It seems a litle silly to argue whose genocide is “better”, but at the very least genocide can’t be measured simply in terms of the number of dead. Argent Towers is absolutely correct; with the Nazis, we aren’t talking about the ruthlessness of a few individuals or the expression of group brutality, we are talking about a genocide that was planned, organized, and executed to a level which, IMO, has never been and should never be duplicated.
This is not at all an attempt to minimize other genocides–which, sadly, seem to occur regularly enough in our history that talk of ranking them isn’t completely preposterous. But if we must rank them, the Nazi holocaust is in a completely different league.
Expulsions and mass killings with guns alternated before they started going for the Final solution, depending on which part of Europe you’re talking about. There was a point where Hitler was contemplating sending all of European Jews to Madagascar, in exchange from some money from either Jewish organizations or the Allies.
As I said, the Rwandan genocide was definitely organized and methodical. Sounds just like the common trope of judging all other genocides by the exact criterions of the Holocaust, and then dismissing them as not being on par with it. All genocides are different, and the Holocaust doesnt constitute either the end nor the peak of history.
Right. So I don’t think you can say expulsion was the objective and not murder. And by late 1941 or early 1942, they were moving toward the mass murder option.
Eh. I didn’t say anything about other mass murders not being “on par” - the whole concept bothers me. There are reasons the Holocaust in particular sticks in people’s minds. Some of those reasons are based on history, like its scope, and some of them are more cultural.
Agreed. However, for those of us in the US (can’t speak for the rest of the world), we have had the WWII Holocaust jammed down our throats through mass media (movies, tv, printed media, etc) since basically the end of the war. Personally, for volume, speed, and method, I think what happened in Rwanda deserves as much attention as the WWII holocaust for the shear speed in which the victims were dispatched. I guess the Rwandan victims don’t have a very good press agent here in the good old USA.
What has always bothered me about “The Holocaust” is that it has turned into a Jewish-only tragedy, where no other group is really even considered. You never hear a number like “11 million killed during the WWII holocaust”, you hear" 6 million Jews killed during the holocaust". That’s insulting to any other group who suffered, and trivializes the tragedy for other groups, cultures, whatever. **ANY **life snuffed out during the Nazi reign was wrong, and should be considered on the same level of “tragedy” regardless of whether the victim was Jewish or not. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
This just isn’t true. There is a great deal of information publicly available and commonly discussed about the other victims (and the other victims are one of the reasons the Holocaust is more shocking than the Rwandan genocide - among many other reasons which are largely common sense to anyone but a contrarian trying to make a point.)
The Rwanda genocide was a tribal conflict between two tribes. Nazi Germany was a colossal killing machine that swallowed up everything in its path and attempted to take over half of Europe. No, it didn’t just go after Jews. It went after a very long list of people considered undesirable, as well as any German who was remotely against Nazism and about whom this was known.
I have to repeat Marley23’s question: just who is forgetting about these other victims of the Holocaust? Nobody I have ever spoken to is unaware of them. And all the Holocaust memorial museums and organizations that I have seen have acknowledged all of the Nazis’ victims, not just Jews.
It’s sad that two weeks after November 11th that such statements can be heard.
I have to echo Marley23 and Argent Tower question. Who is forgetting about the other victims?
Certainly not Poland, Romania, the Netherlands, and France to name a few.
And definitely, not gay men who have reclaimed the pink triangle as international recognizable symbol for gay pride and gay rights.
You’re kidding? Police crackdowns on Rom communities just took a meteoric rise. People only vaguely acknowledge that Roms were as badly treated as Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe. If Roms truly enjoyed the "Holocaust protection status " (that is, “they suffered enough during the war, let’s not lower ourselves down to Nazi level and add any more hurt”), that would never have been politically possible. And we’re talking about the Roms, the second biggest group to suffer from the Nazis, imagine for those lower down the list.
Notice the question was “who has forgotten” (which was in answer to the specious argument that because the 6 million(ish) Jews generally get more press than the 5-8(ish) million gentiles, nobody remembers them).
Saying that groups in Europe are still mistreated doesn’t answer that question, at all. Hyperbolic nonsense about “Holocaust protection status” is silly enough, but alleging that anybody involved today is being treated with “Nazi level” anything is vacuous bombast.
You’ve committed the fallacy of equivocation, like a parent changing the definition of “listening” to “obeying my instructions”. The population of the United States hadn’t “forgotten” that blacks were slaves or that the civil war was over slavery, even when people were still racist bastards. And people haven’t forgotten that the Nazis systematically butchered people from a great many groups.
Also, you’re wrong. The Romani were not the second largest group to suffer under the Nazis. The second largest death toll would be soviet POW’s. After that Polish gentiles. Then the Romani.
Not that that has anything to do with anything, of course.
The only vacuum I see here is in your argumentation, as I’ve never ever said that people were treated with Nazi like brutality this day in Europe. As it is written in simple and plain English, it wouldnt be that hard to get at first reading.
And neither the Poles nor the Soviets have ever been considered Holocaust victims. And since we were discussing about the Holocaust, another pseudo argument down the drain…
What is it with the American obsession with the holocaust? The Holocaust was just one of a number of mass deaths, democides and genocides. And not at all the worst. Or the most recent. I for instance am a Black Death survivor descendent, I am also a descendent survivor of a semi-genocide perpetrated by Denmark against Faroese population and a descendent of slaves (& slave raiders) and a descendent of a Soviet genocide survivor and a descendent of a thousand wars. My wife is a survivor descendent of the Spanish inquisition and the Spanish civil war (on both sides) and concentration camp survivor (communist) descendent. Anyway in the year 3000 almost everybody will be descendent of a holocaust survivor (as well as a descendent of holocaust perpetrators), just as everybody today is a descendent of a survivor of the Mongol genocide.
Yep, that’d be you talking about “Nazi level” conduct.
Wrong. And flagrantly wrong. A massive number of soviet POW’s were sent to the death camps or died in concentration camps and were, in short, part of the organized and systematic brutality of the Holocaust. Same with Polish gentiles. Perhaps what you meant to say is that you never realized that they were part of the Holocaust. They most certainly are counted among the victims of the Holocaust.
Feel free to call history a “pseudo argument” however, if that helps.
You’re good at not getting it, I’ll grant you that. Starship Troopers yesterday, today, this. I’m sure in a specific timeline, in a specific dimension, at a specific moment, this skill could come in handy, here it is just totally useless.
Depends on what you qualify Holocaust I guess, there’s more than low level controversy on whether Soviet and Polish victims should be included in. As what’s usually used to define the Holocaust is the systematic extermination of races considered noxious by the Nazis. Were the Soviets and Polish victims killed for that, that’s debatable (their suffering isnt, their belonging to the Holocaust is).
Yep, I am.
Of course, as we have in black and white your statement that if the Romani had “Holocaust protection status” then we wouldn’t “lower ourselves down to Nazi level and add any more hurt” and the police crackdowns would “never have been politically possible.”
Those are all your own comments, in context, in order, on topic.
Bombastic nonsense equating modern day policies against the Romani with “Nazi level” anything at all.
We’re fighting ignorance, not spreading it. I should also point out that, now, you’ve gone from a claim that neither the Polish victims of the Holocaust nor the Soviet victims of the Holocaust “have ever been considered Holocaust victims” to that it “depends”.