[HPforGrownups] Re: OT--Holocaust thing

[John Walton]

No: HPFGUIDX 11633

naama_gat at hotmail.com wrote:

> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., John Walton <john at w...> wrote:
>> foxmoth at q... wrote:
>> 
>>> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., John Walton <john at w...> wrote:
>>>> Amanda Lewanski wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> As I'm forever pointing out to people, please to remember that
> in
>>>>> addition to the Jews, the Slavs and Gypsies were also
> exterminated. Just
>>>>> as many Poles, Gypsies, and homosexuals died as did Jews. It
> wasn't just
>>>>> a Jewish thing. It was a non-Aryan thing.
>>>> 
>>>> Don't forget the 20 million Russian civilians who were killed on
> the Eastern
>>>> Front by the advancing Armies of the Third Reich. Oh, and the
> tens of
>>>> thousands of Southeast Asian people massacred by the Japanese.
>>>> 
>>>> --John
>>> They should never be forgotten, but they were not Holocaust
>>> victims.
>>> The term Holocaust refers to those destroyed in the Endlosung,
> the
>>> "Final Solution', not Axis victims in general.
>> 
>> ::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.
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
> 
> So, any old war is just as bad as genocide?

"Any old war"? This is the largest conflict in the history of humankind
you're calling "any old war"!

> Come on! War is a indeed a terrible thing. Moreover, besides being terrible in
> itself it is terrible in that it brings the worst in people. Atrocities
> happen. Civilians are needlessly killed. Cruelty and brutal indifference to
> human lives flourishes.

Aw. Shucks. And there was I thinking that war was just people

> BUT genocide is the attempt to SYSTEMATICALLY annihilate a nation.

You insinuate that UNSYSTEMATICAL attempts to annhilate a nation is just one
of those things that, y'know, happens. Gee, folks, sorry we killed your
entire family, village and everyone you ever knew, but hey, that's war.
Bullfeathers!

Genocide is what Hitler intended when attempting to exterminate the Jews --
but also homosexuals, Poles, Romani, Slavs (including the 20 million Russian
civilians murdered in cold blood during Hitler's march on Moscow) and other
groups.

> In a war *armed* soldiers fight other *armed* soldiers. The atrocities that
> the civilian populations suffer are a by product, so to speak, of the *armed*
> conflict. 

So, that's just cool 'n' froody then?

> It bears repeating that the Holocaust was the systematic massacre of
> defenceless civilians.

And was NOT limited to only one race or nation of people.

> Besides, to claim that event A (the war itself) is worse than event B
> (the Holocaust) because it caused more people to die is a fallacy,
> pure and simple. It completely takes out of the account the
> perpetrators. 

The basic motivations, however, were the same. "We're perfect, you're not,
so we're going to kill you all."

> The reason the Holocaust is so unimaginably awful is
> not because millions have died in agony, it is because they were
> cold-bloodedly murdered by a state machinary, for no other reason
> than pure hate. *Thats* what makes it different from any other
> man-caused disaster.

I couldn't disagree more. It is STILL happening around the world. You could
point to literally dozens of cases of attempted and actual genocide across
the world in the years since WWII: Rwanda. The Former Yugoslavia. Tibet. And
perhaps the most unbelievably ironic case of attempted -- and continuing --
ethnic cleansing is happening where? The Palestinian entity and Occupied
Territories in Israel.

> Amanda, the point you make about the Holocaust being a non-Aryan
> thing is true, of course, but within this reservation: The Jews were
> viewed as the complete negative opposite of the Aryan race. They were
> the principle of darkness, the germ of all evil. They carried disease
> - both physical and spiritual. The hatred of Jews was virulent and
> fanatic in a special way.

I object to this last statement in the strongest possible terms. Jewish
people CANNOT claim a monopoly on being the object of Hitler's hatred. Yes,
millions of Jews died in the Holocaust. Millions of other people died as
well -- people who are NOT recognised, NOT remembered by the world, do NOT
have wealthy contingents in the West to build ethnic museums to their
Holocaust victims. As I said to Pippin yesterday in private mail, I was
shocked and outraged that not ONCE in the ENTIRE coverage of Holocaust
Memorial Day that I saw was ANY mention made of the non-Jewish deaths in the
Holocaust.

Trust me on this. I'm doing an MA in it.

--John

== | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | ==

John Walton                 john at walton.to

"Con-ser-va-tive, n. A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as
distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."
--Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary", 1842-c.1914

== | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | == | ==