Belgium and Anti-Semitism
Several years ago at an international coding conference held at UCLA I asked two young men where they were from. One young man said “Belgium” and the other young man said, “The country that other countries’ armies are always invading.”
Given the news I learned today of the grossly anti-Semitic floats at a Belgian carnival parade in Aalst, I recommend that Belgium be invaded by Holocaust education. One starting point? See the selected Holocaust reading list created for my THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE free theater school project to combat anti-Semitism and hate.
Daniel Boffey in his February 21, 2020, article in The Guardian writes about the Belgian carnival parade:Last year Unesco removed the Aalst carnival from a list of “intangible cultural heritage”, an inventory of protected practices that includes Irish hurling and Cypriot-Greek Byzantine chant.
The UN organisation said the festival, which has been on the list since 2010, had been guilty of “recurring repetition of racist and antisemitic representations”.
Educating people — and organizations — to stand up to hate is very important. I encourage you to read my recent post for author Joylene Butler’s blog — Learning From History Part II: What the Holocaust Can Teach Us for Today.” The post includes this paragraph:
This understanding of how name calling can lead to beatings to concentration camps to murder is particularly important now. Young people need to learn to be aware of what can happen if, instead of standing up, they allow things such as bullying on school playgrounds to escalate until it is too late.