"Confederate Memorials, not a Jewish Problem?" Topic

"As Confederate statues fall in battle, North Carolina Jews may feel that we are watching someone else's war. After all, most Jews arrived in America decades after the Civil War, and few have deep or lengthy southern roots.

Yet, Confederate memorials in two cities speak to North Carolina's Jewish heritage.

In downtown Charlotte the focus is a stone memorial erected with Jewish patronage that honors Judah Benjamin, who served the Confederacy as secretaries of war and state…"
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Armand

First they came for the Confederates and I said nothing.

The CSA was defended by men who believed their sovereign states were superior in authority than the sovereignty of the Federal government. The issue that brought this to a head was slavery but the principle was states rights. Just as we honor Native Americans who fought against the USA because they were fighting for their way of life and their homeland, so we can honor the CSA for the same reasons. The Native Americans and CSA soldiers are all part of our common history as Americans.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

There was such a Caucasian poet Abutalib Gafarov. So one day he said: "If you shoot in the past with a pistol, your future will shoot at you from a cannon."
In other words: he who forgets and rejects his past is left without a future.

A related story about the Confederates, Jewish southerners, and cemetery memorials in North Carolina.

In Raleigh, the state of North Carolina buried both Confederate and Federal dead in the old Rock Quarry Cemetery on the outskirts of town. This included about 500 Confederate soldiers. After the war, during the occupation, the military governor for Raleigh ordered the disinterment of the Confederates since he had selected that Rock Quarry Cemetery to be the National cemetery for Raleigh in 1866. The local ladies approached a wealthy Jewish landowner, Henry Mordecai, who donated the land for a Confederate cemetery from his plantation holdings. The Confederates were disinterred by the locals and reburied in unmarked graves by the order of the US government. However, the ladies made a secret map of who was buried where that they maintained until the US Congress allowed the graves to be marked. This cemetery is now Oakwood Cemetery with over 2000 Confederate dead and also contains a Hebrew cemetery with additional land donated by Mr. Mordecai. If you visit Raleigh you can visit his house, but there is not a monument to this generous man. OBTW, some of the Confederate graves were desecrated in the past few years as part of the recent unpleasantness. My GGGF was a Confederate cavalryman who did the masonry for the cemetery and is buried there too. Here is more of this interesting tale: link

Benjamin does complicate the Civil War narrative of a group of unabashedly white supremist, Christians fighting for slavery. Benjamin, the first Jewish member of a presidential cabinet in the US shows the times were more complex than usually portrayed.

Anyone looking for a simple narrative should not look too closely at the ACW. A Jewish member of the Confederate cabinet and Indians sitting in the Confederate Congress are just a start.

I'm a Jew and my family may have fought for the Union (family rumor there was a a family member in a MA regiment, Governor Andrew did recruit far and wide). But to me, men who died in battle, no matter their cause (I'll make a singular exception for the Waffen-SS) should have the dignity of a gravemarker and a decent burial. To me, grave desecration is a sin against history, God, and all that matters.

Because soon a vast majority of you will have no ancestors connections at all with the acw. You don't judge the past out of its own time frame. It is, it was. You can just blur it out for usually bad reasons. One could put an explanation board near each suspicious statues (incl. Why it was erected) and leave freedom for each to appreciate and think if that particular pose would be nice if done in 18mm.

The whole waste is part of the destruction of your civilisation, that is the only reason for it.
Imagine sooner or later you will be forgotten to play acw.
Just like here model shows can put ww2 German planes but not with the proper markings. Hypocrisy. Maybe 40 years ago not to make it uneasy for those who sferred back then. But you have no one suffering from acw anymore.

The University of Texas moved a group of statues of War Between the States notables because of the recent PC frenzy. One of those was of Judah P. Benjamin.

Thanks!

Armand

Just as we honor Native Americans who fought against the USA because they were fighting for their way of life and their homeland, so we can honor the CSA for the same reasons. The Native Americans and CSA soldiers are all part of our common history as Americans.

An excellent point. The U.S. Army nicknames their aircraft after Native tribes. UH-1 Iroquois, OV-1, Mohawk, etc.

My family fought for the union. I have no desire to erect statues to those who tried to kill my family, which would have meant – NO ME!

Nope

War Against the States who thought Slavery was going to be abolished.

FIFY

Honest history, like truth, is sacred. NO ONE has the right to manipulate or erase it.

B