I just happened to read an interesting book (“WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS” (Shermer, 2001). It has a chapter on the so-called"Holocaust Deniers"-that is people who do not accpet the official historical accounts of the persecution and murder of European Jews, during the Nazi regime in Germany. There are many claims made by these people (the"deniers"), chief among them:
-the death toll was not 6 million; it was less (they claim 400-600,000)
-many of the so-called death camps were modifiedafter the war; in particular, one of them (Auschwitz), was extensively altered by the Russians, following the war
-the oft repeated story (that the Nazis transformed Jewish prisioners into soap) is a hoax
According to the book, the latest figure for the death toll is not 6 million-it is a number between 4 and 5 million. So why is it that articles still quote the 6 million figure?
Also, now that these camps (the “death camps”) have been deteriorating for almost 60 years, is there any movement to preserve these? I would imagine that onece the buildings collapse and the fences rust away, there will be very little physical evidence left.
Where can i find a modern , balanced review of what historians know to be factual, about the Holocaust?
I’m not sure where you’re getting the 4 to 5 million figure. See page 235 (hardback, beginning of the “How Many Jews Died?” section of Chapter 14):
http://www.holocaust-history.org looks like a pretty good place to start.
I grew up reading historical fiction about the Holocaust, and I’ve studied it in high school and religious school. It’s still inescapable in Judaism today, and it will continue to be that way for a long time. My synagogue has an array of small plates with light-up buttons on the walls of the main sanctuary. Some are blank, but most bear either the word ‘Reserved’ or the name of a temple member (or relative of one) who has died. The one exception is the plate that reads simply, “The Six Million.”
Numbers do vary depending on what studies you look at. It’s hard to have exact data about something so huge.
The best source of confirmation of the Holocaust isn’t the camps, though. It’s the survivors. One has to be pretty determined to cling to illusion to listen to someone who’s been through it and walk away believing they and everyone like them are lying. And this generation is dying out. Increasingly, interest has been in studying their children, who have often inherited some of their parents’ trauma.
So they say. Its poor scholarship and tends to focus only on verified deaths, of which there were not many.
This is true and irrelevant. The Russians often did use them for prison camps.
Partly. At least on experimental camp did do this, but it was never a wide-scale thing.
Many of them are partly rebuilt and are being preserved. But the Nazi’s often didn’t use topgrade material and much of that was destroyed in the 50 years of Russian and DDR rule in East Germany. Its more or less inevitable.
I recently read a book on Holocaust denial. Often, deniers are very familiar on one minute technical point. They then use questionable scholarship to try and “prove” that things weren’t as people say it was.
Holocaut denial is funded more or less exclusively by anti-jewish groups. Some deniers claim not to be anti-semitic, but often change their tune to play to their crowds. A disgusting and thoroughly evil idea.
I have never really understood holocaust deniers. Often, the people doing the denying are the very ones who sympathize with Nazi goals - why deny what they evidently admire?
That being said, the “people turned into soap” story is probably an urban legend - but one contemporary with the events. I read somewhere that the Nazis really were interested in making soap out of people, but had not actually done so by the time the war ended. However, rumours of this intention got out, and the image was so memorable and horrible that it gained a life of its own.
The Nazis did really perform gruesome experiments on live people, and commit other horrors. The soap business just was not among the horrors that they committed - although I don’t know why that should make any particular difference (as far as gruesome recycling goes, as a matter of fact they collected as a matter of course human hair and gold teeth).
Actually, the fat from inmates at the death camps was generally used to fuel their bodies’ cremation.
Some information about the Holocaust as seen from a Romani perspective can be found here.
Thank you, Kal. I meant to mention in my post, but forgot, that often the non-Jews, particularly the Roma, who died in the Holocaust are ignored or forgotten.
Another source of information is The Nizkor Project. Among other things. it has several sections dealing with Holocaust denial (look at the center of the page for links).
I think the problem is that serious research into the subject is too easily twisted into propaganda of the worst kind. A new study based on all the available data discovering that 5.5 million Jews were killed could be billed as, “Six Million Jews Killed–A Lie!” Well, yeah, technically. But, no, that’s not at all what I get out of finding out with certainty that 5.5 million people were murdered. Obviously it is not unreasonable, given the uncertainty, to use the round number six.
I was not even aware of the subject until a couple years ago. Silly me, I thought the only holocaust “deniers”* were skinheads. Nope. Now there are holocaust “revisionists”* of various stripes. Some people or arguments, of course, are more scholarly than others. Some are pushing an agenda. Others goose step for fun and have the dance remix of Deutschland Uber Alles. I’d provide cites for these assertions, :eek: Never again. That is, never again will I research this topic.
The accepted academic theory on the soap issue is that it is a myth.
*Whatever. The ones that lie we can call “liars.”
The first time I heard about Holocaust deniers, I thought it was, shall we say, “wishful thinking?” That some people were so horrified that they just couldn’t believe something like that could happen.
I think I’m not the only one to say-how we WISH that they were true, and it didn’t happen. But it did.
Holocaust denial is mosotly based in extreme fruit-of-the-poisoned tree argumentation, taken to the level of logical fallacy.
For instance, it is indisputably true that the “Jewish soap” thing is a myth… but extending that argument to the belief that the entire Holocaust didn’t happen is absurd.
To use an example, I’m sure most people have heard the old legend about a Civil War bullet that passed through a soldier’s testicle and hit a woman in the abdomen, impregnating her. That’s not a true story - so does it prove the Civil War never happened? Of course not. Or you may have heard the story that Adolf Hitler delayed the production of the ME-262 jet fighter by insanely insisting it be made a dive bomber. That’s false; it was Ernst Udet who held it up. So did the ME-262 not exist? Did the war in Europe never happen?
“The death camp sites were altered.” - Four years ago I visited Gettysburg with my Dad. Many of the historical sites have been altered or rebuilt. So did the Battle of Gettysburg never happen?
“Eyewitness accounts are wrong/conflicting.” - This is absolutely true; many eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust at at variance with the facts, or conflict with one another. And many eyewitness accounts of the Vietnam War are at variance with the facts and with each other. So did the Vietnam War never happen?
Holocaust denial arguments are universally idiotic.
Does anyone know the death count for all the non-Jewish victims of the holocaust? They really don’t get talked about much. As a teenager I once met a death camp survivor who was a Jehova’s Witness. His story was just as horrible as any Jewish survivor. At that time I hadn’t even known that other groups had been victimized too, particularly Roma, JWs, homosexuals and disabled people. Nobody ever makes movies about those people, but they deserve to be remembered too.
[quoteI have never really understood holocaust deniers. Often, the people doing the denying are the very ones who sympathize with Nazi goals - why deny what they evidently admire?
[/quote]
Well, because they want to “ressurect” Nazism. They are often sympathetic to the Nazi government, aside from that pesky war thing.
Thats true, although they never as numerous, organized, and sometimes not treated as bad as the Jews. I suppose its mostly that the Nazis never realy tried as hard to get them.
Rather a nice ‘Revisionist’ site
http://www.reptiles.org/~madrev/
Especially on The Protocols of the Elders of Eire and the activities of the Hibernian Occupational Government.
[ok I admit it’s a parody site but it follows the IHR ‘tradition’]
My Grandfather was a combat medic with the 45th Infantry in WW2. His unit was the 1st into Dachau. He attempted to treat the prisoners they found there, but they were in no way capable of such an undertaking.
He still cries when he talks about it. He will be 80 in May.
His word is good enough for me. God bless him, the soldiers and the victims…
There was a movie about two gay lovers in a death camp. I saw a summary on the cable info. screen. Sorry, can’t remember the title or anything about it.
Technically, anything that changes the accepted historical view is revisionism. Ergo, the soap thing as researched and reported by the Holocaust Museum is revisionism.
Of course, the word also provides academic cover for bullshit.
My uncle was a part of the troops that liberated the Camps. For years he refused to speak of it. All he would say is that he walked across Austria and witnessed horrors that 1,000 men in 1,000 lifetimes could never witness.
When he finally did speak of it, he cried and shook. I never asked him about it again…
He halocaust did exist, and still does in the minds of some…
The movie–after searching, also a play–it’s called Bent. Don’t ask me how I remembered that.
While estimates for Roma and Sinti victims vary between 250,000 and 1.5 million, it’s safe to say that at least 500,000 died. There are some claims that, as a percentage of the total population, the number is comparable with the statistics of the Jewish loss.
Regarding movies, IIRC there was a ‘Gypsy’ in Schindler’s List. Okay, it was the name of someone’s dog, but you can’t have everything.
Diogenes -
Number that I was taught in various history classes was that the total number of concentration camp victims was approximately ten million.