Europe to Bengal: Jewish and Bengali Experiences with Genocidal Terror
Talk by Dr. Richard Benkin
Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM)
26 January 2021
There’s a debate going on in Israel right now following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s nomination of former IDF general and cabinet minister Effi Eitam to head Yad VaShem. I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Yad VaShem. It’s Israel’s memorial to victims of the Shoah, Shoah being the Hebrew and more accurate name for the Holocaust. Yad VaShem is also central to Israeli and Jewish identity and the best expression of grief and honor for the Shoah’s victims, alive and dead. Over the years, two understandings of the Shoah have emerged. The first, traditional use is that the Shoah was an historically unique event and though others suffered and died, it was essentially an anti-Jewish genocide. The second recognizes the Shoah’s historical uniqueness—and it really was unique in that there never was before or since a horror so planned and carried out on an industrial scale with the realistic aim of totally erasing an entire people. That goal was driven in part by the Nazis’ experience with non-Jewish Europeans, who did not fight their destruction of Jewry, who were complicit through inaction. When they euthanized mentally and physically disabled Germans, the public outcry forced them to stop. Not so when they started killing Jews so they kept up the killing. That lesson was not lost on the Nazis, and it should not be lost on us today.
The more current understanding also recognizes that the Shoah was primarily anti-Jewish—hardwired into Nazi ideology and practice. We acknowledge all its victims and, most importantly, apply the insights we gleaned from it to judging our own behavior. And I’m going to take a somewhat contrary view of things today—because if we overuse concepts like genocide, they lose their power and we lose the ability to understand what is happening and what we can do. So, for instance, although we talk about the Bengali “genocide” by Pakistan and its goons in 1971, there was no realistic expectation of wiping out all Bengalis. That’s a critical difference between the two. Yet, it would dishonor the victims of both atrocities to ignore their similar nature and human toll.
In recent years, the latter interpretation of the Shoah has been the ascendant one. We Jews know that we can’t stand by while others die, as all those “good Europeans” did while their Jewish neighbors were dragged away to their horrific fate. That understanding recognizes our obligation to make sure “Never Again,” the clarion cry that came out of the holocaust, means never again for anyone.
And that’s a great segue because, as a Jewish child growing up in the decades just after the Shoah, I always understood Never Again to mean that we would never again allow that to happen to us and also that we would not stand by silently while it happened to others. In both cases, it is how we apply it to ourselves as moral individuals who—unlike those who helped drive Nazi expectations—do care enough to take action. It is out of that moral imperative that I came to devote my life and attention to stopping the ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus—where, according to noted Bangladeshi Professor Abul Bakat and others, if unchecked, it will mean the total elimination of Hindus in Bangladesh before mid-century. Yes, the Shoah was uniquely evil, but if we fail to recognize and fight its echoes today, we risk becoming more unwitting accessories to genocide. Things can happen quickly, too, if we’re not paying attention to the antecedents of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and violent bigotry. Former US President Bill Clinton, for instance, has said on many occasions since leaving office that if he and other world leaders acted just a little more quickly, they probably could have saved an additional 300,000 lives in Rwanda. A brief moment of inaction can mean the difference between life and death!
I want to compare what is happening to Hindus in Bangladesh today to what happened in the Shoah—to be clear, not to equate them, but to compare them. As I noted before, killing off the Jews was an essential component of Nazi ideology and practice. A glance at the Bangladeshi constitution shows that—regardless of its lack of reality in practice—making Bangladesh free of Hindus does not track with the values of that nation. A huge difference that means we might one day see all Bengalis living peacefully together. On the other hand, we noted that if we don’t act forcefully and quickly, Hindus will be eliminated there. Significantly, the Nazis’ original goal was to eliminate Jews in Europe and grew globally only with their military and genocidal successes. They partially succeeded, too. On the eve of the Shoah, most Jews lived in Europe; today only nine percent do, and the number is not going back up again. That’s because even without Hitler and his gang, Europe’s not a very hospitable place for us, and that is such an important insight. While some people seemed to think that the holocaust also killed European Jew-hatred, the reality is that it never went away. People were just too embarrassed to be public about it after the Shoah. Not anymore. Violent antisemitism is the order of the day in much of Europe, whether disguised as opposition to Israel or out in the murderous open. For many in Europe, killing a Jew does not rise to the level of murdering anyone else, as in the Sarah Halimi case in France and many others. I wonder how long it will take before the remaining 1.3 million Jews either emigrate or die out, fulfilling the Nazis’ initial goal.
In other words, I believe that both Europe and the by-standing world missed one of the most important lessons of the Shoah; namely, that while the Nazis were awful people, they were not the main reason for the Shoah. The reason the Shoah could proceed is the many millions more who were complicit in it because they sat and did nothing; or rationalized their participation in it: from rabid Jew-haters in every occupied country’s militia, to people who drove the trains that took Jews to Auschwitz, people who were just fine taking over now emptied Jewish homes, and others who were part of the death machine in many ways. The Shoah is also a history of missed opportunity; of not taking advantage of ways to save lives: refusing to bomb the rail lines that carried boxcars of Jews to death camps, refusing to dock a shipload of Jews fleeing Europe and sending them back to their deaths, the allies’ decision at the infamous Bermuda Conference in 1943 to do nothing, and more deadly inaction.
So let’s move from yesterday to today, from what happened to what must be done. I’ve been fighting the ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus for more than a decade and a half. Since the partition of India in 1947, Hindus have gone from almost a third of the East Bengal population, to just under a fifth when East Bengal became Bangladesh in 1971, to about one in 15 today. Throughout that time, we have seen an unbroken torrent of anti-Hindu atrocities including murder, rape and gang rape, child abduction, forced conversion, religious desecration, land grabbing, and more. The Bangladeshi government would be right in objecting to my intervention—and they have in many ways and at many different times—by saying that minorities are attacked almost everywhere, including in my own, beloved United States. But I also learned a long time ago that in the human rights field, you have to take another step and ask what is being done about it. Is the government taking real action to stop it or allowing it to happen with a wink and a nod. Hey, we Americans don’t always get it right or get it done the first time, but we ACT! What is Bangladesh doing about its assault on Hindus?
Nothing! For decades those atrocities I referred to have be allowed to proceed without any action against the perpetrators, no matter which party is in power. That is, the killing or brutalization of a Hindu does not rise to the level of murdering anyone else. Sound familiar? In addition, to years of reviewing and vetting the data, I have experienced that myself in the cities and villages of Bangladesh. In 2013, for example, I visited a remote Hindu village in far northern Bangladesh soon after it was attacked by a mob whose Imam told them to rid the land of Hindus and build a mosque on the remnants of their homes. I witnessed the aftermath you might expect: all the livestock were taken, all crops destroyed, homes and other things in ashes, and traumatized women and girls. That day and many other times, the attackers said they were coming back to “finish the job.” Yet, while I was there, a truck drove up with four Muslim police, who told me they get to the village as often as they can, something the villagers confirmed. Those police told the attackers they’d have to get through them first if they attack the village again. They also told me that they do this on their own time “because the government will do nothing.” I’ve spoken with police on the ground in villages and large cities, who told me that they could do something to stop the carnage but the government prevents them. Many are very discouraged by this, I can tell you. They see crimes being committed, and as law enforcers they want to do something about them but the government won’t let them.
Yet, when I raise this, the government denies its culpability, offering ridiculous excuses (like “Hindus have left Bangladesh to go to India to find better matches for their children”); angry denials that the evidence of our senses are wrong (“we’re a land of communal harmony and you’re causing the problems”); accusing the accuser (one former Home Minister responded that the United States is bad and what Bangladesh is doing to Hindus is no worse “lower union membership in the US”).
We are entering a new phase in what we can do, and it would be shameful if every one of us did not do what we can. There’s a new attitude about Bangladesh in Washington. Resolutions in the House and Senate last month called out Bangladesh along with Pakistan more than any other country for their use of blasphemy laws to undermine democratic values. The State Department is publishing unflattering information about Bangladesh now, and recent actions by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reflects that new attitude as well. Expect new initiatives this year that could prevail upon Bangladesh to change its ways or face serious handicaps to its economic well-being—but only if we continue the struggle unrelentlingly. It’s up to everyone to stay up on things and to actively support initiatives when they arise. And even if it’s not genocide, it does not have to be for us to be obligated to take action.
Let me add one more thing along those lines. I’m moving the picture so you can see my shirt. It shows support for the LGBTQ community and is germane here because it affirms that everyone must be able to live as who they are. And if we say that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer does not merit equal rights, or worse merits atrocity, we are repeating the history that we just condemned.
Thank you.