Keynote Address

of

MARK WEINTRAUB

Authored by Manuel Prutschi Executive Director of

Canadian Jewish Congress National Community Relations Committee

and Mark Weintraub National Chair of Community Relations of

Canadian Jewish Congress

to

International Citizens’ Forum on War Crimes and Redress: Seeking Reconciliation and Peace for the 21^st Century

Conference Day One, Opening Session

December 10, 1999

Tokyo, Japan

“Accountability, Justice and the Importance of Memory

in the ‘Era of War’”

Distinguished Representatives of Governments, Honourable members of the Organizing Committee, fellow participants, ladies and gentlemen:

Today we come together to begin sharing a deeply painful part of Asian history; but we are also ourselves making history today in more ways than one. We at Canadian Jewish Congress are indeed honoured by the invitation to address such a committed and esteemed group of world citizens in this great city of Tokyo.

The writer Iris Chung, in the subtitle to her book The Rape of Nanking, referred to this massacre as “forgotten”.” But she, in the very act of writing her book, and so many of you here, through your tireless work, have ensured that what happened at Nanking no longer is forgotten.

“Zachor! “Remember”. Zachor is the Hebrew word for remembrance. It is one of the central commandments which a Jew is required to live by. “To recall and relive,” in the words of Vera Schwarcz, author of a work on Chinese and Jewish cultural memory, is the only way one can, one must, approach catastrophe.

Through memory, we honour the wishes of the victims that they never be forgotten. Through memory we ensure that those who were slaughtered in innocence will never be forgotten, each as a complex human universe, who lived with achievements, great and small and all, with untold potential. Memory connects us with the victims and thereby engages us in the sacred act of revival, returning all to a form of life so at least their torment and murder will never be shrouded in oblivion.

The act of remembering also joins us with the survivors in a collective acknowledgement of their suffering. Those of us who are of the second and even third generations, by rekindling memory, link ourselves to our survivor parents and grandparents, broadening our understanding and strengthening our love for them.

Memory, however, must not only be internalized. It must also be externalized. The victims and the survivors must be given a voice and that voice, though it may start as a whisper, must end up as a lion’s roar. That is how memory can lead to history. Rekindling memory and the writing of history, coupled with advocacy, are the only possible paths which can lead the successor governments of perpetrator states to acknowledge the past and to confront it honestly. Only as a result of such accountability can there come sincere remorse so that the past may be redeemed from absolute evil.

Memory however must not be limited to the extremes of victims and criminal perpetrators. It also must include the righteous. The German John Rabe, for example who, as the “ good man of Nanking,” defied the Japanese Imperial Army and saved thousands of the city’s Chinese inhabitants. Or the Japanese Senpo Sugihara who, as Consul in Kovno, Lithuania in 1940, also in defiance of his government, issued thousands of visas saving over 31,000 Jewish refugees. Or the Chinese Consul in Vienna, Dr. Feng Shan Ho who between 1937 and 1940, once again without permission from his government issued thousands of life-saving transit visas to Jews desperate to flee from Austrian and Nazi persecution.

Just recently at the Holocaust Centre in Vancouver, Canada, my city, Dr. Ho’s efforts were honoured with an exhibit and memorialization of his simple yet majestic words:

“I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be.”

Ladies and gentlemen, as we gather here in remembrance and advocacy, let us be inspired by the Rabes and the Sugiharas, the Wallenburgs and the Dr. Ho’s of this world. Let us, as members of the indivisible human family, enter into a partnership on a mission of tikkun olam, the Hebrew words for “repairing the world.” And how badly indeed does this world of ours need repair!

The organizers of this Conference have referred to the 20^th century as the “Era of War.” This is indeed true, though, with respect, it actually does not go far enough in capturing the monumentally tragic human experience of these past 100 years, a record of inhumanity perhaps unmatched in the history of our species.

The mid-19^th century began, with the seizure of the African continent by European imperial powers. In one recently documented example of genocide, European fortune hunters, as part of Belgium’s colonial policy, devastated the fertile Congo River lands which may have resulted in the slaughter of more than 10 million Africans

In the Ottoman Empire’s Turkey, the so called ethnic cleansing resulted in the effective murder of up to 1 ½ million Armenians between 1915 and 1923. Hitler's remark, “Who today remembers the destruction of the Armenians?” was made in the context of the destruction by the Nazis of the European Jewish community. It demonstrates with full clarity that the lack of response by the world community to one set of crimes against humanity only encourages mass murderers into believing, quite correctly, that they can get away with other such crimes.

This century has witnessed the suppression of cultural and religious infrastructures and the deaths of millions in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s Communist China through various governmental policies. The world watched the ethnic killings in Nigeria-Biafra and the mass murders of the Cambodian middle class by the Pol Pot regime in the countryside killing fields. We have seen the murders of countless Tutsis in the massacres in Rwanda and most recently the destruction of large parts of East Timor’s population. As I speak, the massive persecution of Christians continues unchecked in the Sudan and an entire city once again, this time in Chechyna is targeted for complete bombing while the sick and elderly are trapped.

As a Canadian, it is my responsibility to raise the horrendous mistreatment endured by members of the Canadian Armed Forces at the hands of the Japanese military, after the fall of Hong Kong, on Christmas Day, 1941. They were confined in brutal prison camps, where they were summarily executed or subjected to starvation or beatings, with many dying as a result of their captivity.

As a Canadian speaking here in Japan, I must as well refer to the great injustice inflicted on Canadians of Japanese ancestry between 1941 and 1949. The Canadian government forcibly removed this community from their homes, imprisoned them in intern camps, and confiscated and liquidated their property.

Many of you know so much better than I the results of the explosion of Japanese military and economic imperialism in Asia. Millions of civilians in China and other parts of Asia were killed and millions of others were subjugated under brutal military rule. The degradations suffered are incalculable not least of which the horrors suffered by Asian women who were forced into sexual slavery, the live human medical experimentation and the use of mortal and disfiguring biological warfare. The rape of Nanking was not an isolated incident of war policy gone awry. It was only a precursor to the more comprehensive enslavement and destruction of massive numbers of innocent civilians. By reason of your activism, which in part has been inspired by the courage of the survivors and the penitence of a few brave former Japanese soldiers, the international community is now finally beginning to take notice of the trauma inflicted on Asia during those dark years.

In the conflict in Europe, the Holocaust, or Shoah in Hebrew, was the culmination of two thousand years of anti-Semitism which subjected Jews to the teachings of hate, forced conversion, torture, expulsion, massacre, and finally under Hitler’s regime – annihilation. With the assistance of technology the Nazis devised instruments of mass murder par excellence: the extermination camps. And dehumanization did not end with death. The bodies of Jewish victims were treated as industrial and consumer products to be mined for their by-products,- gold crowns from teeth, hair, skin and bones. And all of this was conceived by one of the most so-called advanced of European societies

The Nazis were animated by an ideology at whose very centre was Jew hatred.

Germany, one of the most modern, best educated and technically competent nations in the world, with the complicity of collaborator states, enlisted its massive human and material resources, for the singular purpose of annihilating the entire Jewish people simply because of who they were. Every aspect of German society was complicit, including the legal and medical professions, the major business and industrial enterprises, academic institutions, the military forces and the civil service.

Of course we also now know that simple greed, the prospect of dispossessing an entire people of its wealth, was a powerful motivator resulting in the largest mass robbery certainly in modern history.

Two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population including over two million babies and children were destroyed along with a two thousand year culture. But the Nazi murder machine did not stop there. It included amongst other incomprehensible tragedies, the Nazi brutalization of the Polish nation, the attempted genocide of the Gypsies, and the enslavement and killing of Slavic peoples. As the treasured Holocaust survivor and writer Eli Wiesel so rightly put it, “All Jews were victims, but not all victims were Jews.”

The memory and history of these last one hundred years, make for a sorrowful list of mass murders and our enumeration is by no means all-inclusive.

And as in the case of the Holocaust, it is not only precious lives but the entire complex of an ancient culture which is destroyed as part of a systematic campaign and which is lost to humanity forever. It compels us to refer, as the genocide scholar Israel Charny has, to “the rotten cannibalism and sadistic cruelty that is, tragically, a serious part of human nature and potential.”

Yet we know there is that noble and altruistic potential to being human which compels us to reject pessimism as the final answer. Our presence here is a testament to our collective belief that even after unmitigated evil there is the possibility of redemption. And we must resist those who listen to our century’s litany of horrors and argue that every war-related death is identical. For the innocent who were made refugees and haphazardly murdered, the precise and unique animating historical and political forces are irrelevant. But for those of us continuing to live and advocating for human rights, it is vital that we do not capitulate to the belief that everyone is equally guilty – for if everyone is guilty, then ultimately no one is guilty. Relativism and rationalization are too often used by those who would prefer not to face the past.

Redemption from evil through atonement is very much a Jewish belief. The most sacred holy day of the Jewish calendar is Yom Kippur –the Day of Atonement-.It is a day wherein each Jew annually takes stock of his actions and atones for misdeeds as a prelude for a reconciliation with God. Peoples and States in the same way must take account of their past, reviewing it and confronting it honestly. This is what defines accountability and only with accountability can there be the possibility of reconciliation.

I want now to touch one aspect of Jewish historical consciousness which I think is very relevant to our Conference.

I ask you to consider how it came about that a marginalized, inconsequential rabble like the ancient Jews who were held in contempt by every mighty conquering empire, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans have been able to survive to contribute to the world and joyously celebrate their peoplehood both outside and inside the restored State of Israel.

The answer in part must surely be found in the Jewish commitment to memory and in its collective form, the writing of an authentic history. What do I mean by authentic? I mean a history which reflects the degradations of a people as well as its great achievements; a history which reveals that even its greatest leaders were flawed and capable of committing acts of evil.

I ask you for example to look at the great master story of the Jewish people: the central collective memory found in the Biblical book of Exodus which recounts the slavery of the Israelites, who were the ancient Jews, and their subsequent liberation from slavery by their leader Moses with God’s guidance.

The words of Moses which he hurled at the ruling Pharoah of Egypt to “Let My People Go” have reverberated throughout the millenium, inspiring enslaved peoples everywhere to strive for freedom. But when this history was first being written there was no nobility in the story. Slaves were sub-human; to root your past in a slave history was seen by Near East belief systems of the time as shameful. But the Jewish Bible, the Torah did not shirk from an honest confrontation with reality, for there was the profound realization that a sanitized history, a history depleted of reality, is inauthentic and will never be seen as vital and sufficiently transcendent to be transmitted from one generation to the next as a living history.

Jewish history teaches we must begin with the truth no matter how painful or humiliating. Accurate rendering of a collective past permits a society to escape the inevitable catastrophe arising out of living in worlds of illusion. Those who write purposefully distorted histories give to their fellow citizens illusions: illusions of grandeur; illusions of superiority and illusions of absolute power which all too often have erupted into murderous frenzies orchestrated by ultra –nationalist and power-intoxicated leaders who feed their peoples a disfigured past. We know all too well that the illusions of Axis superiority set in motion a world wide tragedy on a scale previously unknown to mankind. Clearly my reference to authentic history is intended for those in Japan who would resist confronting the ugly past of the War years. My point, if I need to make it any clearer is that the Jewish people did not go down to psychological or cultural defeat because they recorded painful parts of their history and nor will Japan.

But I want to go further and suggest that the accurate recording of memory is not sufficient to ensure that the past is emotionally understood by subsequent generations. What is needed is not only authenticity in the preservation of memory but memory anchored in purpose and meaning. A cataloguing of catastrophes, while absolutely essential, runs the risk of numbing those who were not directly involved. Therefore the search for meaning in the transmission of history becomes an essential, perhaps the most essential of all tasks.

I submit that the principal reason the past has been preserved as a living force in Judaism despite overwhelming odds, is because of the absolute insistence by our Rabbis and other communal leadership that we find meaning and context when confronted with the face of evil.

The Jewish community is still searching for the right formula, the right balance, between cataloguing the horrors of the Holocaust and maintaining optimism for the human spirit. Only time will tell if we will be successful. But we have a great precedent to guide us by looking at the Jewish slave history to which I have already referred.

Over and over again in the Torah, known as the Five Books of Moses, or the Jewish Bible, the people are reminded by God to love the stranger in their midst; for God reminds them; prods their memory, that they were once strangers in the Land of Egypt who were ultimately enslaved because they were seen as the not fully human outsider. The message, loud and clear from ancient Jewish history, is that notwithstanding enslavement and persecution, when liberation comes you must not turn inwards but always maintain an open and ethical approach to the world. “Love the stranger in your midst.” and time again the Biblical writer makes clear that while one is creating peoplehood, creating national pride and history one must at the same time remember first and foremost our common humanity and obligation to act ethically to all.

One of the most compelling demands placed on the Jewish people by their leadership, was that of one of the great Biblical prophets when he thundered the words: “Justice, Justice….Justice thou shalt pursue”; over and over and over again. But Justice can only be pursued if a people has the capacity to remember and the commitment to engage in the writing of authentic history. So memory, accountability and ultimately ethics, purpose and meaning are linked together in a complex dynamic.

The great challenge for those of us involved in this Conference is to somehow insist on the recording of the details of history as an absolute imperative and then despite this record, move to a place where we affirm that it is possible to have a world where warmth and caring and compassion and not terror, death and destruction will ultimately reign supreme. This Conference’s leadership has already begun to create meaning by highlighting the need to move to reconciliation and into an era of peace. But also, by looking at those righteous ones during the War who would not march to the party line and emphasizing their readiness for self-sacrifice in the cause of goodness we make sure that we do not fall into the pit of despair.

By focusing on our common humanity rather than our differences we will ensure that while we remember and mourn the loss of our own relatives and people and work on their behalf, our concerns are also with other peoples so they do not share a similar fate.

If a commitment to working on behalf of all those who are persecuted because of their race, ethnicity or cultural background arises out of our efforts, then the memory of those we commemorate today will continue to be kept alive for generations to come.

I want to thank the Organizers of the Conference and Global Alliance/Alpha and Thekla Lit of the B.C. Chapter for extending the Conference invitation to Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canadian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress. Our National President, Moshe Ronen conveys his regrets for not being able to attend and has asked me to bring heartfelt wishes from the Canadian Jewish community for a most successful conference. Indeed many many Canadians of every background wish us much success in our work over the next several days.

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It is especially encouraging that this Conference is taking place in the great city of Tokyo, principally organized by Japanese citizens. The movement towards “overcoming the past,” therefore, is in part and very importantly coming from within. Segments of leadership in this great and wondrous country of Japan do understand that accountability is vital, first and foremost for the victims, but also for the benefit of the Japanese people, for the sake of the new Japan which emerged after the war, and for humanity as a whole.

Let me now conclude with one final observation. Accountability and justice have the potential to redeem evil and therefore have the potential to be massively transformative experiences; for these are the only paths to rescue humanity from the depths of inhumanity. All peoples, as a single human family must commit and re-commit themselves to the post-Holocaust cry of “Never again!” We hope this Conference will one day be seen as a great human rights watershed; but irrespective of the immediate outcomes, it is clear to me that the Conference organizers and all of you as participants have embarked on the most challenging road of attempting to extract goodness from evil and for that, this Conference, even if it accomplishes nothing else, stands as a beacon of light to the victims, to present and future generations of Asians and to all citizens of the world .

Thankyou