# What qualifies someone as a Holocaust survivor? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 14, 2010, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605 "2010-11-14T01:01:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/41 "2010-11-25T16:05:58Z")
I’ve already provided cites to the United States Holocaust Museum. Let’s check on Yad Vashem. [ > [@](#): > > The Persecution of Non-Jewish Groups > > In addition to the European Jews, the Nazi regime murdered millions of people from other nations and races. As early as 1939, the Nazis began to kill tens of thousands of disabled, retarded, and mentally ill Germans, who were considered racially harmful, under the guise of “Euthanasia”. When Poland was occupied in 1939, the Einsatzgruppen embarked on the systematic murder of the Polish elite and intelligentsia as part of their plan to eradicate Polish culture and turn the Poles into a slave nation. The war against the Soviet Union was perceived as a war of annihilation that was vital in order to capture the living space (lebensraum) that the Aryan race needed and was destined to have. A total of 3.5 million Soviet prisoners, as well as millions of other Soviet citizens, were therefore murdered. ]([http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource\_center/item.asp?gate=2-34](http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/item.asp?gate=2-34)) [There’s also Nizkor.](http://www.nizkor.org/) "Dedicated to 12 million Holocaust victims who suffered and died at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime " Hrm, 12 million? It’s almost as if they’re including the Soviet and Polish casualties. Let’s check out an example from there… [ > [@](#): > > 1. The Majdanek Concentration Camp, which the Germans called “Vernichtungslager,” i.e., “Extermination Camp,” was a place for the wholesale extermination of Soviet prisoners of war, prisoners of war of the former Polish army, and of civilian inhabitants of different European countries occupied by Hitler Germany and also of the temporarily occupied regions of Poland and the U.S.S.R. > […] > In this camp the SS butchers and the Gestupo carried out the wholesale extermination of Poles, Frenchmen, Netherlanders, Italians, Serbs, Croatians and persons of other nationalities, and also Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of war of the former Polish army confined as prisoners in this camp, as well as those transported to this camp from other camps and places especially for the purpose of being exterminated. ]([http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//maidanek/commission-07](http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//maidanek/commission-07)) A cite of the “more than low level controversy on whether Soviet and Polish victims should be included” would be nice. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/42 "2010-11-25T21:48:20Z")
Off topic a bit, but I sorta kinda hope that Soros is the S.O.B. that Beck paints him, because if he is Beck’s just made an enemy who’s a multibillionaire and I can think of no more provocative sentence than ““Here’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to the death camps”. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/43 "2010-11-25T22:36:19Z")
**Capitaine Zombie** , your ignorance on this topic is exceptional. Every Holocaust museum I have visited prominently mentions all groups who were victims besides the Jews including homosexuals, Slavs, the mentally ill or challenged and the Rom. Every Holocaust memorial I have ever attended or heard of did the same. You were given a cite from the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel, where I have been, which did the same. Yet you still persist in your now willful ignorance. What is up with that? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/44 "2010-11-26T00:54:02Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Off topic a bit, but I sorta kinda hope that Soros is the S.O.B. that Beck paints him, because if he is Beck’s just made an enemy who’s a multibillionaire and I can think of no more provocative sentence than ““Here’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to the death camps”. I doubt this somehow. Soros has a wide range of interests – the Open Society Fund helped take down the Soviet Union and establish universities and civil society institutions in the former eastern bloc countries. Today they support Wikipedia and net neutrality. The other stuff is a small part of his work. RE: The OP. Smears aside, if you escape central Europe with your rucksack and your parents die in a concentration camp, then you are a holocaust survivor. You were targeted by the Nazis and you survived. QED. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/45 "2010-11-26T01:43:22Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > What is up with that? I wonder how much of it is a basic familiarity with the issue. I’ve been to yad vashem and the museum in the US, grew up with stories of my grandmother who was a survivor, studied it in parochial and religious school as a child, etc. To me, the fact that Slavs, Poles, Romani, etc… were victims of the Holocaust isn’t at all revolutionary. Nor is the fact that they’re always included in any serious study of the Holocaust a surprise to me. I suppose that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing though, but one hopes that ignorance won’t be willful. And I suppose that hyperbolic comparisons about modern actions and “Nazi level” behavior serve a rhetorical if not a factual function… But cites and knowledge are generally better than ignorance. Hopefully Zombie will either cite his claims or retract them, however. ---
**Author:** ![acetylene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@acetylene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/acetylene)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/46 "2010-11-26T03:01:13Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > RE: The OP. Smears aside, if you escape central Europe with your rucksack and your parents die in a concentration camp, then you are a holocaust survivor. You were targeted by the Nazis and you survived. QED. Works for me. To be honest I hadn’t really given the matter much thought before. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in NYC. I definitely walked out of there a different person than I was when I walked in (and yes they mentioned the Slavs and Gypsies and other groups). But they mainly focused on the people who were directly, physically abused by the Nazis, which reinforced my previous (mis)conception of what a Holocaust Survivor is. This thread has helped fight my ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/47 "2010-11-26T03:44:56Z")
I think it is shameful for somebody that wasn’t in a death camp to call themselves a HC. It would be like me calling myself survivor of 9/11 because I was alive when it happened, and it involved targeting ‘my people.’ Also, the term Holocaust, as used, doesn’t mean living in an occupied country. Best wishes, hh ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/48 "2010-11-26T03:53:40Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I’d say that depends on the person, but my experience is that it’s usually said by Jews about the survival of Jews. Isn’t it the slogan of Meir (sp?) Kahane’s group, originated by them? Of course, the words aren’t unique, but the use of it as a slogan is, IIRC. Best wishes, hh ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/49 "2010-11-26T03:54:40Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I think it is shameful for somebody that wasn’t in a death camp to call themselves a HC. > It would be like me calling myself survivor of 9/11 because I was alive when it happened, and it involved targeting ‘my people.’ > > Also, the term Holocaust, as used, doesn’t mean living in an occupied country. > > Best wishes, > hh HC being a typo for HS, short for Holocaust Survivor. BW, hh ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/50 "2010-11-26T04:07:08Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I think it is shameful for somebody that wasn’t in a death camp to call themselves a HC. So, my maternal grandmother, who saw the Nazis break into her home and drag her father and brother out into the night, came home several days later to find that her mother had hanged herself, and then managed to escape (eventually) to the United States should’ve been ashamed to consider herself a survivor of the Holocaust? > [@handsomeharry](#): > > It would be like me calling myself survivor of 9/11 because I was alive when it happened, and it involved targeting ‘my people.’ No, it wouldn’t. Do you not grok the difference between a one-off terrorist attack and years upon years of systemic brutality, concentration camps and death camps? If Anne Frank hadn’t been discovered and had emerged into daylight at the end of the war, she’d be ashamed to call herself a Holocaust survivor? For serious? > [@handsomeharry](#): > > Also, the term Holocaust, as used, doesn’t mean living in an occupied country. Nobody said it did, ever. Surviving the Holocaust in one of the occupied countries in which it was being carried out means that one survived the Holocaust. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/51 "2010-11-26T04:23:23Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I think it is shameful for somebody that wasn’t in a death camp to call themselves a HC. The father of my sister’s ex-husband was a little boy in Germany when things went to shit. Save for one brother, his whole immediate family was killed\*. He and the brother lived in a cave in the woods and scavenged for years to survive. He is a Holocaust survivor. \*He thought that he lost his _entire_ family. When his son and my sister were just about to get married, he met one of my father’s closest friends. They came to discover that they were first cousins. They hadn’t seen each other in fifty years and had no idea each other had made it through. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/52 "2010-11-26T04:25:10Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > 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. > > Which term would you use? Does anybody really think that hiding in an attic during the Holocaust is cowardly? ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/53 "2010-11-26T05:39:53Z")
I don’t think anyone really believes that, but the way it’s put is sort of the difference between saying “I avoided this ordeal” and “I survived this ordeal.” There is a big difference in the connotations even though in this case they can mean the same thing. If you’re hiding out, you’re avoiding the grasp of the Nazis, and you’re surviving in the literal sense of staying alive instead of going to your death. To say you survived something implies that that thing you survived was being directed at you in a more direct way. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/54 "2010-11-26T12:09:00Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Surviving the Holocaust… means that one survived the Holocaust. Uhhhhh…did you see what you did here? That’s the whole point of my post. It’s a definition thing. As to your family, are you denying the years of Soviet repression in which many, many more lives were destroyed because of the abuses of a cruel tyrannical government bent on persecuting Jews, and forcing people into concentration camps was part of the Holocaust? How about the US war on drugs, in which whole families were disrupted, the police burst into homes, and the children see the parents dragged off, and the children themselves robbed of their identities, and forced, by a government to live with strangers, while their parents are locked up, forced into concrete cells…are you saying that wasn’t part of the Holocaust? Personal and pathetic stories do not change the meanings of what happened. That would be like me calling your Anne Frank a survivor of the Holocaust, because, even though she didn’t fit the definition of the word survivor, because she still survives on paper, in our hearts, etc…ad nauseum. And on and on… Best wishes, hh ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/55 "2010-11-26T16:07:54Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > As to your family, are you denying the years of Soviet repression in which many, many more lives were destroyed because of the abuses of a cruel tyrannical government bent on persecuting Jews, and forcing people into concentration camps was part of the Holocaust? > How about the US war on drugs, in which whole families were disrupted, the police burst into homes, and the children see the parents dragged off, and the children themselves robbed of their identities, and forced, by a government to live with strangers, while their parents are locked up, forced into concrete cells…are you saying that wasn’t part of the Holocaust? Neither of those were part of the Holocaust. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2010, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/56 "2010-11-26T18:11:28Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Uhhhhh…did you see what you did here? Tried to point out the basic facts to you and show you that you were playing word-games whereby someone who survived the holocaust in the places it was going on should be _ashamed_ of saying that they survived the Holocaust if they weren’t also imprisoned in a camp. In any case, it’s clear that you’re posting from a position of total and complete ignorance. The Soviet Union and the War on Drugs are, shall we say, somewhat off topic. If you obviously have no idea what the Holocaust was, then arguing about who survived it, let alone about who’s misusing language to define it, is a fool’s errand. I’d suggest that you to read up on the Holocaust so that you know what it was before you post again in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2010, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/57 "2010-11-27T03:07:50Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Neither of those were part of the Holocaust. Ah ha! Somebody is catching on! Best wishes, hh ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2010, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/58 "2010-11-27T03:10:59Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I’d suggest that you to read up on the Holocaust so that you know what it was before you post again in this thread. I’d suggest that you get a dictionary and find out where the word Holocaust came from, and why it is used with the allegations concerning what the Germans did during WWII. Just because you think you know what happened 60 years ago because you have some relatives with a narrow experience, doesn’t qualify you to say what happened. I have a degree in history, so I am certainly more competent than you to judge what happened. Best wishes, hh ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2010, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/59 "2010-11-27T03:11:01Z")
So do you have a point (or any honest arguments), or are you just planning on personally insulting Holocaust survivors? Edit: that was posted before your most recent absurdity. I suppose we may be able to draw an honest argument out of you if we refer to the Holocaust as HaShoah? Then you can drop your disingenuous word-games and babble about the war on drugs? ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2010, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605/60 "2010-11-27T04:43:23Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > So do you have a point (or any honest arguments), or are you just planning on personally insulting Holocaust survivors? I don’t think he was trying to insult holocaust survivors as much as he was trying to make a point. It looks like you may have missed that. As for me, like some of you, WWII impacted my family. IMO, I guess someone who lived under the Nazi flag in a country taken over by the Germans is technically a holocaust survivor, however I personally wouldn’t use that term. Unless the person was in a work camp, death camp, or prison, (or similar), I think it is insulting to those that actually survived the camps to call EVERYONE in Europe that survived the war a holocaust survivor. This does not extend to folks in the kind of situation that hajario described. They too were HS. Common sense tells you that. I also have problems calling jews, poles, whoever who helped the nazis carry out their plans survivors. Collaborators maybe. I understand most did it under duress and threat of death, but there is no way I’m chucking my fellow beings into a furnace to save my own ass. Anyone that identifies themselves as a child, grandchild, etc. of a “HS” (and is perfectly aware that their relatives weren’t in a camp, tortured, etc), is an ass that’s looking to garner sympathy and/or manipulate the opinions of the people that he/she is addressing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-qualifies-someone-as-a-holocaust-survivor/560605.md?page=4)