This article refers to George Soros as a Holocaust survivor. So does this one. Yet according to Wikipedia
He didn’t suffer in a concentration camp, he handed out deportation notices for the Nazis. Not exactly the same thing. This thread isn’t meant to bash George Soros. It’s not about him.
I’m just wondering what, in your mind, qualifies someone as a Holocaust survivor. Should the term refer only to survivors of the concentration camps? Should it also incude those who were otherwise persecuted by the Nazis? Or should it refer to those who were
The latter. A Holocaust survivor is a member of group targeted by the Nazis for extinction during the Holocaust who lived in an area under German control or the control of its allies who survived the war.
Indeed. My mother WAS in a concentration camp, but my father spent the war in Budapest, sort of in hiding. I consider them both Holocaust survivors, and I can’t imagine anyone would say different.
This would be the appropriate way to do it, in my opinion. However, very few people in my experience think someone who happened to be in Norway during WWII as a holocaust survivor.
“Holocaust survivor” seems to be a term that is used for jewish people only, and most people, when hearing the phrase, assume the person is jewish. I have never met anyone who thought otherwise. It’s not a bad assumption out of the gate, but it’s hardly accurate given the various peoples and cultures that were persecuted during WWII.
It would be nice if the phrase would die out with the last of the WWII generation. But it won’t. People that were not even born during WWII have used the phrase “holocaust survivor” because, well… I can’t speak for them, I can only guess. But I heard someone introduced on TV one Sunday morning as a “child of a holocaust survivor.”
Really? Is that necessary? People are going to take credit for being a child a holocaust survivor? or a grandchild? When does it stop? When SHOULD it stop? I haven’t heard anyone pronouce themselves a great great grandson of a Civil War survivor.
Not all Nazi aggression and persecution was part of the Holocaust. True, some use the term only for Jewish victims, but I think the most reasonable and widespread usage refers to all the groups targeted for systematic extermination, all those eligible for concentration camps, and not, for example, other French civilians.
I wouldn’t see it as “credit,” just a fact.
I know lots of people who cite their ancestors’ roles in the War.
Personally I hope it never, ever dies out. I hope in the year 3000 we can still refer to someone as the “descendant of a holocaust survivor”. The holocaust is something that should never be forgotten by civilized humanity, and considering the Nazi’s ultimate aim was to wipe an entire race off the face of the earth, it would be a triumph to have a daily reminder of the extent to which the persecuted survived.
I’ve seen various people touted as descendents of American Civil War veterans: Louis L’Amour is one famous example, but try googling grandson of a Civil War Vet to find plenty of others.
I’m not talking about ***descendants ***of the Civil War. I’m talking about survivors. Big difference, since ***survivor ***indicates some sort of horrific treatment that was geared toward the elimination of one’s life. Being the great great great grandson of Robert E. Lee is not the same thing as being the descendant of an Andersonville POW camp survivor. (and no, I’m not comparing the holocaust to the American Civil War, so save the typing. Just trying to make a point with a not-so-great example that I used in my last post)
Really? Your idea is that all of humanity, if any of their ancestors were persecuted, should have some sort of moniker associated with their name? I’d suggest to you that just about everyone would be able to do it.
Yes, the holocaust was a tragedy. But I don’t think anyone is going to forget it anytime soon. Hell, as long as we have Hollywood and the History Channel, I think the holocaust will be in our collective consciousness. If you want to focus on just the holocaust, just WHO do you think needs to know about this in the year 3000? I’d submit that other than the victims and the perpetrators, no one else needs to be reminded about it a thousand years from now. At least not to any degree that any other human-on-human tragedies are remembered by history.
I’m not so sure the Nazi’s have the corner on Bad Behavior in History. So unless you are going to recognize EVERY tragedy, holocaust, genocide, or pick your favorite, making the holocaust any more significant than any of the other cruelties of humanity against humanity seems to me to minimize all others. There is no limit to the hatred of one group of humans over another, and the elimination of one group by the other is not limited to Germany and the Jews. When you mention the holocaust, you make the same mistake that most people do. You imply, by stating that " the Nazi’s ultimate aim was to wipe an entire race off the face of the earth", that there was only one “race” involved in the holocaust. There were a lot of victims, not just jews, who suffered, and I’m doubting the germans were trying to save some gypsies, poles, homosexuals, etc. for post-war communities.
I believe that The Holocaust will always be known as The Worst Genocide™ because so many people in so many first world countries knew about so many first world citizens being genocided and did nothing. And the people committing the genocide, as well as many of the victims, were first world. And white! So naturally, this genocide would garner the most attention.
I can’t think of a good offhand comparison to The Holocaust in the years since it happened. More recent genocides have been committed by black or brown people against other black and brown people, and historically (at least from a first-world historial viewpoint) they tend to be more easily brushed aside as “savages,” or are simply not expected to know any better. Whereas the Germans should have known better.
Additionally, it happened during a WORLD war. Not a tribal feud or internal tiff. So it will be granted more attention because of that, as well.
I do not think that Holocaust survivors are necessarily more merit-worthy than any other genocide survivor. However, they are easier to relate to and feel sorry for when they look like us and speak our language.
The Holocaust is scarier than other genocides because it was mechanized and took place in an industrial, workmanlike, matter-of-fact fashion. It wasn’t just a bunch of people rounded up and shot to death and villages bombed and burned. It was gas chambers designed to kill people, designed by engineers and scientists; insane medical experiments on Jews and prisoners of war which were carried out by doctors who earnestly believed in the value of their ‘work’, nonchalantly testing out pressure chambers and bizzaro surgeries on living victims; a whole elaborate pseudoscience created to justify what was being done.
This kind of shit just didn’t happen in the Armenian Genocide or other historical acts of mass murder. It was horrifying on a surreal level.
[QUOTE=Stink Fish Pot;13176157Really? Your idea is that all of humanity, if any of their ancestors were persecuted, should have some sort of moniker associated with their name? I’d suggest to you that just about everyone would be able to do it.[/QUOTE]
My mother was in occupied Yugoslavia during the war, I doubt she’d consider herself a holocaust survivior. I think the term is idiomatic meaning someone who was in one of the camps. People always like to paint themselves in ways that are “cool” for the moment. To say you “survived the holocaust” sounds brave to say “I was hiding in an attic in occupied France” makes you sound like a coward.
Occassionally, I hear of a person referred to as a “grandchild of a slave.” In time, we will no longer hear this phrase, as I suspect will be the case of the descendents of Holocaust survivors. But I find the reference helpful in placing that individual’s life in context (as well as seeing how far things have changed in society). Having someone who has survived awful circumstances in your family can affect one’s outlook on life. Like when I meet black people of my parent’s or grandparent’s generations, both having experienced Jim Crow, I can understand the bitterness and cynicism they may have regarding white people and the establishment in general. Even though I do not share it myself (for the most part).
I admit when I hear “Holocaust survivor”, my mind instantly jumps to concentration camps and arm tatoos and Jewish victimhood, not someone who managed to escape the Nazis by catching the first thing steaming out of Europe. But then again, when I hear “grandchild of a slave”, my mind instantly creates an image of a field slave being whipped for not working hard enough in the Georgia heat, not some little kid playing in the yard with Massa’s kids right before Emancipation. I suppose people who use these terms to describe themselves need to be careful not to play up victimhood that wasn’t there, but I don’t see it as a big deal to describe themselves in these ways. Like I said, it put their lives in perspective. I imagine a Jewish person who has a Polish mother who literally had to run for her life and lost family members who weren’t as lucky has a different perspective on things than a Jewish person who did not have that legacy in their family.
If the Nazis occupied your city, put you in a ghetto, and forced you to hand out deportation notices to your family’s friends and neighbors, you’re a Holocaust survivor as far as I’m concerned. I realize you said this isn’t about Soros, but describing his activities this way makes it sound like he was a Nazi collaborator. He wasn’t. He was a 13-year-old Jewish kid in a ghetto in Budapest. Later I believe he pretended to be a gentile to escape.
No, it shouldn’t. People who were put in ghettos and who were subject to Nazi persecution are Holocaust survivors, too. When I hear the term I might think of someone who was actually in a camp, but you can’t tell me that someone who escaped occupied Europe before his ghetto was liquidated is not a survivor of the Holocaust. The term may be imprecise but it’s not that hard to find out more details.
Nobody is taking credit for anything. People who family members of Holocaust survivors have access to a little more firsthand knowledge of what happened than the rest of us, and I think that’s all the term acknowledges.
Consider that among the most significant writings about the Holocaust is the diary of Anne Frank which was written entirely outside a concentration camp. If her family had not been discovered and had survived, I think it would be difficult not to allow them to claim that they were Holocaust survivors.
The only difference with the Armenian Genocide was the industrialization of it.
At first, the means used against Jews were precisely people rounded up and fired upon, till the leaders of the Reich deemed it too “barbaric” for them, and came up with the whole death camp process. Dont forget also, that as madlly antisemitic as were Hitler and his people, it doesnt seem that the wholesome massacre of the entire Jewish pop of Europe was their objective, more the expulsion of them from European soil. It has been said many times before but the Holocaust went up a notch every time Hitler suffered a military setback.
BTW, what an incredible penchant for navel gazing and ethnocentrism not to see anything comparable in history. Rwanda has offered us quite recently the spectacle of almost a million people killed in weeks, with just machetes.
I am always a bit nauseous when I hear people talk about the Holocaust like they want it to be a protected trademark.
(Wholesale, not wholesome.) And no, expulsion was what they did initially. Their goal for the last several years was definitely murdering all the Jews and other undesirables they could get their hands on.