Katrina Evacuees Compare Gov't Response to Concentration Camps

[Phasad1913]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051207/...trina_congress

WASHINGTON - Black survivors of Hurricane Katrina said Tuesday that racism contributed to the slow disaster response, at times likening themselves in emotional congressional testimony to victims of genocide and the Holocaust.

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The comparison is inappropriate, according to Rep. Jeff Miller (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla.

"Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed," Miller told the survivors.

"They died from abject neglect," retorted community activist Leah Hodges. "We left body bags behind."







What do you guys think about the residents comparing their tragedy to being hauled into concentration camps? I don't think people should criticize the comparison, as some did on the article, if they were not there themselves to bear witness to the response and how the residents were treated first hand. What particulalry ticked me off was all the congressmen just out-right dismissing the accounts made by the residents of THEIR experiences! Who are they to tell them they're descriptions and comparisons were inappropriate?

[DC_Zeta1920]

In some respect I can see the comparison. They were trapped, separated from families, the police would not let them cross the bridge to Gretna (to the point of firing shots), saw death, starvation, etc.


The comments of the congressmen did piss me off. It amazes me how disconnected and callous this leadership is.

[squirrely girl]

while i COMPLETELY agree that the response to katrina was beyond slow and in other places nonexistent and most of all racist and classist at every level... and while i see the analogy between the shelter/corral situation and the death and disease...

i still get upset when anybody basically compares something to the holocaust.

i myself was not there to bear witness to the effects of katrina, but i am venturing a guess that the katrina victims were not there to bear witness to the holocaust either. over 6 MILLION jews were systematically annihilated. that is a VERY powerful experience to try to compare something else to - and i think it belittles the experiences of the holocaust survivors and the memories of those who died to try to do so.

on the other hand - i think that katrina is its own experience for which i pray the likes never reoccur and that there would never be reason to have to compare something to it...

- marissa

[Phasad1913]

Yeah, I have a bit of a problem with the comparison to the Holocaust. I think, though, that the residents were trying to put some kind of widely known event out there to demostrate how dier their experiences were. They have been met with so many rolled eyes and scoffs at their situations that I think they were just trying to get people to really see how they were treated. I'm down here in Houston literally one block from the Reliant Stadium which was where many people were housed after Katrina and just seeing the masses of people coming and going and how after a while the city officials, police, etc, just began talking to them and treating the people like groups of nameless, faceless aliens, I really don't find their testimonies hard to believe. Its so frustrating.

[squirrely girl]

that's probably one of the worst aspects of this whole experience - nobody understands what they've been through.

and i am guessing that within recent history the concentration camps are the closest comparison there is. which is just as disturbing.

- marissa