A decision anywhere in
the world to establish a Nazi party, complete with the standard
swastika symbol, would obviously be cause for grave concern and
immediate protest. To ignore such a phenomenon would be unthinkable.
But Wednesday's announcement that a group of Taiwanese students,
headed by one Chao Lan, has established a Nazi party in Taiwan
poses a different problem than would be presented if an ostensibly
similar political organization were founded in Europe or in North
or South America.
The party envisioned by Lan is not the typical initiative by European
anti-Semites with nostalgia for the Third Reich and definite anti-Jewish
proclivities, but rather a completely different, much less dangerous,
but still extremely worrying issue that we have failed to address
adequately.
While high school and university courses in Taiwan cover European
history, they clearly do not devote sufficient attention to the
Holocaust and its universal implications. This also explains why
in the relatively recent past, possibly well-intentioned if woefully
ignorant Taiwanese entrepreneurs have used Nazi symbols and the
likeness of Hitler to help publicize products or restaurants.
Most Europeans today have granted the Holocaust iconic status
as the ultimate genocide and a watershed event in the annals of
mankind, and share a revulsion to anything associated with the
Nazis and their collaborators.
But in the Far East, there is little knowledge of the fate of
European Jewry and almost no understanding of the deeply-rooted
disgust most Europeans feel for Nazi images.
For obvious reasons, Israel and the Jewish world have focused
most of our Holocaust education efforts in places where we assumed
it was most needed. Asia, the Far East in particular, have basically
been ignored.
Perhaps the Taiwanese students' initiative will serve as a long-overdue
wake-up call.
Even though there was no mass murder of Jews in that part of the
world, even by the Nazis' Japanese allies, there were many events
during World War II that still resonate locally - the comfort women
issue to name one - which the Jewish world can use as a context
to educate the Taiwanese about the Holocaust.
Last year, the UN established an international Holocaust Remembrance
Day. It is up to us, with our five decades of Holocaust education
expertise, to make it meaningful in the Far East, as well.
jpost.com
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