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\title{A Holocaust survivor and an anthropologist oppose all genocides (Seminar)}
\date{20\Slash{}01\Slash{}2026}
\author{Stephen Kapos, Hugh Brody \& Mark Etkind}
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This is a Holocaust Memorial Day event.


Stephen Kapos survived the Holocaust in Hungary. He’s an artist and campaigner against the Gaza genocide.


Prof. Hugh Brody is a son of a Holocaust survivor. He’s an expert in the often genocidal treatment of Indigenous peoples.


Mark Etkind, son of a Holocaust survivor, facilitates.


\hairline


\href{https://vimeo.com/1157884063}{\texttt{https://vimeo.com/1157884063}}


\hairline


Hello, my name’s Mark. I’m a sort of a regular at these meetings, the group, and, because we’re in the run up to Hollocaust Memorial Day which is Tuesday 27\textsuperscript{th}.


A few of us thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting and a discussion about Holocaust, genocides and bigger contexts than is often discussed in our culture.


So we are enormously privileged to have two Speaker one is Hug Brody famous filmmaker and anthropologist and author has lived with and studied several under gatherer communities.


I’m assuming he’ll make connections between his anthropology and Holocaust and genocides, but I’ll let do that.


and we also have Stephen Kosh, who has think more historical interests than anthropological, but he also has something of a life experience in that he was actually in Budapest in the last year of the war.


The Nazis were trying to kill off all the Tuesday.


He was a very young man there, seven years old, but he’ll talk about that later and I, myself, didn’t go with anything like that, but, but my father was a, a Polish Jew and he was in various concentration camp.


So I obviously have an interest that side of things and with the permission of the main speakers, they’ve said, I’m not, you say your stuff beforehand.


I’m gonna say a few things about Holocaust and genocides.


I think the purpose of what I’m saying and what Hugh’s gonna say and what Steven’s gonna say is to provide food for thought.


So hopefully in this circle we can all have lots of interesting questions and a good discussion and agree and disagree as well.


I’m particularly interested in that because if you’ve watched Holocaust memorial meetings or been to them, they’re often rather tomber.


It perhaps is appropriate, but I, I’m someone, it’s just my personal opinion.


Others may agree, disagree.


I think it’s important when we discuss the Holocaust, we do it in a, a curious and, intellectual way, perhaps trying to understand why it happened.


A commemoration that just goes on, it was sad, it was terrible.


Doesn’t do much for me, but that’s personal.


My father would’ve felt differently about it.


He was quite going, these commemorations, he went to many of them, he now passed away.


but certainly for this meeting at the university, I think it’s important we have a healthy discussion, as if that’s the right it is.


so you’ll be perhaps pleased to know, I’m not gonna tell you my father’s entire story, but I’ll tell you an anecdote, and have some political thoughts about that, which people are afraid to completely disagree with if you want to.


But again, hopefully it’ll be good for all and then we’ll have an anthropological, I presume, intervention and a more eyewitness, although I’m sure Steven always has historical things to say.


so yes, I won’t go through all the detail, but my father, he’s Polish.


He’s a teenager. He’s Jewish, in, in Woods, which is the industrial town in Poland in 1939.


So he ends up spending years and years in the falling conditions, but a very long story shortage.


Entire family die either of disease or of, gas nearer and he finds himself in various concentration camps, including in Bruen Belt, which is the one I suspect most people might have filled up in Germany and I could go into more details about that, but I won’t cause that’ll take us far too long, although people are welcome to ask me.


he was the sort of survivor who never stopped speaking about it and actually wrote his own autobiography.


So I know that lot of detail about what he went through and of all the stories he told me, one of the most intriguing, and the one that I think I like to talk about most is what happened to him towards the end of the war.


So this is the autumn of 1944, and he’s been sent to a small concentration camp, associated with an industrial, metal working firm that’s making bits and pieces for, the, of the German Air Force at, at, at, at the time.


many Jewish and other slave laborers in the I think, I’ve been brought into Germany to work in industrial plants and they’re being put into these plants often in sort of countryside and other areas.


So they’re trying to sort of hide from the, so he ends up in this plant, and of course, he has to be trained.


He’s just a 17-year-old starved, completely ignorant, no banning of machines, work and make la work and make wheels for highly sophisticated aircraft.


So he has to be taught how to do this by a, a very skilled, presumably very skilled German worker who is gonna be sent to the front, almost inevitably die fighting the Russians.


Terrible situation in every respect.


So very surreal situation as well.


I mean, insane Training up a bie teenager to do this highly sophisticated work and the Germans imagine they’re gonna win the war.


That’s utterly insane and the German worker, he’s not very friendly to my dad.


He doesn’t give him any food because all my dad really wanted, he’d been starving for years and years.


But he apologizes to my father.


He says to him, got the quote here.


My father had different ways of putting it.


He said to him, we had no choice.


They would think nothing of killing one or two or a hundred thousand.


We did not stand a chance and what he’s saying to my dad, he you had no power and he, he’s apologizing for the law, for the Nazi takeover.


He’s speaking on behalf of the German working class, the trade unionists and others who clearly didn’t like it.


We, we wanted to, but we couldn’t overthrow hit.


We were scared to do so and yet at the same time, he’s sort of suggesting that he could have done, which for what I’ve read a bit of a history nerd myself, they could have done many times towards the early period of the Nazi, rural in Germany.


There was a possibility was, was very organized, very powerful, huge communist party, huge democratic party and they had weapons and organization and didn’t happen.


and that’s always sort of made me think, I’m not sure what my father made of it, but it’s sort of one of these sort of little details from his experiences.


It just lights things up in terms of our understanding, because if you read the history of what the Nazis were about, what Hitler and others were fearing, they were of course scared of Stalin.


They were scared of Churchill, they were scared of Roosevelt, they were scared of all their enemies.


But the thing that the Nazis were most scared of was a repeat of the German Revolution of 1980.


At the end of the first World War and German workers went on strike German army, their soldiers and their guns round against their officers, stopped fighting and marched back into Germany and led what was called the German Revolution.


women workers were very much at the forefront of some of those strikes and in fact, there were food riots, but women workers, the very crucial uprising and that German revolution inspired similar uprisings in, in, in Austria and Hungary and other areas and it was the beginnings of revolutionary at atmospheres were, of course, Europe, but of course the Russian evolution all and this is something absolutely terrified and horrified Nazis.


They didn’t want that to happen and once they were in a world war, they were, their biggest fear was, oh my God, there’s going to be another German revolution and we, we, we tell, so Nazi policy at every level, in my understanding, and others can have different views, is all about preventing that and this is why they commit right at the beginning of the war, the early years doing them, one of the most brutal things that the state has ever decided to do, which is when they go into the Soviet Union and decide to kill about 30 million people, that’s the plan to starve them to death and the idea is if you starve the occupied peoples, then you then have enough food to feed German workers, and you can withstand the British blockade, and you can win World War ii and by winning World War ii, you can then have this empire in eastern Europe, in the Soviet Union, provide the resources to make Germany as wealthy as Britain or America, which both, of course had huge empires.


America, which America itself, you of course had this huge empire that was very crudely, very simplistically Hitler on the Nazis and so there was a logic why my father was starved in the ghetto along with all the other Jews, why prisoners of war were starve.


There were the first people who starved in vast numbers, made it.


There was clearly an ideological aspect to a horrors of the marathon.


But it’s completely intertwined with that very practical aspect of how does Germany survive in the modern world, in the wake of the economic crisis in the early 1930s in a world in which they can see the British empire is keeping British work, keeping, keeping Britain wealthy and, meeting high up Libby standards.


So there’s no better revolution there.


The same with the American society may be even France, which Germany is in this situation under threat of revolution.


It’s very powerful work, father having these very strange conversations with the German worker in New Autumn of 1944 and to me, anyway, that particular conversation sort of really lights up what was at stake and helps me understand why it was Nazi regime.


German society minted such unbelievable and appalling brutality and of course, I’m not saying that there weren’t other aspects to the Holocaust.


There is a very strong ideological aspect and of course that is very much tied in with this idea that this threat of revolution, this threat of communism is coming from the Jews.


But at the same time, this is the thing that’s understand.


It’s also coming from capitalists or from western capitalists or America or the British capitalist church or Roosevelt.


I mean, Nazis have this idea.


It’s all the Jewish conspiracy.


It’s a Jewish communist conspiracy and the Jewish capitalist conspiracy, they all come together and you’ve got this ideological aspect, of course, which is what’s usually talked about in documentaries and lectures and such, like when the two things come together, speaking to begin to understand why the most civilized society, the most educated, sophisticated culture, I certainly in Europe by Germany, finds itself in this situation of committing with unbelievable barbarism, is horror beyond horrors of, of the Holocaust.


Anyway, that is an attempt to explain, I’m speaking more than I should have done, but hug, unfortunately.


I’m now gonna ask Hugh to give a more anthropological explanation, the Holocaust and then thing will, hopefully you’ll give us a more, personal, and then we’ll have a good old discussion about it.


Thank you. I’m gonna speak anthropologically and historically, but it’s also personal.


I like, I grew up under the shadow of genocide.


My mother’s family were victims of the Holocaust.


My mother was a refugee from Vienna, defense of murder all around me, all my life.


It was never spoken about.


So I grew up with the violence of the genocide.


But there it was. And then as an anthropologist, I’ve discovered as anthropologists think very often do discover that they are working under the shadow of genocides.


It’s just like knowledge, I think in the anthropological literature that to go to many tribals peoples, it’s to enter the world of genocide, blood for worth and I want to begin vignette of my own anthropology.


In 1996 and 97, I was working with the Bushman of the Southern Kalahari, and we were collecting oral histories, people’s stories about their childhood and their lives when they lived all beyond the reach of the frontiers.


But they did do so and as we were collecting these stories, several very elderly women told us about the way the Germans hunted them down and they described in detail German soldiers, and they described the helmets.


They wore a particular kind of helmet that, that, that was very surprising to them and these Germans hunted down people and killed them and they showed us the places where they had watched this happen, and they showed us trees against which prisoners of the Germans had been executed.


They even pointed to what they said were bullet marks in the trees when these executions had taken place.


Now, we were very puzzled about this.


We researchers, who could they be referring to? Was this something to do with the First World War? Were these Germans hunting down the, indigenous people of the Kalahari, we realize were the very flash of insight, what they were referring to, the little known genocide, which by the Germans in southwest Africa in 1908 and in 1904, under directions from Berlin, the military command of the German army in what they called Deutsch, stood German, Southwest Africa, German colon essence.


In 1888, the high command, the military in southwest Africa issued an edict, which they called the fair ict, which means total destruction ict and this is the first time that in European modern history, that regime goes on record of deciding that the entire population is going to be killed.


Now this destruction was launched.


Response to resistance is a very, very important part of what I want to focus on tonight.


The slows connection between genocide and resistance.


The Germans were very excited about their southwest African colony, the only bit of their new 19\textsuperscript{th} century empire that they thought they could settle and this was settler colonialism, unlike the other parts of their engagements, which sort of extractive imperialism and their settlements were resisted by the herrero and the Nama, the two main peoples of the area and the herrero particularly led a military, campaign against the German occupation and killed 101 particular important engagement, killed 120 soldiers and settlers.


But the Germans decided in response to this resistance, the way forward was to exterminate all the herrero and then all the nama and they set about this in a very thorough way.


They put in a a, an army.


They dressed them in a camouflage type uniform, especially designed uniforms.


They mounted camel brigades that could operate in the desert, and they hunted down rero on the nama, and they chased them across south, South Africa towards the Kalahari and killed huge numbers and forced survivors into a desert where they were supposed to die, that they hunted them down in the desert and they also created concentration camps or slave labor.


So the prisoners they took, they turned into slave laborers and concentration camps that in no use of the word, it begins of course, with a war.


The first time it appears in German on concentration camp appears in this German massacre of the people of the southwest Africa.


the women we were talking to, I’d seen, or they had, their parents had seen, they weren’t old enough to have seen it themselves.


They always used the first person parole.


We, they say, saw this, we were in this place.


So they were carrying a story to us of the German genocide against the hara and nama, which turned into a genocide against Bushman as well, because the German military couldn’t tell the difference in one kind of person.


Another excessive.


This, genocidal venture was fairly considerable.


It seemed that 80\% of the Herrera population and around 50\% of the Lama were now the link between the ion, the concentration camp in toughest Africa, and the concentration camp in the Second World War.


That could by another very interesting and surprising link that we under mentioned that the German army was dressed in camouflage.


Well, they were given brown shirts to wear.


They wouldn’t stand out too much in the desert.


In 1921, a Nazi, a new Nazi member discovered that there was a large warehouse filled with these brown shirts.


It was supposed to go to Namibia, decided these would be handy to dress up the para.


That’s how the essay came to wear brown shirts and that’s how the brown shirts appeared as a sort of signal symbol alongside the black shirts of as cilia.


There was a strange link between this German genocide in southwest Africa on the Holocaust and it is striking that when the word genocide was first coined, Raphael Lemkin in 19 19 44 that was coined, was referenced the Holocaust of the Second World War, on the mass murders permitted by the Germans during the Second World War.


Then King made a point of saying that it should not be thought of this word, GenOn new term, not be thought of exclusively in relation to what had happened in Germany.


He fed himself.


There’s an intimate connection between genocide and colonialism.


Now, my experience of the stories in what is now Namibia, I collectively heard these stories on the borders of South Africa.


What Swan and Namibia, my experience of that reminded me that the story of Holocaust in my relation to my work went right back to the beginning of my anthropological work, which was in Ireland.


Now Ireland instead, by some of the most interesting legal theory to be the crucible within which the legal theory of genocidal colonialism was forged.


The British established in their own minds and to their own satisfaction that the Irish were barbarians and wild.


These were two words. There was used wild barbarians, and there were two pap bulls in the 13\textsuperscript{th} century.


Two different popes issued bulls to say that the Irish were SALs and barbarians, and therefore, Henry II was entitled to invade and occupy and settle Ireland.


The mission to dispossess came from a theory, a racist theory of the people were being possessed.


In the case of the herrero and Nama, they of course, was seed as savages and wild, but the justification for killing them was bridal.


Of course, it cleared the way German settlement, which is, where in south.


But in Ireland, very first formulation of this logic merges determine that a roof of people or a nation of people are somehow not fully human.


It’s entitled you do anything you want.


If you want their land, pull them up in the land and you just put that simple.


That began in the 13\textsuperscript{th} century.


It was reinforced during the period of the uds where they established that the Irish or vile savages, and further reinforce by Cromwell in the 17\textsuperscript{th} century, 1640 invasion of, Ireland.


The seat here, thank everyone in the circle, they declared and so un declared, but the Irish were savages and even argued that they were canals and therefore, the total th sorters that he perpetrated on the Irish in 1640 were justified.


So the same logic is at work.


Who the ages in Ireland of then in the 19\textsuperscript{th} century, riches, a kind of climax, this racism against the Irish.


Now they are wild and savage are not entitled to be, saved from the famine.


The result of which a million Irish died.


A million disappeared, a million fled to America.


When I look at my work in Ireland, what I described and came to understand on the West Coast and Ireland and villages of the west coast of Ireland, I realize that I was looking out the shadows of genocide on the gen of layers of genocide, reaching from the 13\textsuperscript{th} century through to the time I was there from seats at the front here.


So from the ninth through, from the 13\textsuperscript{th} century through to the 19\textsuperscript{th} century, there were the time that I was there normally, and the farms and the economies that I was describing, these tiny pieces of land that people were trying to keep going on in defiance of the Constitution, immigration isolation was a result of the genocide of project in Ireland that reached back and truth striking, when you look at the literature around genocide and colonialism, how little opposition there was to it, and indeed how some of the major thinkers of the time endorsed it.


Now, Hagel, for example, in the electricity gave in Berlin 18, 20, late 20 1830s, explicitly said that the destruction of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were mutually appropriate.


They were undereducated, they were uncivil.


Their only hope.


He called freedom, both he meant civilization, that they should be colonized, enslaved, and if necessary, completely destroyed and gel, even in one of his lectures, said that the death of 2 million people in the American West with a small price to pay of a huge human achievement of the settlement of the American West, represented for Europe.


Of course, the settlement of the American West, one of the largest movements of human peoples known to history.


Hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions of people moved from Europe into the American West, where they were given land, small amounts of land, but significant enough for them to want to be there then to defend against anything might threaten them.


On this land, of course, great threat to them on the land, the people, the land really belonged myriad of cultures, the prayers and planes.


1790 and 1980, it thought that about 4 million indigenous people in the prayers and planes were murdered and the scale of the genocidal venture in the Americas in North America by nothing in South America, because North America is represented by what’s happened to their languages, thought that approximately 300, 320 languages were spoken in the whole North American region.


This was reduced to possible 20 that are going to survive.


Now, 90\% of the population is thought to have been wiped out in the course of the Colonial project in North America.


Now, colonialism in North America is complicated, especially in Canada and there are vast areas of the north where agriculture is impossible.


Therefore, the people who live in those places are not directly threatened by colonialism.


The colonists, the newcomers don’t want their land.


What they want is their furs and fur trade became a central feature of the Canadian North.


So instead of wanting to destroy the people, you want to just change their economic system and keep them alive.


But you might say, well, therefore, the genocide in the Americas ended the agricultural frontier.


However, the Americans and then the Canadian governments from about 1880 onwards and all through 20\textsuperscript{th} century, up to the 1950s and sixties and even beyond, introduced the notorious boarding school program, which was designed to destroy all those people as well.


They made no distinction between the indigenous peoples who lived in agriculturally productive zones, and those who lived in the forests trapping fur as far as they were concerned, all these people could be turned into non-indigenous people.


Many of ‘em, as a result, had disappeared and their languages, as in were drastically averted and reduced to a, and the Canadian government has acknowledged that its boarding school program did constitute the genocidal project.


Even though you didn’t herd people into camps and murder them, its intention is to get rid of their way of life, their way of thinking, forms of knowledge.


In my work in, in North America, we heard a huge amount about what might be called the shadows of this genocide as in relation to the border department and when people talk to me and not talk to anyone else about their experience of this genocidal project, always express it in part in the language of resistance.


By telling the story they were resisting, by being alive, they were resisting by holding onto bits of their language.


By having a grandmother who taught them a few words in their language, they were resisting.


Their resistance is integral to this story and if we look at Australia, this is an extreme case, of course, of settler colonial genocide, particularly in Victoria and New South Wales, carbon Queensland and Tasmania.


Those parts of Australia, which were declared olus as legal concept with coin, initially with reference to Australia, brought through in other parts of the world, nullius with a legal notion, was established in the minds of the settler colonial project.


But there were no rights to the land.


This was not done covered by any legal system of any kind, therefore, settlers would come and take as much of it as they wanted and this led in the case of Australia to a sort of a capitalist driven genocidal.


Whereas in the American West or this place, migrants from all over Europe came to find a small piece of land where they could live and make the best of it for themselves.


In the case of Australia, rich individuals, sometimes corporations went to Australia and acquired huge areas, hundreds of thousands of acres, and then they used convict labor, and the convicts had been released from their convict sers, or wasn’t functioned as sheep labor to go and run the sheep herds or the cattle principally sheep in the early days, and then manage the cotton fields and the later phases of this.


So the land was taken thanks to capital, and then the labor was in the form of these, very oppressed and disadvantaged people who were of the convict process, indigenous peoples of Australia, whom there were huge numbers, and that it had thought that there were approximately 500 languages, spoken in Australia at the time that Captain Cook arrived there in 17, there was huge resistance for this capital driven, large scale colonial project.


But the people who were at the receiving end of the resistance, of course, were the disadvantaged convicts and labors who would be attacked and killed and then the central authorities would launch reprisals.


Sometimes groups of local people would set up for vigilante armies that how does their project be exterminating of now one group and now another and in a recent book by the Australian writer David Maher, about his ancestors’ role in the, possession of murder of the indigenous people of New South Wales, the on chart that the individuals who were on the land there aim to think of the land as their, that they felt the Australian settlement had.


They spread all of themselves are the owners of the land, and they were defending themselves.


They were defending their land against these dreadful human average.


Therefore, Asian veno was informed both by a sense that these people were a terrible threat to them, take the land back to ‘em.


Although there was a question about how safe they could ever be on the frontier, on the general view that the only way forward Australia for the entire Aboriginal popul be exterminated and unsuccessful project for many parts of Australia must be fair.


But once again, the logic of this process reveals itself.


Land is taken.


Oh, I do. We thought we were booked three to eight o’clock.


I’m so sorry. I have been show you the thing.


I’m so sorry for that.


I don’t think we’ve taken energies.


do you need this much room? Because we’ve got a meeting on the Holocaust going on.


No, no. I just, I’m so sorry. It’s more for us.


I’m so, I’m so sorry and I don’t, I don’t really know what to do Situation.


It’s not moving.


You have the dar for Yes, they, they may book the room, but we not, there’s the student common room downstairs.


If they want to dance, can they dance? Nonsense? Hear the whole you books every week.


I thought you wanna keep going, happy going, what’s gonna happen? Let, keep going. You colonial front.


Yeah. The, the, the model in Australia the same has the same logic and then is needed or desired by colonial forces, individuals, governments, corporations, in order to secure the land, they have to get rid of the people who are there to do this.


They dispossess them and go on and the genocide in south, in New South Wales and warrior and, and Tasmania, astonishing fashion.


I, when did the Google one typed in what percentage of the land in New South Wales held by aboriginal people? The Arthur came back Naugh percent similarly to Victoria also for Taman.


Now the distant in the 1960s, seventies and eighties from within the aboriginal community has reversed that in many parts of Australia.


So this is not an entirely disastrous story.


It’s been extraordinarily effective right back.


But the clearing of the land genocides were total and that was the intention.


Well, a question comes to mind, of course, is where were the challenge to this from within Europe, the intellectual traditions of Europe.


It weren’t at the challenge.


What were some 1550 famous debate in Spain between Las Kaza? A monk who spent 30 years in the Americas Jesuit priest who never been to the Americas, looked at what rights did the indigenous peoples of South America have in relation to the Spanish Las Kaza? I spent 30 years there, argued that they had all rights of any civilized people or nation.


Vedo had never been there, argued on the base of Ourian philosophy and these people were natural slaves and natural slaves only could look forward to being civilized by enslavement.


And, servitude.


This debate rage for 18 months and led to the King of Spain having to adjudicate a question, what rights do the peoples of the new world have? So that question, what’s being asked the 16\textsuperscript{th} century? But it’s quite striking when we move our industry into the enlightenment, how little concern there was and indeed, the enlightenment representation of the noble, savage, et cetera, did not focus at all on the genocidal issues and there’s very little challenge in the 19\textsuperscript{th} century.


Mark, in a way, echoes hagel in his view, in capital of what is going on in relation to tribal peoples.


Though in the last few years of his life, mark did slightly rethink this and in his, ethological notebooks in 18 80, 18 82, he comes up with some very surprising different views of where indigenous people might fit in his model of revolution.


But by and large, the consensus about tribal peoples and indigenous peoples, the effect that they were somehow quasi human subhuman did not have rights, goes across the intellectual ward.


It’s only really in the 1950s, late fifties and sixties.


I want just finish by looking again.


Now, this paradigm of the settle going into a place deeming the land to be their, that’s constituting themselves of the defenders of their land against other people, and then justifying this other by reference to some original entitlement to the land given to them by God, some version and that the people that were there are not really white people and that reminds you of the West Bank, young women who thought they’d come in here because unfortunately Jerome didn’t book them all through, just booked it up to seven.


He thought that there was nobody afterwards.


So, but they probably have her own and status and Mark’s going to show.


Can you, okay. Yes.


Well, yes, we, if we are ready to go over to, to hear Steven.


Okay, that would be wonderful.


Can I just say that the people on Zoom actually need to hear your voice? It might be better if you come this side.


Actually, can you the side, because so that we can, can hear Itself.


Actually, I moved Steven so that the people on Zoom can hear, because that’s one of the things that Okay, that is different here.


Well, my, my connection to the forthcoming celebrations or memorialization of the Holocaust is that I was child survivor, in Budapest, in Hungary, of, of the Holocaust.


And, I’d like to illustrate some of the nature of, of the experiences, by actual examples, a few examples of what I know about things that happened not directly to me, so much as people very close to me and, and I had firsthand accounts of their experiences, when, when Holocaust is talked about, the image of the Holocaust sort of conjures up certain fixed, images, I think like, the gas chambers and the mass killings that, happened in, Belarus and, and Ukraine.


People showed directly into groups and so on.


But in my actual experience, the Holocaust had some other horrors as well, which, are not so obviously realized.


Which, which, which are the, the kind of psychological pains that associated with all that went, went on.


They, they run up to atrocities, the, the uncertainties and, and the, the fear that was generated.


my, my family on my mother’s side, Pennsylvanians and, Pennsylvania was, historically for about a thousand years, a natural part of Hungary, a region which was, which had a certain degree of self-governance, but very much part of Hungary when, the Austria-Hungarian Empire lost in the first World War.


the China East Treaty has, divided Hungary, and, Hungary lost two thirds of its territories, is an amazing shock that, that hung is still in a way echoing today, being exploited this great, great tragedy as, as it’s represented in, in the national history.


Pennsylvania as a whole, which is a very large land mass, just simply was attached to Romania.


And, with, despite the fact that, culturally very significant part of Hungary and at that moment, I think there was a Hungarian majority population there, although there were Romanians and others, Saxons in German speaking, population, which actually in previous periods had lived quite reasonably peacefully together.


but that changed, after tensions that were created with the, these divisions and, and, reattachment.


so Hungary lost, Transylvania on the north.


It lost Slovakia, what is today.


Slovakia was the northern ian parts of Hungary quite simply.


And, the, Slovakian capital Bratislava was at one time the seat of the Hungarian parliament in the eighteens in the early 19\textsuperscript{th} century, and also lost in the South what is now part of about half of Croatia.


And, also lost, a, a big chunk of Serbia, now attached to Serbia Voina.


So anyway, this happened, in, in the first World War and my mother’s family stayed on in the, under the Romanian authorities, and they were not prevented from peacefully farming, which they had a reasonable size of a state.


and, although there were tensions at times between the Hungarian and the Romanian population, but there was also, quite a lot of, initiative, to have sort of cultural exchanges.


And, some, some of the Hungarian aristocracy stayed on and actually, developed, cultural, circles and, and, movements to try and preserve the Hungarian language and, culture and, and be reasonable, reasonably friendly terms with the, the Romanian authorities that came the second World War and they, us, Pennsylvania was, attached in art back to Hungary as a gift of Hitler to the Hungarian ruling class, and particularly the Hungarian autocrat, admiral.


And, what happened was that, they, the beat of the Jewish population became very much more endangered, the result because, the Romanian regime was greater, more tolerant about the Jewish population and as soon as, the Hungarian, authorities marched into about half of Transylvania, including the area where my family, their, their feet was, much more endangered.


and in the end, first they were thrown out of their homes into temporary accommodation and then, deportation started and although they were warned by some of the, some of the Romanian workers in, in my family’s case, that they should not be, trusting the Hungarian authorities, that would be much safer for them to, try and try and get to Romania and they would be actually, they were offered a ride on illegal routes to a point near the border where they could have, could have crossed over to a greater degree of safety.


they, they declined this offer because there was a member of the family and who, who was, elderly and not well and it was judged that he couldn’t take this, journey and as a result, having turned that down and not believing that there could have, could be some kind of extermination program, they were all, in fact, transported to Auschwitz and 15 members, died.


50 15, what? Five 15 members of his family, of my family, some, some from the southern part of Hungary, but mostly from transfusion.


so that, that in a, in a way very much rhymes for me with the experience of, the gazen people where they are told simply to move on first, firstly to, to move without any transport, of course.


And, and the dilemma and the pain of what to do about family members who are disabled, who cannot take the journey and I mean, the pain of this can hardly be described.


It’s a choice between leaving somebody behind or staying on, exposed to bombing.


What, what’s, what a choice.


But, that, that’s in Sylvania.


In the meantime, in Budapest, the, huge population of Budapest was not immediately, objected to its, although the Germans came in in March 44, that there was a sort of somewhat delayed impact of, of their appearance, but not too long, Mann came in with a German invasion and organized with much Hungarian ha it has to be said, the deportation, the Hungarian Jews from the countryside, and, 400,000 million Jews needed to transported to Auschwitz.


It was the quickest, inauguration program of, of the Holocaust because they, they produced a special platform to receive the Hungarian Jews and deal with them very fast.


in the meantime, there was a delay with dealing with the Budapest Jews.


And, first, well, there were various laws passed ever more severe, limiting what Jews could do and allowed to do, which ended up with, for example, being, being banned from using public transport, trains, et cetera.


And, or, or what you could own.


they went all vehicles or, or even radio.


And, and, and, and then came really, stamping of all Jewish people with having to wear the yellow Star.


it’s about in November, 44, I myself wore the yellow star, although I was seven years old.


I remember my family grew me, meeting women, actually cutting out from yellow material, the star shapes and, and sewing it on.


The next step was to use, were limited to live in, especially designated houses, which were marked with large yellow stars.


Again, obviously that was, preparation to depo deportations.


and we had to live.


it so happens that our flat, which was Central Budapest, was marked with a yellow star, and we didn’t have to move, but others were moved in the building, and I think one or two non-Jewish families were moved out, that, that was, the state for a while, and then the dangers got greater even and at that point, we, our, my family became involved with a rescue group called the Good Shepherd Organization, is started by the Lutheran Church.


It was called the Evangelical Church.


It doesn’t mean that they were evangelical, just a name.


They were a Lutheran, protestant church and the bishop of that church charged one of, one of the very able pastors to organize, help those Jews converted to Christianity, particularly to evangelical Christianity.


and, this man, who by the name of, Gabo Sta, was a great humanitarian, and he started consistent with the instructions and then extended, his mission without any, not any, distinction.


And, this, organization, the Good Shepherd Organization, had four executive directors who actually organized, and one of them was my uncle, obviously on false papers.


He had a, he, he was a, a sort of an intellectual writer, journalist, lawyer, et cetera.


quite a, quite a well-known person in Transylvania.


But by that time he was in Budapest, and he was one of them and another one was from another, Protestant church, the Reformed Church.


We saw the Calvinist.


The, the Calvinist Church was the biggest church in Transylvania, bigger than the Roman Catholics, which in elsewhere in Hung, we were the dominant, dominant force.


so this group, then organized, various homes, and they were supported, supported by the, this Red Cross.


the leader, GA, pastor Galo actually had Swiss connections.


In addition, just coincidentally, family connection to Switzerland and the biggest brewer, one of the biggest brewers in Hungary, the ha Maha family were Swiss related, and they already, or they weren’t Jewish, but they, they escaped at the beginning of the war.


Switzerland vacated their wonderful villa in a Budha Hills, donated it for this purpose through their cousin that was still the, the leader of the group and on one day in October, I was taken up by somebody who was specially sent down from this organization, taken up, to, to be part of this home where everybody was on false names and papers, false papers.


We were pretending to be war refugee Gentiles escaping from the advancing Soviet troops.


So we were in, in relative safety.


But in the meantime, down in the town, and particularly in npa, both Buddha and Feta, the, about the same time, the a fascist party, the Arrow Cross has taken over the government, and they had ODing Milius who were literally hunting Jews in Budapest and come to one of the illustrative stories.


my later, school friend, Julie Li who, after, after Liberation, I was, in the same class with, age eight by then, he was arrested on the streets of Budapest with his mother, and they were trying to get somewhere, I dunno.


And, and they were taken with others right away to the Danube, to a point where the embankment was at a height.


They were lined up and shot straight into the bone and he was, holding his mother’s hand.


He was the same age as me, not seven at that point.


His mother, Stu, stunk right beside him, but he was only shot through the arm.


The river took him down very fast, a few hundred yards.


He scrambled out, somebody seen him on the surrounding houses and, and rescued, and he survived and he appeared as my, home mate, actually my desk, me, because the, the class was organized into rows of double desks and he was my desk mate, a very clever student, quite clearly, very nervous and traumatized by his experience and I, I lost touch with him later, I think later he was identified badly, relatives and taken out of the country.


Another example is what happened to my aunt was later in charge of our group as part of this organization, this sta led organization to Good Shepherd.


I just want to mention that by the end of the war, they built up so many, safe houses, kind of archipelago homes that all together, he saved and this group saved 2000 Jewish children.


And, he’s now celebrated in Hungary as a hero, quite frankly and a, a beautiful monument has been built by one of his, one of his boys who was saved and became a, a noted sculptor.


It is probably the only really successful, Memorial Monument that I know of, actually.


It’s very beautiful. And it stands in Central Budapest in front of Lutheran, main Lutheran Church of Bud Stable.


Anyway, I’m, my Aunt Erie had a niece staying with her at around the time, this is before we all went up to the safe places, and it was time for her to return to her home in the south of Hungary.


so my aunt was accompanying her to rail railway station to go down and say goodbye, just as she was about to.


This cousin Bunk says she was, about to board the train, and she was about 17, 18 years old.


The Arrow Cross asked for her house, arrested her.


Now, I just want to highlight the moment when my, when my aunt had to witness this and could not do anything, and she tried to intervene or in any way to even to say goodbye, he would’ve fallen into the thing.


So she came back from that, and I remember that she had an absolute breakdown, historical hit because of this.


cousin was taken, paid to Auschwitz from, from that arrest, came back it’s, story with a good ending because she did come back and had, established a family afterwards after liberation.


My, my third example of, of these horrors which are not necessarily physical, but the kind of mental pain of, of, of these days, is a boy called David Ack, who ended up in the same home as I was on false name.


And, but he was quite a bit older.


I think he was something like 12, and he didn’t have much connection between various his age groups.


So I didn’t know him personally, but I read his story afterwards.


He was traveling on a tram, a crowded tram with his parents.


And, the trams are fairly primitive.


The driver was not separated into a cabin, but just a bar divided him from the rest and this boy being very curious, went forward in the crowd to stand behind the driver to watch him use the levers and so stop the following.


The Arrow Cross came onto the town and asked for papers, and his parents were arrested.


They were separated physically, and the parents had to make a instant decision.


Again, similar to my aunt, whether to say goodbye or, or try to unite with the, with their son or ignore it, and thereby possibly saving him.


That’s what they decided to do.


They were taken down, the parents were taken down on the next door and taken, pray to Auschwitz.


They didn’t come down.


And, a few stops on, David suddenly realized he was on his own.


That’s it. And eventually somebody took him up into this home when I, where I was also and survived.


So anyway, these are just examples that are not so obvious aspects of the Holocaust, what I call the invisible pains that surround, or all the killings that, that we do know about.


Those two, we’ve had a few conversations about, we can cut 20 minutes or so, and until we can get a discussion going, yeah, you’ve spoke to for more than 20 minutes, but it’s up to you what you wanna do.


I just want to make one more point about the antisemitism and Hungary, because it’s quite interesting, history that antisemitism was always latent in, in, in Hungary, but it came to surface from time to time and with different degrees of violence and the big question is, it is it is claimed by the Zionists even today that antisemitism is incurable.


That it is latent in, in certain places, and the only escape for Jews is to go to Israel, that that cannot be a solution to it in locally.


Now, Hungary’s experience is different, because the Austrian Hungarian empire encouraged accommodation and, and, integration of, of the Hungarian Jews into society.


So theoretically worked very peacefully, and you could have professional careers, it was successful.


But there has been from time to time, of, of antisemitism, the question is, can that eventually be cured? But I, i, I think can.


but, that, that, that’s a big question and, and, subject of debate generally in Hungary, there was a little influence of the Zionists.


there was, there were some Zionists, but they were regarded as somewhat rish and particularly the educated Hungarian Jews intention was almost uniformly to integrate and actually some, like my father even advocated assimilation.


And, and that is my experience. I just wanted to add that.


But, the passion is, time to time.


It does erupt like in the revolution of 19 3 56, it erupted again, but not with the same ferocity and the question is, over time, can this be by education and, long periods of living together be resolved? And I think it can be, I’m optimistic on that side, but it’s, it’s completely opposed to the Zionist to you.


That’s what I want. Thanks, Steven.


I dunno about, my head is spinning with all the ideas and historian and come out in this is this, this past hour.


So, I think it would be great if we had lots of questions and some phrase, get a sort of healthy discussion going.


I’m not gonna let anyone speak as long as you did, but, questions or comments? I think Agnes was first put her hand up, so go for it.


I’d like to add something to Steven’s, speech.


and then I have a question from you.


I just feel very strongly that even though it’s just very small, gathering of people, it needs, needs to be emphasized that the rules of the Budapest ghetto were liberated by the Soviet army.


100,000 of them were saved.


My mother and I were liberated by the Soviet army in Russia, which my mother wrote very movingly in her memoirs.


So I think to be said that that was it, and all these people, they were amazing.


But what the Soviet army achieved was, we need to back I completely agree with you.


No, but you didn’t mention it.


So, and to be mentioned again and again.


Again, my question, sorry.


Can I just add something that, we were at, towards the end completely engulfed in the fight, the, climatic fight in Budapest between the Soviet army and, and, the, the German, defenders so called and we had many experiences, the result that also rhymes with the Gaza, fighting and, and, experiences of the people there and it helps me to sympathize even more, also gone through siege and fighting not as long as they did.


Can I ask my question from you? mentioned the Irish, aspect of genocide and I’m just wondering, is it possible that perhaps there too, the land was the main aim? I’ve never been to Ireland, but apparently it’s beautiful.


all the other genocides and colonialism, it’s land grabbing, it’s land grabbing now.


And, and I just wanted, the short answer is different.


You said it was special that that Irish were deemed as rubbish already in the first place.


But I just wonder whether the motivation was the land.


A big part of the motivation was about the land and not entirely on the model of the Western American settlement in relation to who was going to own the land.


So very important part of British colonial policy allowing was to dispossess Catholics and ensure the land be owned by Protestants.


And, they did this most extremely, of course in the north where they introduced a whole new set of population from Scotland, become the people of Alster who own that land and across the rest of Ireland, especially in the eastern central regions, they dispossessed the Catholics and put in place English landowners who then earned the population to renting families who rented their land.


From, from that the landowners owned the land and then made money from rents.


It was a, was a land related project. Yeah.


Thank you. And I just said if you do ask a question, please either speak loudly and clearly so that people on the zoom can hear or come and sit here.


Not that you’ll be in the screen, but you can sit here and the microphone now will pick you up.


So neither it’d be so fine in the back there or we can repeat it.


Yes, thank you. I’ll start. I wanna put a, what you might call a len and the, the capital interpretation, I’m not going to deny about, but I’m speak, look at Lenin’s appeal, the high stage of capitalism, and then you ask, what was capitalism do mass modification and then you can remember what grin, in, in, in, in, in the Nazi fascist psychosis, they wanted to dehumanized and completely commodifying it, sort of bizarre and theatrical fashion and then you think, what do imperialists like to, they like to reshuffle land rights.


That’s a form of resource looting what imperialists, practically activities resource loo destroy.


So basically gonna destroy all system, indigenous economic structures, turn all people into modified arians, and then they finished extract excess labor.


Then they wish to destroy iCal forms and indeed, I want to make a British in India managed to kill some between 50 to a hundred million people and walk up about \$45 trillion pounds in today’s gold value.


So you’ve gotta see what imperialism and genocide and fascism is really like means look what the British man to do by the India and of course what the LG man to dogo and, so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, I want to generalize the horrors what we Nazi extermination that re colleagues.


But see, but instead of trying something exceptional, it’s not exceptional, it’s of seen, but the European supremacism capitalist, imperialism patriarchal system of commodification resource looting land that extermination people for the pleasure of extermination.


You need to remember there is a lot of narcissistic, blatant and delights pure killing people.


It’s not, not a, it’s, I would say it’s march out Africa because Popul nation think that’s not, now can you explain a bit better for people that’s even missing all the nuances of everything that here, okay, so in a nutshell, but if you came here short nutshell would be great.


If you wanna start dragging outta Africa into it, we’ll have a, and so the genocide, one excellent perspective on the Nazi fascist genocide is because it is a form of patriarchal capitalist imperial modification of people, which has taken to one of its ultimate forms.


In order to be properly commodified, you had to be exterminating the gas chambers, then you could be converted into marketable commodities.


People delight. Now I would invite you to think about that perspective as illuminating.


You respond to respond, you say yes, no, you can, I think just say I just made, my only response really is just sort of a more, I dunno, very empirical one, which is it appears historically that if you are functional for capitalism, right, cruel, if you are wage laborer or even slave laborer, which is making profit, at some level the system will keep you alive.


In fact, if you are a skilled worker and very useful to the system, it might even treat you quite well.


But if you are living in a world where you are no of no use to people in power, the people making profit at any state that wants to make use of you, then you can be just, your life becomes worthless and that was certainly the case, of, many people in Eastern Europe under the Nazi occupation.


They considered that region to be overpopulated from their point of view.


They wanted, have increased industrialization in western Europe and to have the Soviet Union as it was, supplying food and therefore you didn’t need to have industrialized cities like, lending grad style and redley could just be wiped out.


Everyone could be killed. and unfortunately that capitalist logical, though it’s politics is, is is quite different.


I’m not making direct comparisons, that would just be silly.


continues to this day.


The obvious example is now in Gaza where unlike many other colonial colonial situations, population in Gaza is considered by western capitalism, where any capitalist system as superfluous, they, no one wants to make money outta employing gardens to make or do a thing not even in the cheapest sort of a production facilities and that’s why at some level in our magic western culture, their society’s being wiped out.


Just, it just doesn’t matter.


Whereas if they were people who were, say, I dunno, working in Vietnam or other in the past, but impoverished countries, but are now very much part of capitalist production, there will be people who want to make money outta them and protect them and they’d be privileged and I unfortunately, although there are many differences between our world today and that of 19 forces occupied Europe, there’s this unfortunate capitalist logic, which I think at least coincides with what you’re trying to say.


I will let, is it Chris next? I think Chris, yeah.


Okay. I’m kind of taking off from that pause zoom.


Well, I mean, it’s just a question really.


It’s just that, I mean, the answer is the elephant in the room.


This is the general side that’s happening right? As we here and, and all three of you, you’ve been so, so delicate, so, so careful, um to mention it and sort of not mention it and I, I understand it’s great cause we have, we have too much direct politics about stuff going on.


It was absolutely wonderful all three of you that to go back into the past and your own experience and everything.


But just, I just inviting you to say a little bit more about this irony that the victims of the, of the, the Holocaust Sea Wolf being talking about, are perpetrators.


And, and, and of course we’re not allowed to say it, we’re not allowed to say that net and these criminals are Nazis.


I mean, it is actually, I have no difficulty in saying it.


Genocidal operators and you could say the entire Zionist project is a fe colonials project Exactly on the model I was describing.


Yeah. people who want the land establish a, a logic, a part of intellectual or would be intellectual narrative that says there is nobody there, or if they are there, they don’t really deserve it.


Therefore, we can lay claim to it.


Once we have lay claim to it, then we are under attack, therefore, we defend ourselves and we become the, the murderer of relatives land we’ve taken, I mean, the, the world is, and, I think the elephant can be laid firmly on the table.


the Zionists, have long insisted on creating a taboo about any comparison with their behavior and the Nazis behavior and I think it’s a taboo, which must not be accepted, broken as often as possible, because there is absolutely no reason why it could, there’s no, no logical argument why it could not be used.


Those comparison when they apply.


Well, I think I was, can ask, I ask if there’s Zoom questions as well, but Just about how we got here, I mean, mark Mark’s been very quiet about what he’s been doing.


He’s been actually finding, Jewish victims of the public and actually making it part of the, of the movement in support of Palestine.


I don’t, I may, there may be people here don’t know that, that’s why. Okay. I’ll Just say something very quick about our group, which is we, several of us have already spoken.


I, I’m in this group, survivors and against Genocide, of which we have two actual survivors, Steven and Agnes, who we’ve both heard from and many others of us who are sons and daughters of survivors with a whole range of different backgrounds are you, as you would expect with a bunch of people from Jewish backgrounds.


We disagree politically about all sorts of things, and we’re all happily start having rows about that in here amongst ourselves here.


But, but, we do agree on one thing and Agnes now wants to make an immediate response.


So I let her, I can response. Go for it.


Agnes, my latest research, I’m hoping to be able to, Israel is not really a Jewish state anymore.


It’s not necessarily that the oppressed became the oppressors, which deeply upset me, but there are more non-Jew going in now, and in fact an ultra-orthodox Jewish paper complaint that more non-Jews get Israeli citizenship these days than Jews.


I’m delighted about it because I don’t want to feel that my fellow Jews became what they became.


But I think that’s quite an important, thing.


And, and the Israelis justified by saying that if you have one grandparent who was Jewish, be the similarity with the Nazi Jewish laws.


If you had one grandparent who was Jewish, you can come, you can become an Israeli citizen and you can bring all your non-Jewish ations and they don’t check on that one grandparent.


The Nazis, they did check, and when they got, they killed people who had, were Jewish grandparents.


Anyway, I, I just want to say that it’s not as bad as I feared and you fear that the oppressors, the oppressors became oppressors.


Many of them, yes.


But now it’s more anybody who, it’s not free for all who hates the Arabs and who wants a cheap life.


Yay. I’ve got a very quick story and then a question for both you and Steve.


back in the 1980s, I walked through northern Germany.


I met an s captain who had been on the Russian front.


Somehow, he and I amazing, but we clicked and it seemed to me, he told me his story.


I told him my story, and there was a big similarity between our stories and it seemed to me that he saw himself as an actor on stage.


It was uncanny.


and I came to realize that I also was acting a story on my stage.


So that’s the story. back in the sixties, I was part of Israeli culture and I swallowed the brainwashing left, right, and center and even now I have difficulty in escaping from my emotional attachment to that culture.


so I’d like observations from each of you about that problem that I have or how to escape my emotional connection to Israeli culture as it was then.


I’m not sure what you mean by Israeli culture, of course, but I did live in Israel for six, but if you are referring to an emotional attachment to the idea of Israel, then I don’t you ever get away? Mm-hmm. I think anyone who’s been brought up under the shadow of a holocaust, the shadow of the genocides who’s been part the stories even has been narrating, feels an attachment to the idea of Israel, that they should be somewhere that is ultimately safe.


It, deeply embedded within me, and I’m sure within many people of my background, the challenge, of course, is to recognize that this is an emotional attachment.


This has gone holistically crazy, of course, and, and has to be challenged on the ground and that’s what I, I mean, I would say that from my experience, I never had that dilemma be because, my family were non observant, non-religious, and, I was entirely brought up and completely, involved in the Hungarian culture, Hungarian poetry, literature, music, et cetera and I never had this, problem of, reconciling in fact, because of Hungary having turned communist, country, a Stalinist communist country.


All religions were totally suppressed and, even religious distinctions banned and the whole question of, the story of, and the crimes of antisemitism in Hungary were swept under the, so the, my only experience of, of, Israel, and, that part of the story is when I visited relatives in the sixties, I played and I was horrified at what I found, about the, complete racism in my own family.


Sometimes people who had themselves gone through the Holocaust, in one case, a cousin who came back from Auschwitz, my aunt who behaved extremely bravely during the Holocaust in Budapest and ended up in Haifa, completely racist and the whole atmosphere of the place was, was like that, not just within my family and, and racist and militarism and milar.


So when I saw that, I just turned again, turned completely against it.


So I never had to reconcile a happy phase, if you like, of, of, Zionism or, or attachment.


Never had it quite lucky.


Thank you. I would like to say a couple of things.


Okay. So I knew I was good. Okay.


So, it might be interesting to hear the perspective of a younger person.


So I remember in 20 13, 20 14, I was, in my last year of school and in history lessons we were studying about, second World War, the Holocaust, 20\textsuperscript{th} century history and then I saw on the news, photos of Russian tanks, entering the Caribbean, Caribbean peninsula and I had, I had this massive moment of shock, like, oh my god, history is now like this bridge between the present moment and what I’m studying about in school and point my, my whole twenties.


So I’ve been expecting World War iii and so, I don’t know, 5, 6, 7 years later after this moment, I was, visiting a friend’s house and we were having a conversation with her mother.


I dunno about what? And I just started sharing that.


Oh, wow. One day I imagine myself as a resistance fighter, I’m so inspired by those women, for example, who would go out on their bicycle and cut some phone lines to, to, how should I say, to cut, to cut off Nazi communications.


I was saying, oh, I really see myself as such a figure one day and mother told me, okay, it’s fine.


I’m listening to you speak, and I feel this makes sense of responsibility and I feel like history is putting such a weight on us and when you were sharing about, was it your uncle? Was it your uncle who now, now there is a statue of and managed to save children? No, this was this, Lutheran pastor, grand Pastor. Okay.


I got a bit distracted.


So when you are Talking about this figure, I was thinking, well, each one of us has the responsibility to become a hero and to be remembered by future generations.


It’s very accessible to us.


And, yeah, I feel this strong, this heavy sense of responsibility and like, I’m not doing enough.


But at the same time, this shouldn’t stop me to continue to organize with people and to find common channels because we’ll mm-hmm.


I think we’ll have plenty of opportunities to save life in the, to save lives in the years to come.


Mm-hmm. I’ve become a bit desensitized with, like seeing, pictures and videos and, accounts of the genocide in Gaza.


But now the new thing is every day seeing how ice in the states are snatching up people from the streets and it’s very inspiring to see how neighbors communities are organizing to resist.


It is. Yeah. And This is, thank you and this is the work, like I, this is what I will take from this talk, the inspiration to do this work with neighbors, with friends, to organize networks of resistance to save lives.


Yeah, yeah. At school.


That’s in Bulgar, isn’t it? You’re at school in Bulgar.


Clarify. Yeah, yeah.


sorry.


I, finished my undergrad degree in anthropology last year, and I felt during those three years I learned more and more evidence that showed that to me, humans have really evolved to succeed through being social and making bonds, genuinely.


but obviously it’s undeniable.


We have this terrifying capacity for dehumanization and it’s something I can’t make really make sense of.


so I think, and also linking to what you were saying about how best to resist, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts either through your lives or your research and, the most effective strategies for countering dehumanization that people have in inside them in their minds.


Mm-hmm. If that makes sense.


A big question through action. Hold on. Anything now? Not to put up with injustice and, and, and education.


Yeah, well, education by just being involved with culture and reading and so on.


and that joining in the sort of demonstrations we, we have, talking to people who are potentially sympathetic to this, but not yet active and trying Get Them to be active because yes, it is important not to turn the other way.


I think that’s one of the, lessons of the Holocaust, in my country, in Hungary, there’s too many people took the comfortable way out and there were some absolutely outstanding heroes as well, but few, very few and the thing is to simply be intolerant of injustice and what was the other part of what you were asking, which is how do you deal with it in yourself as opposed to relations people around you? And I suspect that many people, many of us have to face that challenge and I think the challenge begins with acknowledging there is a dark side, many of us and the question is, where does that dark side come from? I think trying to track acknowledging and owning the dark part of oneself and then tracking it is the only possible way we deal with it, I think and also, could I, could I just say, it works me anyway, I, I’m sure everybody knows that, but whenever I see an injustice, something I don’t agree with, I just put myself in what if this person was my, my was my brother, it’s my brother and that makes me really close and even my, I dunno, sure I have dark side as well, but the empathy and the fact I can feel person grief then helps me maybe that I in the back if this, I hope not that, I think that is important and then just if, when I hear tv that they say, oh, they are not, it’s like they’re not human beings.


People in Gaza, they are, they are, there are a lot of terrorists there, or all stories you said these are subhuman these people, so we can just kill them or get rid of them.


That moment I stop and I say, is this true? Is it right? What if these people that are dying, were part of my family, these are people, these are human.


So start thinking like that or feeling like that and then act and then join other people and neighbors and friends and make them, I think the change work has to start from within ourselves, and then afterwards you reach out to other people to help you.


I mean, that’s what works for me anyway, some holistic points about, I mean, just wanna say, first of all, I’m an Australian, so I very much lots of Australians don’t know our own history.


In fact, I think that teenagers should go and live in the outback for a couple of months as part of their education to see the world that they never see when they’re living in Sydney.


Lots of Australians have never ever met, although there are plenty of them even in the cities, but they may not know they’re indigenous.


I’m also the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.


And, I’ve always been actively engaged.


But I, I have to say, while I have, I lived in Israel, I was married to Israel, perhaps that’s what has put me off the idea of having any link into Israel.


But I, I have to say, I do feel, I, I, I, what Gaza has done has ignited my Jewishness, not my connection to Israel.


I have never organized as a Jew.


Most people who’ve known me didn’t even know I was Jewish.


Even though I have to say I have had my DNA done.


There is no blood in me as an Ashkenas interview.


I am 99.9\% from Russia and Poland.


I’m not. I have had my DNA done, and I am a Jew as far back as I know on both sides of my family and I feel like what Gaza has done has acknowledged my Jewishness and I feel it’s important for me and other Jewish people who are, I went from being a Zionist.


I live in Israel. I was such a Zionist, a working class Jew.


I was so, so imbued in Zionism.


I am, to date the only person I know who paid for their own airfare as an 18-year-old.


I got a job when I was 13 because I knew I really wanted to go to Israel, that my parents could never afford to pay my airfare and I paid my own airfare to go with Hubble, which is a Jewish youth group when I was 18.


So I can tell you I was a rabid Zionist.


I went from being a Zionist to a non Zionist to now I have to say I’m a total anti proud, loud anti.


I’m very actively engaged and what I wanna say to you is I am, I’m compelled, compelled by my Jewishness enraged, but not just about what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on in this country of our own government.


Yeah. And I was so compelled that despite still working, I’m one of these older women that missed out on the intention.


I’m still working. I had to take part in the defender jury’s action and so I did the rest of a couple of times.


So I’m intending to do another related action.


No, it all excellent.


If anybody’s and wants to get involved in a very little action where we are testing the law, please come and talk to me.


We don’t know whether we’ll be that would be, and I think, and I tell you why, because it’s in that, that I have a meaning in my life and having a meaning of my life enables me to feel optimistic.


I I don’t mean as a positive, as like positivity, like what is going on now is I do, I’m terrible and we don’t even have the words subscribe, what’s going on.


Mm-hmm. But actually, I do feel optimistic.


I’m, I’m nearly 70, but I feel really optimistic in my lifetime that things are gonna change.


I do feel like that. I’ve never felt like that.


It’s because I’m actively engaged.


So I would say do whatever you can do.


You have to reflect, I think that’s true on our own stuff, but I think be engaged.


Whatever you can do, whatever anybody can do, do it.


cause, as a Jew and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, the question I always asked myself was, would you have given away your last potato in the concentration camp? And what would you have done in Nazi Germany? And now I know, I think I would’ve done something and so now is the time because it’s not just Gaza.


We are living in an authoritarian regime.


Jeremy, Jeremy is my ny He doesn’t even tell anybody where his constituents office is.


Yeah. I mean, it’s, I really highly recommend it reading Paul Holden’s book board, if you haven’t.


Sorry, I don’t really have a question, but I just wanted to say, don’t include your optimism, because if you do How think, I just wanted to say about, you talked about your anthropology course.


You learned about human beings being a so, so, so social species and in a sense, it is our sociability that can be perverted to turn us to do the terrible things that history shows we’re capable, capable, we’re capable of doing.


species, species genocides are a group of people who, who, who feel sociable towards each other, each other, but in a perverted sense have turned, other human beings into something other that’s less than human, that’s subhuman.


So that is the, that’s the thing we need to overcome as a species and I’m a so socialist, and I think if you, overcome the, perversity of cap of capitalism and class society, that is possible to envisage, the possibility of building a society in which we have empathy with all human beings all over the globe.


just on the question of, oppressed people becoming oppressors.


I also was born in Australia, south Australia.


My, I was Australian. My, Australian ancestors were, were Irish.


And, and someone who’s looked into the family history, has seen that they came over in the early 18, fifth, fifth.


So they were part of the exodus from Ireland as a result of the gen mess approach of the Bri Bri British government to the Irish in the potato.


But you, once they became Australians, they considered to themselves as Australians, albeit Irish Australians and they still had sort of a, a, an empathy.


We, I Irish and so on, but they, I don’t know what, whether my family, participated in any outrage against the indigenous PE equally in Australia, but I do know that enough of them had very racist attitudes ditch people in Australia.


So that, that, that, that, that’s just all through history.


You see the same thing happening and you were talking about you have a press p equally Europe going to North America, acquire, acquire, acquire some lands, and then they want to defend that against the indigenous people who they see as the other, and wild and, and animals or whatever.


This is just something that, it’s a, it’s, it’s something we need to overcome.


We need to build systems, a system which overcomes that kind of those oppressive relationships.


Just one question to Mark, actually, you, your first introduction, you were talking about the genocide or attitude you, of the Nazis linking that to their, anti working, that fear of the organized working in class.


I’m not sure.


I mean, we can perhaps discuss this in controversial, not sure that works.


They didn’t carry out to ide against the German, were in class.


It’s much more satisfy, or it seems much more explan explanatory power, what Hugh was saying about the importation of colonial, the Nazi Holocaust in Europe with a kind of, reflection of colonial attitudes, which the Germans themselves had carried out, but also other European, power in Africa and North America, Australian, so on.


So you see that those generalized happening around the world, and then it gets reflected back into Europe in the sec exec World War and the extreme circumstances of that, I mean, it’s, there’s still stuff to be explained, but that, that seems to have more explanatory power than the attitudes towards the work and plus, as that was directed to me, i, I, I completely agree with you in the sense that, that that aspect of German imperialism earning Europe into sort of conditions that European powers did, were, do, when they were born Africa or, or India or wherever.


But I think there are that, that there are, there’s a level of brutality.


There are particular aspects of what the Nazis do and to do, which I think needs other layers of explanation.


and although, well, to to continue the point I was making before, no ruling in class even run by the craziest fascists or nuts, wants to exterminate the people who are making anything new.


They’re not gonna exterminate their own workforce.


I mean, who know who the Jews, they exterminated sections of the workforce, if you like.


Yes. But they also freed up food and housing and other resources while they were doing that.


So there’s a controversy about that.


But what I was trying to argue and not arguing it all clearly, I, I confess, was that, that the, the, the Nazi regime made a decision to starve huge sections based in Europe, in order to free up food for the German working class so they could remain fed during the war and there was then no danger of the famines and the disease that happened in the first world war, and one of the main factors that led to the unrest, which led to the defeat and the, the revolution that ended the first World war and that paranoid that Hitler said, we’re not gonna let  the German working class be hungry again.


This is why they, they absolutely were determined to kill tens of millions in Eastern Europe to supply that food so they could withstand the British blockades and what I’m trying to say is there is a material explanation for the Holocaust, as well as ideological and other explanations and said, including one you are suggesting, which is this colonial, values coming back from Africa going into Europe.


It’s a different, but there’s something about the viciousness of the Nazi regime, which I think is rooted in that counter-revolutionary terror that just fear, unless they take things to an extreme, there’s gonna be this backlash and the Nazis and the type root gallery power entitled this, they’re very classic and good work.


We into that.


There’s the math psychology of have complexity.


Are you, what do you, well, how much time, more time do we have? Well, well, we can carry on to half, about half pass, I would say.


But I, nobody’s gonna swear us out now lost, but I just wanted to give Zoom a chance to say something.


Mary, did you wanna ask something Mary? Yes, thank you, Camilla.


I was just, wondering if you could develop a little bit on tracking the dark side.


could you elaborate a little bit on this idea? I just wanna make sure I understand.


So say it louder, Mary.


she, Mary’s asking who to develop on tracking the dark side of people or maybe yourself or situations.


Penny, do you wanna say anything more or that what Mary’s interested in in this? Yeah, difficult to speak about it briefly, but I think question that, that there raise the, the realization that there is this extraordinary darkness within people and this, what do we do about this response that came to my mind was we look at teaching ourselves and we carry in ourselves the trauma and the grief and the anger of our ancestors, and especially our parents and that those of us who are children of violence and there’s the violence were created against us by troubled parents or by the violence was perpetrated against our people, or people like us by forces like the Nazis or colonial, terminators, then that carries into it, reds and rivers, streams of darkness that can converge into a very troubled place inside one.


But the deal with that troubled place, the only way I can think of is to identify all those streams and rivers, where they’re coming from and what has been done to whom that has reached.


Mary, you didn’t wanna say anything else, Mary, because of your own background history, did you No, I was just wondering if Hug was, going to relate it to some, experience with, hunter gatherers he spent time with.


Thank you very much for the answer.


I, I’d like to add something to what Hugh has just said.


I came to Israel looking for values that I could believe in that I did not get from my family upbringing.


Mm-hmm. So I came to Israel, I felt accepted by the culture, and in return I could accept the culture.


So it was, it was a perfect mix, but the danger was that there, there was no motivation to think about things.


I accepted it, it accepted me. You don’t ask why am I happy? There’s not happy. So my offering is to develop ways of asking questions.


That’s my suggestion.


I think the difference between knowing and not knowing, because in the residential schools, for instance, in Canada, there was generations of people who didn’t know that that’s what the government was doing and they don’t feel they need to.


The government that wasn’t honest with, I don’t agree with that actually.


I think there were plenty of people who knew what was going on in deep care and I’m also from Australia, I and Noel Pears and Australia refers to Australian Aboriginal people as the least thought in the country and if you don’t believe that, what happened in the referendum three years ago, everyone said that didn’t want aboriginal people when the referendum had the constitution.


Now we know, we know the communication networks that we have, the social networks do we have the information that we have, nobody doesn’t know what’s happening.


It’s the same thing. Climate change.


We know what’s happening.


We know that’s happening right now.


What would you do if you knew what, what, what might you have done if you didn’t know what we found out? But we all now know exactly what’s happening and what we do now with that knowledge is what defines whether or not, or living, living with your darkness, acceptance that we’re trying to find a way to help us.


All right, so that’s the, we, that’s we, it’s not the first time.


I mean, people knew the Vietnam War that were making Asian orange, how many million pounds have we dropped is month and so it’s not, we have a unique four by seven access, but the idea that in the name of Western civilization or European supremacist capitalist imperialism, we have not really exterminated people’s, but done it The great glee figure in Dr.


Strange love. And so it’s, it’s not, it’s not unique to say that we now see it, we just see it with very real time and there’s a, not just, bill Helm rice book, but also M Scott Peck’s work on narcissism and the dark triad of narcissistic macve and sadists.


I, I think it’s very useful to regard what the Nazi fascists, particularly their deliberate program, destroying the status of the individual.


I think, particularly Dr.


Girls, there was also no fool, just fool.


They, it be set out to destroy a lot of environment, sorry, enlightenment, individualism, barriers, releasing what I would call extremely powerful, largely subconscious collective psychodynamics and whether or not they quite knew what they were doing, they might have thought they in effect unleashed these huge narcissistic sadistic achillion subconscious powers, which then I would say just selected for the, for reasons, the brave friends and then the ultimate otherwise ated.


I’m just very glad to be here.


Larry was Talking about your experiences maybe with hunter gatherers and how that really, I was wondering if anything came to you with Regards to that.


Yeah, I mean a huge amount, I think to understand the genocide of colonial history, you need to understand the relationship between agricultural frontiers and hunter gatherers in that the just dispossession of hunter gatherers is the story of colonialism and the murder that goes with colonialism has concentrated in a huge way on hunter gatherers.


Just to put in, there is a total discrepancy of the understanding of ownership, which is a completely different concept among hunting peoples compared to farming peoples.









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The Ted K Archive





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Stephen Kapos, Hugh Brody \& Mark Etkind

A Holocaust survivor and an anthropologist oppose all genocides (Seminar)



20\Slash{}01\Slash{}2026


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