Love of the Land: Yad Vashem sidelines N. African victims of Nazism

Yad Vashem sidelines N. African victims of Nazism

Bataween
Point of No Return
21 February '10

A Jew who suffered under the Nazi occupation in Tunisia will have his story recorded by the Ben Zvi institute in Jerusalem, while the tribulations of a Jew who suffered in France will be studied at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Why the discrepancy? asks Edith Shaked, a Tunisian-born university lecturer who has dedicated the last ten years to teaching the Holocaust in the US. The remit of Yad Vashem, she points out in Opinion Forum, was originally to memorialise the Holocaust all over the world, not just its impact on the Jews of Europe.

Israel and the Holocaust – Is there an authentic historical perspective?
Jacques and Isabelle silently left the compound of Yad Vashem (YV), Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the world center for documentation, research, and education about the Holocaust. It was noon and they went for lunch. As per their French custom, they ordered a cappuccino. They talked about the period when defeated France was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Their stories were very similar, because they were both French Jews. They remembered how the Nazis went door-to-door to count them. They remembered the racist and discriminatory laws enacted to gradually purge the Jews from economic, professional, and educational public life. Jacques’ father couldn’t work as a doctor, and Isabelle’s mother couldn’t work as a lawyer.

(Read full story)

Love of the Land: Yad Vashem sidelines N. African victims of Nazism