URL - http://holocaustandgenocides.blogspot.com/2012/12/hitlers-annihilation-of-romanis-gypsies.html

Holocaust and Genocides continue to haunt us. Are humans really capable of doing this? It saddens me every other day when I think about the Holocaust. On our part, the Muslims in Dallas have commemorated and continue to commemorate the Holocaust of Jews every year, and then we included the Gays and the Gypsies, each year, as we learn, and have someone to articulate, we have added Genocides of Native Americans, African Americans and the Genocides around the world. And now, we will add the annihilation of Romanis.

The least you can do is pause and think about it. We said never again after the holocaust, but genocides have continued non-stop, and we are currently witnessing the annihilation of the Palestinians people by the Israelis. We are (Americans) manipulated into hating the Palestinian, and that is stripping us from our own humanity of being just to them and justifying bombing them as revenge. Obama is damned wrong on it, so are the others. How can you support annihilation of a people? We have indeed condemned the shelling of rockets and harassing the Israeli population, both are wrong, but we cannot justify either, if we do, we need to ponder about our own humanity.

In this piece by Dilip Simeon adds the India connection with Hitler.

We have known about Subhash Chandra Bose meeting with Hitler, I will say the most unpopular thing to say, Subhash Chandra Bose is regarded with reverence by good percentage of Indian Population, including me once. His anti-British stance should not have caused him to befriend Hitler. The other admirers of Hitler are: Golwalker, Modi and a host of them, now Dilip adds Iqbal, Mashriki and Inayathulla Khan and I am asking him the sources for such information. If it is true, I will withdraw my admiration for the later three with an article, not the popular thing to do, but we must do.

Mike Ghouse


Photo: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Adolf Hitler - Germany 29 May 1942


Hitler's annihilation of the Romanis (the Gypsies of Europe)

NB:  I placed these comments on a Facebook site called Lets Speak India, where a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose shaking hands with Adolf Hitler has been shared over 1500 times, and 'liked' over 580 times. Many comments are full of admiration for Hitler. One person is moved to say this is a picture of the 'Tiger' meeting the 'Lion'. I had provided the link, but find that its been deleted. 


For many of our youth, the deaths of millions in wars and genocide are a mere throw of the dice. The disdain for history and the mania for glory are bad enough, but the normalisation of mass killing is the most disturbing. I've discussed this in my article A Hard Rain Falling and Armies of the Pure: The Question of Indian Fascism  (click the titles for the links)


Find below material related to the Nazi's genocide of the Romani (aka Gypsies) who were of Indian origin, and whose fate is seldom talked about. They remain the prime targets of racial hatred in Europe today.  The many Indian admirers of Hitler could spare a thought for these people, who were slaughtered with the same merciless barbarity as were Europes' Jews.

They could also reflect on Golwalkar's (the successor to RSS founder, Hegdewar) views on Nazism: "To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races - the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here...a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by" (We, or Our Nationhood Defined, 1938).

Incidentally, Allama Iqbal and Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi were also fervent admirers f Hitler..


The Gypsies of Europe (also known as Romanis, of Indian origin) were registered, sterilized, ghettoized, and then deported to concentration and death camps by the Nazis. 



Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 Gypsies were murdered during the Holocaust - an event they call the Porajmos (the "Devouring"). Together with Jews, the Romanis were the only ethnic/racial population selected for total annihilation according to the genocidal policy of the Final Solution - ttp://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/gypsies.htm


On July 14th, 1933 Hitler’s cabinet passed the law against “lives not deserving of life” called The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.” It ordered sterilization for “Gypsies and most of the Germans of black color”. It also affected Jews, the disabled, and others seen as “asocial” (i.e. social misfits). The Law for Revocation of German Citizenship was implemented against Romanies unable to show proof of German birth, as well as against the “Eastern Jews,” who constituted nearly 20% of all Jews in Germany in 1933. In the week of September 18th-25th, the Reichsminister for the Interior called for the arrest of Romanies, under the terms of the “Law Against Habitual Criminals.” Many were sent to concentration camps and made to undertake penal labor. From January 1934 onwards, Romanies were being selected for transfer to camps for processing, which included sterilization by injection or castration. Over the next three years, such centers were established at Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Sachsenhausen, Marzahn and Vennhausen..


The Romani people in Europe are today the most vilified and discriminated against of all ethnic or national populations, and the most victimized by racist violence and discriminatory governmental policies. “One exhibit [at the Holocaust Museum at Buchenwald] quotes SS chief Heinrich Himmler on December 8th, 1938, as calling for the ‘final solution of the Gypsy question,’ and cites his order of December 16th, 1942, to have all Gypsies remaining in Europe deported to Auschwitz.”


At the beginning of 1940, the first mass genocidal action of the Holocaust took place when 250 Romani children from Czechoslovakia were murdered during tests with the new Zyklon-B gas in the camp at Buchenwald..On December 16th, 1942, Himmler issued the order to have all Romanies remaining in Germany deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination, and so the end began for the second “major group which National Socialists proposed to exterminate in its entirety: the Gypsies” .. The final number of the dead Sinti and Roma may never be determined. We do not know how many were brought into the concentration camps; not every camp produced statistical material. Sinti and Roma often. . . do not appear in the statistics. Also, as the Auschwitz Memorial Book points out, Romanies were murdered unrecorded, sometimes by the hundreds, outside the camps, in the most numbers in the eastern territories, for which only scant records exist. As research continues, the figures rise higher. In order to estimate the percentage of total losses, we would have to know, in addition to the number of dead, the number of Romanies throughout Europe before 1933, and this we will never be able to determine accurately, although both Colliers Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana list the pre-war European Romani population as 700,000...


That there are Indians who are hailing the mass murderer of Romanis is indeed ironic.. Read more: 
THE ROOTS OF ANTIGYPSYISM: TO THE HOLOCAUST AND AFTER
http://www.radoc.net/radoc.php?doc=art_b_history_rootsofprejudice&lang=en&articles=true


Also see: Hitler's Assault on the Golden Rule : by Claudia Koontz 


And: Gypsies' fate haunts Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film-maker


As she approaches her 100th birthday this week (2002) Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film-maker, remains the pariah of the German cinema. Her first new movie for almost 50 years has been coolly received, and she faces renewed accusations that she failed to prevent more than 100 Gypsies being sent to die in concentration camps. Riefenstahl, whose centenary is on Thursday, faces a legal challenge by Gypsies who claim she has lied for decades by insisting that the Gypsy extras she used in her rustic melodrama, Tiefland (Lowlands), all survived the Holocaust. The production was filmed during the Second World War when she was director of Nazi propaganda films


Source: http://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2012/07/hitlers-annihilation-of-romanis-gypsies.html