To the "All Lives Matter" folks
I grew up in the Soviet Union, where the Jews were pariahs, along with the Romani, experiencing systemic discrimination and bearing a lifelong stigma on all levels of the society, from government (which translated to jobs and education) to some of our neighbors. We knew all too well the bitter taste of fear and injustice. We were altering our names, ethnicity records, forgetting our roots, but all that was never enough. I was called a slur and punched in the nose as early as in the elementary school, by my classmate. Years later, as I made Belarusian and Eastern European identity a deep part of my own, having studied Slavic cultures for over a decade, I was not once brushed off by the notion that I did not really belong there. I knew I should have dismissed that but it nevertheless was hurtful.
Aside from that, Holocaust was an unsanctioned topic in public sphere. Mentioning the Holocaust in the USSR could cost you being called out as a nationalist, which could bear very real consequences. Jewish mass graves with thousands, tens of thousands lying there without any identification, were at best marked as those of "Soviet civilians." Today's post-Soviet society is still very, very sick with antisemitism (look at any comment section in Russian or Belarusian or even Polish Internet). Too many people will still say, "yes, the Jews died, but they get their share of attention worldwide (oh, and the money, too!), how about the Russians and people of other ethnicities who also died at the hands of the Nazis?" Does that sound familiar? Of course, people of all ethnicities and faiths suffered and died in WWII, but the Jews were the largest of the few groups that were purposely exterminated based on who they were. It is morally wrong to be preaching about "all lives matter" while standing at the mass grave of thousands of Jews. It is equally wrong to be saying "all lives matter" at the moment when the African American community is in pain and is asking to hear them out. Our common goal is to extinguish their pain, help them heal, stand with them in repairing the society we share for the good and the future of our own. Black Lives Matter.