USA, Norman G. Finkelstein (1953-)
Finkelstein is a Jewish-American political scientist specializing in Holocaust studies and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
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Indeed, THE HOLOCAUST has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through their use, one of the strongest military powers in the world with a terrifying human rights record has put itself in the role of a victim state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has also achieved victim status. This seemingly captivating role of victim results in considerable dividends – especially the immunity to criticism, however justified.
Correct!
Indeed, THE HOLOCAUST has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through their use, one of the strongest military powers in the world with a terrifying human rights record has put itself in the role of a victim state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has also achieved victim status. This seemingly captivating role of victim results in considerable dividends – especially the immunity to criticism, however justified.
Year:
Author Bio:
Source:
Norman G. Finkelstein, Die Holocaustindustrie. How the suffering of the Jews is exploited, Munich 2001, 5.
Context:
Finkelstein published a number of books on both subjects. He gained international fame through the controversy associated with his book “The Holocaust Industry” in 2000. DePaul University in Chicago refused him promotion to full professor in 2006 because of the dispute related to the book.
Further Reading:
OK
The bourgeois reformers who wanted to carry out their social reforms to banish the revolution, but not at the expense of holy profit, their primary programme, had to look for another economic basis for the reforms. They found it outside their homeland, in the exploitation of colonised and semi-colonised peoples, whose ruthless, inhumane plunder and servitude brought in abnormal profits, out of which the capitalists paid the crumbs of union concessions and social reforms.
Correct!
The bourgeois reformers who wanted to carry out their social reforms to banish the revolution, but not at the expense of holy profit, their primary programme, had to look for another economic basis for the reforms. They found it outside their homeland, in the exploitation of colonised and semi-colonised peoples, whose ruthless, inhumane plunder and servitude brought in abnormal profits, out of which the capitalists paid the crumbs of union concessions and social reforms.
Year:
Author Bio:
Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) was a German Marxist, women’s rights activist and KPD parliamentarian until 1933. She was a gifted orator and arch enemy of Paul von Hindenbrug, then President of the Reich, whom she described as a servant of capital. She died in exile in Moscow.
Source:
Clara Zetkin (1924): Die Intellektuellenfrage. In: Protokoll. Fünfter Kongress der Kommunistischen Internationale, Bd. II, S. 946-982.
Context:
The workers’ movement put pressure on the German imperial government, especially in the 19th century. Chancellor Bismarck introduced reforms and improvements for workers in an attempt to placate them. As a Marxist, for Zetkin there was a connection between the prosperity and emancipation of workers in the Global North and the exploitation of workers in the Global South. Marxist historians like Silvia Federici and Walter Rodney further claim that the industrial revolution in Europe would not have been possible without slavery and the plantation system in the Global South, the enslaved workers and export-oriented production (Federici 2014: 129, German edition). Rodney described European workers as being bribed with “colonial profits” (Rodney 1972).
Further Reading:
*Walter Rodney (1972): How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
*Maria Mies (1986): Patriachy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Women in the International Division of Labour. London & New York: Zed Books.
*Silvia Federici (2014): Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Automedia (auch in deutscher Übersetzung)
*Anne McClintock (1995): Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.
OK
We live under a form of government which does not emulate the institutions of our neighbours; on the contrary we ourselves are the model, which some follow, rather than the imitators of other peoples. Our government is called a democracy because its administration is in the hands not of the few but of the majority.
Correct!
We live under a form of government which does not emulate the institutions of our neighbours; on the contrary we ourselves are the model, which some follow, rather than the imitators of other peoples. Our government is called a democracy because its administration is in the hands not of the few but of the majority.
Year:
Author Bio:
Pericles (ca. 495 – 429 BC) was an Athenian general and politician.
Source:
Dr. Fani Mallouchou-Tufano (2006): “The Restoration of the Athenian Acropolis.” Lecture at LSA.
Context:
Athenian democracy is often seen as the basis of contemporary Western democracy. Within it, a significant part of the population took part in certain types of voting. However, women and enslaved people were excluded from voting, and Pericles is also credited with saying ‘The best woman is the one who speaks the least.’ The city-state of Athens had numerous colonies in the Mediterranean and along the Black Sea’s coasts. The so-called Great Colonisation took place mainly from the mid 8th to the mid 6th centuries B.C.E. Initially Greek traders settled, and they were then followed by others, while existing populations were expelled. During the debt crisis of 2009, the situation in Greece was described as post-colonial, because Greek domestic policy was externally determined (by the troika of the IMF, European Commission and Central Bank, Samaddar 2015).
Further Reading:
*Ranabir Samaddar (2015): “The Postcolonial Bind of Greece.” Viewpointmag.
OK
According to this, in addition to undeniable colonial atrocities, social destruction, structural changes at the economic level and mental trauma, there are also changes without which no development would be possible, such as the development of school and health systems, infrastructures and the penetration of the “European spirit”.
Correct!
According to this, in addition to undeniable colonial atrocities, social destruction, structural changes at the economic level and mental trauma, there are also changes without which no development would be possible, such as the development of school and health systems, infrastructures and the penetration of the “European spirit”.
Year:
Author Bio:
The Federal Centre for Political Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb) was founded in 1952 to make a German contribution to education in the service of democracy. It is part of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The bpb creates and publishes materials, organises events and promotes other political education institutions.
Source:
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2007): Afrika Verstehen Lernen. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, p. 148.
Context:
This quote is based on the colonial and racist argument that without Europeans, Africans would have no education or health systems, nor any form of infrastructure. Behind this lies the idea that Africa did not have complex social structures before colonisation. This logic also justifies “civilizing” colonial intervention from outside. By contrasting the supposedly positive with the negative, the bpb conceals the fact that colonial infrastructure was created primarily for the exploitation of resources.
Further Reading:
*Walter Rodney (1972): How Europe underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
*Chimananda Ngozi Adichie (2011): Narratives of Europe. Stories that matter.
*David Harvey (2000): Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils.
OK
The people whose condition and origin I intend to deal with in this writing, the Z*******, are an extremely strange phenomenon in Europe. We may look around their homes, or sit as spectators at their meals, or finally just get a glimpse of their faces. We always find them peculiar and are surprised at every step by a new and unusual scene. But the strange thing about these wandering strangers is that neither time nor climate, nor example have hitherto had any appreciable influence on them.
Correct!
The people whose condition and origin I intend to deal with in this writing, the Z*******, are an extremely strange phenomenon in Europe. We may look around their homes, or sit as spectators at their meals, or finally just get a glimpse of their faces. We always find them peculiar and are surprised at every step by a new and unusual scene. But the strange thing about these wandering strangers is that neither time nor climate, nor example have hitherto had any appreciable influence on them.
Year:
Author Bio:
Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann (1756-1804) is regarded as the founder of “Tsiganology”. In his work he claimed Rom*nja stole and probably ate children. He also described the Romni as extremely sexually permissive. He was appointed professor in Göttingen in 1787.
Source:
Gottlieb Grellmann (1787): Historischer Versuch über die Z******* betreffend die Lebensart und Verfassung und Sitten und Schicksale dieses Volkes seit seiner Erscheinung in Europa und dessen Ursprung. Göttingen: Bey Johann Christian Dieterich.
Context:
Although Grellmann is considered the so-called founder of Tsiganology, he probably never spoke to Rom:nja himself. His entire body of work was either copied or written in conversation with a priest who worked with Rom:nja. Nor was it Grellmann who proved, through linguistics, their Indian origins. This piece of writing is an example of how social science research talks about, but not with, its “objects of research”.
Further Reading:
*Ian F. Hancock (1987): The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers.
OK
Death is a master from Germany, his eye is blue he hits you with a leaden bullet he hits you exactly a man lives in the house of your golden hair Margarete he incites his males on us he gives us a grave in the air he plays with the snakes and dreams of death is a master Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Sulamith
Correct!
Death is a master from Germany, his eye is blue he hits you with a leaden bullet he hits you exactly a man lives in the house of your golden hair Margarete he incites his males on us he gives us a grave in the air he plays with the snakes and dreams of death is a master Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Sulamith
Year:
Author Bio:
Ukraine, Paul Celan, 1968
Paul Celan was a Jewish German-speaking poet who was born in Chernivtsi (today Ukraine) in 1920.
Source:
“Todesfuge”, The sand from the urns 1968.
Context:
His name was originally Paul Antschel, later Romanized Ancel, from which the anagram Celan arose. Paul Celan is considered one of the most important German-speaking poets of the 20th century.
Further Reading:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?view=detail&mid=C320A35F78FE11C8B585C320A35F78FE11C8B585&q=celan todesfuge&shtp=GetUrl&shid=37b84559-bfd1-4955-9ba9-eadaf1ac5301&shtk=UGF1bCBDZWxhbiBUb2Rlc2Z1Z2U%3D&shdk=TWl0IGRlbiBHZW1DJGxkZW4gZGVzIERldXRzY2hlbiBNYWxlcnMgQW5zZWxtIEtpZWZlciBiZWdsZWl0ZXQuIEluIDE5NDUgZ2Vib3JlbiwgZ2VoQzZydCBkZXIgTWFsZXIgenUgZGVyIE5hY2hrcmllZ3NnZW5lcmF0aW9uIGRldXRzY2hlbiBLQw%3D%3D&shhk=wRLqtYJqIY6rCsR61rcVpXEO91b%2Brt61wW8g3YcyEJY%3D&form=VDSHOT&shth=OVP.RicxtTPiJF_otPWFSVbcHgEsDh
OK
Whereas, it has become evident through long experience that nothing has sufficed to bring the said chiefs and I* to a knowledge of our Faith (necessary for their salvation), since by nature they are inclined to idleness and vice, and have no manner of virtue or doctrine (by which Our Lord is disserved). (…) at the time the I* go to serve them [the Spaniards] they are indoctrinated in and taught the things of our Faith, after serving they return to their dwellings where, because of the distance and their own evil inclinations, they immediately forget what they have been taught and go back to their customary idleness and vice.
Correct!
Whereas, it has become evident through long experience that nothing has sufficed to bring the said chiefs and I* to a knowledge of our Faith (necessary for their salvation), since by nature they are inclined to idleness and vice, and have no manner of virtue or doctrine (by which Our Lord is disserved). (…) at the time the I* go to serve them [the Spaniards] they are indoctrinated in and taught the things of our Faith, after serving they return to their dwellings where, because of the distance and their own evil inclinations, they immediately forget what they have been taught and go back to their customary idleness and vice.
Year:
Author Bio:
Excerpt from the Burgos Laws through which the Spanish Crown regulated the behaviour of Spaniards towards the colonised peoples of the Caribbean.
Source:
Quote: Southern Methodist University, 1512-1513. Gesetze von Burgos.
Picture: Wikimedia
Context:
There were strict hierarchies in the Spanish colonies in America. For example, the Burgos Laws of 1512/1513 stipulated that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were subject to Spanish feudal lords, but should not be considered slaves. In order to exploit them as workers, the Spanish crown meticulously regulated their working and living conditions. They wanted to make sure that they would not reproduce their own ways life and at the same time would not be subjected to excessive violence by feudal lords. However, by 1550, 50-90 percent of the estimated 80 to 100 million inhabitants of Latin America had been killed by warfare, enslavement and diseases (National Geographics 2011 & The Guardian 2019).
Further Reading:
*Eduardo Galeano (1973): Open Veins of Latin America. Five centuries of the pillage of a continent. New York: Monthly Review Press.
*National Geographic (06.12.2011): “Massive Population Drop Found for Native Americans, DNA Shows”
*The Guardian (31.01.2019): “European colonization of Americas killed so many it cooled Earth’s climate“
OK
I had to give up my habitualiation and I was forced to leave the hospital because my contract ended and they didn’t want to renew it. I was not employed at any other hospital.
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I had to give up my habitualiation and I was forced to leave the hospital because my contract ended and they didn’t want to renew it. I was not employed at any other hospital.
Year:
Author Bio:
Egypt, Mohammed Helmy, 1937
Source:
Statement protocol, BpB “Mohammed & Anna”, 1937.
Context:
Mohamed Helmy, also Mod Helmy, was an Egyptian-German doctor who made it possible for several Jews and other persecuted people to survive in hiding in Berlin at the time of National Socialism. In 2013 he was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, as the only Egyptian among around 70 Muslims to date.
Further Reading:
Igal Avidan – Mod Helmy
OK
The [witch] is gone now (…) [but] her fears, and the forces she struggles against in her lifetime, live on. We can open our newspapers, and read the same charges against the idle poor (…). The expropriators move into the Third World, destroying cultures (…) plundering the resources of land and people (…) If we turn on the radio, we can hear the crackle of flames (…) But the struggle also lives on.
Correct!
The [witch] is gone now (…) [but] her fears, and the forces she struggles against in her lifetime, live on. We can open our newspapers, and read the same charges against the idle poor (…). The expropriators move into the Third World, destroying cultures (…) plundering the resources of land and people (…) If we turn on the radio, we can hear the crackle of flames (…) But the struggle also lives on.
Year:
Author Bio:
Starhawk (born 1951 as Miriam Simos) is an US American writer and activist. She writes feminist non-fiction books that centre on goddess religions.
Source:
Quote: Silvia Federici (2014: 208).
Picture: Wikimedia. The picture from 1880 shows Elisabeth Plainacher who was executed as an alleged in 1583 in Vienna.
Context:
Starhawk is referring to the persecution of women as witches in the context of capitalism’s seizure of the commons in Europe, which began in the 14th century. She sees parallels between on the one hand, the devaluation in Europe of women’s ways of life, work and knowledge during capitalism’s rise, and on the other, the categorisation as inferior of societies in the Global South, as well of poor people today. Resistance by these actors has always stood in the way of capitalist exploitation of humans and nature.
Further Reading:
Silvia Federici (2014): Caliban and the Witch. Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia.
OK
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; (…) The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!
Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work; There shall be a forty-hour working week (…) Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children;
Correct!
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; (…) The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!
Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work; There shall be a forty-hour working week (…) Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children;
Year:
Author Bio:
Freedom charter created by the African National Congress (ANC), through a process in which 50,000 volunteers in the townships collected important freedom demands of the people. The demands written on individual pieces of paper were then summarised and ratified in 1955 at a congress which 3000 delegates attended.
Source:
ANC (1955): The Freedom Charter.
Context:
In South Africa, the white minority ruled over the Black majority during the apartheid regime from the beginning of the 20th century (especially after 1948) until 1994. Former ANC resistance fighter Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president in 1994. Within apartheid, a distinction was made between White, Coloured, Asian or Indian and Native, each of which had different rights. The ANC was founded as early as 1912, and with the “Defiance Campaign” against the laws of the apartheid regime from 1952-1954, it became a mass organisation of resistance.
Further Reading:
*Naomi Klein (2007): The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Toronto: Knopf Canada.
OK
Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men, during the past thirty years in the South, have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution. And yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity with which the white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed.
Correct!
Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men, during the past thirty years in the South, have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution. And yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity with which the white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed.
Year:
Author Bio:
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a Black investigative journalist, sociologist, and feminist. She documented the lynch law in the United States in the 1890s.
The missing years are 1865 and 1895.
Source:
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1895/1969): On Lynching. Southern Horrors – A Red Record – Mob Rule in New Orleans, New York: Arno Press, p. 8.
Context:
After the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the liberation of enslaved people, the number of lynchings rose rapidly. The victims were almost always Black men who were hanged from trees. Lynchings were carried out by white mobs to spread terror. For example, up to 300 Black Americans were murdered in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, with the massacre not becoming part of the school curriculum until 2020. In addition, the Jim Crow laws, which enforced segregation, were introduced in southern states, and these remained in effect until the 1960s. The singer Billie Holiday protested against the lynchings by singing the song “Strange Fruit” in 1939: “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
Further Reading:
*Audrey Lorde (1984): Sister Outsider. Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg: Crossing Press
*Toni Morrison (2000): Sehr blaue Augen. Reinbeck: Rowohlt.
*Billy Holiday (1939): Strange Fruit. Text von Abel Meeropol
OK
We Roma and Sinti are the flowers of this earth.
You can crush us,
we can be ripped out of the ground, we can be gassed,
you can burn us
one can kill us –
but like the flowers, we keep coming back (…).
Correct!
We Roma and Sinti are the flowers of this earth.
You can crush us,
we can be ripped out of the ground, we can be gassed,
you can burn us
one can kill us –
but like the flowers, we keep coming back (…).
Year:
Author Bio:
Karl Stojka (1931 – 2003) was an Austrian survivor of the Porajmos (genocide of Romn:ja during National Socialism). After surviving the concentration camps, Karl Stojka became an artist and author.
Source:
Projekt Kulturelles Erbe. Tradition mit Zukunft (2007): Roma und Sinti. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. HAK International Klagenfurt.
Context:
Despite their long history in Germany, attempts have been made to exclude, suppress and deport Sint:ezza and Romn:ja from social life here over the centuries. This is still the case today if one considers the deportation of Sint:ezza and Romn:ja to so-called safe European countries of origin. Despite the discrimination and persecution they have experienced,Sint:ezza and Romn:ja organise and resist. In Germany, there are numerous clubs and associations organised by Sint:ezza and Romn:ja that work on empowerment, raising awareness of racism, documentation and political participation. Stojka’s ancestors lived in what is now Austria for an estimated 300 years before many of his family members, including his father and brother, were murdered in the concentration camps. Stojka himself survived the Porajmos and later began to paint. In his paintings he expressed the persecution of Sint:ezza and Romn:ja.
Further Reading:
*Council of Europe: History. Remembrance. Identity. Remembrance of the persecution and genocide of Roma by the Nazi adn their allies remains a sensitive and painful issue for the Roma.
OK
I will die, but I will return and I will be millions.
Correct!
I will die, but I will return and I will be millions.
Year:
Author Bio:
Tupac Katari (1750-1781) was an Aymara leader in the rebellion against Spanish colonisers in present-day Bolivia. He took the names of earlier resistance fighters (Tomás Katari and Túpac Amaru) who were killed by the Spanish in 1572.
Source:
Quoted by Thomas Guthmann (2017): Körper im Zeichen des Zeitstrahls. In glokal: Connecting the Dots. Lernen aus Geschichte(n) zu Unterdrückung und Widerstand, p. 98
Context:
Tupac Katari assembled an army of 40,000 fighters and besieged La Paz. His wife, Bartolina Sisa, commanded the siege and played an important role after Katari’s capture. However, the overthrow of European colonialism in most Latin American countries in the 19th century did not mean that free and equal societies could develop. This was because the formal end of European colonialism did not mean the end of power relations. New hierarchies were created, and the distribution of wealth in many countries was tied to class, race and gender. Aníbal Quijano argued that global capitalism replaced colonialism as the system of domination and that the main beneficiaries of this system continued to be Europeans and their descendants in other countries (Quijano 2007: 168). Tupac Katari’s remarks were taken up again in 2003 when the people of Bolivia opposed the sell off of their natural gas. ‘When neoliberal President Sanchez de Lozada was ousted from the presidency, the slogan echoed through the streets of El Alto’ (Guthmann 2017: 98). Former Bolivian President Evo Morales also sees himself as an inheritor of Tupac Katari’s tradition of resistance (Morales’ inaugural speech reported in the New York Times, 23 January, 2006).
Further Reading:
*Thomas Guthmann (2017): Körper im Zeichen des Zeitstrahls. In glokal: Connecting the Dots. Lernen aus Geschichte(n) zu Unterdrückung und Widerstand.
*Anibal Quihano (2007): Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality, Cultural Studies 21 (2-3); 168-178.
**The New York Times (23.01.2006): “Bolivia Indians Hail the Swearing In of One of Their Own as President.”
OK
You are the true Hyenas, that allure us with the fairness of your skins and when folly has brought us within your reach, you leap upon us. You are the traitors of Wisdom, the impediment to Industry… the clogs to Virtue and the goads that drive us to all vices, impiety and ruin.You are the Fool’s Paradise, the wiseman’s Plague and the Grand Error of Nature
Correct!
You are the true Hyenas, that allure us with the fairness of your skins and when folly has brought us within your reach, you leap upon us. You are the traitors of Wisdom, the impediment to Industry… the clogs to Virtue and the goads that drive us to all vices, impiety and ruin.You are the Fool’s Paradise, the wiseman’s Plague and the Grand Error of Nature
Year:
Author Bio:
Walter Charleton (1616-1707) was an English natural philosopher and doctor.
Source:
Walter Charleton (1659): Ephesian Matron. Quotet by Silvia Federici (2004: 163).
Context:
Time and again, women are used as scapegoats: from the biblical story in which Eve seduced Adam into taking a bite of the apple, to the witch hunts, where women were held responsible for all the social ills of the time. In this quote, women are accused, amongst other things, of driving men crazy through their sexual attractiveness. This inversion of responsibility is still used today, e.g. when a victim of sexual violence, rather than its perpetrator, is held culpable for the violence inflicted on them.
Further Reading:
*Silvia Federici (2004): Caliban and the Witch. Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia.
OK
What can we do apart from resisting? (…) It will not be easy to avenge their crimes against our people, for every step we take will be met with massive and arbitrary retribution. (…) But the destiny of our people on this earth is already certain. (…) We can either die with them or try to avenge their death. Our revenge will have to be unbridled and merciless.
Correct!
What can we do apart from resisting? (…) It will not be easy to avenge their crimes against our people, for every step we take will be met with massive and arbitrary retribution. (…) But the destiny of our people on this earth is already certain. (…) We can either die with them or try to avenge their death. Our revenge will have to be unbridled and merciless.
Year:
Author Bio:
Gusta Dawidsohn-Draenger (1917-1943) was born in Kraków to an orthodox Jewish family. After the outbreak of World War II, she played a key role in coordinating Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Together with others – including her husband Shimshon Draenger – she smuggled weapons, organised hiding places and fought with partisans in the surrounding forests. In November 1943, the Germans murdered her and her husband. Between January and March 1943, she had written down her extensive memories on a roll of toilet paper in prison.
Source:
Jochen Kast, Bernd Siegler & Peter Zinke (1999): Das Tagebuch der Partisanin Justyna. Jüdischer Widerstand in Krakau. Berlin: Elefanten Press. The year (1943) is an approximation.
Context:
This quote, in which Gusta Draenger-Dawidson cites her husband Shimshon Draenger, is a testament to Draenger-Dawidson’s memory of armed resistance to the Nazis in Poland. Jewish resistance to the Nazis, often carried out by individuals and small groups, is rarely mentioned in history books. There were also uprisings and revolts in the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bialystok and Sobibor. The largest resistance group with around 1,200 members was the Jewish partisan Tuvia Bielski in Belarus. The forms of resistance were numerous: they ranged from leaflets and newspapers, the running of theatres and schools, to food smuggling and the forging of documents. An estimated 6 million Jews died during the Second World War from 1939-1945 as a result of the Shoah, the Nazi genocide.
Further Reading:
*United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans.
OK
Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.
Correct!
Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.
Year:
Author Bio:
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was a US-American women’s rights activist with ties to the eugenics movement.
Source:
Margaret Sanger (1920): Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentano’s, p. 8.
Context:
Margaret Sanger co-founded the IPPF in 1952, which promoted global population control. There are overlaps between feminist, socialist and eugenics currents. The IPPF circulated eugenics’ problematic ideas, without directly referring to the Nazis’ racial hygiene doctrine.
Further Reading:
*Betsy Hartmann (1995): Reproductive Rights and Wrongs. The Global Politics of Population Control. Cambridge: South Ende Press.
OK
Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun… Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn, without making an effort worthy of our race? Shall we without a struggle, give up our homes, our lands, bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit? The graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will say with me, Never! Never!
Correct!
Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun… Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn, without making an effort worthy of our race? Shall we without a struggle, give up our homes, our lands, bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit? The graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will say with me, Never! Never!
Year:
Author Bio:
Tecumseh Shawnee (1768-1813) was a fighter and leader of the Shawnee in what is today’s Ohio in the USA. He was known as a powerful speaker, and for his ability to bring together diverse groups.
Source:
Quoted in Alex Alvarez (2016): Native Americans and the Question of Genocide. Lanham: Rowman; Littlefield, p. 9. The quote could be also from 1813.
Context:
After the American War of Independence at the end of the 18th century, a new immigration policy was rolled out. This liberally oriented migration regime wanted to allow migration from Europe. This contrasted with the enslavement of people from Africa, and the expulsions, genocides and expropriations against Native Americans. Through numerous armed conflicts, Native Americans defended themselves against European settler colonisation and its land expropriation and genocidal policies. The victorious settlers created reservations for indigenous peoples. During the 18th century, Tecumseh persevered in his attempt to form a broad alliance against the white settlers. In this quote, in which he mourns his contemporaries, the traumatic brutality of the genocide of the Native Americans is clear.
Further Reading:
*Vine Deloria (1969): Custer Died for your Sins. An Indian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan.
OK
The Devel was in the English-man, that he makes every thing work; he makes the Negro work, the Horse work, the Ass work, the Wood work, the Water work, and the Winde work.
Correct!
The Devel was in the English-man, that he makes every thing work; he makes the Negro work, the Horse work, the Ass work, the Wood work, the Water work, and the Winde work.
Year:
Author Bio:
Anonymous enslaved person in Barbados.
Source:
Quote: Anonym (1676): Great Newes from the Barbadoes, Or, A True and Faithful Account of the Grand Conspiracy of the Negroes against the English and the Happy Discovery of the Same with the Number of Those That Were Burned Alive, Beheaded, and Otherwise Executed for Their Horrid Crimes. With a Short Discription of That Plantation. London: L. Curtis, p. 6
Picture: Wikimedia
Context:
England appropriated the island of Barbados in 1625, continuing to control it until 1962. Over the course of the previous century, its inhabitants had either been kidnapped and enslaved or driven out by the Portuguese. Working on the plantations, English and Irish serfs, enslaved Africans and American indigenous peoples were settled, exploited, tortured and murdered in the cultivation of sugar cane. They defended themselves, often together, through flight, arson, murder and revolt. In the Caribbean, as in other parts of the Americas, resilient formerly enslaved people formed what were called Maroon communities (Linebaugh & Rediker 2008).
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Further Reading:
*Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000): The Many-headed Hydra. New York: Verso.
OK
Development cooperation means helping people to help themselves. It is value-oriented, but it is also interest-driven. I never made a secret of it. Development cooperation does not have to be harmful to German companies.
Correct!
Development cooperation means helping people to help themselves. It is value-oriented, but it is also interest-driven. I never made a secret of it. Development cooperation does not have to be harmful to German companies.
Year:
Author Bio:
Dirk-Ekkehard Niebel (born in 1963) is a former German politician (FDP). He was Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development from 2009 to 2013. He has been working as a consultant for the weapons and automotive supplier Rheinmetall since 2015.
Source:
FAZ (Manfred Schäfers, 20.11.2009): Entwicklungshilfe muss sich nicht überflüssig machen.
Context:
According to Niebel, his ministry was not a “world social agency” (Herter 2010). An example: In 2001, the Kaweri coffee plantation opened in Uganda with investments from the German company Neumann (NKG). The NKG demanded that the land be uninhabited. Residents should be resettled with compensation. Resettlement was left to the Ugandan government, which forcibly displaced 2,000 people. When the expellees started a campaign against this with the NGO FIAN, Niebel took a protective stance in front of the German company in 2013: “The Kaweri plantation is the largest German investment in Uganda and has the attention and goodwill of the German government” (Die Zeit, August 13th, 2013). 2013). At the end of 2019, the Ugandan state offered the displaced persons compensation (FIAN, February 17, 2020).
Further Reading:
*FIAN International (2019): Human Rights violations in the context of Kaweri coffee Plantation/Neumann Kaffee Gruppe in Mubende/Uganda.
OK
“You have to be amazed, outraged and infected, that’s the only way to change reality. What improves healing is the affective contact between one person and another. What heals is joy, what heals is the absence of prejudice.”
Correct!
“You have to be amazed, outraged and infected, that’s the only way to change reality. What improves healing is the affective contact between one person and another. What heals is joy, what heals is the absence of prejudice.”
Year:
Author Bio:

Dr Nise da Silveira, born on 15 February 1905 in Maceió; died on 30 October 1999 in Rio de Janeiro, was one of Brazil’s most important scientists*, psychiatrist, alchemist of the psyche and Marxist, who resolutely defined new paths through the fields of medicine, philosophy and art. Her work was characterised by her rejection of the invasive methods of psychiatry that were common at the time. She was the only female graduate alongside 157 men. Nise da Silveira completed her specialist training as a psychiatrist at the Antonio Austregésilo Neurological Clinic and in the same year won a national competition for a post in psychopathology and mental health care at Praia Vermelha Hospital.
When she was employed at the Pedro II Psychiatric Centre in Engenho de Dentro, Nise da Silveira rejected the practices of lobotomy, insulin shock or cardiazole shock therapy and was then transferred to the occupational therapy department. There she enabled her patients to develop personally and artistically. In particular, she led art therapy sessions, through which, according to her understanding, subconscious states of the psyche became accessible. Nise da Silveira, the “psiquiatra rebelde”, revolutionised the history of psychiatry beyond the borders of her country and was a forerunner in the worldwide movements of psychiatric forms in Brazil, England, Italy and Germany between the 1960s and 1980s. She advocated the humanisation of treatment methods for chronically mentally ill patients and created the “Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente”, which was also her study and research centre. After her death, her private archive was included in UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” programme as a heritage of humanity, a digital collection of historical documents of exceptional value to human history.
Image/source: Arquivo Nise da Silveira, https://revistacult.uol.com.br
Source:
Livro –MELLO, L.. Encontros. Nise da Silveira. São Paulo: Azougue Editorial, 2009. Entrevistas e depoimentos que Nise da Silveira concedeu entre 1976 e 1997
Context:
In the wake of the Communist uprising in 1935, da Silveira founded the organisation “Uniao Feminina do Brasil” (UFB) together with intellectual and feminist activists. The women demanded legal changes that would grant women custody of their children after a divorce, equal pay with men and the right to maternity leave. These demands brought the UFB close to left-wing organisations, which in turn were linked to the Communist Party. On 19 July 1935, the ruling dictator President Getúlio Vargas signed Decree 246, which immediately ordered the closure of the UFB as an illegal organisation – less than two months after it was founded. A year later, Nise da Silveira was denounced by a nurse who had discovered Marxist literature in da Silveira’s locker. This was followed by 18 months in prison and a ban on practising her profession. In 1944, with the end of the dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas after 15 years, democratic processes gained the political upper hand and the emancipation of society through education and art became a political concern.
Nise da Silveira was granted amnesty and transferred back to her previous position at the Pedro II Psychiatric Centre in Engenho de Dentro, Rio de Janeiro. She was deeply shocked by the invasive and, for her, brutal treatment methods that had become the norm in international psychiatry: Insulin shock therapy, electroshock, lobotomy (a neurosurgical operation in which steel needles are driven deep into the patient’s brain to sever the neural pathways between the thalamus and frontal lobe and parts of the grey matter). The Portuguese doctor António Egas Moniz (1874 – 1955) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949 for the development of lobotomy. When Nise da Silveira was asked to apply these therapies herself, she flatly refused – which earned her the title “psiquiatra rebelde” from that moment on. For her, these methods were risky, aggressive and ineffective, akin to torture. She was convinced that “all these techniques […] represent an attack on the integrity of man in the noblest of his organs”. Sensitised to a life in captivity by her own imprisonment, she was equally horrified by the housing of the 1,500 or so schizophrenic patients at the time in closed rooms and walled courtyards.
In order to keep her job, the only solution offered to her was to be transferred to the neglected occupational therapy department. Even though the job had previously only consisted of cleaning and maintenance work, Nise da Silveira accepted the offer. She took over an unused administrative area of the hospital complex and founded the Secao de Terapeutica Ocupacional e Reabilitacao, the Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Section, on 9 September 1946, and from then on began her ground-breaking work. Nise da Silveira developed a clinical method based on affection and respect for the dignity of each person.
Nise da Silveira became known worldwide for the avant-garde idea of using affection as a scientific method in the treatment of mental illness. Empathy, commitment and charity overcame hospital walls, prejudice and abuse of patients. In 1956, Nise da Silveira founded the Casa das Palmeiras, the first Brazilian clinic for psychiatric treatment in the form of a day school.
Further Reading:
Nise Da Silveira – Uma Psiquiatra Rebelde (Em Portuguese do Brasil), 1. Januar 2000
https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/nise-da-silveira/
Museu virtual – Ocupação Nise da Silveira – Itaú Cultural
Livro –MELLO, L.. Encontros. Nise da Silveira. São Paulo: Azougue Editorial, 2009. Entrevistas e depoimentos que Nise da Silveira concedeu entre 1976 e 1997
Memória do Mundo da UNESCO: Arquivo Pessoal de Nise da Silveira
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtUhmbHqeXM&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Frevistacult.uol.com.br%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&feature=emb_title
Nise, el corazón de la locura.. (subtitulada)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcLpV3a_hZ4&t=2953s
Nise da Silveira – Posfácio: Imagens do Inconsciente
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDg0zjMe4nA
Leon Hirszman, Imagens do Inconsciente
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxYx4obbARE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uN1lsWFjM&t=4322s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgong5EYqUE&t=3585s
Robert Berliner, Nise – O Coracao da Loucura (Nise – in the Heart of Madness)QUEM É NISE DA SILVEIRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbWP3JEUV1s
OK
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