Friday, February 24, 2006

Thoughts from Rome on Holocaust denial laws, the Armenian genocide, and more

Despite having been swept up in the media reaction to Irving's sentence, I have begun to teach and to meet people at the Gregorian. Last night, after my first class, Father Madigan, head of the Inter-Religious program at the school, took me to the local wine cask.

He knew that I had two Turkish Muslims in my class. He had just had a discussion before the class with one of them about Holocaust denial laws as compared to Turkish laws against discussing the Armenian genocide.

This was Father Madigan's comment: I told the student that Turkey is using the law to protect a lie. The European countries which rely on Holocaust denial laws are using the law to protect lies about the truth of "what we did during Holocaust."

While I am still against the laws, I was deeply intrigued by his formulation of the matter. I was touched by his use of the first person plural. BTW, he was born well after the war.

3 comments:

Angry Anarchist said...

Armenian genocide but Jewish Holocaust? Something special about Jews, or what?

Deborah Lipstadt said...

I only have two things to you:

Before you attack, talk to some Armenians about my position on the genocide. And hear what I have to say in my classes about it.

And the other thing is: get a life.

Deborah Lipstadt said...

Thanks Artyom. Actually one of my good friends [whose book on the Armenian denial I gave a blurb of approval and whose books I use in my classes] is Peter Balakian.

He would probably be appalled by the idiocy of the Anarchist's comments. BTW, he sent some other ugly emails which I dumped. They made no point except to use a lot of unprintable terms about me. There are lots of other places happy to post that stuff.