I used to deliver mail to an elderly Polish gentleman who had a tattoo on his arm.
He was taken from his family at age 15, he never saw them again, both parents and 2 brothers.
Tell this guy it is all a hoax
I don’t believe in Holocaust Deniers. I think they’re just a myth made up by the MSM to get people all outraged and worked up over the past while forgetting about the very real problems we have today. And even if they do exist, there can’t be but one or two of them. Claims of hundreds or even thousands of Holocaust Deniers is pure fantasy. Where’s the proof, people?
Yes, it’s a joke, dammit!
I too have interviewed and written about a Holocaust survivor. How can an elderly lady living in a small Kentucky town in the 1980s sit in her kitchen and discuss her vivid memories of a catastrophic event, have a tattoed arm and be wrong? “History is written by the victors” is one thing; actual personal memories of someone who was there? Come on.
[QUOTE=Ellen Cherry]
I too have interviewed and written about a Holocaust survivor. How can an elderly lady living in a small Kentucky town in the 1980s sit in her kitchen and discuss her vivid memories of a catastrophic event, have a tattoed arm and be wrong? “History is written by the victors” is one thing; actual personal memories of someone who was there? Come on.
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[QUOTE=chowder]
I used to deliver mail to an elderly Polish gentleman who had a tattoo on his arm.
He was taken from his family at age 15, he never saw them again, both parents and 2 brothers.
Tell this guy it is all a hoax
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[QUOTE=Lars Aruns]
If someone ever tried to tell me that the Holocaust didn’t happen, I’d just have to tell them to talk to my old Auntie in Rome who was a young woman in Rome during World War II and saw her Jewish neighbours being carried away and never coming back. She’d give them a right piece of her mind, I assure you!
She’d tell them about her colleague who lived on that same street and who was working while all this happened, and then came home and all of his family was gone. And after that she would tell about how her family and another non-Jewish neighbour started hiding some Jews that escaped the first gathering, and even dug a secret passage between the two houses to smuggle them from one place to the other.
She’s eighty-something and she still can’t forget this.
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Hey guys, you know what they say about the plural of anecdote…
d&r;)
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
Hey guys, you know what they say about the plural of anecdote…
d&r;)
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Of course, of course 
And what about the plural of witness? 
As I understand it, most Holocaust Deniers no longer hold to the claim claim that no Jews were killed etc, but that
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the numbers have been overinflated (“the gas chambers could only process x prisoners a day”
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it wasn’t a “systematic policy” of extermination, just a by-product of cramped living conditions.
In fact, I’ve heard several Revisionists argue that it’s a good thing, as it means fewer Jews died than we thought. :rolleyes:
Another anecdote, seeing as we’re here… when I lived in Hannover, we weren’t too far from the site of Bergen-Belsen.
The professor who taught us an I"ntroduction to Germany" course said there was a well-known quote in Hannover during the 1940s… something along the lines of
Person A: “Ah, it’s an East Wind today”
Person B: “How can you tell”
Person A: “You can smell the Jews”.
[QUOTE=e-logic]
2) it wasn’t a “systematic policy” of extermination, just a by-product of cramped living conditions.
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Yeah, but when you’re in a crowded GAS CHAMBER, the main complaint ain’t gonna be about the lack of elbow room.
I’m not sure if it’s anti-semitism. I think that we just live in an age where we are so used to seeing the smallest of events blown out of proportion and then spun by the media that people can’t grasp what is real and what isn’t.
The problem in this case with the claim “the victors write the history books” is that it is incorrect. The Germans wrote the books on this case, they went to great lengths to document their genocide.
My grandfather (of blessed memory) was a deputy lead prosecutor at the Nurmberg war crimes trials. I regret that he died about 30 years before I was brave enough to ask about the trials. But I expect he had direct access to the Germans’ hard evidence for his cases.
I agree that it might not be anti-semitism, simply pure ignorance or misinformation. And it’s the job of the Straight Dope to correct that.
I originally wrote SD instead of Straight Dope as a joke, but thought that it might be too easily misunderstood.
Not many people would get that. Especially since the SS is the more famous organization.
[QUOTE=Hypno-Toad]
What worries me is what is going to happen when there’s not one left alive who experienced it or knew someone who experienced it. At that point, there will be no direct witnesses to counter the deniers who claim that all the physical evidence is faked imagery or testimony.
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My mother was a child during WWII, and lived here in the states most of her life. But, like Auntbeast, she’d had at least one encounter with a camp survivor - she was assisting at the birthing while she was practicing as a nurse, and noticed that the woman had a string of numbers tattooed on her arm. Afterwards she’d asked if that had any signifigance, and she was told that the woman has survived one of the camps. (My mother says she was told Auschwitz, but I’m not sure that’s accurate.)
[QUOTE=Lars Aruns]
Of course, of course And what about the plural of witness?
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The plural of “witness” is conspiracy, of course!
[QUOTE=msmith537]
I’m not sure if it’s anti-semitism.
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Overwhelmingly, it is (assuming we’re talking about a general policy of denying or minimizing the Holocaust, and not just debating a particular detail).
The Holocaust represents an enormous obstacle to the propagation of anti-Semitism, since it’s a stark example of what such bigotry can lead to. If you can create enough doubt in people’s minds about what really happened, your message of hate has a better chance of being favorably received.
People like David Irving are not misinformed or merely trying to make the historical record accurate..
My father has run into a number of Holocaust survivors over the years, two of which I can remember about:
My father used to work for IBM, and they had ID badges with the person’s name emblazoned on the front along with a photo. One day after work, he was running an errand on the way home and ran into an older woman who stopped him and commented on his last name. “Oh, it was originally _______.” My father didn’t quite hear her, and asked her to repeat it. She did, and my father asked how she knew. At that moment, he noticed her arm tattoo, she got nervous and scurried off. We were aware that the family that didn’t make it over by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution were probably killed in the Holocaust, but it was a pretty vivid reminder.
My father has a neighbor who had survived the Holocaust by being on a list of “protected” Jews. He’s quite old, and is no longer in good health, but he’s a very kind, gentle man. I met him a few times, but did not think it polite to ask about his experience as it was not my place to ask such personal questions.
[QUOTE=nashiitashii]
My father has a neighbor who had survived the Holocaust by being on a list of “protected” Jews. He’s quite old, and is no longer in good health, but he’s a very kind, gentle man. I met him a few times, but did not think it polite to ask about his experience as it was not my place to ask such personal questions.
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On that topic, have you heard this story? Short version if you don’t care to read the link, a young boy was saved from execution by an SS trooper, who made him into a uniform wearing mascot for his SS unit. The boy even helped with the work.
I’d never have the courage, or would it be chutzpah, to ask someone whom I’d known was a protected Jew about their experience. It may be heresy on this board, but there are some things I’m not sure I’d want to know.
My mother has a friend, Hungarian origin IIRC, whom I believe had to prostitute herself to a German officer to protect herself and her family. (She’s not Jewish, just another member of one of those peoples the Nazis considered sub-human, and so was at risk.) Anything she might care to share about that part of her history I’d be thrilled to be trusted with, but I’m not about to ask her about it.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
Overwhelmingly, it is (assuming we’re talking about a general policy of denying or minimizing the Holocaust, and not just debating a particular detail).
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True enough. There are groups that actively deny the Holocaust for the very reasons you describe. But I also think there are a significant number of deniers who I would put in the same group as 9/11 and JKF conspiracists and Moon Landing deniers. They simply deny the Holocaust because it is their conspiracy de jour. There may be some latent anti-semetic feelings there as well, but IMHO, it’s more related to being somewhat disconected with society and reality.
[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
Sometimes I think Holocaust denial has less to do with anti-semitism (although that’s certainly a factor in some of it) than with some people’s inability to grasp the enormity of the event. I wonder whether, if as much exposure were given to Stalin’s or Pol Pot’s purges, people would deny them, too. I think some people just can’t process that level of evil.
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I haven’t heard of any Cambodian genocide deniers, but the old line hard core Lillian Hellman style Stalinists denied the purges, and managed to convince themselves that all on trial during the show trials deserved it. The Gulag Archipelago made such a big impact since it was one of the first instances of documentation of Stalin’s camps from the inside.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
I haven’t heard of any Cambodian genocide deniers, but the old line hard core Lillian Hellman style Stalinists denied the purges, and managed to convince themselves that all on trial during the show trials deserved it. The Gulag Archipelago made such a big impact since it was one of the first instances of documentation of Stalin’s camps from the inside.
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And the Armenian genocide and Rape of Nanking, both smaller in scope and publicity than the Nazi holocaust, have had fierce, nationalistically motivated denial movements associated with them.