What Is So Special About The Holocaust?

Great Debates
1

The Great Leap Forward caused 18 - 45 million deaths in the space of 3 or so years

… Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag [during the] Stalinist period is likely between two million and three million. The Great Terror and other shooting actions killed no more than a million people, probably a bit fewer. The largest human catastrophe of Stalinism was the famine of 1930–1933, in which more than five million people died. So roughly 9 million.

I don’t ask this to discount the atrocity of the Holocaust but rather to ask why it is so special when other leaders have committed acts of genocide / mega-murder on a grander scale.

Why do we not refer to someone who is utterly vile as a Mao or a Stalin?

I get that, for the most part, we are pretty far removed from China and so despite the absolute horror it doesn’t touch us as much as it would someone born and raised in China (or having Chinese parents / grandparents.)

We are not that far removed from the Soviet Union. A great many people in Canada are of relatively recent Slavic decent and the Stalinist period is most definitely within living memory.

On top of that we hated the Soviet Union and Russia for 45 or so years. You would think we would highlight their barbarity rather than always raising the Holocaust as the height of human evil.

So what is so special about the Holocaust?’

I suspect that it has something to do with the Jews. But I don’t know what.

I say this because you seldom hear of the other victims targeted for specific reasons - the Roma, Homosexuals, handicapped, retarded - it is ALMOST always “…6 million Jews…”

The vast majority of documentaries about the camps focus on the Jews. I can’t think of too many holocaust movies that center around any group but the Jews - though I concede I have no knowledge of Roma or gay cinema.

I do not say this to suggest, in any way shape or form, a Jewish illuminati works to highlight it. I do not say it to disparage the Jews in any way.

My thoughts are as follows:

  1. The Allies assisted in the formation of Israel and they have been North America’s staunchest ally in the area since formation. It is politically important that we continue to sympathize with the Jews in order to help maintain popular support for Israel.

  2. I can still recall Ukrainian jokes being common here as recently as the early 90’s. Maybe since all the humour centered on their stupidity we viewed them (subconsciously at least) as somehow lesser.

Come to think of it we had a lot of Chinese jokes to. Perhaps that’s part of why Mao gets a pass.

Those are some of my thoughts.

I ask you, why is the Holocaust special?

Zeke

2

A few thoughts

We weight events that happen in Europe or the U.S. heavier than we weight events that happen in other parts of the world.

The depth of the atrocity was understood almost immediately after the war - we didn’t understand the scope of Stalin’s purges until much later (and arguably, we don’t now).

Because the camps were liberated, there were survivors to tell their stories, and rescuers to tell their stories. A lot of photographs - even some film. The Killing Fields (for instance) weren’t nearly so well documented.

Some literature we read in school as teens is Holocaust related: Diary of Anne Frank, Night, and Boy in the Striped Pajamas are all part of school curriculums in high school. We don’t assign Solzhenitsyn.

All this creates more weight on the event.

3

Oh, Roma really don’t integrate or share with outsiders. So you won’t get a lot of Roma history on WWII.

4

I don’t know. What about Pol Pot?
Personally, I thought the Rwanda genocide was far more disturbing than most such horrific events. One part of the population decided to kill their neighbors, friends, and even families. Kind of like if in the US all members of the GOP decided to go out one day and kill everyone else.

5

The Stalinist and Maoist purges were not attempts at genocide. The Nazis actually set out to wipe from the face of the earth European Jews, Poles, Roma, and other groups.

Furthermore, a significant proportion of Americans were directly affected by the Holocaust, which is not true of Stalin and Mao.

6

The Rwandan genocide is far more bothersome to me because the outside world could’ve easily stopped it and didn’t care. Stopping the Nazi holocaust would’ve been harder for multiple reasons. With Rwanda, a peace keeping force of a few thousand soldiers probably would’ve stopped it. The Cambodian genocide too, that stopped when Vietnam invaded.

Also I don’t like how 11 million people were killed in the Nazi death camps, but you only hear about 6 million Jews. Nobody talks about the other 5 million non-Jews who were killed.

I’d say it is a big deal because the US was at war with the Nazis, and the holocaust is an excellent piece of anti-nazi propaganda. However, if that were the case, why do ex-Allied countries not care about Japanese atrocities in China? I’m not sure. Maybe because the Japanese victims were Chinese, but Nazi victims were Europeans.

7

Both of these things.

Plus, Americans (and westerners generally) were directly involved in uncovering/putting a stop to the Holocaust; not so much with Stalin and Mao. (The West was in fact allied with Stalin after he had perpetrated many of his worst atrocities.) So the Holocaust makes a bigger impact on the West both because we encountered it directly, liberating the camps and so on, and because it puts us in a good light, the heroes who fought against the perpetrators of this shocking crime. (In actual fact our motives for fighting against them had nothing to do with the shocking crime, and all our efforts failed to prevent it but, still, we were on the right side.)

8

As to your first point, so it is the motivation not the end result that matters most?

As to your second point, I’m pretty sure there are a fair number of Americans who lost a family member or three due to Mao and Stalin. Unless you lack any meaningful number of Slavs and Chinese.

Yeah, Rwanda is the one that hits me most closely. Not because I had any connection but because it happened when I was old enough to comprehend the horror and because Romeo Delair (sp?) is a countryman and was all over the news for years.

Yeah, that bugs me too. That’s a large part of my thinking that the reason we hold the Holocaust as the pinnacle of Evil is because of the Jews. But you seldom hear, “11 million people were exterminated by the Nazis.” it’s almost always, “Six million Jews.”

We were at war with the Nazis but we’ve been allies almost since Hitler bit the big one. You would think we would want to down play it - especially in light of our problems with the Russians. Why would we need anti-Nazi propaganda after they were defeated and not need anti-Russian propaganda while we were still at each other’s throats?

9

I think the issue with the Holocaust is it is the first time that anyone made an explicit attempt at genocide (at least on this level).

Certainly there have been other conflicts where extermination seemed on the table but not on the level the Nazis managed which was clinical in its execution. They put a lot of effort into figuring out ways to best carry out mass murder on an industrial scale and executed that program with machine-like efficiency.

Nothing like what happened in Rwanda (as one example).

10

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11

The entire situation around the Holocaust was atrocious. With nazi Germany warring across the entire continent, the indoctrination of an entire generation of youth (Hitler Jugand), the scorched earth policy as the allies moved in. All of it under what was a democracy 10 years earlier.

I read the links, I hadn’t heard of the great leap forward. I’m not sure why that is with my only guess being that we had no involvement in it the way we did with ww2.

12

Basically that. We did nothing about the atrocities of Stalin or Mao. Therefore, telling those stories does not reflect well on us. Therefore, you have never heard of the Great Leap Forward.

13

I was taught about both in high school (among others). Most people I know are aware of these happening.

Anecdotal perhaps but I have not seen an effort to suppress the information in the US. I think it is just more general apathy many Americans have for history and anything not American.

14

Missed the edit window:

Also, I would not characterize what Stalin or Mao did as genocide which is what the Holocaust was very explicitly trying to do.

Staggering amounts of people died due to them but genocide is not about raw numbers. It is about eliminating a particular ethnic group.

15

The Holocaust was an industrialized, mechanized, high-tech, highly-engineered act of genocide. It occurred in one of the world’s best-educated, most scientifically advanced nation. One might make excuses for “backwards” countries, but Germany was one of the world’s great centers of scientific, artistic, and philosophical thought.

The vastness of the leap, from the most advanced civilization to the most psychotic behavior, is much of what gives the Holocaust its unique gloss of horror.

It forces us to face the fact: yes, it could happen here.

16

I’m not suggesting that information about the crimes of Stalin and Mao is suppressed. Far from it.

My point is that it simply doesn’t register with in the same way; it doesn’t have the same hold on their imaginations. Erocked says he never heard of the Great Leap Forward; what is more likely, I think, is that he has in fact heard something about it, but he doesn’t recall doing so.

17

I once discussed this with my mother, who had lived through all those years as an adult. She said the difference was that Germany had been a civilized Western country, advanced in science and the arts, very similar to the U.S. in so many ways. In just a few years, it became a country of brutal savages. People had the feeling that if that could happen to Germany, it could happen here. Plus, there were so many people who had escaped Germany, either before the Holocaust or having survived it, and settled in the U.S. . . . and most of them were Jews (many of my mother’s own relatives included). We had living history among us as a reminder. One of my own uncles, in fact, had the numerical tattoo on his arm, so I was aware of the Holocaust from a very early age.

18

But why is genocide worse than killing an equal number of people who don’t constitute an ethnic group?

19

This. One European death, to Westerners, is worth 100 African/Arab/Asian deaths.

20

Eddie Izzard: