This really bothers me. When people speak of the Holocaust, they usually just mention the 6 million Jews. While this was definitly a tragedy, does it bother anyone else that they ignore the other 6 million: communists, political prisoners, “undesirables”, handicapped, etc.
Also, it is my understanding that the Japanese, during World War II, killed more Chinese than the Nazis killed Jews. However, you hardly ever hear about that. Why exactly do people focus on the Jews, aren’t the rest of the deaths just as tragic?
So what’s your point? That the pile of Jewish corpses must have hired a better press agent than the “Misc.” pile?
Is this your complaint? It’s only valid if a Holocaust Memorialist comes right out and says that all the non-Jewish vicims were inconsequential. I’ll even allow that if such a statement were implied through oversight (as it was in “Shindler’s List”) rather than stated outright. But your gripe reminds me of an encounter related by Gore Vidal between a Jew and homosexual about their comparative losses under the Nazis. “How can you compare 60,000 homosexuals to 6 million Jews” asked the Jew. “What - are into real estate or something?” replied the homosexual.
I would agree that there should be a better overall awareness of the extent to which the Nazi regime murdered all sorts of people.
However, with the exception of the Gypsies, (whose murders were every bit as horrifying and tragic, but whose “seeking out” was more sporadic and less systematic), no other group was targeted for utter elimination.
The Nazis did not set up organizations in every captured country for the specific purpose of identifying every Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, French, Danish, etc. Communist so that they could be sent to Auschwitz-Bilkeneau.
There was no Wannsee Conference regarding Communists, Gypsies, or any other “undesirable” class.
I think that we should be sure that our children know the extent of the Nazi massacres, but among all that horror, the one group that was the most ruthlessly hunted down (and from whom 50% of the victims were taken) was the Jewish community.
Gordon McPhee addresses this very question in Are Jews Central to the Holocaust?.
Please remember that ever since the time of Christ people of Jewish faith have been persecuted in an almost merciless fashion. Only a year or two back did the Pope apologize to the Jewish community for the Catholic church’s lack of action in WWII. At the same time one of the first reconciliations in history was made with Rabbinical representatives and the Holy See.
Pogroms have been a fact of history for centuries upon centuries before the Holocaust. It took the maniacal retentiveness of the Nazis to bring it to a perverted art. The Soviet’s gulag atrocities are only diminished by the sheer industrial scale of Nazi liquidation. Such systematic extermination is entirely different from the wide-scale enslavement of political prisoners found in the USSR.
To this day Neo-Nazi organizations perpetuate the same ancient malignant myths of Jewish responsibility for the death of Christ in order to justify their own Anti-Semitic drivel. For this reason the slaughter of countless Rom, handicapped and deformed people pales in comparison to the almost unrelenting prejudice that Jewish people have historically endured.
The Holocaust was different because it was civilized. Unlike other atrocities, which were acts of barbarism, of rage, of hatred, of the insanity of war, the Holocaust was preformed by calm, rational grey little men in grey little rooms filled with file cabinets. It was an organized, thorough, sane - and almost successful - attempt to wipe out an entire people, and it was carried out by one of the most advanced civilization this world had managed to produce. It was evil, refined to a level I hope to God we never reach again.
No. To a level we must ensure that we never reach again.
Please note- that altho I do beleive that the Jews were a target of special hate- to not at least mention the slavs, gypsies, gays, etc- is to lessen their sacrifice. My relatives were in Ruthenia, and were involved in the attempt to make it a republic. They were all rounded up, and shipped off to concentration/slave labor camps, where they died and were bulldozed into the same mass graves as the Jews. Perhaps the hatred of the Nazis for the Jews was greater- but all their deaths were pointless, cruel & inhuman. When the bulldozer pushed them into the pit- it did not mark whether it was pushing Jewish, Gypsy, or Ruthenian bodies. I do not want to lessen the effect of the Holocaust on the Jews, and the need for public awareness, but the rest deserve a bit more than a footnote.
Daniel, I concur. There is no reason the tragedy of one nation should detract from that of another.
Besides, the more people who have reason to hate the Nazis, the better.