Washington – President Barack Obama says slavery is a terrible part of U.S. history and should be taught in a meaningful way.
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Obama compared the legacy of slavery to the history of the Holocaust. He said both are horrible parts of history but shouldn’t be ignored. He says in a CNN interview that their lessons must never be forgotten.
Obama returned to Washington early Sunday morning from a trip that took him to Russia, Italy and Ghana. It was the first trip to sub-Saharan Africa for America’s first black president.
Obama and his family visited a West African castle where traders once shipped slaves to the New World.
Obama was interviewed Saturday for CNN’s “Anderson Cooper: 360.” A brief excerpt was released on Sunday.
narishkeiten!!!!!!!!!!!1
Nice…. Comparing 6 Million Jews Killed To…
for slavery there was a cival war in the united states. for the Holocaust there was no cival war . the united states tried to block entry
Comparing the extermination of 6,ooo,ooo men women and children without making a distinction. As to their severity is a sinful comparison. Typical of most goyim? But for president to do is especially insensitive! A Goy bleibt a Goy!!!
Obama is not a descendant of slaves–but he is a descendant of slave owners.
Both episodes were a black mark on humanity, however there is no way we could or should equate the Holocausts to slavery. The Holocaust will stand by itself as a monument to evil, which could manifest as humans.
just wondering why I don’t see any slavery denyers…
oiy oiy oiybama,is there no end to your gaffes and plain down right embarrassing/dangerous comments?
Millions and millions were also killed as a result of slavery in the Americas, and many were killed on the long and difficult voyages that were part of the slave trade. Another similarity is the role of racism in both atrocities.
No comparison!
Both episodes were a black mark on humanity, however there is no way we could or should equate the Holocausts to slavery. The Holocaust will stand by itself as a monument to evil, which could manifest as humans.
Mr Osama,
How dare you!! There is no comparison. The outright murder of 6 million Jews cannot be compared to the slave trade (incidentally much of it brought on by the tribal leaders in Africa). Hitler yemach sh’mo wanted the Jews dead. Slave traders wanted them alive. You continue to have your own version of history and to be quite honest its really getting on the nerves of people who voted for you (I was NOT one of them!)! Keep it up bec 2010 is looking easier and easier as you and Biden open your mouths.
The article doesn’t quote Obama so it’s hard to know exactly what he said. According to the article ” He said both are horrible parts of history but shouldn’t be ignored . . that their lessons must never be forgotten.” For all of you critics, are you disageeing that both are horrible and shouldn’t be ignored or forgotten?
Would someone please ask the smartest historian of all, about this?
Madjob certainly will tell you that there were no slaves in America. He probably will start a drawing campaign in Iran to see who will win with the best picture, showing how the whole fake slavery of blacks was just a trick by the Africans, who wanted to hide that they were selling their own people to the Arabs, who then sold them to the Americans. It is all just a big fake rumor. No such thing as slavery. Ask Madjob, Oh, I mean Ahmadinjad.
You can even ask Rahm Emanuel. We all know who he is. He is Mr. Obama’s puppet who enjoys the title of “Chief of Staff.” Therefore, he is willing to let Obama say, “Do you see everyone? I even have a Jew as my chief of staff.”
“The article doesn’t quote Obama so it’s hard to know exactly what he said. According to the article ” He said both are horrible parts of history but shouldn’t be ignored . . that their lessons must never be forgotten.” For all of you critics, are you disageeing that both are horrible and shouldn’t be ignored or forgotten?”
Oy vey! We suffered the most and no one should compare something else to the holocaust. It’s the 11th commandment, in case you missed it. Lehavdil eleph alphei havdolos it’s like saying someone non-Jewish was smart like the rambam when we all know he was the thinkiest person ever, ever, ever. That’s the 12th commandment.
“The outright murder of 6 million Jews cannot be compared to the slave trade”
There were likely more than 12 million Africans shipped as slaves to the Americas from the 16th through 19th centuries. Should we now whine about not comparing the Holocaust to the sheer number of 12 million African slaves? It has nothing to do with the number and everything to do with your own desire to win the title of most-suffered.
I agree that analogies to the Holocaust are way over used and waters down and diminishes the pure and massive evil of the holocaust. We even see jews do this when they compare police in Israel to Nazis. However, I think a lot of people here are over-reacting. There are commonalities between the Holocaust and slavery in the U.S. In both, millions were victimized and dehumanized because of their race and subject to unbelievable horrors and brutality. There are few things that share similarities to the Holocaust, but the massive slavery in America and the Carribean for hundreds of years is among them. Notice I didn’t say the same, just similarities. I think that is all Obama was saying.
Obama is stam an idiot and it’s just now becoming aperent during the election his staff wouldent let him open his mouth with out there aprooval but now it’s starting to come out and I think people are starting to notice and are regreting voting for him in the first place and no I don’t meen the left wingers and liberal self hating Jews nothing will change them they agree with evrey word they probbely thing the Shoah was our own foult
does anybody happen to know if slaves were ,put into ovens alive, lampshades made out of their skin, made to march in freezing bitter cold miles and miles ,slept in sub human conditions en masse, given moldy bread, cement for soup etc etc etc 10’s and 10’s of 100rd’s pf thousands pressed into ‘showers’ to be GASSED??? the nerve of this …to compare slavery to holocoaust . slaver was a fact of civilizastion all over the globe for centuries involving all races not only in the colonies, and not only africans
I am embarrassed by many of the remarks on this post.
Do any posters want to say that the SLAVE TRADE was not a horrible part of history? The terrible depravities that were perpetrated upon the Black community were horrendous!
Obama (who I generally don’t support) was not making a “my Daddy is stronger than your Daddy statement.”
Bottom-line, I *wonder* how many here are fueled by racist ideology.
Did anyone actually listen to what Obama SAID?? After visiting a place in Ghana where tens of thousands of slaves were held for shipment and many thousands died in hellish conditions, he said it was REMINISCENT of his visit to Buchenwald. That’s not a comparison but an intelligent and appropriate observation.
You are insensitive racists – you are the only ones to suffer. Theirs was different but terrible
As someone who lost most of his family in the Shoah, I was not offended by the President’s remarks in the context they were made. There was no intent to trivialize the shoh or make a moral equivalence. We have reached the point where if C’v a politican uses the word holocaust in the same paragraph as any other historical event the chorus of outrage only gets louder without any effort to understand the context.
Its trivializing the Holocaust. Slavery was an institution practiced all over the world, even in Europe, that is where the word Slav comes from.
One can emphatise with the evils of slavery without equating it to Genocide.
THat has nothing to do with racism. Jews were also sold into slavery, especially those fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. But those Jews had a chance to survive and many were ransomed. The descendants of slaves are alive and thriving- while the descendants of the six million do not exist.
The interview is scheduled to be broadcase at 10pm Eastern Time Monday night. Until then, it might behoove us to wait to see exactly what he said rather than relying on second hand reports!
In the mean time, we can read his inspiring words spoken to the Ghana parliament:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-Ghanaian-Parliament/
The little bit of research I have been able to do in the last half hour indicate that the estimates of the number of deaths as a direct result of the transatlantic slave “trade” are comparable to, and probably greater than, number of Jews who died in the Shoah, and the slave “trade” was equally racist. There are many differences, of course, but we should understand that the slave “trade” was a unique horror that should never be minimized.
actually it is a much more appropriate comparison than the one secretary of state condi rice made last year when she dared to compare the “suffering” of the arabs in gaza at the hands of the “opressive israelis” the the discrimination of blacks she witnessed growing up in the rural south (and she was a spoiled little rich girl) the chutzpah of rice to compare the suffering of gaza palestinians were treated by the israelis to the way poor blacks were treated and discriminated in the south. But of course that for some reason didnt bother anybody, least not the Rush Limaugh robots who think that bushies cant do no wrong. (can you imagine the uproar and outcry if Obama or Clinton did what rice said?)
So now Obama makes a very appropriate correlation , and people think its bad?
How embarassing.
#7 and #36 Mr. charlie Hall- There is no doubt that Both were Holocausts (which jews do not have a monopoly on the term!), and millions have been starved and killed in tribal wars in Africa. In the Americas , however, there were not a deliberate attempt to wipe out an entire nation from the face of the earth, whom had one thing in common! They were Jews ! and most of the world assisted the Nazis in a modern age of the 1930-1945 of a so called civilizing world after the Industrial revolution. . gERMANY THE MOST INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL Nation in the world took up the ART of Mass Extermination of Millions , not to sell them as slaves but burn and gas everyone of them two death! There is no moral equivalency to both the goal and actions of both these vastly different Holocausts.
iN CONTRAST SLAVERY WAS BUSINESS AND MANY DIED IN TRANSIT BUT WERE NOT PUT INTO OVENS AND GASSED TO DEATH DELIBERATELY.
tHE iSRAELI LEFTISTS (todays Nazis!!)CARE MORE ABOUT THE iSLAMIC MURDERERS THAN THE CHILDREN BEING BOMBED IN sDEROT. iF pRESIDENT oBAMA MEANT TO SAY “BOTH ARE SORTS OF hOLOCAUSTS” THERE IS nOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.. bUT THEY WERE NOT EQIVOCAL IN PURPOSE OR IN THE ATROCITIES COMMITEED THOUGH BOTH WERE EQUALLY TERRIBLE!
Obama and other people didn’t try to compare Shoah and Slavery in facts, actions and consequences, but as both horrible part of history to be REMEMBERED, especially I think in Amercian society for the slavery part and holocaust survivors who emigrated to the USA. something to teach in class, and I agree it is something important to do. There is an international day for the abolition of slavery.
I think it’s really wrong to dare compare the details of how the nazis organized their final solution and how they did kill people to what the whites did to the slaves.
Each story is horrible and slaves did suffer a lot, just like we shouldn’t forget we were slaves once in mistrayim…
I am sick of everyone comparing everything to the holocaust. These same people, if they had been around at that time, would not have been shocked by what was going on in Europe and would most probably would have done NOTHING to help the Jews. Aside from that, the main difference is that the Jews DID NOT inflict the holocaust on other Jews. African blacks DID round up and sell other blacks into slavery.
There will be a time (I am afraid not in the so long distance) that we will say “we remember that yidden used to live peacfully in the USA. We better daven very hard for Moshiach to come, rather soon.
The comparison is faulty for another reason. During WWII the U.S. air force suffered heavy losses in bombing raids on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. Auschwitz was much closer and there was no allied bombing of Birkenau. Hitler solved the Judenfrage” for the British, et al.
#45 As I said “both were Holocausts” and i concluded with “there was a difference in Purpose but ‘both were EQUALLY TERRIBLE!!!!” I think that very clearly includes what u said about my sensitivity to the suffering just the circumstance were what I was addressing as I said “THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH WHAT THE PRESIDENT SAID”– My conscience said that #45 and my feelings for all suffering is deep though one was a Holocaust of bondage and slavery and the other of “mass EXTERMINATION AND GASSING AND BURNING”, which no one cared about!!!! In slavery all nations enjoyed that Holocaust of business.
This faulty comparison stems from lack of knowledge what happened. The end of Jewish hatred did not end with WW II . After 1945 an organization “Die Spinne ” and its goal of helping escape SS officer and war criminal to South America. The trip was to Geneva Switzerland where a travel permit by the Internation. Red Cross and then to Rome where a Priest at the Vatican facilitated their escape to Paraguay and Argentinia and that is how Mengele escaped.
Finally to all contributors who never been in concentration camp, never saw the flames of crematorium and never SS shooting Jews I have this to say. I was 15 years when I was deported from Vienna to the Ghetto Lodz [ from 5.000 Viennese 34 survived], then to Czenstochau and finally to Buchenwald. None of you and I mean literally none every faced a selektion where the SS commands right and left. Never any of you saw the terror in the eyes of small girl being commended to the left. Never any of you saw for one week I saw the Reichsautobahn trailers coming in the morning empty and leaving in the afternoon packed with old [some looking old] women, men and children for Treblinka. None of you a starving father and mother as I saw and unable to help. All you not so wise chachomim repeat books which you have read. I dread the day when there will nobody like myself to read all that rubbish and malarkey and able to respond. Shame for denigrating the horrible dead of children , women and men. Especially in the three weeks you should have more insight instead of repeating stale monologues
“The slave traders found a product that was legally on sale in one country, and for which there was a demand in another country, so they took advantage of the situation. What was wrong with that? Slavery was a recognised part of every legal system ever invented, including the Torah’s, since the creation of the world; should they have refrained from buying and selling just because some rabblerouser in England woke up one morning and decided that it was wrong?”
Milhouse, you’ve had more than your share of foolish posts before, but this one takes the cake. It was legal for the nazi guards to kick the crap out of Jews for fun, so they shouldn’t kick the crap out of the Jews? Kicking the crap out of Jews has a long and illustrious history in the world having been practiced in many times and places. Perhaps had it been practiced even more often and formally legalized more often, it would equally qualify as appropriate in your warped mind?
“Aside from that, the main difference is that the Jews DID NOT inflict the holocaust on other Jews. African blacks DID round up and sell other blacks into slavery.”
That’s the main difference, huh? Then I guess you lessen Nazi guilt by according to the level at which Jews collaborated with them? I suppose the Commandant at the camps where Jews policed other Jews are less evil? Other than your pathetic attempt at keeping the “most persecuted” crown, of what relevance is your point? If the Nazis actually paid off Israel for Jews to kill, would that make it less evil?
“Halacha to this day sees nothing wrong with slavery.
Meanwhile the Jews were rounded up and MURDERED, for no reason at all. There was nothing legal about it.”
Good. Halacha also sees nothing wrong with killing Amalekis and Nazi law saw nothing wrong with killing Jews. Go figure.
MILLHOUSE- Do U have an oppositional Personality disorder. I read Mr. Asher Buchwald #68 posting and although an old man I cried. My heart was broken.. It was an extermination of the so called enlightened western intellectual world. Slavery was not Million burnt , gassed and shot just sold for profit and abused for the most part.. The tragedy was for both but the sheer size and intent as well as the results are and forever will be quite demonstrably different. Hashem yinokem ess domom.
MILLHOUSE BE A MAN ND TELL MR #68 how u feel personaly about his comment. U have a big heart now let everyone know u have it for klal yisroel!
Why am I reading comments about how the Holocaust was worse or complaints about Obama having the nerve to compare the Holocaust with slavery? Why is it that people expect the world to sympathize with the horrors THEIR particular group had experienced, yet are completely incapable of expressing sympathy for the horrors that another group has experienced? I bet that if I had come across this article posted on a blog for African-Americans, people would be complaining the same thing . . . except they would be demanding that Obama should pay more attention to the history of slavery, instead of the Holocaust . . . or insisting that slavery was worse. Both the slave trade (with the institution of slavery) and the Holocaust were some pretty horrible periods for people to experience. Why is it so impossilbe to simply face that?
Why do people (and I mean EVERYBODY) insist upon maintaining this stupid herd mentality?