Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Thoughts on Holocaust Education
Yeah. And we've talked also about--not here, but in, in the...
The group?
...the group about Holocaust education. And there's--there's this--this film that's being made. And, uh...
Yes.
...um, what are your feelings about that--about...
Oh, um, it's okay.
It's okay to...
I approve it to have the education that and the lectures and the explanations, because people do not understand what hunger is, people don't know what discrimination is, maybe a black do you know, okay?
Uh-huh.
Uh, what's helped you know, your self--what self-esteem is, what pride is you know, what--you know, how can it happen? "We," Christians probably say, "we don't do things like that." But how does a teenager know that he hates Jews? Because his mother told him to. He says so. "How did you--my mother said they're terrible people!" This broad, I bought a--I bought her beer you know, entertaining her. Sure uh, my ulterior motives will be there, but I'm sure she's aware that my ulterior motives are there. But she tells me, "I understand there's a lot of Jews in Detroit. Aren't you afraid of them?"
Hm.
What does that tell you? She never saw a Jew. She had no dealings with a Jew. And she tells me that they're terrible?
Huh. So you think it's--Holocaust education is important...
Very important.
...to raise people's consciousness for us?
K...Kosovo and what was it, the--and, and Yugoslavia, Bosnia and all that stuff, that's a thousand miles a away--thousands of miles away. They got nothing to do with me. I would rather not see Kosovo, because I know what it is.
Yeah.
It's a terrible thing that one group decide that this is--ethnic cleansing, we got to get rid of you.
That, that another group has to be destroyed.
They're destroying it.
Yeah.
It's okay. But you could have told them, "So look, you cannot--as long as we--this is our land. It's been historically our land. You are just recent invaders here. You cannot have a separate state. If you want it, if it's okay with you, what we'll--you'll, you'll be treated as a citizen like as, as before. You don't like it, you can move. But don't tell us we have to give it up."
So you would rather not make the comparisons. I...
No. It's not comparison, but the suffering is the same.
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