OT--Holocaust thing

[mschub at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 11572

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., John Walton <john at w...> wrote:

> ::takes a deep breath and counts to ten::
> 
> Pippin, I'm sure that you didn't mean it to come across as such, but 
that
> last message really made me angry in that it seemed to insinuate 
that the
> deaths of those who were not specifically singled out for genocide 
by Hitler
> on his insane Aryan crusade were "less important" than those not
> specifically targetted.

I hate to speak for someone else, but that's really not what I got 
from Pippin's message at all. This whole thing started with a 
discussion of "Holocaust victims". He was merely pointing out that 
those people were NOT "Holocaust victims". Were their deaths just as 
"important" as those in the Holocaust? Absolutely. But the fact is, 
those casualties are not attirbuted to, and do not fall under the 
heading of, "the Holocaust"
 
> Remember, there were MORE "non-genocide" victims than those killed 
in the
> name of the Aryan "race". Three to four times as many, in fact. And 
what
> does the international community do to the perpetrators of THOSE 
crimes?
> Nurnburg? Nope. Trying them well into their eighth decade? Naw. Zip. 
Zilch.
> Nada.

Big, big, big, big, gigantic difference. There's a big difference 
between soldiers killed in battle and non-combatants killed outside of 
that sphere. Debates on the righteousness of war aside, a soldier 
CANNOT be tried on any level for taking the life of an enemy during a 
battle. It would be no more fair to gather up a group of Nazi grunts 
and put them on trial for murder than it would be fair to gather up a 
group of revolutionary Minute Men and do the same thing. There is a 
tremendous amount of difference there. I personally am anti-war, as, 
I would suspect, are most people. An end to war would be an undeniable 
good. But I am wholeheartedly against prosecuting soldiers fighting 
DURING a war.
We are like, WAY off topic here... I TA'd a class on the Nazi rise to 
power a while back. I wish you had been in that class, we could have 
had some very interesting arguments.
-Mike