Sarcophagus of the spouses - Volterra Museum Guarnacci © fr.wikipedia.org
Etruscans and Romans: a genocide?
by Franco Cardini
www.avvenire.it
I read Elie Wiesel's statements reported by Avvenire January 25, 2011. Wiesel writer I admire, I feel sympathy for Wiesel man and witness of the sufferings of its people and our time. Nevertheless, I fear that we should really back down to earth: regain a foothold in the historical truth, including that little now have the knowledge and / or courage needed to present it clearly. On 27 January, I did something I never do: stay for hours glued to the small screen.
I guarantee that all channels between newscasts, films, dramas and discussions, it was all about the Holocaust. This is certainly not bad. But this leads us to observe three things. First: if Wiesel feared that such an event come to be forgotten, it can be reassuring because, for now (and I also think this crowd of young people from all over Europe each year are brought to Auschwitz school trips halfway between education and pilgrimage), the memory is alive.
Secondly, if he fears "the historicizing of Nazism", I then asked the intellectual cultured and refined what we can do a "case" tragic and terrible history, provided that we want to truly historicize, in other words trying to understand how it can be verified (and "understanding" does not mean "justify").
Third: if the primary value, human and universal memory of the Holocaust is the duty of memory, so that what happened never happens again (and no longer able not only to Jews but to no people on the face of the Earth) , then such a memory must interpret the tragedy that struck the Jews not so much as "unique" and incomparable to others, than as paradigmatic of all those that took place and that could take place.
And those that have taken place are so numerous. The parallel with Wiesel's "only" Etruscans is wrong for two reasons. First. The Romans have not committed genocide, that they have never deleted en masse the Etruscans, they could have destroyed the Etruscan culture, thereby committing a ethnocide, but they have not done either, being limited to no more than an assimilation which wiped culture and memory, but not descendants. Second. History is full of genocide comparable to the Holocaust, though less documented, but Wiesel, of course, prefers not to remember.
First. In fact, although the Latin language is undoubtedly strain the Indo-European and Etruscan origin uncertain (Controversies continue, assumptions accumulate ...), the "erasure" of the idiom - which also survived until the 5th century AD as a "sacred language" in ritual magic and divination Etruscan of obedience - not in any way corresponded to the disappearance of an entire demographic of people allocated to Campania and Lombardy whose destinies are closely related to those of the Romans.
The Etruscans were the kings of Rome during the final phase of the monarchic period, as were Etruscan until full imperial era, the great aristocratic families like the Cecina and people which belonged to Maecenas, friend and adviser of Augustus. Studies of DNA on average Tuscany, in the territory of Volterra, revealed a biological fact still alive, that can be traced to the Etruscans. I refer to the important, albeit controversial, Dictionary of the Etruscan language Massimo Pittau, Honorary Doctor of the University of Sassari (ed. Dessì, 2005), who systematically scrutinized the Etruscan sources and light which he is evident how the abandonment of the idiom Etruscan resulted primarily a phenomenon of assimilation Etrusco-Roman, there is no need to explain by violent means, let alone genocide, but was instead implemented through technical and institutional organization of political marriage. Apparently, the Romans were, to say the least, far more likely to extermination against the Gauls and Carthaginians.
Second. We know almost nothing of some genocides, among the most heinous in history : And it was perhaps the most successful. If we do not turn your back stubbornly to the past, one can find traces everywhere: the deeds of the great Achaemenid kings in the annals of Genghis Khan and these peoples 'Canaanites' mentioned in the Bible, to populations Balkan exterminated by the Byzantines in the 10th and 11th centuries, the Saxons destroyed by Charlemagne, Slavs and Finns eliminated en masse by the Teutonic Knights between the 12th and 15th century.
In times close and very close to us, by convention "civil" we commemorate the Indians massacred by the Conquistadors, but we are oblivious of the Guanches of the Canary Islands, the indigenous peoples of Brazil and Argentina, those Native American (Indians), which survives only in fragments sad morons in the "reservations" Tasmanians and other peoples of Oceania, literally destroyed by the English and Dutch populations of Central Asia "remote" (and actually eliminated) by the Russians, Armenians, Gypsies who shared the Holocaust, many "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans and in Africa today. Many of these people were murdered coldly and precisely programmed way. And yet, in history, the massacre is remembered only too often those who "serve" that "makes the headlines, perhaps to cover other crimes.
Remembrance Day (1) appeared to commemorate the Holocaust primarily, but also to make it the symbol of all the innocent victims and losers in history and, as men whose We can not absolve us from any and we are co-responsible of them all. Wiesel fears the normalization of the Holocaust, as if it were synonymous with " repression ". Quite the contrary. Resume a full and made history means to tear not only remember but also to a mythologizing "meta-history" that could actually, for once, of one day being contested, betrayal and self-effacing. History, Mr. Wiesel, nobody can leave. Never.
NdT
1. Giorno della Memoria (27 January), established in Italy by Law No. 211 of 07.20.2000 of the Italian Parliament, to commemorate the victims of National Socialism and Fascism, the Holocaust and honor those who risked their lives, protected the persecuted.
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Source: http://www.avvenire.it/Cultura/Etruschi+e+Romani+fu+una+Shoah_201102020935019400000.htm
Article published on 02/02/2011.
Translation from Italian: © George Festa - 02.2011
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