C B Ruthe
The Race Relations Commissioner
4 February 2021
Dear Commissioner,
Shalom,
NZ’s Holocaust [1]?
I write to express my deep concern that in your comments reported in the NZ Listener [2] you indicated that it was valid to consider New Zealand had its own Holocaust. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer MP had said the Maori experience of colonisation was directly paralleled with the Holocaust. You were specifically asked, “Are you comfortable with that?” Your answer: “Yeah”.
(At the outset I want to make it abundantly clear that I am in no way suggesting that I have any anti-Semitic ideation. Further, this letter is not a formal complaint.)
It is accepted that as Race Relations Commissioner you are an expert on words and the appropriate/inappropriate use of certain words particularly in the context of race relations. [i] Therefore it is with great trepidation that I may appear to be displaying some temerity in suggesting that on this occasion you may have erred. I feel like David as he took on Goliath. So I will endeavour to set out the facts upon which my concerns are based, and the possible consequence of your words remaining as the defining of Holocaust in NZ history.
To say British colonisation policies as applied in New Zealand was a New Zealand holocaust threatens to create a new anti-Semitic trope – (a) the Jews suffered no more than NZ Maori, and contributed to one of the major underlying tropes of anti-Semitism – and (b) Jews are unreliable as to historical facts.
By inadvertence or otherwise, to say or infer NZ had a holocaust has the potential to add fuel to the fires of anti-Semitism – the insidious, implicit, covert denigration of Jews. If you are aware of Sir Simon Schama’s encyclopedic The Story of the Jews [3], covering the history for 3000 years you will know how antisemitism breeds, not only in the cauldron of Nazism but more frequently, the inadvertent remark, sloppiness with truth feeding into the common parlance [4] of the everyday have consequences that have blighted the civilised world.
Your acceptance of Ngarewa-Packer’s claim that Maori suffered a Holocaust came immediately after your statement that there was genocide in NZ.
“Q: Genocide is a strong term- it is a crime in international law. Do you support Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s claim?
A: Genocide did happen. When you take peoples land, burn their houses and marae, suppress their culture and kill women and children.., yeah, absolutely, it is a deliberate act of the Crown…”
NZ Listener
The Meaning of the Word Holocaust
Holocaust has a specific meaning and is not a generic reference to ‘pogroms’, other genocides or other types of “ethnic cleansing” all of which are equally unbelievably shocking and an indictment on the human race.
“The word is Jewish in origin, used in reference to the liberation of the camps. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation olah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to Jahweh. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program—the extermination camps—the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.”
The Jewish Virtual Library says “Human history has few tragedies that rival the magnitude and moral bankruptcy of the Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.” To Jews it is a sacred word. It is a Jewish Ahanoa Tapu.
The eminent Jewish philosopher Emil Fankenheim [ii] in To Mend the World, a leading book on defining Holocaust, says the distinguishing features of Holocaust are as follows.
- It was the “Final Solution” designed to exterminate every single Jewish man, woman and child.
- Jewish birth was sufficient to warrant the punishment of death. Jews were killed for the “crime” of existing.
- The extermination of the Jews had no political or economic justification. It was not a means to any end; it was an end in itself. [iii]
What known historical facts paralleled these 3 points enabling you to agree this was paralleled in NZ?
Howard Stein in discussing the meaning of Holocaust [iv] says:
“Jewish historical memory and commemoration of the Holocaust is to preserve the sense of imminent (not merely past) danger and to instil the conviction that the Holocaust is as much a reality now as it was then. The tribal memory of wrongs becomes a collective basis for the survival of the Jewish people: hence the paradox of persistence through (not despite) persecution.
Future Action
As matters stand, a significant untruth is speeding its way through the highways and byways of the NZ cultural subconscious, from whence it will emerge in the conscience with strongly negative impact upon those of Jewish identity in New Zealand. These are suggestions as to remedial steps for your consideration.
- You accept that your comments in the NZ Listener are capable of being offensive to Jews generally.
- You retract your comments identifying British colonialisation of NZ with the Holocaust.
- You acknowledge that the word holocaust, being of Jewish origin, and describing the most appalling act of state-sponsored race extermination in human history is a word that should only be used appropriately and not denigrated by using it as a term of political abuse. (I don’t think he did this.)
- You take steps to ensure that the Listener and other media publish your retraction, so it does not become ingrained in the NZ political psyche.
Yours respectfully,
C B Ruthe
E&OE
[1] “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive and repeated.” J F Kennedy
[2] [Listener 19-12-2020.p34.]
[3] The Story of the Jews, The Story of the Jews, Volume I: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE–1492 CE (2013, Bodley Head, ISBN 9781847921321) ; Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900, Volume II of the trilogy (2017, Bodley Head, ISBN 9781847922809)
[4] vernacular
[i] The Listener article was directly on such subject matter.
[ii]
[iii] “The killing of Jews was not considered just a part of the war effort, but equal to it; thus, resources that could have been used in the war were diverted instead to the program of extermination.”
[iv] Political Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 5-35 (31 pages), Published By: International Society of Political Psychology
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