When I was growing up, my knowledge of the world, history and it’s many Peoples was very rudimentary. My world-view was colored and formed by my Christian upbringing. Amongst which the Christian (white) tale of the Jews, the chosen people of the god who created earth and heavens. Who we were, where we came from, our identity, was besides the point and never mattered.
In The Netherlands, the country where my parents migrated to from Suriname South-America, every 5th of may WWII is remembered with a media stream of stories and recounts of the Jewish holocaust.
The Netherlands was the country where the Jewish Family Frank sought refuge against German barbarism. Anne Frank, the youngest daughter, became the face of the Jewish sufferings through the diary she left behind.
Her story of hiding and then, after being betrayed and deported, dying in those concentration camps became one of the most famous stories ever told about WWII in Europe.
Of course the story of this white/Jewish girl became part of history classes around the WWII commemoration. A white hand in the global deflection of the trials and tribulation, as well as the plight of the enslaved African.
But see, in Suriname the name and legacy of the Jews was of a different one. Associated with malevolence, violence and inhumanity. In Suriname the first colonizing settlers were Portuguese Jews.
They were the first to enter and profit of the slave trade and they topped the European Plantation owners in their cruel and vicious treatment of the Africans they had enslaved.
Back in elementary school the teacher gave me the book “Anne Franks Diary” to read. Of course this was mandatory reading for commemoration season of WWII and the whole class received a copy. I took it home, I showed it to my mother. My mother said, with the typical Suriname (imagine Jamaican or American African mothers) uhm-hmm, “show your father”.
I did as she told me, went to my father and showed him the book. My father blew up, he ripped the book out of my hands, opened it, tore it and smote it across the table. I think he said something like ”don’t bring this garbage around here anymore”.
This reaction I had not seen coming. I didn’t understand, but they didn’t tell me either why they reacted the way they did.
I only started to understand when I took on the task of relearning history from the African perspective.
How is the world forcing us to forget our own suffering and make us cry tears for the Jews. Who else is tired of the sheer hypocrisy and blatant disrespect?
So, this is an interesting story. Normally I would ignore something like it, but just wanted to make a couple of quick comments.
1) The point of this story appears to be, why should the writer give a damn about a white Jewish girl after what Portuguese Jews did to her family in Surname?
This is idiocy. Not learning about one humanitarian atrocity because of another prior atrocity perpetuates cycles of ignorance and hostility.
2) While there certainly were Jews involved with the slave trade and ownership, there were far more Christians and Muslims who profited from the misery of kidnapping and enslavement of Africans. This included white Europeans, Arabs, black Africans and some Jews. There were almost no groups who did not play some role in the terror that was slavery. To single out one group that played a small role functions only to divert people’s attention from the real problem–That hatred continues to ruin all of our lives and that we should learn from the past, not forget or distort it.
@ Dough Winfield. You and I read the same story, but derives at different conclusions. To you, they are “stupid and ignorant” because they prefer to learn about their own history before learning about someone else’s history. You claim that, “To single out people who play a “small role” functions only to divert people’s attention from the real problem. What is the real problem Dough? Is it the continued injustice that black people are subjected to – such as police brutality and the extra-judicial killings of black men, women and children; the tacit consent of these horrific acts by white jurors with their not guilty findings; the mass incarceration of black men, work and children in America’s prisons. You mean those problems Dough? Since you are so enlightened, I trust that you are fully aware of them, as we are about Anne Frank.
So forget the countless genocides all worse then the Holocaust conducted by the white world, never mourn them, ignore police brutality and the systemic issues faced by African Americans imposed by your government in the modern day and remember and forgive not just the white girl but the Germans seeing as the Treaty Of Versailles was undone though they have a far more destructive Treaty with all of Africa causing the poverty and suffering you continually insult us with. But remember thats just the facts, a constant inference to ensure we haven’t figured out what you did, do, fail to do, and practice the task of ensuring every generation is taught not to do.
How about this…”There are no little” human acts of terror. Second, many of us have Blood running through are veins and not from Suriname. We are Jews of African heritage that have Great Grand Parents and Great Great Grandparents from Eastern Europe. There is no room to detail this narrative in such a simplistic manner. Our story is much bigger than this.