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Even hatred can be cured with vaccines

Një prej protagonistëve më të mëdhenj të letërsisë bashkëkohore izraelite, Abraham Yehoshua, është ndarë nga jeta në moshën 85-vjeçare. Sjellim një prej shkrimeve të tij të fundit. Përtej antisemitizmit, trajton temën e urrejtjes ndaj njëri-tjetrit, e ku për shërimin e së cilës, ashtu si në rastin e epidemive, duhen vaksina përforcuese.
Even hatred can be cured with vaccines

By Abraham Yehoshua / Seventy-seven years have passed since the Russian military liberated the most horrific camp in human history, the Auschwitz extermination camp, a German camp in Poland where World War II's donation methods were perfected. the deaths of millions of prisoners, mostly Jewish citizens gathered across the corners of Europe.

And although much time has passed since then, despite the grave atrocities committed in various wars around the world, the liberation of Auschwitz remains a symbol of victory over absolute evil and a warning to future generations about the power and effectiveness of evil in all its possible forms, including, of course and above all, anti-Semitism.

I was born in Israel, I am the sixth generation of this country. Sometimes my family and I have been for short periods outside of Israel, for work or study, mainly in France, England and the United States, but I have never experimented with anti-Semitism, although I have never hidden my Judaism.

I do not even consider the war with the Palestinians and the other Arabs as an anti-Semitic war. To me it is mostly a territorial war as it happens to many peoples around the world. However, anti-Semitism still haunts me, as if it were a disease. A disease that could push anti-Semites to commit acts of madness and cruelty against the Jew.

At the end of World War II, as Allied armies besieged Berlin, Hitler, who was preparing to commit suicide in the bunker, left a very strange will in which he blamed the Jews for the defeat. Two days before he died, he wrote: “My biggest mistake was that I did not appreciate the decisive influence of the Jews on the Churchill-led English. "Generations will pass and the fire of hatred for the race on which the responsibility for all the horror that has befallen us falls: international Judaism and its collaborators will be lit again on the ruins of our cities."

What name to give to this, that the greatest criminal in history was capable of thinking that the destruction of Germany did not come from its horrible crimes and savage invasions, but from the weakest people, the Jewish people, a third of which he himself exterminated so easily. Anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews, fear of Jews and the crazy fantasies that emanate from them can degrade anti-Semitism into criminal gestures that in the most extreme case lead to the destruction of Nazi Germany or in the less serious case of recent Stalinist years in Russia Soviet, in the destruction of anti-Semitism itself.

And since the disease is ancient and dates back to antiquity, before the advent of Christianity and dragged peoples, religious and secular, right and left, it is necessary, as against an epidemic, to vaccinate non-Jews against anti-Semitism. And as we have learned in the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, a single vaccine is never enough, we must necessarily repeat it and perhaps change the formula from time to time.

So it is with anti-Semitism. It is necessary from time to time to draw the attention of those who are not Jews, so that they understand what anti-Semitism arouses in them, what incites such hatred, what are its ingredients, its roots and how it can be opposed without renouncing a fair and legitimate criticism of the Jewish filan or pistachio.

And just as the state of Israel has the absolute right to exist, so also everyone has the right to criticize it if the criticism is concrete and justified for this or that gesture, without falling into the net of anti-Semitic jargon. On the other hand, even Jews need to understand what anti-Semitism is, where it comes from, and be careful not to reject negative criticism by arguing that it is anti-Semitic criticism, and therefore does not need to be addressed. In short, the Jew must examine the criticisms against him and face them concretely, without taking refuge under the umbrella that automatically turns any criticism into anti-Semitism.

Therefore, the day of commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp from the Red Army in January 1945 can be seen, in a sense, as a vaccine injection, a boosting dose intended to increase the antibodies we should all have in our souls against anti-Semitism and then, of course, against all other forms of racism or nationalism.

Studies and research on anti-Semitism, particularly the killing of millions of Jews, the elderly, women and children during World War II, left a very deep imprint on the existence of Jews, for better or worse. They may even explain the current policy of the state of Israel. I feel that the tattooed number is marked on my arm, as it is on the arm of every Auschwitz prisoner, and I must know how to interpret it with my behavior and my political and moral attitudes.

I would like the young people, whose conscience and memory are so far removed from that terrible war that took place in Europe, in the heart of the civilized world, not to forget the war that turned us Jews, the ancient people, into a crippled nation, but which has not lost the will to continue to exist, though the threat of destruction has not yet been extinguished.

Vetë gjermanët bënë një ekzaminim të mirë të ndërgjegjes pas asaj lufte dhe për mendimin tim kjo është arsyeja se përse ata kanë arritur majat në disa fusha në dekadat e fundit. Edhe pse shumë të tjerë nuk kanë kryer krime të krahasueshme me gjermanët në Luftën e Dytë Botërore, kjo nuk do të thotë se ata nuk duhet të merren me të kaluarën e tyre, e cila vetëm mirë do t'u bëjë. Lufta e Dytë Botërore është një udhëkryq për qytetërimin perëndimor dhe mësimi dhe studimi i ngjarjeve të luftës është ende thelbësor për të gjithë ne.

* Abraham Yehoshua is an Israeli writer, essayist and playwright whose works have been awarded prizes such as the National Prize for the Jewish Book, the Israel Prize for Literature or the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is considered one of the greatest Israeli writers. He passed away on June 14, 2022. The article was translated into Albanian by Erjon Uka.