It is wrong to call a genocide a holocaust
KEITH Gottschalk is wrong. The Holocaust is unique in the world and in Jewish history (“How many know of the Kaiser’s Herero Holocaust?”, Cape Argus, June 15).
Yes, there is a whole body of scholastic work devoted to the genocide. Yes, I know about the Kaiser’s Massacre and have read Germany’s Genocide of the Herero, written by David Olusago and Casper W Erichsen and Jeremy Sarki respectively.
The Herero resisted the occupation of South West Africa by the Germans who retaliated by killing between 60 000 and 100 000 of them.
Genocides are usually initiated when people are perceived to be a problem and in the way of a development. The killing usually stops when the “occupying” power has achieved their objective and the inhabitants cease to be a bother.
I don’t recall Sarkin referring to the genocide as a holocaust and can’t find my copy to check.
The uniqueness of the Holocaust is because six million Jews were slaughtered simply because they were Jewish. You cannot compare the Holocaust to any genocide, not even the Rwandan tragedy that Gottschalk refers to. According to a web-published review of the
Kaiser’s Massacre (I haven’t read the book), the Kaiser was anti-Semitic and no friend of Hitler’s although he had many Jewish friends.
An oxymoron, but there it is. I did go to school during the apartheid era and like many of us “learnt the history of South Africa” through the voice of the then National Party.
However, I agree with Gottschalk that today’s history books should teach about these holocausts, but then they should refer to them as genocides, which they are.
“The media must help with the education of adults exposed to last century’s schooling,” Gottschalk wrote. But the media too must use the correct terminology. BRIAN JOSSELOWITZ Milnerton