Paloma Esteban
07/05/2019 10:21 –
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) does not hide its discomfort after what happened last Sunday, when the Government used a tribute to the Spanish victims of Nazism in Mauthausen to quote the ex-Catalan leaders in prison for the ‘procés’. The Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, left the ceremony -framed in all that are held in memory of the more than 8,000 Spanish victims- to show their disagreement and insist that the “exclusionary expressions” used in the ceremony “clashed frontally “With the values that emerged from this extermination camp” and “with the thousands of Spaniards who perished here in brutal conditions simply because they were fighters and defenders of democracy and freedom.”
The general secretary of the FCJE, Elías Cohen, recognizes this newspaper that “comparing the worst crime of humanity with the situation of Catalan politicians in prison” simply “insults the memory of the victims”. In addition to seeing it as “an absurd comparison,” in the federation that brings together Jewish communities in Spain they see “a badly planned and morally open strategy”, which they understand responds to that Nazism “is the paradigm of absolute evil”. “That is to say, everything that is compared to him, is already evil. There is a clear Manichean strategy to say that on one side are the good ones and on the other the bad ones”, ditches.
Cohen insists that the FCJE will not come to assess in any way the situation in Catalonia, but he does recognize that the comparison with Nazism “is a terrible trivialization of the Holocaust” that, like all, “we see it very badly because it empties it of content ” A similarity that “makes the Jewish communities very uncomfortable” and “we do not believe that it should continue”.
Specifically, what happened last Sunday was that the general director of the Democratic Memory of the Generalitat, Gemma Domènech, described as “political prisoners” members of the Catalan government in preventive detention. Domènech made this reference when recalling that the plaque of homage was placed two years ago by the then ‘conseller’ of Foreign Affairs of the Generalitat, Raül Romeva, one of the former members of the Government in preventive prison accused of different crimes in relation to the organization of the consultation in 2017. The Minister of Justice decided to leave the act, to which she later returned, in protest.
The Jewish communities remember that it is not the first time that the Generalitat makes use of the victims of Nazism in its particular struggle for the ‘procés’. In March, the Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat, Elsa Artadi, appealed to the Holocaust victim, Ana Frank, to defend that the Government could continue exhibiting yellow ties in support of the independence cause. The Israeli embassy then decided to interpellate her directly, calling this use “shameful”.
The minister adviser of the embassy in Spain, Assaf Moran remarked that “nothing could compare with the holocaust to promote a political cause”.
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