Why the Jewish part of the Holocaust is viewed as unique

[cali]

The destruction of European Jewry, within the larger context of the Holocaust of some 10 or 11 million is widely regarded in a different historical light. Why? Read on.

The Jews were targeted by Hitler and the Reich in a a way no other group was. And the historical evidence for that is vast; starting with Mein Kampf- no you won't find references to the Roma or the Slavic peoples or Homosexuals in Mein Kampf. The incitement to hate was directed toward the Jews. The same thing is true of Der Sturmer.

From Mein Kampf:

"Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows—at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example—as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews."

Moving on some years, there were the Nuremberg Laws which you can find here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws
Those laws went into effect in 1935 and codified discrimination solely against the Jews. There effect was devastating.... and petty and ugly.
The laws ranged from stripping Jews of citizenship to banning Jews from hiring German women under the age of 45 as domestic servants. Punishments were harsh.

Krystallnacht took place in 1938, unleashing a planned wave of violence directed toward the Jews- and no other group. Throughout Germany and Austria, homes businesses and synagogues were destroyed. People were dragged from their homes and beaten. It wasn't spontaneous, it was state sponsored. Again from wiki:

Jewish homes were ransacked in numerous German cities along with 8,000 Jewish shops, towns and villages,<2> as civilians and SA stormtroopers destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows — the origin of the name "Night of Broken Glass." Jews were beaten to death; 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps; and 1,668 synagogues ransacked with 267 set on fire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_night

Throughout the nightmare of the death camps, Jews were singled out for special "treatment". The amount of primary source documentation for that claim is overwhelming. It was largely Jews who were transported in cattle cars, and then on arrival, separated into two lines at the Death camps; one line for those to be sent immediately to their deaths, another for those to be worked until they no longer had slave value. The victims of the gas chambers were Jews. The obsession was with finding an efficient way to kill Jews.

Finally, the Nazis came incredibly close to completely destroying an entire people; and its culture was equally targeted for extermination. 90% of Poland's Jewish population was exterminated. In Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia, over 70 percent were killed.

None of these facts diminishes in the slightest the other victims of the Holocaust, particularly the Roma who were, starting in 1942 targeted in a similar, if less organized way as the Jews, and killed in large numbers both by Death squads and in camps. The Roma that were targeted were those who lived a nomadic life and the Roma peoples of the Balkans.

The persecution of homosexuals, the 600,000 Serbs who died in camps, the slaughter of Soviet POWs, the early killing of the mentally disabled, Jehovah's witnesses and others are all tragic, and contrary to statements on this thread, well documented, and not ignored by the academic world. Each of those deaths is every bit as tragic as every Jewish death.

There was no 'final solution' for any other population, no Wansee Conference where the extermination of every Jew in every country in Europe, including England, was planned. Therein lies one reason historians almost unanimously consider it a unique feature of the slaughterhouse of WWII.

There's much more, but people can take these facts- and they are easily verified facts- and do with them what they will.

History is too important for meritless revisionism. Particularly when the documentation for the When, where and who, is so available and widely known.

[MazeRat7]

1. So... can I ask a serious question...

Why? What was significant about the Jews and so threatened the Germans that they felt a need to embark on this path ? In other words.. where did this "mindset" originate ?

MZr7

[JohnLocke]

2. Here

http://www.aish.com/seminars/whythejews/wtj01000.htm

[qdemn7]

43. That was damned interesting 'site

I have never encountered that particular argument as the true cause of Anti-Semitism. Something to think about. Thank you. :thumbsup:

[Chulanowa]

53. Very odd site...

Especially once you plow through all the three-line pages and get to the writer's take on the root cause of anti-semitism, which is... brace yourself... that Jews are better than everyone else, have everything right, and everyone else is just jealous and just hates them for it.

[Raksha]

63. It's been a few years since I went through the Aish 'tutorial"

but that's not the way I remember the end of it.

Re once you plow through all the three-line pages and get to the writer's take on the root cause of anti-semitism, which is... brace yourself... that Jews are better than everyone else, have everything right, and everyone else is just jealous and just hates them for it.

I thought the conclusion was more like, "the Jews know the secret of eradicating evil from the world," and therefore evil people hate and fear us.

Which is a nice thought but probably not true. If I ever knew the secret of eradicating evil from the world, I forgot it several incarnations ago. God knows it would be a useful skill to have right now!

As I said, it's been several years. I'll go back through it again and see if I remember it correctly.

[ikojo]

96. aish.com is an orthodox Jewish website

intended primarily to get non observant Jews to return to the fold. The politics of aish hatorah also skew right wing.

Jews believe Judaism is right FOR JEWS. Jews DO NOT believe that we have a lock on "the truth."

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

57. The Jews are persecutet for their superior ideas?

Sorry i don't buy that.

The concepts of family and freedom are not unknown in other cultures.

And monotheism beeing superior to pagan religions? wtf? so much for equality. Besides the idea of monotheism was fostered by the zarathustrians before the jews.

Judaism (Christianity NT, Islam, Communism) would be peaceful if lived after the tenets. But theres that thing about theory and praxis as well as human shortcomings.

i refuse to believe that jews are x because of "jewry"

x= superior, inferior, godlike, subhumans, beasts, automatically right, automatically wrong, etc...

hatred can have so much origins. experiencing anti-semitism where i live it's fear rooted in unknown.

[JackRiddler]

71. Having plowed through it, finally

At the link JohnLocke recommends, after many pages of pedantry pitched to fourth graders, we get this as the payoff:

The Jews: Light Unto the Nations

The profound message that Jews bear to humanity has gained such widespread acceptance that people tend to take it for granted. Yet the ideas which originated at Sinai have literally changed the world.

Few people give much thought anymore to the source of the basic moral underpinnings of Western society. Concepts such as basic human rights, the notion that the sick and the elderly should be cared for – not murdered or left to die -- and the idea of society assisting the poor and disadvantaged, all seem to "come naturally" nowadays.

In short, Jewish concepts have civilized the world.

Peace

Freedom

Monotheism

Family

Education

Charity

Any serious student of history who has gained some awareness of what world standards were like before the Jews came along can easily recognize the enormous impact that Judaism has had.

Sorry to betray it, but I'll admit it's a good list. Well, except for monotheism. Excuse me if I fail to see to see the creation of the One-Big-Sky-God-Who-Is-Just-Like-You, except he hates everyone's guts and you will burn for it -- not actually something one can pin on the Ancient Hebrews, as the Egyptians and Persians were there first, and wisely gave up on the idea -- as a civilizing moment for the world.

Anyway, according to Aish's argument, everyone who sets out to undo civilization and freedom and charity and establish barbarism and the rule of the beastliest (like Hitler did) hates the Jews because they are, the writer asserts, the source of these values. Therefore, the worst thing that can happen is if all those whom the birth lottery designated as Jewish should forget to perpetually honor and espouse their holy texts. (As the subsequent climactic page puts it, "Anti-Semitism + Ignorance = Assimilation."

You must stay in the tribe. Never forget that you're a Lilliputian, my child, for that is when the world ends. This is the same national self-glorification I grew up with among the Greeks - the creators of democracy, philosophy, science and language, and relentlessly persecuted for it by a world that refused to see it, according to my relatives, who emphasized the centrality of maintaining ethnoreligious identity above all else - and that prevails in the other self-styled civilizations of the world.

And it is not the answer to why the Nazi holocaust happened, or why it targeted Jews, or why the Nazis killed communists, Romany and Gypsies, the Polish intellectual classes, millions of captive Soviet soldiers who were penned in open-air enclosures and allowed to starve in 1941, or the sufferers of congenital mental illnesses, who all received a euthanasia shot in 1939. Or why there were so many campaigns and targets of genocide and holocaust around the world before and since the Second World War, and why the great powers themselves committed or facilitated or supported so many of these crimes, or why there are wars.

Weirdly enough, I'm going to look to biology, economics, psychology, politics and the vagaries of happenstance a.k.a. history for the answers - not the mysticism of one people over another, whether in domination or in suffering.

[Raksha]

94. I finally plowed through the Aish tutorial again last night,

and just like the first time, I found the step-by-step format annoying as all hell, because it takes so long to get to the quote you're looking for when you have to click through all those links. You end up feeling like a rat in a maze! The fourth-grade language is condescending and irritating too, and I also spotted a few glaring logical flaws in the argument. For example: Even by the writer's own definitions, some of rationales given for anti-Semitism are in fact "reasons," not "excuses," such as the deicide charge of Christianity. The author actually admits this down the line after glossing it over the first time.

Re Anyway, according to Aish's argument, everyone who sets out to undo civilization and freedom and charity and establish barbarism and the rule of the beastliest (like Hitler did) hates the Jews because they are, the writer asserts, the source of these values. Therefore, the worst thing that can happen is if all those whom the birth lottery designated as Jewish should forget to perpetually honor and espouse their holy texts. (As the subsequent climactic page puts it, "Anti-Semitism + Ignorance = Assimilation."

You have to remember that Aish ha-Torah is an Orthodox Jewish organization, and in any kind of Orthodox advocacy there is going to be an irritating note of "Chosen People" ethnocentric triumphalism that annoys and alienates non-Jews. A non-Orthodox Jewish reader like myself tends to brush it off as simply the way the Orthodox express themselves on such topics.

Jewish readers still have to be on guard whenever we run across those invocations of the Chosen People idea, or the Jewish soul, or the transcendant Sinai experience, or the "Light unto the Nations" idea. All of these phrases refer to the same inner reality, which I personally believe is real because I also experience it within myself. I don't actually have any fundamental disagreement with Aish about that.

But I'm still very much on guard whenever I see that note of Chosen People triumphalism in any Orthodox advocacy piece, because I know good and damn well by now what's coming next. It's absolutely inevitable, like night follows day, and Aish does it just like they all do. What comes next will ALWAYS be a "mystical" argument against assimilation and in favor of strict observance of the commandments.

I'm glad you had the patience to follow the tutorial through to the end, because now you see clearly what I knew all along: It isn't really intended for gentiles at all! Aish ha-Torah is a Jewish outreach organization and its message is aimed at "secular" Jews like me. They are trying to convince me to de-assimilate.

Sure, a secondary message of the Aish argument is that the rest of the world should stop treating us so horribly, and should even honor us for our moral and spiritual contribution to Western culture. The truth about that is that the Christian world has both honored AND despised us at the same time, in a truly schizoid fashion I've never been able to untangle and I don't know if anyone else has either. But that's another post.

[JackRiddler]

100. Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Actually the only thing that annoyed me was the "keep clicking for our mysterious answer" format. I don't find the idea of chosen-peoplehood all that alienating, since it's found in different forms in many peoples, including my own. There's nothing unusual about ethnoreligious centrism or nationalism or group A designating itself as essentially superior to group B and using mystical equivocations to explain this self-definition. I see the non-conformists everywhere having to deal with their own versions of it within their own nations, and it is they whom I most tend to empathize with.

Anyway, be well.

[Raksha]

103. You mentioned in your previous post (the one I was responding to)

that you're of Greek extraction.

Re I don't find the idea of chosen-peoplehood all that alienating, since it's found in different forms in many peoples, including my own. There's nothing unusual about ethnoreligious centrism or nationalism or group A designating itself as essentially superior to group B and using mystical equivocations to explain this self-definition.

I think it's interesting that so many ethnic groups have names for themselves that mean more or less "the People," which implies that outsiders are essentially "non-people." There's also the original meaning of the word "barbarian" in Greek. Originally it simply meant a non-Greek or foreigner, but it has picked up some revealing secondary meanings over the years.

It goes without saying that your people have every bit as much right to be proud of their essential contributions to Western civilization as mine do, and I'm the first one to give them full credit, totally and without reservation.

In fact I'll let you in on a little secret: my true spiritual home is not Jerusalem but Alexandria. Except for specifically Jewish elements like the mystical revelation at Sinai, most of the core beliefs that have had the most lasting influence in my life come from the Hellenistic period, when the supposedly "irreconcilable" world-views of Judaism and Greek philosophy came together in an alchemical fusion often called the Perennial Philosophy. And yet I've never been willing to accept the prefabricated mix known as orthodox Christianity and there's no reason why I should either.

I see the non-conformists everywhere having to deal with their own versions of it within their own nations, and it is they whom I most tend to empathize with.

Yes, the Orthodox can be a huge pain in the butt for us freethinker types. What is especially frustrating is how their patriarchal and legalistic mindset makes them totally miss the most obvious examples of their OWN mystical assertions about the "Jewish soul" and its prophetic role in history. In the U.S. their recent deplorable turn towards political conservatism (not historically characteristic of Jews AT ALL) has made them even more myopic than ever.

You don't need to look further than the current GD page for examples of this. There is Naomi Wolf, raising the alarm in the true prophetic voice about the threat Blackwater poses to our freedom. She wasn't raised Orthodox. Naomi Wolf is a totally assimilated Jewish FEMINIST who had a plain-vanilla Reform Jewish upbringing not all that different from mine.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1924750

I believe Daniel Ellberg is also Jewish--at least it would seem so from his name. And he's raising the alarm too, and getting people to finally PAY ATTENTION! He also is speaking in the prophetic voice that is the mystical inheritance of Mount Sinai...but the Aish people and other regressive types are dead-set on being the last to notice!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1912892

[JackRiddler]

106. Raksha...

We seem to be of one mind on a lot of things. Thank you so much for your thoughts.

You're right about "the people." Think of all the tribes whose very names simply mean, "the human beings." This is the ancient struggle of respecting group identity and its often undefinable essence while understanding that we are all equally the human beings. If I err in my thinking, it's usually on behalf of universal individualism. I appreciate for example your praise of my people's contributions, at the same time feel funny about it since all contributions had specific origins in individuals or specific groups thereof, and those of the ancient Greeks no more belong to me necessarily than to anyone else alive today. The fact is, we share the same ancestors, and mathematically anyone alive in the Mediterranean space or probably the world 2500 years ago who still has living progeny today is sure to be among our common ancestors. So to me we are all one people, even as we have those unique and unmistakable but undefinable identities.

And the two you identify are truly among the great voices in the present cacophany.

I need to look into the Perennial Philosophy. A shout-out to you.

[KurtNYC]

75. The history of europe is dotted with persecution of the jewish people

it seems to be sometimes for consolidation of power and sometimes for economic reasons. Almost all ongoing prejudice and racism has an economic benefit for the elite. Right now what is called "illegal immigration" is really illegal employment -- employment of "illegal" people at low wages. Prejudice = profit. And they blame the victim and they don't talk about how they profit.

In europe for most of the last 800 years or so, the Catholic church forbid their flock from pursuing higher education and sciences but the elite needed or at least wanted the benefits of these skills so they became concentrated in the non-catholic populations. As the Spanish inquisition reached its peak, Columbus sets off to claim new land for them and the technical positions on his boats are filled by jewish people. Fast forward to Hitler and you have a drive to concentrate power -- the government and big business become one entity (facism) and he exploits long standing prejudice and racism in order murder, steal from and otherwise exploit large populations.

[Selatius]

3. I think it is rooted in Christian bigotry against Jews and others such as Roma Gypsies

I've read something roughly like 1.5 million Gypsies perished in the camps, along with socialists, social democrats, unionists, and various other "enemies of the state" in addition to the Jews. The hatred of Jews is old and deep. Hitler stoked the hatred by blaming all the problems on the Jews, so naturally when push came to shove, Hitler singled them out for the worst treatment.

[spoony]

55. Yet Hitler wasn't a Christian.

[PDenton]

59. He was a cultural Catholic

but pretty much irreligious otherwise. If push came to shove, he wasn't a Christian, because Christianity didn't offer him the kinds of glory he saw for himself, being a "great man of history". He had a need to be a great person, a deep sense of rejection because he couldn't be an artist. Christianity wouldn't offer him the kind of narcissistic greatness he wanted.

[JackRiddler]

107. Don't be so sure?

I suppose the question is, what is a Christian, but there's no doubt Hitler is coming out of the real-existing Christianity as well as other influences. Check out these references:

Hitler's Christianity
http://nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

[cali]

5. In part, the "Christ Killer meme"

and the fact that the Jews were seen as "the other". Over the centuries, a large and false mythology of evil was constructed, and at when disaster struck a community, the Jews were scapegoated. I guess you can say it hate became a deeply rooted habit.

[Usrename]

34. Hitler blamed the domestic Jews for betraying Germany.

He blamed Germany's capitulation of WWI on the domestic Jewish population negotiating with other foreign Jews in the international community for peace and settlement of that war. He blamed all Jews for Germany's failure in their first attempt at world domination.

I think that's how he saw it. They were the biggest obstacle to his goal. The rest is all a matter of how he accomplished this tactically. He used the same tactics as Bush/Cheney uses. Simple. Prey on people's xenophobic nature.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. The Germans In General Did not Feel Threatened By The Jews At All

Jews were as integrated into German society then as they are integrated into US society now. Jews held high positions in government and in the military. Half of German Jews married non-Jews, just as happens in the US. A Jewish friend of my family was born in Cologne prior to Hitler taking power - her dad owned a butcher shop, known for its pork sausages. Most all of her friends and classmates were Christian. Germany was perhaps more favorable towards Jews than any other European country - in fact, Jews in the US tended to side with Germany at the beginning of WWI, in part because Germany would accept Jews from Eastern Europe, byt England and France would not.

Hitler convinced his thugs (the Brown Shirts) that the Jews were bad, the cause of their problems (most Brown Shirts were lower-class thugs looking for someone to blame for their lot in life). Most all other Germans thought that Hitler's yammerings about the Jews was just nutty. However, once Hitler took power and started being successful in his various undertakings, the average German started to really listen to him. In just a few short years, Germany went from a very tolerant democracy to a living hell.

It can happen here too, all too easily.

[cali]

7. Sure, but a couple of things

Hitler really didn't have to convince his thugs that Jews were bad. Many were already a bunch of virulent anti-semites. He did persuade the populace at large, however, praying on the latent anti-semitism extant within the culture. And from what I've read, the fear of the "other" was also a basis to build hate on.

[MazeRat7]

9. That's kind of what I'm getting after reading a bit...

It seems to have been mostly a "manufactured outrage" that assimilated various aspects of classic antisemitism which could then be used as a kind of adhesive or bond for the Brown Shirts to help him gain absolute power. In other words... there was no reason at all expect his own personal thirst for power.

I'm sure I've over simplified the complexities, but then thats what engineers do when trying to understand system dynamics :)


MZr7

[MannyGoldstein]

11. A Really Fantastic Book That I Recommend

To The Bitter End, by Hans Gisevius. Gisevius was a high-ranking Nazi early on because he was anti-Communist, but became disgusted with the Nazis disrespect for the law. He ended up participating in the plot to kill Hitler, and was a key witness in sending Goering to death row at the Nuremberg Trials. The book details, very dispassionately, almost day by day, how Germany plunged into madness.

http://blueworksbetter.com/ToTheBitterEnd (a writeup of the book on my blog)

[MazeRat7]

15. Thanks !!! I'll check it out. -nt

[Sequoia]

81. Thanks.

[Lerkfish]

35. We can see this happening now, in America, when phrases like "Axis of Evil"

is used to demonize Saddam, a former ally, and Ahmanidijad (sp?).

The point is its a human dynamic: make the mob hate and/or fear the enemy to an irrational extreme.

[tigereye]

92. I've always thought, though, perhaps incorrectly, that "Axis of Evil" as used

in this admin. is an attempt to reframe current conflicts in terms of WWII - the Axis and genocidal powers, and thereby a way to create some emotional resonance in the older US population with the idea of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as similar to Japan, Germany and Italy.

[Raksha]

40. "The latent anti-Semitism extant within the culture..."

And why was that latent anti-Semitism THERE to be exploited? I have to blame organized Christianity for its existence, and in particular the Catholic Church. History bears me out on this and I have no plans to forgive them...EVER! Pope John Paul II's "repentence" or whatever it was officially called didn't go far enough. He blamed "some Catholcs," knowing as well as I do that some of those Catholics were popes. Until the day comes when some future pope asks forgiveness on behalf of THE CHURCH (which I know good and well won't happen), you can wait about a hundred years and ask my great-grandchildren if they feel inclined to forgive...and then don't hold your breath waiting!

[JerseygirlCT]

73. As you go back in history, it becomes nearly impossible to separate

the church from political institutions -- they were the same thing, for the most part.

Certainly Jews had been used as scapegoats for centuries, and hated for it, to boot. In many "Christian" countries, laws against usury prohibited Christians from lending or borrowing money. Enter the Jews, who were pushed into the role, and then hated for it. Convenient, huh?

Certainly the church furthered those teachings of hatred. But it's very hard to untwist this and separate out purely religion-driven hate from the more diffuse stuff that was the reality for a long time.

Germany offered for a while the safest sanctuary. Many Jews moved there from all over Europe to enjoy relative freedom and safety. Which made the horrors of the Holocaust all the worse, really.

[Raksha]

104. I am well aware of the unholy alliance of Church and State

and what disastrous results it had for the Jews in Europe.

Re As you go back in history, it becomes nearly impossible to separate the church from political institutions -- they were the same thing, for the most part.

Certainly Jews had been used as scapegoats for centuries, and hated for it, to boot. In many "Christian" countries, laws against usury prohibited Christians from lending or borrowing money. Enter the Jews, who were pushed into the role, and then hated for it. Convenient, huh?

No argument there! In fact, the big attraction of America as a destination for Jewish immigrants like my grandparents was precisely the "wall of separation between church and state" (Jefferson) the fundies claim doesn't exist because those words aren't in the Constitution. The Jews knew that principle would protect them from persecution like nothing else, and that's why we continue to defend it with such passion today. We are well aware it has literally saved our lives.

[JerseygirlCT]

105. Yup. nt

[PDenton]

56. Germany had desperate poverty from the Depression

and in about 4 years, the Nazis turned that around completely. Germany was the first country to emerge from the Great Depression. That had to create a sort of Messianic image around Hitler. In terms of works projects and an aim for full employment, the Third Reich was extremely effective. They built roads and had their Kampf durch Freude tourism program going, getting people to spend money and stimulate the economy. Of course, this economic rebirth had an extremely dark side as well, it turned "blood and soil" into a religion.

It's also been noted that Germans, starting in the Reneissance, had an inferiority complex. Most of the world was looking at Italy at the time, even though Germany produced alot of culture, art, and music, people focused on Italy. Germans were often seen as a simple, quaint people with nothing great to contributed to Western civilization. A bunch of politically divided city-states. This trend continued even to modern times. It is sort of ironic if you think about it, but that is the perception: Italian and French things are "fine", German things were not, no matter how artistic, efficient, or finely crafted. Artists like Wagner or Schubert asserted the right of Germans to have a celebrated culture of their own. It was only really the Third Reich that cemented the idea of "German engineering" in the wider world.

I'd say the brutal Treaty of Versaille combined with the Depression, a German inferiority complex, combined with latent anti-semitism contributed to the Holocaust.

[tigereye]

93. nice analysis

I still remember Shirer's line about German's with wheelbarrows filled with worthless scrip - at the beginning of one of his books.

[JerseygirlCT]

72. Yes, and though pre-war Germany was

fairly hospitable to its Jewish population, there was a long, long history of anti-semitism in Europe, going back centuries. That sort of stuff doesn't just disappear -- which is why we simply can't relax and think all that is history.

[ikojo]

97. What Hitler did was tap into a latent antisemitism

which has existed in Europe for almost a millennia. Like racism against blacks here in the US, antisemitism was just below the surface and all it took was someone like Hitler to kindle the flame.

[brentspeak]

98. Well, the LEADERS of the Nazi party were already anti-Semites, and didn't need convincing

But the rank-and-file of the SA (i.e., the brown-shirts) were basically just young, rootless, unemployed thugs, looking for violent thrills and a steady income. In college, I wrote a paper on the politically-motivated mob violence during the Weimar Republic. The young German thugs who comprised the various right-wing and left-wing hoodlum squads, which fought each other in the streets, usually held -- in contrast to their groups' leaders -- no firm political ideologies; thugs who were members of Communist party gangs one week would cross over to the Nazi party gangs the next, and vice-versa. One week, left-wing thugs would be praising Karl Marx, a Jew; the next, being members of a right-wing gang, condemning him because he was a Jew.

[cynatnite]

18. They were, but anti-semitism was still a strong undercurrent...

based on economic and religious reasons Jews in Germany were resented no matter how much they were integrated into society. Many of them were pushed out of countries like Czechoslavakia and settled in Germany. You'll also find that a lot of Jews of that time even went so far as changing their religion to better conform to German society which is much of the reason why there were marriages of Jews and non-Jews.

Hitler put a voice to the resentment many had for Jews at that time. He had far more support from the average German citizen than you realize. Germany's economoy was suffering. There was poverty, breadlines and a lot of unemployment. It was easy to point the finger at the Jews who owned businesses and were managing quite well. The people wanted better lives, Hitler played on it like a consumate politician and they voted him into office. The rest his history.

[Lerkfish]

33. Not an expert, but a history professor made the interesting point that

(at least in Hitler's mind) certain jewish families were collectively in control of a lot of the banking and other power broker industries. The professor said he targeted what he consider the powerful interlopers who controlled what should have been controlled by the germans.
:shrug: I dunno, there's a lot of arguments either side.
I think certainly Hitler felt the final solution was a viable method to rid his country of Jews, and this seems to have been his primary target. However, many other millions of people, poles for example, were eventually introduced into the final solution process.

Right before the rise of the nazi party, there was I'm told a huge recession/depression, where the currency was drastically devalued. In Hitler's mind, I suppose, he blamed what he perceived as those in control of the money, and then demonized them to such a degree it was no longer about financial power, but genocide.

again, I'm not an expert, but that's what I was told a long while back.

[cali]

37. Well, that's conjecture

There was certainly lots of rhetoric from him about 'blood sucking jews', but of course the major engines of industry were companies like I.G. Farben and Krupp, and they weren't owned by jews. Hitler's anti-semitism was far more encompassing than a feeling that Jews controlled the economic levers of Germany, as the passage I quoted from Mein Kampf indicates.

The final solution as planned at Wanasee was directed only at Jews, but starting in 1942, laws directed at much of the Roma people had much the same intent and effect as the Nuremberg Laws. And the Roma like the Jews were subject to mass killings by the Einsatzgruppen.

[pink-o]

80. Blood Sucking Jews: check this out, they thought it literally!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews


I'm pretty sure in Medieval Europe there was a book circulating called "The Chronicles of Zionism" but I can't Wiki or Google it. Anyway, it was a total propaganda piece that claimed as well as killing the Christian Messiah, we also snatched Christian babies during Passover to drain their blood for baking our Matzoah. Of course, this kept us as the fear foreigners, the moneylenders, bankers and takers of dirty jobs that no decent gentile would do. Seriously! At the beginning of the 20th century, there were still Europeans that believed it. Why d'ya think so many of us ended up here?

(Just for the record, Kosher rules don't allow us to eat the blood of any animal. And if pork is forbidden, we're sure not gonna sit down to a meal of toxic humans!!)

As an agnostic, believer in science and one with a socialogist's viewpoint this is my take on Anti-Semitism: It has always behooved a society to have an underclass, one who will do the dirty jobs and allow others to feel better by reviling them. It's economically the smartest way to run a place with more than 100 people living in it. Jews were a good target because we didn't assimilate, we always looked different and had customs most people didn't understand. We also were resourceful and got rich from being pushed into those jobs others considered dubious. We also relished our isolationism, so throwing us into the Venice or Warsaw Ghettos didn't bother us the way it does, say modern African Americans who rightfully want to be part of American Society. But having such a large collection of Jews with all those beautiful possessions and stockpiles of precious metals and stones was like shooting fish in a barrel for Hitler. There are those who believe we should have resisted, but the isolationism didn't give us the resources to figure out what was going on until it was too late. As for the camp survivors, they were programmed to just get through another day, another week. It's hard to plot very much when you're starving, cold and scared.

But knowing Holocaust history helps me understand the Sabras in Israel, why they fight every perceived threat they see to their existence. I hate it--I hate seeing Jews act like (the other N word) and practice genocide and apartheid. We're better than that--and Muslims are more our people than European Christians are.

Anyway this is longer than I had intended, but if anyone knows about that book "The Chronicles of Zion" maybe they can find a link.

[Chulanowa]

52. Centuries of European tradition

Ever since the dark ages, European communities have regularly attempted to "drive out the Jews." It kind of reached a fever pitch during the Crusades and the plague, but it had always been an ongoing phenomena. The Nazi holocaust and the Soviet purges were not an aberration - they were the ultimate culmination of the tradition. "Purge the Jew" meets industrial efficiency.

It wasn't so much that the Germans feared Jews. It's just that the Jews were a visible and sizable minority, and nobody really had much of an issue with singling them out, due to their historical status as "the other."

[HamdenRice]

78. Honestly? The main reason: They were within reach

I think the hardest thing to wrap our minds around, in understanding the holocaust, is understanding the pre-World War II racist mentality of most of the European and Euro-American world. Most Europeans and Americans believed fervently in eugenics. They analogized human reproduction to farm animal breeding and frankly wanted to cull what they considered "inferior" stock. Of course, each group believed itself to be superior and others to be inferior. The holocaust discredited that kind of racism in the west.

One of the least known but most important events in 20th century German history is Germany's treatment of indigenous people in their colonies. A few decades before the Germans tried to wipe out the Jews, they had tried and almost succeeding in completely wiping out the Hereros in German South West Africa. Many historians (at least those who are acquainted with this episode) believe that the German genocide against the Herero helped consolidate in the minds of the German elites the idea that it was possible to completely wipe out a people. The other European powers in Africa simply never contemplated doing the kinds of things the Germans did in Africa (the Belgians came close, but that was mostly as a result of mind boggling greed, incompetence, and indifference to human suffering, not industrial scale annihilation).

Fortunately for the people of Africa, German's colonies were taken away from them after World War I. Although the British and French were racist also, centuries of contact and experience with other cultures -- from the colonization of Ireland to the management of Caribbean slavery, to the management of world scale empires -- made the British and French much more pragmatic and by the 20th century simply not genocidal in their attitude toward indigenous people.

But the Germans had basically proven that if you put them in proximity with the "other," they would annihilate them. The "final solution" was their recognition that there was an "other" in their midst, and to apply what they had done in their briefly owned colonies, at home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide

I, the great general of the German troops, send this letter to the Herero people... All Hereros must leave this land... Any Herero found within the German borders with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall no longer receive any women or children; I will drive them back to their people. I will shoot them. This is my decision for the Herero people. <3>

General Lothar von Trotha's orders to kill every male Herero and drive the women and children into the desert were lifted in 1904 by the Kaiser, but the massacres had already begun. When the order was lifted at the end of 1904, prisoners were herded into concentration camps and given as slave labour to German businesses, where many died of overwork and malnutrition.

[defendandprotect]

83. Notice that the Communists also ran progroms against the Jews -- ironically. ....

Jews were hated for their intelligence and liberalism . . . .
that's certainly NOT what we are seeing today in Israel!!!

Yet, Jews are liberals, just as Americans are --

But, their right-wing fundamentalists were armed by Nixon -- and the takeover of the nation began!!!

Additionally, Hitler was a baptized Catholic who saw himself carrying out what the Vatican was doing for a thousand years and more in "ghettoizing" the Jews and separating them from society.

He was moving to the final solution ---
not just barring them from society, but killing them!!!

And, Hitler asked the world . . .. why do you see this as something so terrible, when the Catholic Church has been doing this for a thousand years???

[Name removed]

4. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alfredo]

8. The Armenian Genocide was carefully planned out. I wonder if Hitler

learned something from the Young Turks. Maybe he felt he could do a better job of eliminating the Jews than the Turks did with the Armenians.

Armenians were the industrialist, gained power and wealth through their business expertise. Armenians were resented for this. The Turks held power in government and the military, but the Armenians reaped financial wealth out of the reach to most Turks. There was also a religious element to the Genocide.

Turkey also "deported" their victims.

[cali]

10. I'd like to know more about the Armenian Holocaust

could you recommend a book for me?

[Swede]

14. Atom Egoyan has a movie about it called Ararat.

He's well known here in Canada. Here is a link to some info on the film and Mr. Egoyan.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/is_39_11/ai_92802464

[cali]

17. I love his work and I've

meant to see Ararat. Thanks for the reminder.

[Emit]

16. My neighbor is of Armenian decent, and he recommended this dvd

New York, NY (January, 2006) -- The Armenian Genocide is the complete story of the first Genocide of the 20th century – when over a million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I. This unprecedented and powerful one-hour documentary, scheduled to air April 17th on PBS, was written, directed and produced by Emmy Award-winning producer Andrew Goldberg of Two Cats Productions, in association with Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Featuring interviews with the leading experts in the field such as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power and New York Times best-selling author, Peter Balakian, this film features never-before-seen historical footage of the events and key players of one of the greatest untold stories of the 20th century. The Armenian Genocide is narrated by Julianna Margulies and includes historical narrations by Ed Harris, Natalie Portman, Laura Linney and Orlando Bloom, among others.

“What the word ‘Genocide’ connotes is a systematic campaign of destruction. If you simply call the horrors of 1915 ‘crimes against humanity’ or ‘atrocities,’ it doesn’t fully convey just how methodical this campaign of slaughter and deportation really was, and I think that’s why historians look at the record and they really can come to no other conclusion but that this word, Genocide, applies to this methodical campaign of destruction,” says Samantha Power.

Filmed in the US, France, Germany, Belgium, Turkey and Syria, the program features discussions with Kurdish and Turkish citizens in modern-day Turkey who speak openly about the stories told to them by their parents and grandparents.

To this day, Turkey denies the Genocide occurred and maintains this position steadfastly. The film includes testimony by former Turkish Diplomat Gunduz Aktan to US lawmakers in the year 2000, where he explains the official Turkish position on the issue. “The Turkish people firmly believe that what happened to the Armenian people was not Genocide,” Aktan says.

~snip~

http://www.twocatstv.com/armeniangenocide.php

[cali]

19. Thank you

That also sounds like a must see. I think highly of Samantha Powers.

[alfredo]

20. Here's a good start.

Armenian Genocide Museum.
http://tinyurl.com/3box3o


I'm not an expert on it. I should be because of my Armenian blood. My family left Armenia centuries ago it appears. Our name is present in one form or another from India to Munich, so at times I suspect the Armenian heritage. Culturally we are central European, Prussian/German. I tell some people I'm a Pole, they know what that is.

[cali]

21. Thanks. That looks like

a great place to start. appreciated.

[alfredo]

24. No biggie. Google Armenian Genocide and I am sure you will find

a lot of info.


Youtube

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pmB-YQgQuI4&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yqId0RIkFM0

[JerseygirlCT]

74. And continues to insist that genocide never happened... nt

[defendandprotect]

84. Hitler said he learned something from the US government genocide of native Indians --- !!!!

Reservations, etal ---

[alfredo]

89. Reservations = Warsaw Ghetto? One American general said that

we should convert (to Christianity) or kill native American. Not much different than Ann Coulter.

[defendandprotect]

101. Vatican, both re "native Indians" and "Africans" in America . . . kill them . . .

if you can't convert them and/or enslave them --

Papal Bulls!!!!

But, Hitler evidently saw the future of US "reservations" as his concentration camps ---

[alfredo]

102. Fema trailer cities.

[rockymountaindem]

12. Thanks for bringing this up

I try to explain to my friends that the Holocaust did far more than kill six million Jews; it managed to destroy over 1000 years of our culture and heritage that cannot be replaced any more than the lives lost. When you manage to make it through nearly 6000 years of existence history takes on an added value, and since we cannot ever replace or resurrect the thousands of synagogues, schools, cemeteries, theaters, hospitals and other cultural touchstones which were taken from us, the loss grows by several orders of magnitude.

I'm also sorry that some people seem to think, here and elsewhere, that somehow the Holocaust has caused the Jews to lose our sympathies for other oppressed people, namely the Palestinians. Maybe that's true. I don't think it is, but if so, it isn't just the Holocaust. That was just the last in a long string of tragedies which have brought Jews to the brink of total annihilation. So, if you're one to hold the view that the Holocaust has damaged Jews' collective sense of empathy, I'd just say not to focus solely on the Holocaust. This kind of thing has been going down for thousands of years. Secondly, it's hard for Jews to forget that even in the hour of our greatest plight, before the war, after Kristallnacht, after everybody on the globe could have read about Hitler's ghastly promises (as in the OP), nobody took our problem seriously. Nobody stepped in to help us, except the Dominican Republic and Japan (for its own odd reasons). So, everybody else goes down on the list of enlightened democratic powers who couldn't be bothered to let Jews from Germany into their countries. That's hard to forget.

[cali]

13. You're welcome.

And I don't think most Jews have lost their collective sense of empathy, though sometimes I wonder about the Israelis.

[piesRsquare]

27. I would strongly recommend some serious research

before "wondering about the Israelis".

Contrary to popular opinion, the Israelis were the first to offer aid in wake of Katrina, and the first to offer condolences after 9/11.

The ICRC to this day is pissed off to high heaven at the Israelis being first to arrive with massive aid after the tsunami. The efficiency of Israeli aid efforts (remember--this was when the Israelis/MDA were still banned from ICRC) put the ICRC to absolute shame; the ICRC found themselves not only embarassed, but having to do a lot of explaining.

The best and the brightest of Palestinian physicians specializing in emergency medicine in crisis/disaster situations train with some of Israel's top research physicians in the field. One of the best and most highly respected (by both I's and P's alike) Israeli researchers/physicians who had trained numerous Palestinian emergency physicans (and was, at the time, training a group) was killed alongside his daughter by a suicide bomber in 2003, the evening before her wedding.

The Gaza greenhouses, when owned and operated by the settlers (before the pullout), housed the most advanced organic greenhouse farming techniques in the world. Students and researchers from all over the world (esp SE Asia) did internships and special study programs there, to be trained in said techniques and participate in research studies. Those greenhouses also employed over 10,000 Gaza Palestinians, who were paid and treated well--said jobs were highly coveted.

There's a lot more. Look it up.

This thread is seriously lacking in terms of historical basis for the Holocaust. The oversimplicity is quite disturbing.

[stranger81]

28. in terms of historical context, anyone here read Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism"?

Definitely the most fulsome treatment of this subject I've ever read, but would love to hear other's reactions to it.

[stranger81]

31. to expand a bit, it frightens me to see shadows of what Arendt describes

in much of the standard anti-semitic propaganda about Jewish control of financial resources and the media in this country. Ten years ago, I would have said it was unthinkable that this country could ever go down that road that Weimar Germany travelled. But after 2000, 9/11, etc, etc, I never say never these days.

[cali]

30. I meant in regard to the Palestinians.

I'm not trashing Israel here. And I don't really want to get into that. Sorry you think that my OP is 'seriously lacking in terms of historical basis for the Holocaust'., but as you provided nothing but a vague blanket statement, it's hard to see your criticism as meaningful.

[piesRsquare]

39. There's way, way too much information

with regards to historical basis to put on a message board thread. I withheld from posting any as it would be so incomplete--and even in its incompleteness, would be so lengthy that it would serve to hijack your thread with a steamroller.

Some basic points:

-What is referred to as "full emancipation" of Jews (emancipation=lifting of restrictions on Jewish residence, marriage, choice of professions, acquisition of real estate, right to vote, etc) did not take place in Germany until 1871. Emancipation throughout the rest of Central Europe took place at about the same time period. This emancipation came about as a result of over half a century of Jewish activism.

By the time Hitler came around, Jews had been recognized as equal citizens under the law for a mere 50 years (50 years out of centuries of Jewish presence on the continent). Key phrase: Under the law. Socially was a different story. Makes it quite easy, in the wake of WWI's destruction, to blame economic hardship and collapse on the Jews (as in, "After all, things were fine until THEY got rights!")

-The majority of death camps were located in Eastern Europe; two exceptions were Dachau (Germany), which was constructed before Hitler invaded Poland, and Mauthausen (Austria, outskirts of Vienna), which was constructed shortly after the Anschluss.

Hitler was very aware of the superstitions that permeated the culture of Eastern Europeans (peasantry in particular), and the centuries-old, deep-seated anti-Semitism throughout those countries. He purposefully built the death camps in those areas, taking advantage not only of the "way out in the boonies" areas that were available, but of the lack of education and inherent prejudices that were pervasive among the rural populations.

-It wasn't just hateful propaganda, depicting Jews as devils, etc that was spewed by the Nazis. Using film and other media, the Nazis "explained" that the Jews were being "temporarily relocated" to security camps at undisclosed locations FOR THEIR (the Jews') SAFETY. The Jews were "getting special protection", because, the propaganda stated, the Jews were particularly vulnerable to having violence directed at their community. The propaganda was so convincing that, literally, thousands of Jews actually BOUGHT their train tickets to the death camps, believing that they were being "temporarily relocated" to for their own protection, and that their homes and other property would be protected and cared for by the government/military, and awaiting their return when the war was over.

For the first few years, the Nazis actually convinced non-Jewish citizens ("the good Germans", as some people on DU like to call them) that the Jews were receiving SPECIAL TREATMENT. The films of the "relocation centers"/camps showed people (Jews) being well-fed, clothed warmly, comfortable, safe, singing while surrounded by family and friends, and having an oh-so-lovely time. Citizens watching such films, reading such descriptions of "life at the centers" no doubt felt extreme resentment, as they suffered with rationing of everything from heating fuel to food, fearing bomb raids, etc while the Jews were safe and comfortable--at the expense of the non-Jews. Such propaganda was used only in the context of Jews--no other group.

Too much more to go into right now...

[cali]

44. Thanks for your imput, but in all honesty

I prefer what I wrote. By a long shot. Why on earth would I want to put all of that in a post which was targeted on clarifying one issue, and one issue only? Thanks, but no thanks. Oh, and don't worry about threadjacking, it happens to most threads. I'm hardly surprised or even dismayed.

[Jaap]

60. I think you're right..

> This thread is seriously lacking in terms of historical basis for the Holocaust.
> The oversimplicity is quite disturbing.

..because why not just say it all started because Hitler was a homosexual and was bullied by a Jewish boy in school.

[Cameron27]

22. A wonderful post,

thank you cali.

"History is too important for meritless revisionism. Particularly when the documentation for the When, where and who, is so available and widely known."

K&R

[cali]

23. I want to thank everyone who's participated on this thread

A respectful exchange of ideas and information on what can be a contentious topic, is a rare thing around here lately.

[WilliamPitt]

25. Didn't General Eisenhower visit the camps to be a prover that it happened?

"The world must know what happened, and never forget."

- General Eisenhower, while visiting nazi death camps, 1945.

...yep, guess he did. And since he's also the guy who said:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

- Ike

...I'm gonna tahe him at his word about the camps, and the rest of it.

Unless he's part of the conssssssssssspiracy...

:tinfoilhat:

:P

GREAT post, btw.

[cali]

26. OK,, Will

how much have you had to drink tonight?

and I guess Eisenhower was good for something other than golf. That comment alone earns him some respect.

Thanks.

[WilliamPitt]

29. Half a beer.

Exactly half, in fact. I don't count the warm cup of watered-down Bud Lite I had at Fenway tonight. That shit has about as much alcohol content as a deep breath in a meadow.

:)

Punchdrunk tired, tho. Long day.

Hey...wait...yeah! I have a bed!

*swoosh*

[piesRsquare]

32. The Nazis themselves did a fine job of proving it happened.

The vast majority of footage (film, photo, documentation, etc) was taken by the Nazis THEMSELVES.

The Nazis were PROUD OF WHAT THEY WERE DOING. They documented it intensely, with the intention of showing future generations of German children (after they conquered the world, of course) the superiority of the German race. Jews were not human beings, according to the Nazis--LITERALLY! We were referred to as "vermin". The Nazis wanted to "show off with pride" how they rid the world of the pestilence/vermin that is called, "The Jew."

The Holocaust was a massive extermination effort. In Nazi propaganda films, Jews were compared to rats in terms of behavior and appearance. We were called parasites, claimed to be "sucking the blood of good Germans," strengthening ourselves--making ourselves wealthy and powerful--at the expense of the hardworking German people.

Hitler and the Nazis believed they were saving the world by annihilating the Jews; "Therefore, I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work." (Mein Kampf)

[cali]

36. Frankly, I don't think

that adds much. It makes clear how you feel, and yes, it's well known that the Nazis were meticulous about documenting there crimes, but actually, a lot of what you're saying isn't true. No, I don't mean the stuff about how the Nazis regarded the Jews, I mean your claim that they wanted to show off to the world how they were exterminating the Jews.
Thierenstadt ring a bell?

[piesRsquare]

41. Ummm...

I took multiple semester-long university courses on the Holocaust at both the Holocaust Center of Northern California in San Francisco and University of Judaism in Los Angeles, taught by internationally known and published researchers in the field. Both facilities are the largest repositories of Holocaust information on the West Coast, with the Holocaust Center in San Francisco being a West Coast hub of Holocaust studies and research. I am a trained and certified Holocaust Educator through the Holocaust Center of Northern California and have conducted seminars (and published essays) at the Center itself, University of Judaism, and University of Southern California. I have attended lectures by numerous survivors in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem, and participated in extensive guided visits at the camp at Dachau, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. A friend of mine's mother is the director of Simon Wiesenthal's Documentation Center in Vienna.

I've studied this topic extensively. What I have said is true. I wish it weren't. But it is.

[cali]

45. I sincerely hope you normally do a better job

then you've done on this thread. and it has zip to do with whetherit's true. I'm not arguing with most of your information. Clue: It has to do with focus and not throwing everything in to a post that addresses one point.

If you meant to intimidate or impress with your credentials; sorry you didn't.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

61. Not To Hijack This Discussion On A Tangential Point

But if they were proud of what they were doing why did they have the "model" Thierenstadt concentration camp to show to foreigners?

[piesRsquare]

66. Terezin/Theresienstadt served multiple purposes

The Nazi Plan for Theresienstadt was:

1) to concentrate in Theresienstadt most of the Jews of the Protectorate as well as certain categories of Jews from Germany and Western European countries - prominent persons, persons of special merit, and old people;

2) to transfer the Jews gradually from Theresienstadt to extermination camps; and

3) to camouflage the extermination of European Jews by presenting Theresienstadt as a "model Jewish settlement." The leaders of Czechoslovak Jewry supported the plan, hoping it would mean that the Jews would not be deported.

http://isurvived.org/Frameset4References/-Theresienstadt-Terezin.html

The Nazis were fully aware that what they were doing (extermination) would be considered atrocious and illegal in the international community. However, remember that Hitler's plan was to take over the world--all of it, and that the Germans were the Superior Race. The "pride" was not to be discussed with anyone (at least not at the time). The intent was to share the documentation with future generations of Germans, in the context of a "racially pure" world ruled by the German Master Race (had Hitler achieved his goal, had he "won" WWII). The documentation was to serve as a "See what your ancestors did for you, for Germany, the mess they had to deal with, the conditions and horrible circumstances! They did this for the sake of the world, ridding it of this vermin! They did this out of love for Germany and her people! See the sacrifice, the work, the hardship--the disgusting task of ridding the world of this plague! Germans are true and loyal, strong and enduring, willing to undergo suffering and strain, toil and trauma, for the Fuhrer, for the glory of the Reich!" Remember the Nazi doctrine, that it's not about the individual, but for the good of the State. The Nazis believed they were undertaking a glorious crusade, a world empire united under one Fuhrer, inhabited by one Master Race--and exterminating the Jews was one of the "tasks" involved in accomplishing that mission. The Nazis wanted to carefully document the process by which Germany conquered the world--in their (sick) minds, it was documentation of their strength, stamina, and sacrifice.

They hid their atrocities from the world, out of the narcissistic belief that only they understood what "had to be done", that those who would punish them couldn't see that; to paraphrase Himmler, these people (Jews) had to be killed or they would kill us/Germans/etc. If the world knew, they wouldn't be able to complete the task--they would be punished for killing people! But the task had to be completed, lest the world be destroyed by the Jews! As Hitler said, "by ridding the world of Jews, I am doing the Lord's work!" So their "work" (mass murder) had to be done in secret--others are too inferior to understand the greatness of what was being done!

Really sick, twisted, and a whole lot of other adjectives that I can't think of right now...

[piesRsquare]

47. Himmler's own words:

Excerpts from Himmler's Speech, October 6, 1943

"We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us...

"I will never see it happen, that even one bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root in us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn it out together. But altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character."


Original German:

"Wir haben das moralische Recht, wir hatten die Pflicht unserem Volk gegenüber das zu tun, dieses Volk, das uns umbringen wollte, umzubringen...

"Da werde ich niemals zusehen, dass so etwas überhaupt nur auch ein kleine Fäulnisstelle bei uns eintritt oder sich festsetzt. Sondern, wo sich eine festsetzen sollte, werden wir sie gemeinsam ausbrennen. Insgesamt aber können wir sagen: Wir haben diese schwerste Aufgabe in Liebe zu unserem Volk getan. Und wir haben keinen Schaden in unserem Innern, in unserer Seele, in unserem Charakter daran genommen."

**************
Wanna hear the man (Himmler) say it himself--along with the rest of the speech? Strong stomachs (and psyches) only:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/index.shtml

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cali]

42. You mean Raphael Johnson who's "work" is posted on Jew Watch

a site that's actually a step down from Stormfront. That's the author of this piece. So, no, I'd say it couldn't be related to the topic. Hate literature, even when penned by a supposed PhD is not what one might call academically rigorous.

It's just hate. Way to go with the wacky the "Jew's planned their own extermination so they could get rich and buy/steal Palestine" CT theories embraced by White Supremacists.

From Mr. Johnson's own site:

Concentration Camp Money: 'Lagergeld' used to Pay Prisoners for Their Work. Jennifer White. Far from being the "death camps" as you have heard so often, places like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald were not in the business of extermination. They were work camps, critical to the German war effort. But did you know that the Jewish workers were compensated for their labor with scrip printed specifically for their use in stores, canteens and even brothels? Here is the story of the money the court historians do not want you to even suspect existed. <82Kb / 1 page>

Are you proud of having swallowed such slimy shit?

[aaronbees]

49. And here's a bit about the original publisher of....

that article, Willis A. Carto.

Info. from the Anti-Defamation League:

http://www.adl.org/holocaust/carto.asp

"Officially the "Treasurer" of the Washington, DC-based Liberty Lobby, Willis Allison Carto is the group's founder and driving force. Over the group's 40-year history, Carto has come into contact with virtually every significant figure on the radical right and he remains perhaps the most influential professional anti-Semite in the United States."

They really climb out of the woodwork.
:-(

[piesRsquare]

50. "Slimy Shit"--BWAHAHAHA!

Cali--you know how to nail it! Third time in 24 hours you've (unintentionally) made me bust up laughing!

Wish I had the guts to write stuff like that! :)

[bullwinkle428]

76. Good lord...I feel like I need a bleach shower after opening

that pathetic link...

Nothing like going out with a bang, I guess!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

54. I See Granite

eom

[LeftishBrit]

69. Yikes!

Defending Hitler on a liberal board?

Now I've seen everything.

[Beerboy]

46. Yeah, yeah, it's well known.

To be most technically correct one would say the Shoah, as those who study the Holocaust refer, but it's lessons are inexorably becoming as relevant as Latin to everyday readers.
Please excuse my sarcastic dismissive intro/title, it's entirely mis-translated, I assure you.:(

[DemocratSinceBirth]

58. Hmmmm

Could an "in group" seize the apparatus of power to exterminate an "out group" while the rest of world stands idly by?

I don't think that question is irrelevant...

Is the notion that Jews could be that "out group" again irrelevant?

Too early in the morning to answer that...

[Beerboy]

48. And also,

these writings are from a long-dead maniac; they have no meaning for our time.

[piesRsquare]

51. Alright, well perhaps this'll have meaning:

"Seen in the perspective of modern European history, the Holocaust was the product of a long-range and complex set of circumstances, including chauvinistic nationalism throughout Europe, antidemocratic tendencies inherent in the creation of a German nation-state aspiring to great power status, the world economic crisis of the 1930's, technical possibilities afforded an advanced industrial state waging a war of conquest, and the power available to the absolute leader of a totalitarian party to realize his fantasies of omnipotence. Seen in the perspective of Jewish history, the Holocaust stands at the end of a chain going back much further: defects built into the emancipation process, Judeophobia built into medieval religion, the tragic dilemma of a people through whom ethical monotheism came to a humanity all too wiilling to hate and all too eager to destroy."

--from Jewish People, Jewish Thought, by Robert M. Seltzer, p.671

Note: emphasis added

[Jaap]

62. And don't forget..

The leader, Hitler, himself (charisma) and lack of (world wide) communication. Since we now have communication: what are we gonna do about Darfur! (rhetorical question, another thread)

[Jaap]

64. You're so wrong..

..but I won't hold it against you, have another one.

[Chovexani]

65. A word on the Romani people.

None of these facts diminishes in the slightest the other victims of the Holocaust, particularly the Roma who were, starting in 1942 targeted in a similar, if less organized way as the Jews, and killed in large numbers both by Death squads and in camps. The Roma that were targeted were those who lived a nomadic life and the Roma peoples of the Balkans.

You make this sound as if the Nazis haphazardly rounded up Roma. You trivialize what happened by downplaying the genocide. But I don't blame you for it because everyone does; the Romani people are treated like shit when our existence is even acknowledged.

I'm not saying what happened to the Jews wasn't horrific. But this indifference to what really happened needs to stop. We need to stop being treated like fucking footnotes when in Germany and Austria over 90% of the Romani people were murdered. And the sick thing is the Porrajmos never ended. Seriously, it didn't: after the war, Germany determined that all the anti-Roma measures taken during the war were legitimate and that decision stood until 1982. 1982. Today, in 2007, there are still anti-Roma laws passed, Roma still live in squalor and abject poverty, children are denied educations, women are kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, and they are still targeted for violence and hate crimes. The authorities do nothing, because were it up to them, they'd finish the job the Nazis started. The situation has only gotten somewhat better in recent years because so many eastern European countries have tried for EU membership only to be told the shameful human rights abuses toward Roma in their borders need to stop.

Ian Hancock is the only person of Roma heritage to have ever sat on the board of the U.S. Holocaust museum, and he had to fight for it. Think about that for a moment.

[LeftishBrit]

68. Important post

The Romani people are still treated shamefully in many parts of Europe.

[piesRsquare]

70. I didn't see any trivialization at all!

I see acknowledgment right there in the quote from the OP that you cut and paste!

The post was about what happened to Jews! How about starting a separate thread about what happened to the Roma instead of barging onto this one and throwing a tantrum?

The genocide of Jews during WWII (aka Holocaust/Shoah) has been brought to the forefront due to Ahmadinejad's visit and bullshit speeches and statements regarding the Holocaust and Israel! Just because some time is taken to discuss that issue doesn't mean anyone is trivializing what happened to Roma, or Poles, or Gays, or whomever else during Hitler's reign of terror!

Get over yourself!

[defendandprotect]

86. Agree; this subject is too little known -- though there was a book some time back on the issue .

[lastliberalintexas]

91. Thank you!

I can't really say anything more than that about the tone of the OP and several posters on this thread, or else I'd probably be banned. But I can't believe someone would dare to be so fucking dismissive of the attempted genocide of other peoples, while asking us to think that there was anything at all unique about the attempted genocide of the Jewish people.

Genocide is genocide, and it doesn't fucking matter on which group the attempt is made. There is nothing "special" or "unique" about any of the genocidal rampages throughout history- they were all spurred by hate and carried out by evil people. Period.

[LeftishBrit]

67. Great post; important to remember all this!

I think what is most frightening about the Holocaust is that the Nazis had no real motive *except* hatred and the conviction that the Jews are the source of everyone's problems and should be exterminated. Most other genocides have been in the context of an existing war, or have had had an obvious selfish motive, like exterminating the Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians to take over their land. This doesn't make it any better, but it makes it more explainable. With the Nazis, it was pure hate for hate's sake, and we have had to face up to this dangerous and evil part of human nature: some people are capable of such hate, and many others are capable of obeying orders based on such hate.

Never Again - to anyone!

[JackRiddler]

77. Allow me a measured dissent...

There was a final solution for the victims of the Nazi euthanasia - it didn't require a Wannsee conference, but that population, captive from the first, was completely wiped out.

Explicit extermination policy did extend to groups other than the Jews, such Romany and Sinti and certain types of political opponents ("Bolsheviks," for example).

I am going to have to agree with you on the details but dissent from the suggested conclusion. Historians do consider the Nazi holocaust of the Jews a "unique feature of the slaughterhouse of WWII" but this is close to a meaningless statement. Uniqueness is an inherent quality of nearly all major historical events.

From a review of Norman Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry":

In the aftermath of World War II, Jews stressed the universality — the commonality and historical redundancy — of the Final Solution. This was what Hannah Arendt famously referred to, in Eichmann in Jerusalem, as the "banality of evil." That changed: "The first and most important claim that emerged from the 1967 war and became emblematic of American Judaism the Holocaust . . . was unique, without parallel in human history," Finkelstein says, quoting the historian Jacob Neusner. The Holocaust stood apart from time and circumstance. History, in this revised view, ceased to exist, and the deadly sins of the Nazis were deemed beyond rational comprehension. To think otherwise, or to compare the Third Reich to any other barbaric regime in recent memory, was "trivializing" or "Holocaust denial."

Making the Holocaust unique allowed what Finkelstein calls "Holocaust campaigners" — most notably, Elie Wiesel — to claim sovereignty over this "valuable property." In effect, the Holocaust became a crown of virtue. "Ever chastised, ever innocent: This is the burden of being a Jew," comments Finkelstein. Or, as Israel's jocular Foreign Minister Abba Eban once quipped, "There's no business like Shoah business."

(...)

Finkelstein's harsh rhetoric obscures the fact that there was once a fierce debate within the Jewish community over the question of "blood money." In 1952, when Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion accepted Germany's offer of compensation, Menachem Begin led a throng that nearly torched the Israeli parliament. One wishes, in reading this slender, incendiary volume, that Finkelstein had tempered his justified anger at those who would cash in on the Holocaust with the acknowledgment that reparations are for many Jews a crude marker of their suffering and a repudiation of the Nazi past. His animosity at times overpowers his revelations, which sadly mars and even undermines his heartfelt objective: to restore the Holocaust as a shattering allegory of universal human suffering.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=23

[cali]

79. Actually, it the euthanasia program did NOT wipe out the entire

disabled population. For one thing, close to 400,000 people were sterilized, and for another, T4 was the one program of Hitler's that was actively protested both by the people and the Catholic hierarchy.
The program was actually cancelled because of the outcry,though the killing of the disabled continued in a more sporadic manner. Approximately 250,000 disabled people were exterminated, a horrific toll.

I didn't claim the Holocaust of the Jews was unique in human history. I claimed and maintain that the facts support that it was unique within the larger context of exterminations by the Germans, in WWII.
There's a difference.

As for Finkelstein, I agree with the reviewer. His prose is so incendiary and his brush so broad, that much of his valid argument gets lost.

anyway, thanks for the reasoned response.

[Jed Dilligan]

82. The "Lebensraum" concept was always directed at Slavic neighbors,

and in fact the ideas of Jewishness (not Judaism) and Bolshevism were very firmly linked in Hitler's mind. Russia was always the target; exterminating Jews was considered a necessary means to the end of a purely German-dominated world.

The fallacy committed by many who argue the uniqueness of the Jewish holocaust is that all further anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish statements or acts are part of the same unique evil. As in, any regional enemy of Israel is "the next Hitler." When people equate modern Middle Eastern leaders with Nazi Germany they are in fact diminishing, denigrating--I would even say PIMPING--the uniqueness of what Hitler, with the help of IBM, did to the Jews.

By the way, the only successful genocide in history was that of the native Tasmanians by the British.

[defendandprotect]

85. Keep in mind, Germany was 90% "Christian" . . . 70% Catholic . . ..

One of the reasons that the first concentration camps were established in Poland is because they could count on even more so the extremism of anti-Jewish sentiments there and knew that Poles would offer little resistance to this treatment of Jews ---

Even still, this Catholic-inspired hatred for Jews hasn't been quelled entirely ---

[cali]

87. You're reading into the OP, that which is not there

I'm not claiming the Holocaust was unique in nature; only that it was unique in the context of German exterminations in WWII. That was the sole point of the OP, in order to correct a substantial amount of misinformation I saw on another thread.

The uses of the Holocaust; to establish Israel, to defend actions by Israel or whatever, were not the point. And the word pimping whether used by Finklestein or you, does nothing to gain purchase for any argument you're making. Indeed, his use of language, is one of the reasons his arguments are discarded or resisted by academia.

And the facts speak for themselves. Sorry they seem to upset you so much.

[Jed Dilligan]

88. Who the fuck is Finklestein? nt

[cali]

90. Sorry, I directed my

post to the wrong person

[DemocratSinceBirth]

95. A Very Controversial Holocaust Scholar

eom

[JackRiddler]

108. Is "controversial" supposed to be the Mark of Cain?

eom

[PDenton]

99. Action T-4 predates the Jewish Holocaust

In the late 1930's Nazis tried "euthenasia" out on people who were severely mentally ill, retarded, or gravely sick and/or elderly, but mostly on the mentally ill or retarded. Carbon monoxide was used as the lethal agent in most cases. Eventually, public outcry and denunciation, forced the Nazis to curtail the progam, officially ending it in 1941, but the program continued in secret, albeit a reduced rate. It may also have inspired the Nazis in later extremination efforts to conceal their activities moreso.

Rationale for this practice was actually eerily similar to the memes used by the Right in the US to deny public aid to poor people. Disabled and sick people cost society money because they produced nothing taxable and only took money. Hitler actually called these people "feeders". Faced with a life with no prospects for "improvement", these people were a drain on the state, and thus considered "Lebensunwertes Leben" ("life unworthy of life").

Initially this program was greeted with some scepticism, hostility, sympathy and debate, much as Kevorkian is today, and in time alot of Germans started believing in it, that it was both merciful and just. Bishop Clemens von Galen, people of conscience and others, particularly relatives of the disabled who did not want their kin to die, attacked the program as anti-Christian/inhuman, and the program was officially ended in 1941, but continued in secret at a greatly reduced pace. Experimentation/torture of the disabled and retarded was also not unknown and was part of the program, since the vaule of their lives was forfeit to the state.

This may be the precursor to the Jewish/Roma Holocaust, since it saw murder as a final solution to "undersireable" people, and also created a modus operandi for their demise- as cheaply and efficiently as possible to end their lives. The "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" was resolved in a conference in Wansee Villa, Berlin in 1942, but concentration camps such as Sobibor and Treblinka were completed in 1941. The number of people murdered in Action T4 was at least 70,000 individuals.

Here's an example of the state propoganda at the time for Action T4:


"6,000 Reichmarks", the cost to take care of a disabled person, in the Germans estimate, "Fellow countrymen, this is your money too." "A New People".