Wordsmith

The celebrations are hardly muted - Radovan Karadic is finally likely to face trial. The architect of murder in the Balkans who 13 years ago terrorised Europe is now in our hands! I hear you say, 'If only we had caught 14 years ago, before he committed that monstrous crime is Srebrenica! Thousands of lives could have been saved! Someone should have indicted him then, made clear to him that he was not operating with impunity, that one day he would be hauled infront of the world and justify his unjstifiable actions.'

Of course in 1994 there was absloutley no way Radovan Karadic could have been indicted. There was no court established, insufficient evidence gathered to prosecute him, and anyway he was busy attending peace negotiations with the internatioal community.

Now the Bosnian muslims who were murdered back then have long since rotted in their graves. Finally, bleatedly we drag him out of hiding, and we have our day in court with him.

Meanwhile, Omar Bashir's indictment is being roundly condemned in many circles. Some are simply apologists for the regime, others are scared of the political and humantitarian fallout, others are concerned that the indictment of genocide is too strong on the basis that it would be better to take Bashir out of action on a lesser charge and be certain, than prosecute genocide and fail on a definitional point.

So going back to Karadic. Would it have been better for the 7,000 bosnian men and boys he ordered dead, had he been stopped in 1994?

If we have evidence on Bashir, better to indict him than to celebrate in 2021 when, bearded and bespetacled, we haul him out of hiding with belated back slapping on the part of lawyers and investigators who are still at school right now.

If it takes until 2021 to see Bashir in front of the International Criminal Court, I for one will not be slapping anyone's backs.

Look between the glass towers, street cafes and cosmopolitan lifestyle, just below the surface, the whole of Berlin is a living breathing memorial. It is a memorial to 2000 years of German history, language, culture, literature and learning. Its neo classical architecture is memorial to the illusions of grandeur and failed empires. Its knowing buildings and shady streets are memorials to shame faced Nazi’s and skulking communists, who no longer prowl the wide boulevards or occupy the shadows using their power, fearing their prey. The Brandenburg gate is memorial to a divided city and to a city which overcame two dictatorships in as many generations. Checkpoint Charlie, is memorial to the heroes who ran the line. And at the centre of memory’s jungle is the void of Berlin’s missing Jews. Entirely present and so obviously absent.

On Orianburger Strasse the golden cupola of the great synagogue defines the skyline - bright, opulent, its Middle Eastern curves breaking the square blocks of the tutonic architecture that surrounds it. This once decaying remnant of a great Jewish past, which had languished in the Eastern part of the city is now fully restored, standing proud on a bustling street of cafes. After dark it plays host to American college students, a babble of tourist speaking French, Spanish, Japanese and occasionally German too, prostitutes chattering idly under the Star of David. Berlin never lived in the past, nor does it now. Jewish memory and Berlin’s future go hand in uneasy hand.

Away from the crowds of Oranienburger Strasse, Daniel Libeskind’s much hailed Jewish museum building attracts a long and steady line of visitors. The silver-grey box with its angular slit windows creates a striking pose, especially juxtapositioned with the main traditional Jewish community building it stands next to. There are flashes of brilliance in his concept. Otherwise, it is a work of architectural self glorification - a memorial to Libeskind rather than the Jews of Europe. His architecture does not carry their memory, but rather drowns out their sense of life. It is cold, angular, a great garden shed with misplaced windows, over conceptualised, over rated. Not that rating comes into it. It is simply just not fit for purpose. In and amongst the sharp lines and obscure spaces, the building's author overshadows his subject and the point of the memorial is lost. I derived little sense of memory, loss, pathos and developed no new sense of empathy or insight from the museum.

There was some relief in the monotony of odd angles. The garden of exile, as its name suggests is outside. Tall slightly slanting columns of concrete tower six metres high, like giant grey plant pots. As visitors look up from ‘exile’, they see the canopy of green above you, while remaining lost in the dark world of crooked concrete below. It is architetural art at its best - deeply touching too. So too is the Holocaust tower. Fifteen metres of concrete towers above visitors standing in the triangular dark box, light flooding in from a tiny shaft ten metres up - the only way out and yet totally impossible to reach. Its light is hopeful. Hopeless too.

The museum states categorically that it is not a Holocaust memorial museum, but a Jewish museum. This is patently untrue or a theoretical delusion of the management team. The museum only exist to explain the Holocaust, how can it do otherwise in a city that played host to the planning and exectution of the continent's Jews? Of course the histor of the Jews must not be subsumed by the Holocaust. It does try to tell the story of the history of the Jews in Germany, but the architecture, the spaces, and the narrative are all seeking to explain the absence of the Jews, not their presence or continuity.

The story of the Holocaust is purposefully omitted from Berlin’s Jewish museum. I am told it is because the Holocaust is not representable. If that is the case, why does every girder and bolt of the building try to represent it? These mixed messages have lead to a confused narrative which reflects rather than redefines Germany’s narrative. The permanent exhibition avoids the Holocaust, but then there is no anchor point to the history of the Jews, so instead it weaves its way around Libeskind’s accute angles and fails to deliver any story at all. The place is soaked in memory, with no clear narrative to hold it together.

I was excited to be in Berlin to learn about the Jews of Germany, to piece together complex and diverse history, to feel the ebb and flow, the highs and lows of its turbulent history. I wanted to know who the Jews of Germany were, where they had come from, where they were going, up to the Holocaust and beyond. I read the panels carefully, participated in the interactive displays and observed the many artefacts – but I did not find what I was looking for. The building overshadows the exhibit, the exhibit overshadows the Holocaust, the Jews are neither present nor absent, they have no real beginning or end.

I have been to Berlin’s Jewish Museum. I am not uplifted. I am not devastated. I am unmoved.

Back across town the Topograpie des Terrors tells the story of the SS and their influence on the structure of terror that was created. Unlike the edifice of the Jewish museum, currently there is no building there at all. The outdoor exhibition hangs on the open air wall of the former cellar of the SS headquarters occupied and run by Heinrich Himmler. There was supposed to be a building with a new exhibit by now, but the senate overruled the spending of public money on fanciful architecture. The EU 75m project was abandoned. An exhibition building at a quarter of the original price is in construction now. This institution is not pretending to interpret anything, but rather present the facts about State sponsored torture, persecution and genocide, delivered by the office of SS Reichs Fuehrer Himmler. It is objective, fact laden - to the point of tedium - but at the same time deeply troubling because there was so much detail. The new exhibit will not act as a memorial to anything – especially the SS . It opens in 2010.

Not far away, in the shadow of the Brandenberg Gate, thousands of tourists line up to have their photo taken flanked o either side with a model dressed as an American GI and another dressed in the colours of Soviet Union. Not more than 200m away, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial creates a staccato sea of coffin tops clearly visible right at the heart of the city. The memorial is a disappointment. The rows of grey concrete towers are faceless, nameless, and uninformed. A guide explains to his teenage American high school kids that when they go into the memorial, that there is no eating, no running, no hide and seek and no ‘camping’ among the blocks. Moments later the very same students were all engaged in a group hide-and-seek-cum-tag game among the five metre high concrete blocks. It makes the heart sink. How could the Germans get it so wrong?

At one end of the memorial is the badly named ‘information centre’. It does provide ‘information’, but the name implies a kind of glorified tourist kiosk. It is far from that. This is where the real memorial lies. The subterranean museum tells the story of the Holocaust. It tells it briefly and very well. Solid historical fact, complimented by beautifully constructed family stories, 9,000 personal biographies which are read out on a loop, and a set of audio visual presentations documenting 250 sites of persecution and killing, are the main features of this compact exhibition. In a tiny space the museum delivers accurate content in depth and empathy like the Germans are rarely capable of displaying in public. Visitors leave without any doubt about the fate of the Jews.

Berlin has finally created a little corner where 500,000 people a year can touch and be touched by what the Holocaust really meant.

Perhaps no single institution in Berlin can take the serious enquirer through the good times and into the bad. They are all inadequate in their own way. This is not because the Holocaust cannot be represented. It is not so sacred that it cannot be touched – even in Berlin. There is no one way to tell the story of the Jews of Germany. They lived there for two millennia, we know that. They died an ignominious death, we know that too. Their past will be represented in different ways, The past, the present, the future, they all have to be there in equal measure, because Jews have been there from the outset and despite the best efforts of the Nazis, they will be there for a long time yet.

I have just returned from the 6th international conference on Holocaust Education at Yad Vashem, Israel. Eight hundred educators packed in almost four days of discussion arond the topic 'The Holocaust: Fighting Racism and Prejudice.' The purpose of the topic was to assess if it is appropriate to teach about the Holocaust as a means to tackle racism, and if so, how.

One would have thought that this was going to be a largely Jewish affair. Holocaust centres, Jewish museums, authors, well established Holocaust educators from all around the World were there doing what they do best, many of them were Jewish institutions or represented by people with Jewish backgrounds. But whereas ten years ago it would have been a wholly Jewish affair, this was far from the case. In fact among the fifteen or so Britons at the conference, poor old 'Caroline' had to put up with being the only member of the Jewish community repesenting the field of Holocaust education from the UK.

So whose Holocaust is it?

The conference organisers had origianlly put a question for moderators to address during break out sessions. 'Is it appropriate for non-Jews to teach about the Holocaust?' There was such a puzzled look from the moderators - Jewish and not - that such a question should even be contemplated, that it was sidled off into the waste bin of Holocaust discourse. So it is now a given that we all teach about the Holocaust, but that is a different thing to whose provenence it is. We can all go to the cinema to enjoy a movie, but that does not give us the intellectual rights to the movie. In the same way, just because we teach about the Holocaust does not mean we automatically have the right to interpret it how we wish. Whose provenence is it?

There is an assumption that Israel, and in particualr Yad Vashem, is inheritor of Holocaust memory. After all the founding of the Staate of Israel was so closely allied to the end of the Holocaust. It was the home the victims never had, new home to the surviving victims who wanted to be there, and as the Jewish homeland is guardian of their memory. Yehuda Bauer spoke at the Holocaust about relationship between the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel. He contests there is no causal link between the two events. His justification for this assertion is largely based on the fact that those ultimately responsible for making the decision would not do so for emotive reasons and would only reach such a decision on the of the real politik of the time. He takes the thesis to an unjustifiable extreme perhasp. He knows full well that whatever the politics of the time, there is a continuum of interconections between the events as they unfolded. But his principle is right, the two are not part of the same direct historical continuum.

Yad Vashem has a special place as guardian of memory. If it only existed to collect and protect the names of the victims - which now number almost 5m - it has done its job well. In retrieving the victims from anonymity and giving them back their idenity, it has perfromed a sacred task. But still that does not mean that the Holocaust belongs in Israel or to Israel even.

In Europe the presence of literally thousands of sites where Jews and a range of victims of Nationa Socialism were persecuted and murdered are in their own right places where the history is documented, retrieved, interpreted. Each site has the right to document, exhibit, publish its own interpretation of the history as expereinced locally. They too are guardians of memory.

The proliferation of Holocaust museums, school curricula, training courses, and field trips to authentic sites, means that now more than ever those who have conection to the Holocaust are engaged in learning, interpreting, disseminating. Whatever the need to teach more and disemminate more, it is a fact that more people than ever know about this history and own their own their interpreatations, often in a deep and personal way. There was a time when I would get to know a person before I would tell them about my line of wrok, because the Holocaust was a conversation killer as often as not. I now never avoid telling people what I do by way of introduction. It is my expcetation that they will know what the Holocaust was and want to engage in furthe discussion. Now this level of awareness does exist, it is also ripe for myths, politicisation, trivialisation, relativisation, manipulation and general bad practice. As these layers of reinventing the Holocaust become an increasingly visible part of the landscape it means that more than ever we need grounding and the memory of the victims protecting.

We do not do that by creating new icons though. Yad Vashem, Auschwitz, the United States holocaust Memorial Museum and other institutions cannot and indeed do not represent the overwhelming complexity of the Holocaust. To make Auschwitz an icon of 'mans inhumanity to man' may well work as a brand, but it doe snot do justice to the victims of Auschwitz, let alone the victims of the the other 1600 camps and countless ghettos and killing sites right across Europe. There is adnager that in our rush to uphold a dignified and undisputed memory, that we will ourselves become myth makers and brand developers.

The real provenence of the Holocaust lies buried deep in the struggle and the suffering of those who faced inevitable death for no reason than who they were, its provenence is in the tears of frightened mothers, the helplessness of depserate fathers. It belongs in the split second between life and death, the grinding hunger, the fight to survive when all is lost.

The Holocaust belongs to no one, except those who truly are prepared to put themselves in that dark place and stay there in silent vigil. We need to give up our claims on the Holocaust. We still need to talk, to share our thoughts, to struggle together, but the moment we link our conversation to politics, religion, ethnicity, power, land or ideological narratives, then we lose our legitimacy to represent its dark heart. The Holocaust is not about what we think, it is about how we think. It is not proof text to our own ideas of humanity, but rather stark proof that we have little to say about human nature, because we understand it so little.

It is not about what we think, but how we think. It is not about what we say but why we say it. It is not about us, it about them, thos whose lives were wiped out by its irrationale. We only have claim to any form of interpreatation when we stand alongside them, know them. Theologian Paul van buren created the image of the open pyres at Auschwitz and said 'make sure you your theology is able to be stated in the presence of burning babies'.

In the presence of burning babies we are silenced.

There is no claim, no ownership, no prevencne, just pure sorrow and silence.

And maybe silence is the best form of truth we will ever have.

Inroductory comments given at the Yad Vashem International Education Conference, July 2008 on The Holocaust:Fighting Racism and Prejudice:

Talia, 15, Jewish day school pupil:
"The Fact that no one stood up to was happening to friends and neighbours is horrific. I will now do my best when I see those in trouble and try to help on my street and around the World."

Fact: 30% of all Asian and Black people are targets of crime in the UK in a typical 12 month period. If you are mixed race that goes up to 46%

Fact: In 2006 there were 1700 antisemitic incidents in the UK ? four times the number of incidents against Muslims.

Fahmia, 15, Muslim day school pupil:
"I did know about the Holocaust, but I was not aware about other genocides. I guess it is up to us to make people more aware, or history will certainly repeat itself."

Fact: 192,000 people voted for the British National Party at the last elections ? almost 1% of all eligible voters.

Fact: The British National Party is antisemitic, but it primarily targets Asian communities and immigrants

Fact: The BNP has secured over one hundred council seats across the UK.

Karin, 15, Permanently excluded from school:
"During our visit to the Holocaust Centre I experienced many emotions. Sadness, anger, hatred, hope. I thought I was well prepared for the place, until I met a Holocaust survivor that is. Then just when I thought it was all over I saw the film on Rwanda. I just wanted to get up and do something."

Fact: Omar Saddiq Khan is serving for life for the 7 July bombings in London.
Omar Khan Sharif and his accomplice Asif Hanif killed three and injured 60 at Mike?s Place bombing in Tel Aviv. All three of these killers lived within the catchment area of our Holocaust Centre.

Carlton, 16, he already has a gun and knife crime record:
'Learning about what happened to others in the past and what it can teach about our lives today is more relevant than school trying to tell me I need a new language or something. This changes people?s lives and stuff. To come here and to learn this that's a big opportunity. At school they seem to miss the real important things about life.'

Fact: 18 teenagers have been murdered in violent knife crime this year in London alone.

Fact: The Singh family of Newstead, Nottinghamshire were driven from their village by racist hate crime.

All of this at the place I call home.

And so I invite you to our peaceful memorial in the County of Nottinghamshire. Perhaps you will sit for a while in the rose garden and remember the 6million wasted lives. But please do not come to hide. I invite you instead to struggle. To grapple with that dark unknown we call humanity.

You see, I worry that we do not really fear the Holocaust anymore. We revere it. We articulate it. We read it, discuss it, teach it. Sometimes it seems we almost play with its memory, shuffling its victims like dolls in a pram, re-arranging it like dark Legoland.

I know that it is not intentionally like that. But please, do not hide behind the camps and the corpses. Do not take authority from their suffering. Do not wear their shame with your pride.

Sometimes I wonder if what we really fear is ourselves. Perhaps we are the real unknown here. In our search for meaning we confront the Holocaust. We look into its abyss and understand something we cannot articulate. We feel the pain, the loss, the sorrow. And we know deep in our soul it will never end. We know that.

Then of all things that should really change us, instead, The Holocaust shields us, absolves us, engulfs us. We disappear into the comfort of its power.

Friends do not embrace it. It is not your friend. Fear it, because its nemesis is closer than you think.

David Bankier was right when he said that the current generation think we live in a different society. We do. But they also need to know it is not a better one.

I have done hiding; the reality at home is far too stark. Please, please look in your backyard too, on your own doorstep, in your own home. Come out, wherever you are. What are we afraid of, if not ourselves?

Thought for the Day :Radio Nottingham 14 July 2008

Its all seems bad news doesn't it? Kids out of control, gangs, knives, killing on our streets.

So who do we look to blame? Where do we look for solutions?

Well it sounds from the news like everyone is going to get tough. Tough we need to be. But we also need to recognise that these young people involved in these crimes have been failed. Failed by parents, school, society. Our values cannot be right somewhere. We need to look within.

So, am I being soft on crime? No, but I have just had the privilege of meeting a few of these young people on special programmes at the Holocaust Centre addressing knife crime.

Take Carlton, he is sixteen. He seems to get it. 'Learning about what happened to others in the past and what it can teach about our lives today is more relevant than school trying to tell me I need a new language or something. This changes people?s lives and stuff. To come here and to learn this that's a big opportunity. At school they seem to miss the real important things about life.'

Of course, there is no telling whether Carlton will avoid using his knife in future, hopefully he has enough support to put it way for good.

He thinks we are failing to tell our young people about "the real important things about life."

It makes you wonder, are we?

The Jews - the universal paradigm of suffering. The weight of history bears down upon the Jews, the archetypal threatened, ousted, persecuted, despised, universal minority of humanity. Chased by pharoahs, overwhelmed by Romans, murdered by the Nazis, the Jews have never had it good, everyone knows that. But they tough it out, stay strong, hold togehter, survive, and then survive all over again. Everyone wants to be as strong, as determined, as tenacious as the Jews, but still the pity is palpable - the poor old long suffering Jews, who would want be like them? No one, unless you are a Muslim of course.

Apparently, the Muslims are the New Jews. According to Shahid Malik most British Muslims 'feel like the Jews of Europe' and have adopted the mantel of the long suffering Jews. 'I don't mean to equate that with with the Holocaust' he is quick to point out. But of course just by talking about the suffering of the Jews of Wurope, that is precisely what he means. The centuries of Jewish persecution in Europe was precursor to that almighty icon of man's inhumanity to man - the Holocaust. It seems everyone wants a piece of it.

There is a problem with Mr Malik's asserion that 'most' British Muslims feel like the Jews. Quite simply, most british Muslims have no idea what the Jews suffered, nor do they take the time and trouble to find out. Maybe he means that because he has taken the time and trouble to find out, he sees parallels in the lives of many of his maginalised and struggling constituents, that were they to really know what the Jews suffered and how they really felt, they would empathise in a whole new way. Of maybe he means that they feel like the Jews felt, even though they do not know it!

I rather fear Mr Malik is using the Jews, using the history of antisemitism, dare I say it, using the Holcoaust to make a point, which he understands, but few British Muslims understand at all. Most british Muslims equate Jews with a strong State of Israel, not with a persecuted European minority. Muslims live in a free and democratic country, where the governemnt upholds the principles of human rights. There is no state sponsored islamophobia as there was antisemitism for many years. Muslims are free to create their own community structres, organisations and places of religous worship. Their are no restrictions on travel, university entrance, religous practice, or citizenship. We can dismiss his complaint, his trivilisation of Jewish suffering and his spurious comparisons bought at the price of the memory of Europe's vanquished Jews. Or can we?

So maybe most Muslims do not know what the Jews suffered, does that mean that they are not bewlidered by the sense of isolation they feel at times? Maybe the intnetional reference to the Holocaust was a statement too far, but what does it take to make us sit up and listen. Mention the Holocaust and we atrat to listen alright, if only to rebutt the very idea that there is any comparrison at all. But listen we should. However we fear the coming together of muslims and Jews, come together they must.

The muslims fear the Jews. There is no reason, but they see a strong, coherent, homogenous, determined people. they simply do not know their Jewish neighbours well enough. In return many Jews fear Muslims, not that they will admit it. They are uncertain about the tenets of Islam, concerned about terrorism, they see them as a undermining, threatening force. Each knows that the other suffers. And yet the very thing which should bring them together - a sense of shared expereince on the margins of society - pushes them apart. Its understandable, there is an uncertain future.

So Mr Malik got it wrong on all fronts. That is unless we strip out the Holocaust link and uncover the fundamentals of his comment. I suspect what he is actually trying to articulate is that Muslims and Jews have something in common. Both understand what it means to be a minority. Both try to speak about the antisemitism and islamophobia which smoulders on the margins of their everyday existence. Both want to play their full role in British Society, but are rarely understood or appreciated by the majority for their efforts. Neither are certsain about their future as the rising If that is what he meant to say, then indeed the Muslims and the Jews have far more in common than either is yet to prepared to admit. We need to stpe beyond the past, beyond the fear, beyond the unknowing.

But then that is easy for me to say.

Here I am. My first post.

I have the tedious fate of being yet another Smith, hence my choice of blog.

There is the Blacksmith, the Silversmith, even the Goldsmith; but me, I am just the regular type. Now seems the moment, when I can call myself what I like - to lift burden of four decades of being yet another Smith. It is surprising how the anonimity of seeing your namesake presenting the news or writing in a national newspaper or competing in international sporting events, eventually makes you feel a little inferior. Since all the other Stephen Smiths have lifted themselves to either prominence or notoriety, it leaves one feeling all the more anonymnous. Having failed to I elevate my Stephen Smith to anything other than random common ancestry, have instead opted for a name change.

Wordsmith. Either Stephen Wordsmith or just plain old Wordsmith will do, or maybe Smith Wordsmith. Either way, through this blog I get that little bit of uniqueness that I have longed for since Mrs Bust's class all those years ago, when Sarah Smith and I were both on the register as plain old S Smith. It just seemed so unfair, when Mark Pytlokowski and Mark Czubakowski had such unique identities notwithstanding the fact that they both looked up when the teacher called 'Mark!'

I guess that's the point.

We all want to be unique.

My blog will be unique - even if I am not!

Wordsmith