Despite the urging of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a French village is dismissing calls to change its name: La Mort aux Juifs, or “Death to the Jews.” The group’s director, Shimon Samuels, wrote to the French interior minister, saying that “It is extremely shocking that this name has slipped under the radar in the 70 years that have passed since France was liberated from Nazism and the [pro-Nazi] Vichy regime.”
Read More At:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/08/12/hamlet-won-t-change-death-to-jews-name.html
Clip from the Tuesday, August 12th 2014 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday – friday 4-6pm Eastern.
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Comments
The hamlet has been so named since the Middle Ages, and is translated to “the death of the Jews”, which in French, would mean “the place where the Jews have died”.
You’re right in one thing, though. There aren’t two sides to this argument, you’ve just vomited your opinion onto something you had no understanding over.
Ok so from a French person point of view:
It is a little dishonest to say that it would mean “the place where the jews have died”… La mort aux juifs, for every modern day french person means what it means: death to the jews.
So for a contemporary perspective, I totally understand that its shocking.
Now:
The thing most american doesnt comprehend, is that contrary to your country, ours in europe has thousands of years of history behing us. That means that you will often stumble upon places and villages that have names that should be taken in historical context, meaning sometimes thousands years earlier whereas in the states you have like 2 or threen hundred years to look past)… And it could be argue that in ANCIENT french, this place was called this way to point out that several jews had died here and as a way of remembering (understand grieving) this fact. And believe it or not, when you live in europe, you will a lot of time find dozens of different explainations about why this village or this one is named this way. You could put the best historians on the case, sometime the best you’ll get will be a “credible historical assumption”…
So from a modern, and american point of view its totally understandable to be shoked over this. For the vast majority of french person too. Now for ppl actually living there, and having notions about history (like for exemple the political representative) you can understand that you dont brush off several centuries of regional history for a few ppl taking it litteraly.
Moreover, I’ll add that in a lot of places in France there have been some massacre of protestants (which lead ultimately to the US being what it is) and some place are named after that too… You have to get that europe has thousands years of written history unlike the US so we are, indeed, more tolerant towards those oddities
Maybe you should be doing some more research and not just take over what other media say. The translation that you use is a literal translation, the real translation should be more like a place where jews have died, Also the translation of hamlet is wrong. It’s not a village but just 2 houses and a farm. Another thing i find distrurbing is that you have the nerve to call those people antisemetic just because their hamlet happens to have that name? Have you ever been there and talked to these people? If you make assumptions like this then we can say that americans are against muslims. I see no reason why they should change a name that has been around propably since the MIddle Ages that like it or not was a antisemetic era. Just covering this up won’t change anything you need to keep it to inform people about the past so they won’t make the same mistakes or are we going to hide all the bad stuff from the past and act like it never happenend?.