One thing the column doesn’t cover is the 6 million figure, mentioned in the OP. I don’t think it’s Holocaust denial to question that figure, although I think many European countries deem it so. I don’t mean ludicrous claims that none or only hundreds or thousands died. I believe it’s certain that the number was in the millions but someone who estimates that it was 4 million or 5 million rather than 6 is surely not a Holocaust denier.
I don’t know exactly how many died but I do know that this was one of the most horrific crimes in history. The number of Jews who died at Auschwitz according to Wikipedia is 1.1 million. I’m not sure what the consensus of scholars is about the total number of Jews murdered in Europe.
I’m always leery when the number is a nice even rounded off number.
However my issue is how the whole thing is simplified like saying “Hitler killed 6 million Jews”.
What gets me about this are all the other European countries that were involved. Most, except for say Denmark, rounded up their Jews when asked and sent them off - no questions asked. Even the “enlightened” countries like France did this. Of course today they want to put all the blame on Germany.
I once heard of a Holocaust survivor who said he had forgiven the Germans but NOT the Poles and to the day he died he refused to do business with anyone Polish. Indeed the Poles were quick to hand over Jews and take their property. Poles murdered and returned to the camps, escaped Jews, and when some did return and tried to reclaim their property, they were killed by Poles.
So yes it happened but the blame cannot solely be put on Germany.
This, I think, leads to a bad phenomenon in society, which is that people who ask legitimate, valid questions about the Holocaust or 9/11 can get shouted down as “deniers/Truthers” and lumped into the same category as the conspiracy theorists. There are reasonable questions that can be asked that aren’t denial - as the OP stated for instance, one can reasonably question the “6 million Jews” figure, but then run the immediate risk of being assumed to be a Holocaust Denier.
Makes me wonder about Europe’s anti-Holocaust-denial laws. Do they penalize someone who says, “The data doesn’t hold up?”
What if someone wildly exaggerated claims - “The Holocaust killed 200 million” - would he be punished for trivializing or mocking the Holocaust?
Yes, there is. It’s called anti-Semitism. I have never seen a single example (from David Irving on through the roll call of other “revisionist historians”) who did not have a substantial history of bigotry.
Legitimate scholars who raise questions about minor details are not labeled as Holocaust deniers. Those who to a marked extent minimize the death toll and other atrocities, and obfuscate/deny the intent of the perpetrators are quite correctly known as anti-Semitic bigots.
Well said … through the centuries just simply killing off the Jewish population and taking their wealth was an important revenue source for the various Kings in Europe … and no doubt this was a part of the Nazis’ ability to fund their war using the latest technologies which were well developed over these many hundreds of years on how to kill Jews rapidly and economically …
There’s still plenty of people who want to do this again … Israel is a very rich land right now and you can bet the Arabs in that area would love to jump in, slaughter the Jews and enjoy the wealth the Jews have built up there … and it certainly helps to believe that the Jews have never been prosecuted ever, in all of recorded history, and they’re just being butts about it … making crap up …
Finally, just want to remind everyone that we’ll need at least a 5% inconsistency rate to be able to whip up a decent crackpot theory … and I’m just not seeing it here … not across all the evidence … and this “all the evidence” is what The Master correctly points out in the article … there’s just too many lines of evidence that lead to the fact that the Holocaust happened we’re just not going to find an overall 5% inconsistency rate … so what there’s no document that Hitler signed saying to kill the Jews … we also don’t have the rental contract between NASA and MGM studios either … but that doesn’t mean the moon landings weren’t fake …
And I am leery of counter-arguments to evidence that that contain “I once heard an unverified claim from an anonymous person that…” as a reason to distrust said evidence. You say, “So yes it happened…”, but the only thing I can see that “happened” is that you heard an unverified story from…someone, and that was good enough for you.
There’s no way to get exact numbers so of course some estimation has to be factored in. Your argument appears to be based on a fairly weak line of reasoning.
I would ask that question of the at leasr 6 million Jews who died in WW2, and the additional Christians, gypsies, and disabled, mentally ill, and old persons “gotten rid of.”–by the Nazis. so it was more than 6 million Jews; plenty of Poles and French resistance, you name it. --plus other Americans and other nations. yeah, a whole lot of people died. badly.
Interesting article on just how the 6 million figure came to be. It’s from a well-researched Jewish source: one has to google ‘6 million jews’ with care, most links are to the usual motley crew of moronic Holocaust-deniers.
Darn it, when I tried to go to the link again it just asked for a subscription. I’m hoping that it will let you read the article on the first visit, as it did me.
Rapidly and economically? Sure, the einsatzgruppen were efficient–bullets are cheap, make the Jews dig their own graves–but death camps require expensive infrastructure.
As for the complicity of the French and Poles, I always figured their main beef with Hitler was that he wasn’t THEIR fascist dictator. And the conquering.
I thought his point was obvious: that the Poles and other nations were complicit in the murder of the Jews. That does not of course lessen the guilt of Germany but it should always be remembered that the Germans would have had far more difficulty rounding up and killing the Jews without the enthusiastic help of the Poles, the French, et al.