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April 20, 2007 > News > German, Israeli General Consuls discuss Holocaust

German, Israeli General Consuls discuss Holocaust

By Nick Schlossman | Thresher staff

The General Consuls of Israel and Germany spoke to about 190 members of the Rice community Tuesday at “Never Again,” a Holocaust remembrance and awareness event. Opening remarks were followed by Steven Spielberg’s and James Moll’s film The Last Days, and the event concluded with a question and answer session with the Consuls.

“Never Again” was organized by Hanszen College sophomore Katherine Gomer and several graduate students in conjunction with the Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance, Houston Hillel, the Holocaust Museum of Houston, the Graduate Student Association and the Office of Student Judicial Affairs.

The program was partially in response to problems on campus in the past year, including an event in which Holocaust denial Web sites were sent out over a Rice graduate student listserv. One of the goals of the program was to educate Rice students about the Holocaust.

The program began with opening remarks by General Consul of Israel to the Southwest Asher Yarden, General Consul of Germany to Houston Rainer Muenzel and Boniuk Center Director Carol Quillen.

Consul Muenzel said since 1945, Germans have asked how the Holocaust could be perpetrated by a country that had given such great culture to mankind and realized that the doctrines that inspired the Holocaust rose from an ideology of contempt, hatred and eventually mass murder.

“After 1945 we, the younger German generation, had to ask bitter questions of our parents,” he said. “You, the younger generation of today: try to do everything possible that your children will never have to ask these same questions.”

Consul Yarden focused on the phenomenon of Holocaust denial.

“For us Israelis, for us Jews, the Holocaust is something that we understand,” he said. “We understand it to the extent that people who have not experienced the Holocaust cannot. Holocaust denial is not only immoral but is also extremely dangerous, for the simple reason that it poses a danger that such atrocities could possibly happen in the future.”

Yarden said Holocaust denial is a phenomenon with a worldwide base of support that seeks to delegitimize Israel.

“If the Holocaust never took place or was not the same as we think it was, then for many people, Israel does not have legitimacy to exist,” he said.

Quillen said the Boniuk Center works to remind scholars, students and neighbors that achieving a tolerant world requires active ongoing work.

“I urge myself and all of us here today to work everyday actively to create a world where people who are different can practice their religion freely and joyfully and without fear,” she said.

Quillen said she and the other organizers intended for the event to promote understanding of and appreciation for the past and that they hope to see it become an annual event.

Oded Hod, a postdoctoral researcher in the chemistry department, spoke about the history of his family — which had members persecuted and killed during the Holocaust — and the incomprehensibility of the events that transpired.

“It is the duty of modern society to acknowledge and fully understand the exact sequence of events that lead to the most horrible episode in human history,” he said.

The speakers’ remarks were followed by a screening of Steven Spielberg’s The Last Days. The film documents the actions of Nazi Germany in Hungary in the closing years of the war, presenting the Hungarian Holocaust as an effort in which it was more important to Nazis to carry out a final solution than to divert resources toward an increasingly desperate war.

The film depicts the Hungarian Holocaust as a final effort to deport and kill the largest remaining population of Jews in Europe. In a work of first-person testimony, Spielberg follows five survivors as they describe their experiences of invasion, persecution, deportation and liberation.

Following the film, the two Consuls, Holocaust Museum of Houston Board Chairman Peter Berkowitz and Holocaust survivor and artist Alice Lok Cahana discussed the film and the Holocaust’s relevance today.

The discussion panel focused initially on Holocaust denial. When asked which other countries had Holocaust denial laws, Muenzel replied that he knew of Austria. He also said that Germany, which has presidency of the European Union for six months, has introduced a measure to make denial a crime throughout the EU.

Cahana described meeting Pope Benedict. She said her experience reminds her that people must build bridges between each other, and that she seeks to do so through her art.

Berkowitz said it is important for everybody to take action and educate others about the Holocaust.

“It is the young generation that must be educated,” he said. “They must begin to take responsibility for the collective actions of our society.”

Gomer concluded “Never Again” by reflecting on the value of such events.

“We all suffer through various injustices,” she said. “Sometimes, even in the 21st century, we feel like we are wearing a yellow star and we feel that it is our duty to educate and show other people that the Holocaust is not just a Jewish issue, but a human issue, and it is relevant in our time.”

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