> >
> > > With respect to the stolen generation and the holocaust my point is that
> > > there is an extreme difference of degree. In most cases of wrong doing we
> > > recognise a range of culpability. It is wrong to jail a person for
> > > stealing a biscuit and some cordial, but entirely justifiable if they knock
> > > off a couple of banks at gun point. Hitler committed mass murder as a
> > > means of destroying a culture. We assimilated them into another population.
> > > Both wrong, but a long way apart on the scale. There were murders, but
> > > these were contrary to the laws at the time. As I understand it, part of
> > > the basis of the original Native Title cases was work done by Henry Reynolds
> > > showing that land had been alienated from the original inhabitants against
> > > the law as laid down by the British authorities.
> >
> > Graham,
> > How do you dismiss 10,000 Aboriginal people shot off their land in
> > Queensland alone as 'there were some murders'? The genocide committed
> > against Indigenous Australians was against British law but only in *one*
> > case were people held responsible and that was in NSW!
> >
It is my understanding that Nazi German murder of Jews, Gypsies,
Homosexuals, mentally impared etc. was in fact illegal under German
law. I'm not talking about arrest and imprisonment, which had the
rubber stamp of the German judicial system, but the gassings,
shootings and other genocidal acts were a covert operation the
same way that there was no act of parliament in Australia that
empowered police to poison water holes. But it happened anyway, just
as it did in Germany. It is rong to say that Nazis operated within
their laws, although there were legislated racist acts such as the
theft of property by the state, deportation of citizens, imprisonment
etc. Racist gangsters got hold of a whole country and the law meant
nothing.
I see Nazi Germany and the Australian experience as so similar, you
couldn't slip a cigarette paper between them. It is just that the
time frame and scale was different. And the Germans made an industry
of murder using 20th century technology. Imagine how effective the
troopers would have been if they had access to cyanide gas.
We had concentration camps in the form of Reserves and missions or
ophanages like Cootamundra girls school.
Peter
Peter Tremain
Winan-Gidyal Aboriginal Education Centre,
Charles Sturt University, Murray.
Ph 0260 516706
Fax 0260 516865
Fax 060 516865
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