Questions about Hitler and Nazi Germany's attempted extermination of Europe's Jews

In this thread, poster Gack refuses to answer as to whether he thinks the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews. This thread is a follow up, since he said he would answer the questions in a different thread. So, here are the questions (other posters can feel free to add more about the subject topic):

Did the Nazis try to wipe out Europe’s Jews?

Did they kill any of Europe’s Jews? If so, roughly how many do you think they killed?

Do you believe Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was justified?

This won’t last long.

Posting to subscribe. Checking in later.

Yes.
Yes. Lots.
No.

This is easy, gimmie some more.

+1 (+/- 4,5000,000)
eta

Actually, the OP is asking Gack to answer the question. It’s a gimmee for the rest of us

OK, I’ll bite. We learned it in grade school. For those without access to a library, or someone coming to class to explain it because they lived through it, there is an online tool that should work.

What’s to be gained from fellating Hitler and the Fascists nearly 70 years after WWII?

Isn’t it easier for the average aspiring racist to come up with his own justification at this point rather than to try portray the Nazis as being misunderstood?

Too many questions to consider all at once. I’ll consider this question before any others - ‘How many Jews were killed in the holocaust?’

First we must examine the evidence. In a murder case we start with the bodies and the second thing to consider is the murder weapon. Then there is other physical evidence, documentary evidence, and testimony.

I’ll start with the bodies. What evidence do we have here? Do we have photographic evidence? Let’s examine this question critically. If you watch the* first minute* of the Oprah special with Elie Wiesel on the subject of Auschwitz you will see photographic evidence of the holocaust, stacks of bodies, and even bodies being bulldozed into mass graves. Most likely you are already familiar with the photos/film, but if not you can see it here after 1 minute …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KugVjbq6Si8

Now, let’s examine the provenance of the imagery. Who took the photos, when, where, and how did the prisoners die?

I’ll answer these questions. The British took the photos, after the end of the war, in Belsen, and the prisoners died of typhus and other diseases. In fact the British took a lot of documentary film footage when they entered Belsen and it was edited into a movie by none other than Alfred Hitchcock, but it was shelved. You can see it here …

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/

At the end of the war the Nazis had evacuated the camps in the east and transferred the prisoners west (Wiesel describes this in his book ‘Night’), and the overcrowding, lack of supplies, medicine, infrastructure failure, etc., led to a typhus epidemic at Belsen that killed 35,000, 10,000 of them dying after the wars end. For USHMM documentation see …

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-19-holocaust-papers_x.htm

For more photos of Belsen at the end of the war see …

http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/Database/SurvivorsPhotos.asp?index=0

The Nazis did everything they could to combat the epidemic. The correspondence of the camp commandant, Josef Kramer, was captured and can be seen here …

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Belsen/Kramer010345.html

The photos and the letter above are not controversial and are recognized by everyone on all sides of the debate.

Draw your own conclusions.

I think your post enabled those reading this thread to do so quite effectively.

Conclusions drawn. Not about Ha’ Shoah, though…

Now, on to your argument, you are obviously using the Holocaust Denier argument that most of the deaths in the extermination and concentration camps were due to disease. Answer me this, then: if a government imprisons its own citizens, men and women who have done nothing wrong, committed no crimes, harmed no one, and then stuffs those unjustly imprisoned people into overcrowded, unsanitary conditions without proper medical oversight, such that 10’s of thousands of human beings die of disease… how is that not murder on the part of the ruling regime?

(We can debate numbers later, let’s just agree that we’re discussing some sort of moral framework and not just an apologia for anti-Semitism)

Done.

You still didn’t answer this question. How many Jews do you think were killed in the Holocaust?

I typed up a bunch of stuff but I just can’t be bothered to post it. It just isn’t worth it. If this is all it takes to convince this person that the Holocaust didn’t occur then nothing we say is going to matter. Seriously, there is truckloads of proof out there from smaller carloads of different sources. If he hasn’t stumbled over any of it yet you can post till your finger bleed and you’re going to get the same response every time.

Gack, stop reading about it on the internet. Go talk to someone who lived through it. Go talk to one of the GIs who liberated the camps. I have, and there’s no possible way I can give the slightest shred of credit to what you’re espousing. You might as well be saying ‘I don’t believe the ocean exists’.

This is a good, pretty extensive resource detailing the massive amounts of evidence for the Nazis attempts to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and the deaths of roughly 6 million Jews.

In short, there are mountains of documents demonstrating that it was the Nazis goal (ordered by Hitler) and policy to exterminate Europe’s Jews (including the reports of Himmler, Eichmann, and Hoss), there are thousands of eyewitnesses, including Nazi officials, camp guards, camp inmates, civilians, and allied soldiers that report on the Nazis efforts to exterminate Europe’s Jews, and warehouses full of material evidence in the form of human remains, mass graves, and the equipment and machines used for mass murder.

Views like Gack’s should be challenged (and indeed, mocked) not to change his mind, but to demonstrate the incredible falsity and weakness of these arguments.

So what?

Animal shelters both euthanize animals and attempt to control disease, they don’t just say “well we are trying to eliminate stray dogs so we will just let disease run rampant”.

The Nazis treated human children worse than average people treat stray dogs. Draw your own conclusion.

I have personally walked from the train station to the camp in Dachau, on the same route the prisoners took. Dachau was not even a death camp but more prisoners died there than you have accounted for so far Gack.

Millions died because they happened to be Jews, Slavs, Jehovahs Witnesses, Roma, Communists, Socialists, or any other set of undesirables.

Arbiet Macht Frei, was one of the cruelest jokes ever played on Humankind

I am going to show you just one example of just one death and if you can explain to me how this death was in any way justified, I will bow out of this thread and leave you be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82awa_Kwoka

What did a 14 year old Catholic girl do to deserve to die? Gack?

Capt

First I want to review the evidence. Starting with photographic evidence, then physical evidence, documentary evidence, and testimony. Why not make it a collaborative effort. You can present the photographic evidence that you are aware of. Then we’ll proceed to the physical evidence, etc. Then we’ll do our best to come up with a number or at least a range of numbers. I think we should proceed carefully.

Now, let’s look at photographic evidence from Yad Vashem. See this extraordinary photograph

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/photo_34.asp

The caption - “Jews who were classified as “not fit for work” waiting in a grove outside Crematorium IV before they were to be gassed.”

Again, draw your own conclusions.

No one who died in the camps did anything to deserve it. Most of the people who died in the war, many more civilians than soldiers, did not do anything to deserve it. What did the people in Hiroshima do to deserve it? Etc.

Suggestion - go with the best challenges you have, and leave the mocking aside.