# Waste of oxygen puzzler \[questions about Holocaust denial\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 1, 2009, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waste-of-oxygen-puzzler-questions-about-holocaust-denial/479426 "2009-01-01T01:22:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waste-of-oxygen-puzzler-questions-about-holocaust-denial/479426/41 "2009-01-10T05:57:15Z")
> [@](#): > > One slightly off-topic nitpick I’ve always wondered about… if the Holocaust is the primary justification for the existence of Israel, then why isn’t Israel located in, say, southern Germany?? We already forcibly “repatriated” millions of Germans back to Germany after the war (causing 1000’s of deaths btw) - we could just have easily have cleared, lets say, Bavaria for the Jews - they’d been more established in Germany then in the Middle East at that point anyways. As far as I’m concerned, that would have made more sense at the time, and might have prevented the 50 years of bloodshed since in the Middle East… The Holocaust isn’t the primary justification for the existence of Israel. If it were then arguably only Holocaust survivors would be entitled to live there. American and British Jews would have no claim to Israeli citizenship and many Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses would. Zionism existed before the Holocaust and the claims to Israel had already been made before World War II (or World War I for that matter). The justification for these claims was that Israel was the historical homeland of the Jewish people from which they had been forcibly exiled and they wanted to return to it. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2009, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waste-of-oxygen-puzzler-questions-about-holocaust-denial/479426/42 "2009-01-10T08:04:42Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > clairobscr: > Well, lots of what we call Germany now was in the French sphere of influence in the early middle ages. It’s the contrary. Large parts of what is now France were part of the HRE during the middle-ages. I think you might have in mind the early Carolingian era, since large chunks of what it now western Germany were part of the empire. But there was no “France” by this time, and both France and the HRE were created by the division of the Carolingian empire. > [@](#): > > The Jewish community of the Rhineland that was massacred during the First Crusade was certainly at least partially located in modern Germany. And there were also persecutions of Jews in Northern France and England during the crusades. I searched for examples : during the third crusade, it happened in England in York, Stamford, King’s Lynn, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, London and Winchester. And even though the first crusade is famous for it, I’ve no reason to assume that things would have been any different had the crusade, for some reason, crossed France instead of Germany. In any case, my point wasn’t that nothing bad happened to the Jews in Germany during the middle-ages, but that the claim that Jews were expelled from Germany during the middle-ages while other European countries were much more tolerant is utterly false and that it has been essentially the other way around. ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2009, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waste-of-oxygen-puzzler-questions-about-holocaust-denial/479426/43 "2009-01-10T10:33:43Z")
> [@BlinkingDuck](#): > > Yea! > > We should have just given them…Utah 🙂 Where the Jews and Mormons can call each other Gentiles all day 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2009, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waste-of-oxygen-puzzler-questions-about-holocaust-denial/479426/44 "2009-01-10T13:16:33Z")
> [@BlinkingDuck](#): > > Yea! > > We should have just given them…Utah 🙂 I imagine (but am pulling this out of my butt) that Jews pushed for it. However, I always wondered the same thing as you posted. Ha, funny you should mention that, I’ve asked this very question on another (mostly rightwing) board a few years ago, only I posited Kansas as the Jewish state :). Oddly enough, that ended up an ugly mess and me being accused of rabid antisemitism :dubious:. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waste-of-oxygen-puzzler-questions-about-holocaust-denial/479426.md?page=2)