Years and years ago, I met the father of one of my old motorcycle riding buddys. He didn’t DENY the Holocaust. He DID claim that the Jews now living had no right to COMPLAIN about it because many of them became doctors after the war. He attributted this to the medical experiments performed on prisoners in the camps. He even offered undenyable proof… the Yellow Pages’ listings for doctors has a lot of Jewish names in it. There ya go!
The fact that people really are this stupid scares me! My buddy later apologized to me for his dad so I guess he escaped being caught in the net of ignorance and bigotry.
If TVAA does decide to do so, here’s a few cites that he and others may find useful:
First, two reviews of Guenter Lewy’s book, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies - a revisionist work which not only excludes Romanies from the Holocaust, but goes on to conclude that their treatment at the hands of the Nazis wasn’t even genocide:
Have to agree. Not believing in evolution is much greater issue re comprehending how the world works and creationists seem to do just fine. Some even get elected president.
I was hanging out with a friend and his girlfriend (who he worked with) one day after watching the movie Saving Private Ryan. He and I happened onto the topic of the Holocaust. She looked at her boyfriend and said "Holocaust? What is that?’ She literally had no idea.
Keep in mind that this is the same woman who REALLY believed that the reason she had such a happy baby is because she smoked all the pot she could while pregnant.
For some reason he kept dating her till he caught her having sex with another man ON TOP OF HIS DESK at work one night after the office had closed. How he could go to work and sit at that desk every day I will never know.
I would not want my child to participate in this Anne Frank play either, because it is a waste of her/his’ time. I would rather my child to learn Math, Science, English or languages. Something that will actually benefit my child when he/she goes into college and out in the world.
I wonder how much money that Otto Frank (and heirs) have made the last 60 years with that book. If your child was tortured or killed, would you profit by it? Who is to say that the work is not a clever fiction or a forgery?
“Who is to say the the work is not fiction?” That looks like a cowardly method to suggest the book is fiction, without investing any time to find support for your argument. It’s your claim - you provide the support.
(hijack) I won’t bother with the rest of this post, but one of my pet peeves is a certian musician who made mega-bucks with a record about his son’s death.(end hijack)
I remember reading the Diary of Anne Frank in about Grade Nine and doing a scene from it in Drama class. I found it a difficult journey, in part because I’m somewhat German and partly because Anne and I share a name. I had a hard time dealing with the fact that this girl, nearly my age, could have gone through all that. It never would have crossed my mind to think it didn’t happen, though.
Surely, ultimately, it will be out of the parents hands? There are references to the Holocaust everywhere.
I’m glad to hear that A. learned about another part of history that has been neglected - the Japanese Internment. I live on the West Coast of Canada in an area that was very much affected and I don’t recall hearing a word about it until I was an adult. I just checked with my teenage sons and they don’t remember learning about it in school either.
Granted, we didn’t kill the Japanese that we displaced, we just stole their homes, boats and citizenship. I can’t say we’ve denied the events either, we just kind of forgot to mention them. Amazing.
My take on the whole thing is that A. will learn about the Holocaust wether her parents want her to or not and that she will then question all their teaching. It would be interesting to come back in a few years and see what kind of a relationship she has with them by then.
I don’t think that should be a real, live debate: I have always heard that the Holocaust included, as one of the categories of victims, the Roma. I suspect that those who claim otherwise are a fringe minority, albeit one which seems to have disproportunate representation among Holocaust historians.
That last pic was quite infuriating, I must admit; I can’t believe that the organizers of such an event would keep Roma representitives out.
However, by the same token, I get the general impression that many who bring up this debate (and I am not suggesting you are an example), do so for ulterior motives that have nothing to do with offering historical justice to the Roma.
One example could be TVAA, who, it appears from subsequent posts, simply does not like Orthodox Jews very much.
ammo
— What I can’t see is “rewarding” A. with a separate track and a chance to earn the same points, etc, as the kids who learned the real lesson. She should get a big fat zero.
You may be overlooking the fact that A. would suffer from the zero more than her parents would.
Also, I suspect that A. may be feeling a little isolated from her peers at the moment.
Finally, I sort of doubt the parents thought that their kid would be reading an eyewitness account of US human rights violations against the Japanese, when they wrote that original letter. A little poetic justice, perhaps.
Good teachers know that there is more than one method of expanding a kid’s humanitarian imagination.
TVAA et al: There’s a good website that gives details on the 11 million. http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/victims.htm
For example, I was aware that Roma (220,000 - 500,000) and homosexuals were victims of mass-murdering Nazis. I had forgotten or had never known that perhaps 1.8 million Christian Poles and were slaughtered. From here: "On August 22, 1939, a few days before the official start of World War II, Hitler authorized his commanders, with these infamous words, to kill “without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space [lebensraum] we need”. Many Slavs were executed as well.
I also came across a quote by Himmler explaining the Nazi’s policy on education in occupied Poland, “The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one’s name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans…I do not think that reading is desirable.”
On a personal level, I must object to drawing a parallel between violent skinheads who physically attack people because of their race or creed and Orthodox Jews, (who, um, practice Judism? What the hell is the impact of “classifying”?). You see, I’ve had friends who are Orthodox Jews and I take this a little personally.
I would believe in being cordial with A’s parents, but I personally would be more than a little cold with them. Hm. No, actually in practice I’d be more confrontational if certain topics came up. Oh well.
DSeid: I must disagree. Malcolm X’s position was rather like the position you outlined above: blacks must take care of themselves; no one will help us if we don’t help ourselves; we need a place to live apart from those who have oppressed us.
Malthus: I don’t like traditional Judaism very much. Several concepts which I am deeply opposed to are hard-wired into its system of traditions. That doesn’t mean that my objections to the way our society thinks about the Holocaust are founded in my dislike of the religion – the nature of Orthodox Judaism has nothing whatsoever to do with the debate.
Frankly, if you suggest that the arguments I’ve put forth are insufficient on their own and are are indicative of a hidden agenda on my part, it would seem that you have an agenda yourself.
I didn’t like it when it happened, and I still think it was wrong not to allow the Roma in, but it’s not clear cut.
Consider, if you will, that the NYC Fire Department obtains permission to hold a memorial service at Ground Zero for the families of the FireFighters that died on 9/11.
Would you require the organizers/participants to allow access to the memorial service to relatives of NON-FireFighters who died there? Would you invite others to participate?
My personal take: Don’t invite others. Make it clear that this is meant to be a closed occaision, meant for members of a subgroup of the victims’ relatives. Then if the relatives of other victims show up anyway, let them in! (which is, of course, where I disagree with what happened)
I could use fancier language, but there’s really only a couple options here. Earlier in the thread, someone posted an explanation of the book’s history? It doesn’t look like you read it. Please do so. “Who’s to say it’s not a clever forgery?” is a cowardly way of hinting something. Come right out and say it, but if you haven’t bothered to read the link, then it’s rather suspect that you’d be so suspious of this work.
Er, for not researching the issue? For being Holocaust Deniers? There’s all kinds of things those parents are, but applause-worthy is not one of the first that comes to mind.
If it has nothing to do with this debate, why did you bring it up?
I responded to your comments, not the other way around.
I have no particular axe to grind, as I am not an Orthodox Jew; but, I find it quite incredible that, if a poster suggests that Orthodox Jews and neo-Nazis are equally reprehensible, that this statement of opinion has nothing to do with that same posters’ opinions on the subject of the Holocaust. Particularly when said poster brings up his dislike of Orthodox Judaism, and the Nazi-Jew comparison, on his or her own.
Well, I agree with all of that, and I am readily admit that I have very little notion of what actually happened (other than hazy recall of some newspaper items at the time).
Malthus, I thought the comparison more than a little offensive, myself. That fact that it came out of nowhere indicates that it’s on someone’s mind, no?
** I didn’t. I discussed a specific aspect of the ideology of Orthodox Judaism.
** Their ideologies are equally reprehensible. The concept of a “Chosen people” is inherently flawed, regardless of whether the people in question are Aryan or Jewish.
Honestly, I suspect that you would object to any criticism of Jewish people while forwarding the idea that they should be considered as a single entity instead of an associated collection of individuals. “They’re entitled to their beliefs”, and whatnot.
There ya go!