SSHHH

No. Don’t talk to me about the Holocaust anymore. I’m over it. It was a terrible business, but so was Palestine. As was listening to the lyrics of the theme from Exodus;

“This land is mine, God gave this land to me.”

Sorry, but I think any decent god making a gift of land to someone would simply hand over the title deed, and need not expect bloodshed as part of the deal.

Though I do believe, with all my heart, that the Holocaust happened. I’m no denier. And I love that most of you are still, decades later, moved by references to the Holocaust, moved by stories of the Holocaust, have visited dreadful places like Auschwitz on your travels, or ask “would you like to visit the Holocaust museum next time you are in town?”, but, NO. Enough.

No more. Not til you stop living in denial about what is happening in your own time, on your own watch, in your own country.

In Indigenous Australia.

Until you stop silencing me about Indigenous Australia, I will silence you about the Nazi Holocaust.
 

Yes, I know the Holocaust happened because, like you, I saw the newsreels long before digital technology made it easy to fake stuff like that.
I know it happened, because when I was younger, like you, I saw tattooed numbers on real, living flesh.
Because I saw real people blanche and throw themselves to the floor of a tram the first time they heard one of those new ambulance sirens.

Mostly, I know the Holocaust happened because I know that human beings are capable of selective denial about what is going on under their noses – like what is happening today in Indigenous Australia.

 

It's much the same as the way I know the other holocaust happened, because I was with young Sarah Jane one day in Gertrude Street when an old man kept telling me in a quiet but urgent voice to hold her hand, to hang on to her, to hold her tight.
It wasn't til more than 20 years later, when the Bringing Them Home report was published, that I realised what he had been going on about. Then the other stories made sense.
I know it's still happening because I know a government website when I see one; and I can tell sanitised fact from sensation.
And our history may be buried in archives, but it is still there, under all the settled dust.

So, No. Just SSHHH. No more.

Stop it.

I get that you don’t get why I care. What I don’t get is why you won’t.

 

 

 

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