It's striking how nearly every bad comment in this thread—in fact nearly every comment—traces back to the baitiness of the article's title. "The Holocaust: Who are the missing million?" shamelessly invokes hell with a prim veneer of plausible deniability.
I wish we had noticed this sooner. The discussion is not entirely horrible, only mostly. It probably would have been a notch better without an initial sharp shove into hell.
We changed the title to representative language from the article. Let's not forget that authors of articles like this don't write the headlines.
It's a double shame, because the collation of most of the 6 millions Jewish victims names and details, is a data mining feat worthy of great technical discussion on HN.
I thought this was going to be about the millions of oft-forgotten gypsies and other minority groups, not to mention communists and intellectuals, who were murdered in nazi concentration camps along with Jews. Instead the article doesn't even mention them in passing.
My village in Greece was burned to the ground and the Nazis executed 30 people, including women and kids.
I have a family member that fled when he was 12 y/o (now 86) with his brother, while his father, mother, sister and 2 brothers were executed.
Yet nor he or his family were ever reimbursed or even acknowledged. Unfortunately he never made it big, nor he was lobbying in the US :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallikratis to whoever wants to read a bit more on that. If any blogger etc wants to get in touch with him (he has a lot of stories to tell) let me know. He won't charge or get paid, he'll just welcome you to his house and treat you. (I can also translate for free).
> Yet nor he or his family were ever reimbursed or even acknowledged
Native population of European countries, forced to "work" in German agriculture and industry, inhabitants of annihilated villages are the forgotten victims. There are no monuments to them, no lobby groups, they received no compensations except physical and mental, oftentimes fatal, traumas.
This is true, but likewise the entirety of Europe and much of Asia and the Middle East suffered to. Here in the UK, no-one commemorates the British civilian victims of German Bombings, as one tiny example. Likewise civilian victims of other 20th century wars.
WW2 was a western world international trauma with no-one unscathed, and various groups suffering to different unimaginable degrees.
But the Holocaust, in its extreme brutality and relentless focus on racial genocide by a civilised Western nation, was a different level altogether.
Undoubtedly a tragedy created by evil. I'm not so sure it is entirely different than anything else in the world, though. One example: Native American genocide by some estimates killed more people, though until 2017 the US Government still maintained a policy of refusing to acknowledge it even happened, even though they paid bounties per head killed. It appears this injustice of genocide denialism may even continue into the future.
> My village in Greece was burned to the ground and the Nazis executed 30 people
Could we please stop using the term "Nazis" when referring to WWII Germans? A nazi is a member of (Hitler's) NSDAP party, while the war was conducted by GERMANS, not just party members. When you read any texts from say the fourties, no one is speaking of fighting the Nazis - they're fighting the Germans. People who still remember the war also don't ever use term Nazis. It was introduced later to dissociate the German nation from probably the most unimaginable attrocity in human history. Don't fall for the manipulation.
Maybe it's true where you live, it is certainly not true in the English-speaking world. Fighting the Nazis was the primary way of describing the European war in contemporaneous popular and political writing.
Very interesting. In my reading of war-related English language literature from that period (Steinbeck, Orwell) I don't think I've encountered the term "Nazis", but that's hardly a representative sample.
Where I live (Poland), people referred to German occupiers as "Germans", and it is also how they spoke of themselves. For example, the sign on streetcarts said "only for Germans", not "only for Nazis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nur_f%C3%BCr_Deutsche).
Also, on your chart, you can see an over 50% drop of the usage of term "German" in 1945 (without any significant change for "Nazi"). It might have been caused by the US realization that the Western Germany will be an ally from now on, and change of rethoric.
At least here in Holland we tend to use 'Nazi' and 'German' interchangeably some of the time, and most of the time in the context of WW2.
The meaning of 'Germans' is much more context-dependent of course, to the point that I've noticed others and myself disambiguate by saying 'from Germany', because 'German' (Duitser) in itself has connotations (similar to jew/jood, or perhaps negroe/neger I guess).
Of course, being Dutch, many people will intentionally opt for the more rude version to get a rise out of people or 'be edgy'.
This is a reason of serious miscommunication when talking about this topic with the non-English native. I'm pretty sure English-speaking world doesn't mean fighting Slovakian Nazis, Latvian Nazis, or French Nazis, but those of two other very specific nationalities.
If this is about who should bear the blame I think "Nazis" is too narrow but "Germans" is too broad. Hitler won barely 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. Even after seizing power and after a violent campaign of intimidation Hitler only got 44% of the vote.
It is also doubtful that those who did vote for him expected him to kill all Jews and Romani people. The threats were certainly there but most people believe politicians to be hyperbolic and not follow through on everything they say.
At least I can say that my own ancestors who were murdered in Auschwitz did not expect that to happen.
Bush lost the election preceding the Iraq War, but, it was sure as shit the Americans who pointlessly invaded Iraq, not the Republicans.
I see both sides of the point being made here and we may have said all that needs to be said about it at this point but I just want to speak up and say that it's not in fact the norm to attribute a war to a political party, no matter what the electoral numbers.
I agree with you about the war. But I see it a bit differently when it comes to the Holocaust, not least because many of the victims were also Germans, Jewish or otherwise.
> Hitler won barely 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. Even after seizing power and after a violent campaign of intimidation Hitler only got 44% of the vote.
I wish there were polls for support for Hitler after the successful conquest of Poland and France. The accounts from that period speak of enthusiasm bordering on mass hysteria.
In George Kennan was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin from 1939 through 1941. In his Memoirs: 1925-1950, he writes of the Berliners that "they witnessed with a reserved, sullen silence the victory parade of the troops returning from the successful completion of the Polish campaign. Not even the most frantic efforts of professional Nazi agitators could provoke them to demonstrations of elation or approval. The news of the fall of Paris was received with the same inscrutable silence and reserve. I rode miles, that afternoon, on the enclosed upper deck of a bus, where practically everyone's conversation was audible. I heard no one as much as mention the event; the talk was all of food cards and the price of stockings." To be sure, he speaks of them as the least Nazified among the German population.
Yes in reality if you go up to him and ask him in person, or me, I won't use the term Nazis but the term Germans. I just felt it wouldn't be right to blame it on the newer generation of Germans reading yc news etc. I hope that they understand and remember what happened almost half a century ago.
It's very convenient to put blame on something so immaterial as "instrumentation" and "instincts".
You can feel good, moralize as long as you like, take stabs at political opponents.
But it does nothing towards avoiding repeat of tragic events. How would anyone learn on "crime without punishment"? And that's exactly it, you're not punishing any people, not proportionally to damage done anyway, and ideas don't feel pain.
Contemplating the fact that you could be manipulated to perform similar misdeeds may not be pleasant, but it is very important.
We all have tribal instincts, and we are "predictably irrational", meaning that we can be manipulated by skilled pupetteers.
Tribalism is on the rise once again right now and I find it unsettling.
Edit:
>But it does nothing towards avoiding repeat of tragic events. How would anyone learn on "crime without punishment"? And that's exactly it, you're not punishing any people, not proportionally to damage done anyway, and ideas don't feel pain.
I totally disagree. The punishment of Germany post WW1 lead directly to WW2. The extended hand that followed WW2 is largely responsible of the peace we've had for 70 years in Europe.
It turns out that punishment and preventing recidivism do not always go hand in hand.
Contemplating the face that if I perform similar misdeeds I might go without accountability or punishment may lead to conclusions, but not the ones that you would like.
Moralizing people doesn't prevent them from behaving badly when it's convenient to them. The perspective of punishment works much better.
For the Holocaust, very few people were punished. For Turkish genocide, noone was punished. Makes genocide a low-risk tool on a political table, if you ask me.
> It turns out that punishment and preventing recidivism do not always go hand in hand.
I utterly fail to understand how do you imagine it to work.
Imagine I'm a politician in power and I have an idea that some of my country's residents are eligible for genocide.
What's there to deter me and my fellow citizens? Certainly not the perspective of punishment. Then what?
Hell, in recent history, Croats got away with ethnic cleansings. You just have to be buddies with right countries.
> Croats got away with ethnic cleansing. You just have to be buddies with right countries.
I seriously doubt you know enough about break up of Yugoslavia to make such statements.
And furthermore, for war crimes such as genocide it is hard to tell who is to be punished, the officers, the regime, the soldiers, the population? They all took part in some way. So who exactly should we blame?
Who should we blame for Srebrenica? Netherlands? UN?
Or should we instead work towards rehabilitation and educate people and help people rather then just give out punishment?
If the punishments always work, there would be no need for jails.
Maybe I don't know enough, in this case you will surely correct me by providing input.
Ethnic Serbs and Serbia are already blamed for Srebrenica, they were bombed and part of their country occupied.
But, Croats and Croatia are not blamed for ethnic cleansing in Srpska Krajina, they got what they wanted (mono-ethnic Croatia) and had no consequences by being friends with EU.
This tells us, "be sure that you're friends with powers before doing your genocide"
"Or just be strong and unyielding like Turkey was"
UN could have stopped Srebrenica massacre but didn't and still didn't get bombed or punished.
Having friends with connections always helps, same way USA is "spreading democracy" all over the world without consequence. Winners write history.
Also Belgrade was bombed due to issues on Kosovo not over Srebrenica which was done by Bosnian Serbs.
Srpska krajina was part of Croatia and full of all kinds of militia, a lot of people would have left out of fear of reprisal if nothing else when Croatian troops came in or just to live on Serbian controlled territory (which makes sense, you rarely want to stay on occupied territory unless you need to).
That is not to say there were no crimes committed, But killing people en mass and putting them into a big hole is much different then shelling a city. If you want to talk about Croats doing genocides go back to 1940ies.
Why Gotovina and Markac were not put in jail for ethnic cleansing is another story. Some could argue that it didn't happen some have other accounts.
To be honest most of the blame lies with Tudjman and Milosevic which together planned a lot of stuff that happened in Balkans both of which died without even a small punishment but managed to get people rallied up. I think punishments that extend to following generations just make the hate live longer and possibility of another war more real.
The point is we should not call out who is to blame 25 years later, but figure out how to continue to live together, and no, not all family of victims want retaliation and punishment, some people actually understand that bringing this up and finger pointing will just further the divide and make room for another war, all they want is bodies of their family members back and for this to never happen again. This can be made sure with dialog and education not just punishment.
I might be wrong, but I think punishment should always be last resort. Same when bringing up kids for example.
People look very closely to what happens in their neighboring countries when deciding what to try and what to avoid. It is not true that one politician, who does not expect to get caught, is a sole responsible and everybody else is passive.
"Country Y had revolution and country X didn't. Turns out country Y never recovered economically and didn't make much progress. I will probably cut down on protests"
"Country C had ethnic cleansings and country B had reasonable ethnic policy. Country C did not suffer any punishment and is now successful. Country B suffers serious ethnic tensions and is an undesirable place. I would demand going harder on minorities"
You may be shielded from those narratives, living in a stable country. Guess what, not all of us do.
1) Human bonding (mother-child, family, and extended, symbolic tribes) is mediated in the brain by oxytocin. It turns out oxytocin also boosts xenophobia. Someone who claims to hail patriotism without being racist is therefore full of shit. They are two sides of the same coin, enlarging one enlarges the other.
2) Stigmatizing people for belonging to a group strengthens their tribal attachment to said group [a]. By punishing or threatening to punish a group of people, you enhance their tribal bonds and, per 1) their xenophobia, the very thing you're trying to rein in.
It's not about being moral, it's about effectiveness.
The only way to dispel tribal identity is to dilute it in a larger, weaker one, by being open to their members.
---
a. Which is why laws against "the public display of religious signs" are counterproductive. Likewise, ostracizing people who vote for extreme, hateful politicians is counterproductive.
You are right about "punishing or threatening to punish".
However, the goal of genocide or ethnic cleansings were not to punish, it was to make said people go away from you. To make them physically disappear.
Turks has no problems with Armenian tribal attachment because there are no longer any Armenians in Turkey (They however still have the problem with Kurds). The same thing with Croatia and Serbs. We have to admit that the plan worked.
The problem here is that tribal attachment among Turks got haywire. I don't know enough about the tribalism tendencies of Armenians at the time. Victim groups can have developed a strong tribal identity, but that's not always the case (tribalism was strong among Jews and Gypsies, but AFAIK being gay was quite confidential during WW2).
Regardless, the story is the same all over the place. People's tribal instincts are amplified and manipulated by a few hateful/interested people, which turns peaceful crowds into genocidal herds.
The danger is the potential for excess that we have when thinking in terms of ingroup/outgroup, not a specific group (which is why it keeps happening all over the place, and sometimes victim tribes later become perpetrators of bigoted violence).
A desire for justice/vengance is understandable, BTW, but our intuitions are wrong when dealing with populations rather than individuals.
Edit: Whether strong tribal identity among small groups lead larger groups of otherwise neutral people to resent them is an interesting question as well, BTW. I don't know if it is the case. Gypsies and Jews are historical examples, I don't know if there are counterexamples.
Now that's interesting. I must admit that I know little about Jews and their history.
I know that Ashkenazim have a high prevalence of certain recessive diseases, which suggests that they tend, to this day, to be somewhat endogamous. I don't know how much of it is due to their own culture, and how much is due to the fact that they were up to WW2 stigmatized by the Catholic church for being, as a people, responsible for the death of Jesus (without which Christianity wouldn't exist, yet it was held against them, go figure...).
I also know that there's an derogatory Hebrew word, goy, for the out-group. But at the same time AFAIK before WW2 Jews were portrayed by racist nationalists as "filthy internationalists", i.e. an existential threat.
Regardless of the prior strength of the Jew identity prior, WW2 gave us a fiercely nationalist/tribal Israel (defined as constitutionally as a Jewish state, where interfaith or non-religious marriage are not possible, etc...), which in turn gave us the rise of the modern Jihad as a reaction to the oppression of Palestinians and the support of US/Europe to Israel (well, the Irak wars didn't help either).
I wish we could dispel that madness. At this point, territorial and tribal fights are a net loss, to every one but weapons merchants.
I'm not saying that they didn't define themselves as Jewish. I'm saying that that was one part of their identity and that the German part was also important. NB I'm speaking about averages and generalities. I'm sure that different individuals held a full range of opinions.
As you can see, in Turkey this vendetta was not unending - it ended when all the Armenians were dead or driven away. So I fail to understand what's the long-term downside for Turkey, given they were never punished.
Yes, the world became more violent and hateful (Armenian terrorists blew something turkish up in France AFAIR), but that's outside of their borders. Inside borders they were a pretty successful country to date.
I suppose that resentment among Armenians towards Turks is still high to this day, I'm not saying that there will be more violence, but the threat is still there.
Note that I come from Belgium, whose historians are so ashamed of the Congo Free State genocide that they consider it a controversial topic that should not be taught in school. Were it not for Internet conversations, I'd be blissfully unaware of it as most Belgians are. There were more Congolese people killed under Leopold II than there were Belgians living at the time. There's been little to no backlash. So, indeed, sometimes it pays.
I sometimes wish I could have a more cynical take on things, but I have a strong fairness drive, spontaneously.
Punishing Germany almost directly led to massive instability in Europe. Helping Germany recover led to extended peace for the first time (ever?) in western Europe. That narrative is the one the western Europeans thank for their stability.
I think what's missing in your assessment is time.
Yes, in the short term allowing X in country Y might make country Z feel like they can get away with X. But I think people generally have short memory, and anything beyond a generation (or two?) doesn't quite work that way.
To be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong or proposing an alternative theory. I just think there's lack of evidence that you're correct, and personally I'm deeply uncomfortable with any form of punishment that isn't well-supported by evidence.
>The Germans suffered virtually nothing for conducting WWII and The Holocaust.
Except for the millions who died in combat or were murdered by the allied forces and the fact that we are still paying today for something we had no involvement in.
Anyway, it's almost the same for the U.S. today. All the crap they've pulled in foreign countries since after WW II has no consequences for them at all. U.S. politics are directly responsible for the deaths of millions.
> Except for the millions who died in combat or were murdered by the allied forces and the fact that we are still paying today for something we had no involvement in.
It's not the question of whether there were consequences, but if there were proportional/appropriate. After the war, there were talks on the highest international level of destroying all of German's industry and turning it into an agricultural-only country. That maybe would've been extreme, but what has actually happened - financial help from the USA (instead of help for Germany's victims) and the Nazis/Gestapo staff transitioning to the ruling class of the West Germany was also extreme and deeply unfair.
What I ask for is just to have a minimum of respect for the victims and not say that there were murdered by "Nazis". I'm pretty sure they haven't even heard of the term back then.
The U.S. gave substantial help to everyone in Europe, not just Germans. The Soviet occupation zone, as well as Finland and Yugoslavia, would have none of it, because U.S.S.R. was hostile to it.
The largest recipients of Marshall Plan aid were the U.K. (26 %) and France (18 %), with West Germany third at 11 % of total aid amount in this plan. So claiming that financial help went to Germany instead of Germany's victims is, in my opinion, disingenuous.
There were also other American aid programs besides the Marshall Plan.
By Germany's victims I mean for example Poles, who fought on the allied side against the Germans and were later conveniently abandoned to become a part of Stalin's empire. Poland suffered losses far beyond the material (although in this area they were still greater than France or UK's) - Germans and Soviets both had executed targeted plans to murder educated Poles (imagine large percentage of people with bachelor or higher degree being rounded up and executed - that's far bigger blow than even destruction of many cities and factories). No help was extended though.
Polish elites' philosophy was that, although our country is occupied and we can no longer contribute weapons and other material goods to the war effort, we can still contribute blood (by fighting both on both Eastern and Western fronts, as well as organizing a massive military resistance in Poland). It turned out to be extremely naive on our part, as at the end we got discarded like an used tissue.
Marshall Plan was offered to Poland by the U.S. but not accepted by the U.S.S.R. so the Poles were left without. I can't blame the Americans for that. (I'm Finnish, and we also got none of it, for same reason: Soviets. Edit: However, there was some more covert aid, such as the ASLA program which converted an old loan from 1919, which Finns had been paying back throughout the Winter War, into university scholarships for Finnish students.)
Edit: And yes, the Polish suffered particularly badly between Germany and Soviets. But the Germans/Nazis were not the only ones responsible for that. We know of Katyn Forest, we know of the fate of the Warsaw Uprising where Soviet advance deliberately stopped, allowing Nazis (this time I'd really use that word) to crush the independent Polish resistance.
The Marshal Plan offering was actually a bluff by the US - they knew that the USSR would never accept it on priciple, so they took the free good PR and offered it anyway.
The bigger point here though is that Poland didn't just magically end up being ruled by Stalin (via local proxies). Allied forced gave it up to him in part of a political deal, even though 200,000 Polish soldiers fought on the Western front
with an idea of returning to free Poland after the war. (actually, upon hearing of this betrayal, dozens of Polish military officers committed suicide).
Sure, but they gave the help to practically anyone who could receive it. The agreement on Oder-Neisse line was indeed not due to magic, it was due to geography and military power.
The alternative? Let Patton have his way, and once Germany had surrendered, ally immediately with the Wermacht and attack the exhausted Soviet troops to force a downfall of the other mustached dictator, using the atom bomb if necessary? That wouldn't have gone down too well in the public opinion in the U.S. -- or Britain or France for that matter. Even today, there's still a Stalingrad, in the Paris metro...
I don't think it's actually true. Hitler had two major causes: eradication of Jews and eradication of Slavic people, and none of them were rooted in rational economics.
He of course wanted to eradicate the Jews because he believed they were the cause of much of evil in the world - hard to find much rationality there. For the Slavs, it's a bit more complicated. Hitler was hugely fond of and inspired by America's colonization of the West (which required extermination of Native Americans to make room for settlers) and wanted to repeat that in Eastern Europe - murder all the Poles, Ukrainians, Bellariusians and Russians in the territories that he manages to conquest, raze all cities to the ground (hard to find economic justification for that) and then move German settlers in their place. The goal was to make Germany large and powerful enough that it could later tackle America. The joke here was that his thinking was largely antiquated at this point - in the XX century a country's military power was determined by its industrial capabilities, and not population/territory. So again, the entire genocide was motivated by one man's delusional view of the world, and not rational thinking.
Eastern lands were important for them for other reasons - they had they own "idyllic" vision of them. High officials and officers were promised as an compensation for being sent to dreaded Eastern Front a large plot of land and Poles/Ukrainians as slaves. Eastern Poland and Ukraine are among most fertile agricultural lands in Europe.
At that times agriculture looked completely different and being feudal lord was considered prestigious. Nowadays one can grow (or rather produce) food in tiny greenhouses in overcrowded Netherlands.
What Hitler wanted is basically getting a huge slab of agricultural land. But as we all know, in second half of XX century both fertility and agriculture prices fell sharply, so even if he was ultimately successful Germany will have neither people to populate these territories nor economical reason to do so. The settlers will probably be leaving the area en masse towards "mainland Germany" creating "human deserts" of depopulation while being a drag economically. Even now it happens in these territories (Poland, Baltics, Ukraine) as people move west for better life.
Perceived excessive reparations for World War 1 were one of the grievances used by the Nazi party to gain power. It was possibly a good idea not to repeat those circumstances.
One more point on the reparations. In general,
any harm done can only be forgiven when the culprit makes a genuine attempt at redeeming it. In case of Germany, there was relatively little of such attempts (some slave labor by german POWs and loss of some territory to Poland). It does not make up for the crimes committed, and thus Polish people have not truly forgiven Germans. In fact, I have friends who fantasize about Poland becoming an economic superpower and then taking out a revenge on Germany. It's truly terrible that this vicious circle was not stopped by an attempt at redemption/reparations back in the forties.
Yep I totally agree. The reparations wouldn't need to excessive - let's say Germany would pay 2-4% of their GDP every year to the victims until all damage they caused was repaired. That would probably take hundreds of years, but would be very bearable for the Germany and also pretty fair.
How would you even define these damages? I understand property damages, those are easy enough to calculate.
But you're talking about money/financial compensation for - in my world - invaluable things (grief, trauma, loss of life).
Judges have a hard time coming up with these on a much smaller scale and expectations for compensation vary wildly (my impression is that you can get a loooot of money in the US while the amounts would be a magnitude or two lower in Europe).
I'm not saying that we should forget about everything that happened (and people around me don't as far as I know), but I feel that your suggestion isn't easily done.
- resources robbed during occupation (Poland was heavily deforested for example).
- value of slave labor
- predicted lifetime economic output of people who were killed during the war (this prediciton could be tricky)
There should also be individual payments for people who suffered hardships during the war, such as:
- malnutrition (Germany's central planning had entire Polish population on 700 kcal per day, which wasn't much more than Auschwitz's daily ratio. Luckily, Germans didn't manage to totally control the Polish agrarian economy so, thanks to the black market, we didn't quite starve as quickly as the plan assumed).
- slave labor
- torture
- loss of health
- loss of family members
For the above section, I'd argue for amounts proportional to the standard of living in Poland back in 1939, which wasn't very high (i.e. I wouldn't want modern US-style $10m per head settlements).
The hardest part to estimate are the reparations for murder of political, economical, scientific, social and artistic leaders/talents. I'm really at loss here.
As well as loss of substantial amount of German property to Soviet Union and its satellites. In effect, Poland was shifted left on the map by 200 km or so, and the space and property claimed by U.S.S.R.
Also, lots of industrial capacity of East Germany was moved to U.S.S.R. For instance, my dad's first car was a Moskvich 401, which was effectively the same as the pre-war Opel Kadett K38 whose plans and tooling were transferred to a plant in Moscow.
I have a very nice KMZ Industar 50-2 camera lens which has similar heritage to that car, a Zeiss Tessar design made using plans and tooling moved to Moscow from Germany.
The genocide of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks a couple of decades before WW2 was a major influence on Hitler. The Greeks had been in the area of the Black Sea for 'only' three thousand years, so they were not local according to the Ottomans.
The Wikipedia page on Holocaust victims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims) has a list of the different groups targeted by the nazis.
In addition to what other commenters have written there was also: freemasons, spanish republicans from the 36 revolution, soviet prisoner of wars, slovene and romani.
Interesting to note that nazis killed as much ethnic poles as polish jews.
The anti-Jewish implications in this comment and some of the follow-ups (that the article is at fault for something because it focuses too much on Jews, that Jews somehow uniquely manipulate government through lobbying, that Jews don't accept any debate about the exact "6 million" number in the dominant narrative) is palpable.
People made a number of legitimate points about how some victims of the holocaust and WWII are much less remembered than others. Why do you immediately characterise this as anti-Jewish?
that Jews somehow uniquely manipulate government through lobbying, that Jews don't accept any debate about the exact "6 million" number in the dominant narrative
> Instead the article doesn't even mention them in passing.
There's something implied there. For me, it's not mentioned simply because that's not the topic of the article. But what he seems to imply is that it was purposely omitted from the article - thus conspiracy/manipulation.
That's only a conjecture. It's easy to read something into what someone else wrote.
I interpreted it only as a complain that a vital piece of information isn't even mentioned, and more as an implication of quality issue than conspiracy.
Since when was it anti-$ETHNIC_GROUP to talk about an $ETHNIC_GROUP's lobby? Do you accuse people of being "inaccurate" if they mention the China lobby?
In that case, just ban me. I've also asked before. As long as I can still post here, I will occasionally debate with people when they take contentious positions I disagree with (esp when they make accusations).
I'm not flaming, and you know it. Nonetheless, if you think I'm a problem, just ban me and the problem will be solved. I don't want to be in a place where politics is totally OK to discuss until it's not for arbitrary reasons I can't guess or predict.
Your immediate reaction to a non-jewish person having the temerity to talk about how their community suffered from Nazi forces during WW2 was to label them "anti-jewish". That's messed up. The fact that they mentioned "lobbying" doesn't excuse you.
I'm not sure I see evidence for anti-gentilism. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say over-sensitivity, or paranoia. But accusations of anti-semitism are being thrown around far too freely. Discussions of non-jewish victims is not anti-jewish, and it should not be shutdown by trying to shame or accuse people.
There's actually an Israeli documentary about how American Jewish lobby organizations make comparing genocides a competition (of course insisting that the Holocaust was the worst, no matter what) and that their leaders and members often do this to compensate for lack of religiosity. So, yes, the Jewish lobbying efforts are unique, and uniquely successful. There's nothing wrong about it per se, but if it happens at the cost of remembering other Nazi victims, or victims of other genocides, things are definitely headed in the wrong direction.
I don't understand why your interlocutor has dignified this comment, because it's not responsive to their point. Since this (still unnamed) documentary has not, in your estimation, suggested that the ADL suppresses the non-Jewish victims of the Third Reich --- how could it? They certainly do not. --- you're simply perpetuating the anti-Semitic subtext that commenter was complaining about: that any recognition of the magnitude of the suffering endured by Jewish people during the Holocaust must in some zero-sum way take away from the suffering of others, and thus it's once again the acquisitiveness of Jewish people distorting global politics.
There were also "Israelis" who think Isreal's is an abomination because it is a Jewish state in existence without the Messiah. What is the existence of a documentary supposed to prove other than that in any group of people, there is a variety of opinion? The bias comes in how you cite, weight, and construe elements of this plurality. Not whether they exist.
Funny how you just focus on the existence of the documentary, and not on the contents of it which I paraphrased. I'm not talking about some fringe Extremist Haredi group, I'm talking about a mainstream Israeli film author closely following and critically introspecting the work of the ADL and their then-CEO.
The ADL is not a Holocaust remembrance group! They're a group chartered to combat anti-Semitism. You know some other groups that doesn't spend a lot of time talking about the Romani exterminated by the Third Reich? Partners In Health, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the NRA.
But once again the subtext: if a Jewish organization mentions the Holocaust, they have a special responsibility not borne by other organizations to ensure they don't take too much credit for their suffering, in which the majority of their population were swept from the continent of Europe.
You haven't even given the title. What am I supposed to do, hunt down every reference you fail to cite to dispute a point no one is making - i.e. that countervailing narratives exist within groups on opinions they are assumed to have consensus about? Sorry, no. Burden of evidence for a documentary you vaguely allude is on you, and I'm happy for others to watch it and draw their own conclusions, because I've got to get to work.
> that Jews don't accept any debate about the exact "6 million" number in the dominant narrative
It's not just "the Jews", any educated westerner would balk at the very idea that the number can be questioned. It doesn't sit particularly well with me, since I find it hard to believe things I can't doubt, though the immensity of the evil of the Nazi regime is itself pretty obvious.
The value of efforts like these is that we can have a scientific record proving how many were killed and where, so that we can have an iron-clad defence to show people who could otherwise be swayed by holocaust denier tracts. Rather than turn away, say sorry, and comfort the few victims that come forward, we have to face head-on the actions of our ancestors, collect and document their deeds scientifically and build a proven historical record. Treating a historical subject, any subject, as taboo, leads to history being written by propaganda, and no matter how intentional that propaganda is, it makes us ultimately no better than the Nazis themselves.
I agree, making the topic taboo fuels the denialists. I beg you to reconsider the notion that the numbers killed in the holocaust is a closed topic. Even the article quoted elsewhere on this forum (which appears to me to exploit Wiesenthal's actual view by quoting it out of context) if you read through notes that no less a holocaust denialist fighter than Deborah Lipstadt is even open to discussion on this topic when it comes to authoritative and informed discussion about making these estimations.
My point is just that Holocaust denialism and anti-Jewish bigotry makes its wedge into discourse as classic F.U.D. People make a few unsourced, innocuous sounding comments, put in some well-known weasel words, wait to be challenged, and cry "cover up/bias".
My original post has been downvoted. I consider the topic well and truly closed until at least another 50 years have passed. I feel mostly safe bringing it up in an anonymous setting where only my fake internet points will suffer, but I would absolutely never bring it up in real life.
Antisemitism is very deeply rooted in many Christian dominant cultures to the point where most of the tropes are so deeply ingrained most are blind and unaware of their implicit prejudice. One of the best books on the history of modern antisemitism is "The Devil and the Jews" by Joshua Trachtenberg.
also political prisoners, religious leaders and the mentally or physically handicapped. It's often underplayed how broadly the Nazis set their targets - they really were attempting to exterminate anyone and everyone who wasn't part of their "master race" ideology.
"Say those close to the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, its progenitor, it is a number that was intended to increase sympathy for Jewish suffering but which now is more often used to obscure it."
so what is the real number of non-Jewish victims? Or at least, the number we know about?
The holocaust was about the Nazis reshaping German society in their image - justified by arguments of German supremacy. There's no denying that they held Jews in a category of their own, as Nazi propaganda painted them in all manner of horrible depictions and tried to blame them for the loss of the first World War, the collapse of the German economy and so many other things. But it seems inaccurate to deny either the victimisation of other demographic groups, or to deny that Jews were the primary target.
and this is only those someone with influence actually cares about. no one looks to identify the millions who died in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Nor is there any true accounting the horrors of what Japan did in China and Korea and there is what China did to itself.
The deaths inflicted by the Nazi's were inexcusable but we cannot keep focusing on them alone if we are to have a true accounting and have people understand what leads to such outcomes.
It's incredible to contemplate the billions given in reparations to Israel, while Gypsies - who still live in complete destitution in a Europe - have not recieved a single penny.
I can say that Yad Vashem's database is actually sorely lacking. Their website is very difficult to search.
In my own family, my great-aunts filled out a Page of Testimony for their sister and brother. Their brother's page includes 4 children written in the sidelines and Yad Vashem only lists 3 of them, missing one that's written, and their sister's page leaves out her 1 year old son, so he's still missing. And they never filled out a page on their mother, or I can't find it, so in my own immediate family, the records are missing 3 people.
Indeed, best-effort estimates for the number of Jews killed range from 4-6M, with similar variance wrt actual cause of death (split among starvation, typhus, gassing, military action, etc.). It's very hard to pin down exact numbers. It's unfortunate that the fog of war isn't explored more often in the topical explanations of WWII most people are exposed to; as you stated, it gives ammunition to historical revisionists.
Very interesting site - thanks. But I'm disappointed with its coverage of the Irish Potato Famine. It gives an estimate of 750K. In 1850 Ireland was the most densely populated nation in the world, with 8M. In 1950 there were only 4M. What happened to that population? Yes, many emigrated. But many were starved as a result of British land seizures and government intransigence. More research is needed in this area to counter the dissembling of the Potato Famine Deniers.
When I raised this before I was labelled and a holocaust denier, and I'm sure others have experienced this too. I think this is why people like talking about it.
I'm sorry but I'm jewish and I have no idea what you're talking about. Six is a magical/religious number?
This is the first time I hear about it.
[source needed]
I'm atheist Jewish and was raised with a conservative upbringing. I can think of at least like 3 different numbers in Judaism that have special meaning, and none of them are 6. I don't remember anything about the number 6. Also confused.
> Yad Vashem is working with Jewish organisations in those countries to try to reach remaining survivors in the former Soviet Union, where the Holocaust was not officially commemorated, and who may have little awareness of the memorial's existence.
This is an unbelievably cavalier piece of revisionism. The USSR never commemorated the camps they themselves liberated? Holocaust denial in Russia is still a criminal offense, how totally absurd.
For example, Babiy Yar (a place in Kiev where Germans killed tens of thousands) was a garbage dump until 1970-s.
Or (which is ironic, given their "Nothing is forgotten, nobody is forgotten" motto) - they didn't search for the fallen soldiers. Probably because they feared that there will be too many Soviet medallions compared to Germa ones...
The Nazis concealed and eliminated any traces of Babiy Yar before retreating, there was nothing there at all already.
What do you mean "cover up"? The Soviet Union as a nation suffered some of the greatest numbers of causulties in WWII at the hands of the Nazis by far. What are you talking about with regards to "medallions"? Are you even aware of who fought against and defeated Nazi Germany?
>Interesting to note that nazis killed as much ethnic poles as polish jews
Wow. Why is the holocaust taught with such a focus on one ethnic group of victims? I thought Jews were the only significant group of victims, but that's clearly not true.
It's also interesting to note that one legitimate government still exists in the world that funded the genocide of what many estimate to be a larger number of people than were killed in the Holocaust, but it's commonly not referred to as a genocide. Instead, it's "wartime deaths," or something else.[1]
This comes across as unreasonable to me. Of course I am not trolling. I am responding directly to the comment above me, and I'm not aware of why you would say something so accusatory. Yes, I could be wrong about this, and I'm aware this is a controversial topic now, but I'm not sure what you are asking me to "not do." I think disagreement should be met with facts to support why you disagree, not with insults.
Please don't jump to conclusions based on a misinformed comment on the internet. You can't compare the number of dead and conclude anything meaningful from that alone. Hatred of Jews in particular was a cornerstone of Nazi philosophy and they made the unique persecution of them a priority in government. From the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, to the Nuremberg Laws, to Kristallnacht, to complete disenfranchisement and seizure of all Jewish property and rights, to widespread European collaboration with the Nazis throughout the war which led to the extermination of countless Jews who were betrayed by their fellow citizens, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, to Zyklon B, and the systematic extermination of the Jewish people. If you want to learn more, visit a Holocaust museum. Better yet, talk to survivors. They are still here in NYC and around the world. But they won't be for much longer.
>You can't compare the number of dead and conclude anything meaningful from that alone.
Of course you can. The number of innocent people murdered is a very meaningful number.
I never disagreed with the rest of what you said. I don't disagree with you that Jewish hatred was not a cornerstone of Nazi philosophy and that other European countries did not collaborate in anti-antisemitic policies.
However, it's not appropriate to just throw aside the number of lives lost as "not meaningful alone." What other single metric would you select to be considered to be more meaningful?
I certainly learned about other groups when I was taught about the Holocaust in high school. Other groups are mentioned in the Holicaust museum in Washington DC. I've seen movies about other persecuted groups & read books about them as well.
Is it possible you are just not well versed on the subject?
Further, any discussion on the topic requires special treatment of the Jewish holocaust because of its scope and how central it is to the politics of Naziism.
>Is it possible you are just not well versed on the subject?
Well I took required history classes in high school and university and scored well enough in those courses. This is what I was taught. That's what my statement is about. I was aware that other ethnic groups were targeted, but did not know the numbers in some cases were similar to those that Jews suffered. I had a very real understanding they were, by a far margin, the largest group to suffer.
Asking "Why is the holocaust taught with such a focus on one ethnic group of victims" is different than asking "why did my education not discuss victims of the Holocaust other than Jews".
The latter is an interesting question and could potentially lead you to a better understanding of subjects you've missed. The former implies a systematic bias in the education about WWII history and assumes it based on a data point of one that goes against other data points (for instance my own).
Another thing you may not be well versed on, implication of a systematic bias in teaching the Holocaust is a standard part of the bag of dirty tricks that many neo-Nazi, white nationalist and other anti-semitic groups employ to paper over the Holocaust. They trot it out in venues where more extreme versions of Holocaust denialism or outright Holocaust justification won't fly.
OK I can see now this is going down a dark road to that line of thinking and that was not my intention. This is a very controversial topic* and I wasn't aware of this. I didn't mean to open up a bucket of worms. I'm still a bit perplexed. Since reading here I've done some research and learned the Cambodian Genocide claimed around 1/3 the death toll of The Holocaust, yet I'd bet most people haven't heard much, or anything, about it. Could you name the leader in charge of it, or how it came about? What about: how can we avoid it from happening again? Keep in mind, it happened much more recently.
The Native American genocide is barely recognized as even being real (and never officially in the US), even though it was directly funded (paid dollars per head killed--pretty blatant, isn't it?) by the US and California governments.
And for God's sake I'm not trying to say anything in support of racism or Nazis, as you alluded to, that's ridiculous and awful.
I find that in mentioning atrocities we don't even recognize as ever happening (Native Americans) as a really hard mental gymnastic maneuver required. How is it logically any different than Holocaust denial? I literally never covered the Cambodian or Native American genocides in school. I find it hard to believe others have had much different experiences in their educations as mine was very vanilla at large public schools and universities, but I would certainly like to know if that's the case or not.
I don't have any tolerance for racism myself, and please stop speaking in a condescending tone. It's unnecessary at this point as you've already made yourself clear that you view yourself as righteous and my comments as uneducated, and further doing so is not productive.
Can't we do more for Native American peoples? Isn't this a step in the right direction away from racism? Or, is their attempted-genocide deserving of continued denial? What do you think?
1-reloading the page shows karma is changing rapidly with a consistent average
> Since reading here I've done some research and learned the Cambodian Genocide claimed around 1/3 the death toll of The Holocaust, yet I'd bet most people haven't heard much, or anything, about it. Could you name the leader in charge of it, or how it came about?
Pol Pot? This was something that was literally covered in my World History class in high school. I remember that mostly because we watched "The Killing Fields" and I was happy to have what I assumed would be an easy week, but that movie is pretty profoundly impressive.
We also covered Native American atrocities and read "A People's History of the United States", which at the time (20 some years ago) might have been out of the norm but now seems relatively common.
None of this is to condescend to you or to suggest you are uneducated generally, but rather to point out that something you are extrapolating as systematic in education is not. And for what it's worth I went to public high schools and public college in a not too progressive place.
I also didn't mean to imply you were aligned with anti-semitic groups, rather that anti-semitic groups use that misunderstanding as propaganda and you should probably be aware of that.
I'm also aware of Pol Pot, but to be honest, I have to admit I don't really know a lot about his rise to power and the genocide of ethnic groups in Cambodia. I would bet money most people don't know who Pol Pot is. I don't remember covering it.
The US stance on the Native American genocide(s) is basically denial that it happened, or at minimum, failure to admit it.
No, that's simply a false statement. Every American school kid learns about the Trail of Tears. I'm sure you can find someone to deny the genocide of Native Americans, just as you can find Holocaust deniers or people who think slaves in the American south were well-treated. But only on an Internet message board can you maintain an argument that mainstream American history denies Native American genocide.
>I'm sure you can find someone to deny the genocide of Native Americans
It has never been officially recognized by the US government. It's not "simply a false statement," it's a fact. Yes, we both learned about the Trail of Tears, but we don't recognize Native American genocide as what it is. Your presenting the Trail of Tears as a strawman for Native American genocide.
There are a lot of people saying this.[1] I'm sorry you felt the need to write such a condescending remark about internet message board arguments, that in combination with a straw man argument is really low.
The Killing Fields won 3 Oscars and was nominated for best picture. We watched it in Junior year history in high school. I don't think you can get out of an American high school without learning about Pol Pot.
More importantly: recognition of human suffering isn't zero sum. Acknowledging the scale of what happened to European Jewish people doesn't take away recognition of what happened to Native Americans --- in fact, in my experience, the genocide of Native Americans and European Jews are usually the two textbook examples of nationally-sponsored genocides.
Finally, I'll observe that nobody has condescended to you here.
Hi, I can't respond to your comment below. I just want you to know it's not correct. I also learned of the Trail of Tears, but the US Government paid per head for killing Native Americans, and never formally recognized or apologized for it. It has never been recognized as an attempted genocide. It's not an "internet argument," it's a fact.
> > Interesting to note that nazis killed as much ethnic poles as polish jews
> Wow. Why is the holocaust taught with such a focus on one ethnic group of victims?
A large part of that is because they were deliberately and very specifically targeted, particularly with regard to the use of camps and gas (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution). A lot of the other groups were either attacked for more general reasons (being allied to the "wrong" group, not being Aryan enough, speaking against the Nazi regime, to give three examples) or abused generally simply because many the Axis command structure where generally abusive and encouraged that sort of behaviour further down the chain.
> The doomed were bused to killing centers in Germany and Austria walled-in fortresses, mostly former psychiatric hospitals, castles, and a former prison — at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, and Brandenburg. In the beginning, patients were killed by lethal injection. But by 1940, Hitler, on the advice of Dr. Werner Heyde, suggested that carbon monoxide gas be used as the preferred method of killing. Experimental gassings had first been carried out at Brandenburg Prison in 1939. There, gas chambers were disguised as showers complete with fake nozzles in order to deceive victims — prototypes of the killing centers' facilities built in occupied Poland later in the war.
> Again, following procedures that would later be instituted in the extermination camps, workers removed the corpses from the chambers, extracted gold teeth, then burned large numbers of bodies together in crematoria. Urns filled with ashes were prepared in the event the family of the deceased requested the remains. Physicians using fake names prepared death certificates falsifying the cause of death, and sent letters of condolences to relatives.
> Meticulous records discovered after the war documented 70,273 deaths by gassing at the six "euthanasia" centers between January 1940 and August 1941. (This total included up to 5,000 Jews; all Jewish mental patients were killed regardless of their ability to work or the seriousness of their illness.) A detailed report also recorded the estimated savings from the killing of institutionalized patients.
"A large part of that is because they were deliberately and very specifically targeted, particularly with regard to the use of camps and gas "
What about other groups that were deliberately target like mentally retarded, Roma, homosexuals etc?. Why they are less important in this discussion? Is it only because they still have no voice in our society, and (baring killings) we don't treat them any better than Germans did?
In part at least: numbers. The patients killed in the earlier "experiments" numbered tens of thousands, perhaps close to a hundred depending which figures you count (not all the records are meticulously kept at the time and some were destroyed later so some guesswork is involved). The number of jewish people killed (I'm not sure if this is just in the camps or more generally) is counted in millions.
Regarding the "killed as much ethnic poles as polish jews" comparison I was initially responding to, you can slice and dice the figures a great many ways to find such similarities. I'm not sure "polish jews" isn't too specific a category to be considered valid as a single absolute number. What are those figures as proportions of the all Poles and Polish+Jewish populations respectively? I suspect that the proportion of the European Jewish population is going to be a lot higher.
Yes thinking in pure numbers can seem somewhat heartless, and I fully understand if some groups feel unduly ignored, but it isn't being done to deliberately hide or discount the effect on those other groups. The groups that get a lot of the attention do so because the effect on their population was proportionately much higher then most (all?) others.
> (baring killings) we don't treat them any better than Germans did?
Two points there:
1. That we treat them as badly is IMO simply wrong. When making statements like that you need to provide evidence to back it up. Society doesn't treat minorities as well in a great many cases, but I would say the orders of scale are not close to similar. Maybe as a white middle class male I'm misunderstanding the scale of something I myself don't suffer from, but if that is the case please show evidence to correct my understanding instead of a single vague (and potentially inflammatory) statement.
2. I recommend not using "Germans" in such statements, use "Nazis" instead. Many German people suffered too, and far from all the perpetrators were German, so the choice of word will to many flag your statement as unfairly targeted.
Your comments in this thread stand out as provocative and inflammatory, as do some others'. We need you and everyone else not to comment this way on HN—not on any topic and especially not this one.
HN is for reflective conversation. If we're going to talk about the Holocaust we need to do it that way, not this way ("what about", "didn't lift a finger", etc.)
I don't see what's wrong with reminding people that there were other groups of people that we killed in WW2.
I'm also surprised that "didn't lift a finger" is considered inflammatory.
I admit that I allowed myself to be little provocative but I think it would be better not to censor comments, but instead moderate non-technical links from the forum before inconvenient discussions take place. If this is not a place for discussions like that, it's also not a place for links to articles that will start such discussion, right?
There's no substitute for commenters learning the ropes of how to self-regulate in discussions here, technical or non. One of the ropes is not to comment out of fury.
The American extermination of the Indians was Hitler's inspiration for his plan to exterminate the Slavs and take their land (Lebensraum). He wrote about it in Mein Kampf
Possibly because the Poles were killed largely in genocidal military operations, such as large scale bombing of cities, and not (in numbers comparable to the Jewish people) in death camps.
How about the fact that Polish Jews were Polish citizens. Why are people keep separating these people from their country? If something similar were to happen in the US, would we be talking about Jews, or Jewish Americans?
These Polish Jews were as much citizens of the country are all other minorities. They were part of Poland for close to 600 years. Poland lost 20% of population during WW2. The fact that half of the lost population were of a different religion does not make them any less Polish.
I'm not sure I understand the argument here. I agree: Polish Jews were Poles. It's possible we don't disagree at all.
If you ask me why, at least in the US, there's so much attention paid to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, then the answer I'll give is that the Germans killed far more Jews, but also did so more deliberately and carefully, thus supporting that narrative.
I didn't go to US public school --- I went to Catholic school --- but we were always taught about the other victims of the Holocaust. At 12 I'd have told you the Nazis targeted not just Jewish people but also "gypsies", gay people, and communists.
We were, for instance, taught about Maximilian Kolbe, a name I remember principally from the story I was taught in grade school.
My problem with your previous comment is that you claim that polish losses were mostly to "genocidal military operations, such as large scale bombing of cities".
See, the thing is, since Polish Jews were part of the country, were scientists, doctors, blacksmiths, or just regular farmers they were also killed by these bombings, and other forms of killings. The other side of the equation is that these people who died in the concentration camps were mostly Polish citizens. They count towards "polish losses". It's unfair to separate people simply because of their religion, and make it look like being killed by Zyklon B is so much worse than being torn apart by a bomb.
It's just sad that we even have discussion on this and that some people still think that one for of killing is "better" or "worse" than the other (and I'm not saying that you think that, but other commenters in this whole thread did.)
This is going to sound snarky but I don't mean it that way: I agree that it's unfair to separate people based on their religion, but I think you want to take that complaint up with the Third Reich. We've come to a point in the conversation where I felt the need to write the sentence "European Jews were deliberately, carefully, and systematically targeted by the Third Reich", which suggests to me that something has gone wrong either in our dialog or the thread.
Not really. See in the previous comment you wrote "European Jews were deliberately, carefully, and systematically targeted by the Third Reich" yet few sentences before that you wrote "I agree that it's unfair to separate people based on their religion".
What my problem with this whole discussion is that people keep talking about as Jews as a totally separate group from all of the victims. They don't talk about {Polish| Russian| French |Other } citizens being killed in extermination camps. Yes, a lot of them were ethnic Jews. But a lot of these ethnic Jews did not thing about themselves as Jews, as they were being shipped of by the trains to Auschwitz. They were in their minds Russians, French, even Germans. But for some reasons these people were "separated" by some people to show how much more their group suffered. And then they claim that other groups just died "because of bombings" or in "work camps" as if this was so much better way to die.
To me it's infuriating that we talk about just one specific group that died, while ignoring the rest. And even more infuriating is suggesting that these others that died don't count as much simply because there were fewer of them or they were not from the "right group".
What tptakec is saying is that it's not the Jews that separated the e.g. assimilated Polish Jews as a category, but the Third Reich.
> But a lot of these ethnic Jews did not thing about themselves as Jews, as they were being shipped of by the trains to Auschwitz.
I don't know how you can say that especially bearing in mind the Nuremberg laws defined as someone with 3 or more Jewish grandparents. If you're that strongly Jewish by race, you're very unlikely not to have that as part of your core identity. And in any event, you're not addressing tptakec response to you with this.
> But for some reasons these people were "separated" by some people to show how much more their group suffered.
You may not have fully intended it, but that sentence comes across very poorly.
> To me it's infuriating that we talk about just one specific group that died, while ignoring the rest.
I don't know anyone that talks just about the Jews (you mean jews, right?) that died (were exterminated) and ignores the rest. It is an acknowledged fact that Jews suffered extermination disproportionate to any other race or nationality (90% of the 3 million Polish Jews, for instance). The only other group that's comparable when using the term Holocaust is the Romani (who's true numbers is still hard to hard estimate) who are mentioned (along with gays, the disabled etc.) in every reasonable discourse.
Infuriation is the wrong energy to bring to HN threads, especially about explosive topics and especially not in a thread that's teetering on breaking into national and ethnic conflict all over again (if it hasn't already).
If there's one tiny thing we all can contribute to a discussion like this, it's not to let that happen.
OK, well I don't claim to be an authority on this subject. It just really appears to look like two methods that reached the same result; though one sounds more unnatural than the other to us (i.e. in 2016 the US dropped 26,000+ bombs on Muslim-majority countries, but we have very few places resembling death camps, and none of them are--at least in name--racially motivated).
Anyways, both I think we can all agree are bad. I just didn't know so many non-Jews died in the holocaust.
I only skimmed it but maybe because Jews suffered relatively more.
> Note: Polish losses amount to 11.3% of the 24.4 million ethnic Poles in prewar Poland and about 90 percent of the 3.3 million Jews of prewar times. The IPN figures do not include losses among Polish citizens of Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnicity.
What you don't consider is that these Jews were Polish citizens. They lived in that country for hundreds of years and became an integral part of the culture, science and economy.
Do you consider Jewish-Americans not Americans? When you talk about people lost in 9/11 do you split people by race or religion?
Now, when you consider that these 11.3% of the 24.4 ethnic Poles and 90% of 3.3 mln POLISH Jews died, can you still say that Polish losses were smaller?
This is exactly the kind of direction commenters need not to take in a thread like this. Significantly increasing both inflammation and repetition (of well-trodden pathways) is a ticket to flamewar hell, which is just where you and other commenters ended up.
Fortunately this phenomenon is so predictable that we can ask commenters to simply avoid it here. Please don't do it again.
It categorically does not say that remembering non-Jewish victims diminishes the memory of the holocaust. It says that commemorating non-Jewish victims at that specific monument diminishes the memory of the holocaust vis-à-vis that specific monument.
Anyone who's happy to make the former interpretation needs to look very carefully at their motivations.
The stated reason does suggest they believe non-Jewish groups are less deserving of remembrance:
These people are not in the same category as Jewish people
with regards to the Holocaust,” Hikind said following a
press conference at the memorial. “It is so vastly
different. You cannot compare political prisoners with
Jewish victims.”
The proviso I would add is that NYP a muck-racking rag that delights in outrage and controversy. I would be very skeptical it is giving a full and fair account of the individual's views.
Anyone who's happy to make the former interpretation
needs to look very carefully at their motivations.
I don't believe the parent is making unfair interpretation of the actual article content. Using that as a source is somewhat suspect but any discussion of anything holocaust, Jewish or Israeli leads to accusations of anti-semitism these days. Its a problem, please be charitable.
The guy in question - Dov Hikind - seems quite open in his views. He's a follower of the terrorist group Jewish Defense League who has some odd views that @tome will probably be happy to explain to you as misunderstood :)
I don't know what to say about your prickly confused paranoia. I have no need to 'slander Jews'. If I were to criticise a Christian fundamentalist would I be 'slandering Christianity'? If I were to criticise a Jihadist would I be 'slandering Islam'. Should I be told to shut up?
Look, the guy you have supported here is open in his support of Kahane and the JDL. That's just the territory you occupy.
Perhaps, then, you can explain what you meant in your post "Apparently, remembering gypsies and other groups 'diminishes the memory' of the holocaust because they were just 'political prisoners'".
It sounds like you were suggesting that that statement is a widely held belief amongst Jews in general. The tabloid article you linked doesn't support that claim. So what exactly is your claim?
Everything 'it sounds like you were suggesting' is in your paranoid head. I was linking to an article. I am not Hitler hiding under your bed. This is Hacker News - where people post links.
Presumably then, if your post were misinterpreted as suggesting that a significant proportion of Jews hold that "remembering gypsies and other groups 'diminishes the memory' of the holocaust" then you would be aghast, right?
Sorry if you feel harassed. That is not my intention.
Let me just say that the article and commentary you posted could very easily have been misinterpreted as suggesting that Jews try to minimise the suffering of non-Jews at the hands of the Nazis. I'm sure you didn't mean it to come across this way because it is a very common trope in anti-Semitic thought, and I guess it was an honest mistake on your part. We'll leave it at that.
In my experience, the blinkers on white South Africans during apartheid and Jewish Israelis seem to be constructed in the same way. In that sense I don't blame Israelis for wanting to build a Museum of Tolerance on a Muslim cemetry - that's just how they have been brought up. Just their culture.
It's no wonder Israel supplied apartheid South Africa with nuclear weapons. They had a shared philosophy.
Which I'd argue puts them squarely in the 'only human' bucket, and makes this part of history a warning for every single human rather than something exceptional.
Perhaps you agree with me on this; it's difficult to tell from your comment.
Not. The similarity is in title only - "identities of ~1M of the murdered are unknown" and "there's a discrepancy in statistics, therefore did not happen" are as different texts as they could possibly be, even though the title could fit both.
I'd prefer the term "Shoa" over "Holocaust", as that this is AFAIK the term preferred by the victim groups. But apart from that I don't see any issue with the title.
Do you care to elaborate? Who was sentenced, what was the reasoning, and what was written in that article?
It was long time ago, his name is Vladimir Stwora. He wrote that number of victims were not identified and 6m is not exact number. BBC is British, but in my country I would report this article to the police.
...and also wrote, in that very same article, that "there isn't any evidence of extermination camps" - an insignificant bit of information that you have omitted, surely by accident.
And that is where we diverge: your "any" seems to indicate "never mind the intent, never mind the content: the title is slightly similar to one of a completely different article. Therefore revisionism, release the kraken!"
I consider that overzealous - this article on "it's hard to identify the now-nameless people who were mass-murdered during the Holocaust" is anything except revisionist, yet you would "report this article to the police." What for?
The gist of his article was essentially "no holocaust ever took place, there is no evidence of any genocide or gas chambers, Hitler did nothing wrong." He was just asking questions, riiiiight.
The difference is that most tribes don't fall as easily as Germans for madman's tales of nation's superiority and greatness. Every nation has its nationalistic/rightwing nuts. Not every nation sets out to conquer the world and murder tens of millions of civilians.
I experience a unique German deference to rules and authority working in multinational engineering teams e.g. the Chinese engineer won't own a rule book, the Brits will ignore rules they deem irrelevant/unhelpful, the Germans will follow every rule precisely and cannot comprehend anyone not doing the same. This trait is sometimes the invaluable discipline that leads to an exceptional level of trust and quality... and sometimes infuriating when the rules they follow unquestioningly are idiotic.
They were punished so harshly after the WW1 that they decided it's time to start killing again and this time to do it in a methodical way with German efficiency....
It's an article about work done by the Holocaust museum in Israel. What would you have the article include to sound less biased, restoration of the Mona Lisa?
>Please don't post trash video links like this here.
Are you a mod, or just emulating one?
I watched the linked video in its entirety. It essentially said that the number is not six million but eleven million, and those five million people commonly forgotten deserve better. The tone was mostly somber and respectful.
While I loathe the general YouTube personality format to the core of my being, it's probably a stretch to call the video trash.
Of course, linking just a video URL is arguably poor form for HN.
My apologies, from the description and the title (forgetting the "holocaust") it seemed like a denier video. I was on my mobile and could not watch more than a few seconds. It was wrong to call it trash if the content is as you describe.
My post gathered negative 4 points so far, so rest assured that you're not the only one who fell for this.
But for fuck's sake, read/listen to the thing you comment on. Is this how engineers should behave? Do you build a new tool instead of understanding the old one? Do you re-do the library based on functional requirements (which you may or may not have read) instead of understanding and maybe refactoring it?
You made an ass of yourself, with your name, blog and github account searchable via your profile. This was a minor offence. Breathe and do better next time.
>You made an ass of yourself, with your name, blog and github account searchable via your profile.
No need to be vindictive, he already apologized.
So what if his real identity is tied to his account? Even if that somehow mattered, the fact you're trying to attack him for it while yourself remaining anonymous is hypocritical at best.
Don't post a single youtube link with no comment in the future if you expect people to engage with it. Your comments about "how engineers should behave" are not at all relevant, nor warranted.
I watched it, I actually agree with it. The presenter argues that remembering 6 million Jews murdered by the Third Reich should really be only a part of remembering the 11 million humans (including homosexuals, resistance fighters, Romany etc) murdered by the same group of people. This shouldn't take anything away from the remembrance of the 6 million, but should include the remembrance of the remaining 5 million.
His main point is that human life is equal no matter what race or religion you are.
The one point he didn't touch on was the fact that many Germans (who were probably just trying to survive in the midst of a horrendous war) also lost their lives.
I think the point of the video is that you shouldn't single out one group of victims, but instead realise that WW2 (and indeed all wars) was a tragic, disgusting affair that caused huge losses for all sides involved.
It shouldn't be glorified, it shouldn't be used as any one group's foundation for revenge or compensation, it should (ideally) be used as a point of history that illustrated that wars are the most terrible thing that we can inflict on ourselves as a single species, and that however "correct" or "moral" the justification seems at the time, the reality is one of massive negative consequence for all involved, as well as generations to come.
This isn't saying that nothing should have been done to combat Hitler's campaign, but that the reality of war means that almost everyone involved becomes a victim, and that all victims should be remembered equally.
I didn't watch the video, but there is a huge difference between those who were members of a society who were murdered and tortured by their own people and victims of an invading army. It's not something that is done in the midst of war and it was not something done to an external country.
The lives may not be individually more important but the threat we face to ourselves of becoming intolerant and thus gassing mass amounts of people, putting them in ovens alive, and experimenting on them in the most torturous ways is morally different.
I was responding to the logic that all victims are equal, which was expressed in the parent post, but you knew that and are clearly attempting to bully and distract.
I wish we had noticed this sooner. The discussion is not entirely horrible, only mostly. It probably would have been a notch better without an initial sharp shove into hell.
We changed the title to representative language from the article. Let's not forget that authors of articles like this don't write the headlines.