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Talk:The Holocaust

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Move Proposal

I agree with Adam, so I think we should move this to Nazi Holocaust (or European Holocaust) and move Holocaust (disambiguation) here, I mean after all there are many Holocausts in history. --Member 9 July 2005 00:12 (UTC)

I disagree. Which ethnic groups seriously refer to the acts of genocides carried out against them as "holocausts"? Do we have to take PETA seriously and link to pages of alleged "animal holocausts" as well? I don't think it's very helpful to use the term inflationary and I don't think it's very ambigious to begin with. Something else: Does anybody know if the talk page is somehow "full"? I wanted to make a new subsection but it doesn't show up somehow... Zerofoks 16:49:29, 2005-08-13 (UTC)
Nevermind about the last question, I figured it out. The "Start a new topic" link was just pointing to a wrong talk page. But another question: Why is this section up here? Wouldn't such a new talk section more to the bottom (where my new subsection can be found)? zerofoks 22:04:33, 2005-08-13 (UTC)

Proposal to overhaul article

Latest comment: 21 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

My first proposal is to have an article called Holocaust, which will discuss the origins and various usages of the term, and a second article called Holocaust (World War II), which will be specifically about the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. I think that will take some of the heat out of the definitional issues surrounding the current article. Adam 05:08, 31 May 2004 (UTC)Reply

I think this issue has already been adequately addressed through the creation of Holocaust (disambiguation) which is linked to at the start of this article. I think that most people, when they search on "Holocaust," are going to go be looking for the article that we have now. I do not think this is a productive direction to take the article. Snowspinner 02:57, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)
I don't agree with that at all. Many other groups have had their Holocaust, and shuffling them to the side in the (disambiguation) category is downright disrespectful. Even though our media focuses more on the WWII holocaust, usually called the Jewish Holocaust, the numbers were far greater in other holocausts (e.g. the Ukrainian Holocaust). I think Adam Carr is right on target with what he wants to do, and I encourage him to go through with a proper restructuring once and for all. Sep 22, 2004 142.161.91.56

That is highly questionable (about the numbers being higher than the Holocaust). Much of the extent of the Ukrainian Famine is as many of the pertinent documents came to light during the Nazi occupation. Several historical studies are coming out now which tackle this issue, and some have concluded that many mass graves attributed to the Famine, were in fact, murders purpotrated by the Nazis during their occupation of the Ukraine, and that the Nazis then went on to claim these as casualties of the Famine a decade earlier — incidentally, if this ever proves to be the case, it would become very pertinent to the Holocaust — it would be a grave error, in my opinion, to view these studies under the prism of Holocaust denial, though I should note that my familiarity with these is lacking. At any rate though, this was not the reason why I removed your addition, that was just an aside (the manner in which it was formulated was, as well, problematic, also an aside), I did so because I also do not think this is a productive direction to take the article. Lastly, you may find it beneficial to sign your ip following your comments (or better yet, register and sign your username). El_C


How long would this "Holocaust" article be? What about the great many links to this page that intend to go to The Holocaust? Perhaps naming that holocaust 'The Holocaust' would be better. --mav 05:21, 31 May 2004 (UTC)Reply

It would be as long as it needed to be (what other answer can there be to that question?). I would of course accept the responsibility of fixing the redirects if I moved the World War II part of the article to a new article. Adam 00:16, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

So long as it is not a stub, or worse just a definition. --mav

It certainly won't be either of those. Adam 05:00, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Snowspinner that I think having this article on The Holocaust and the Holocaust (disambiguation) article for other meanings works better. john k 20:22, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The problem with that approach is that it appears to pre-judge the question of what the word "holocaust" means, when that issue is far from settled and is the subject of controversy. If people seaching for "holocaust" are taken to an article on The Holocaust, with all other meanings relegated to a disambiguation page, they will not unreasonably conclude that Wikipedia has taken a position in the debate on the meaning of the word. However, I am more concerned at present with fixing the text than the question of which article leads to which, so we can have that discussion when I have a draft ready. Adam 23:45, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I thought about this at one point, and considered moving this to a disambig page. Ultimately, though, I decided that almost anyone who was searching on Holocaust was going to be looking for The Holocaust - otherwise, they'd probably search for genocide or ethnic cleansing. And I think articles should be located so as to be the article that's being looked for the most on a search. I'd be very, very surprised if this were anything but this article in this case. - Snowspinner
In terms of article naming, given that it's a zero sum game, there's no way to do it without taking sides in one manner or another. As such, I think the consideration of "what are people looking for when they type in 'holocaust'" is the most important consideration, as Snowspinner suggests. At any rate - yes, let's postpone the discussion of ___location to the actual improvement of the article - which is, as you point out, pretty awful at the moment. john k 00:13, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It has taken me longer than I expected to get round to this but I will do it eventually. Adam 07:53, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Adam, I basically agree with you that for start we should move the Holocaust (disambiguation) on Holocaust; in such a case, the Jewish Holocaust should undisputedly be on the top of the disambiguation list, as it comprises the highest death toll. But note that this article doesn't just refer to the Jewish victims of the death camps; it mentions other people who suffered a similar treatment. And apart from the death camps, and when it comes to my country, Greece, there are some WWII incidents involving Christian victims which are also called "Holocausts". The "Holocaust" term is mostly used when referring to the Holocaust of Chortiatis (alternative spelling: Hortiatis, Χορτιάτης). There the whole population of a village near Thessaloniki was eradicated in a single mass execution that happened on-spot. There's some effort to increase public awareness about these facts in Germany (distomo.de), and since the reunification of Germany, Greece has been claiming compensations for the victims. (more soon) Etz Haim 01:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I erased one of my statements above, as this may be disputed, and some people -like the friend who posted here before me- may find it disrespectful. I think it's better this way in order not to lose focus in this discussion. Etz Haim 01:40, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

El C, there is also lots of evidence of the Jewish holocaust being exaggerated. There is, in fact good reason for Israel to want to have the holocaust exaggerated as it has received plenty of money in retribution. So, it would still be unfair to sweep other holocausts under the rug. Cute cat BTW.

  • Okay, it seems people are missing the point. First of all, the "WWII Holocaust was not the holocause of the Jews". Only about half the casualties were Jews. Second, we are not deciding which genocide is deserving of the title Holocaust. Our articles should not be labelled by "the most accurate term". That is POV. It should be the term that best coincides with real use. That means if more people refer to the Jewish genocide as "Holocaust" that should be what are article addresses as well. It doesn't matter whether there's a legitimate reason for people to call that the Holocaust. Superm401 | Talk July 5, 2005 03:39 (UTC)

Origin and use of the term

The article contains two different translations:

  1. Shoa ... Hebrew for "Calamity"
  2. Instead of holocaust many Jews prefer the Hebrew word Shoah, which means "desolation".

I propose to bring the section Origin and use of the term up to the beginning of the article and merge those two. Any takers? Also, should the term be prepended with the definite article? ←Humus sapiens←Talk 22:01, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

As much as I dislike this page, the latest additions were patent nonsense. "Many people hold: means nothing. Find me a decent Holocaust scholar who says that. Danny 23:01, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wording Question

I'm confused by the end of section 2.5, "Extent of the Holocaust". It says "The following groups of people were also victimized by the Nazi regime...". The word "victimized" would normally include people who were killed, imprisoned, had their property taken away, etc. Are those the figures on how many people were killed?

I too am confused by the number of people killed. It would appear that we are guided to beleive that the Holocaust refers to WW II, and a systematic genocide. Yet no referance is given to the book of Revelations and the Holocaust that will happen to the Jewish people after they are encoraged to return to thier homeland. Which by the way now has a population of 6 million.

Others who are working on this Holocaust page should also keep an eye out for vandals on other Holocaust related pages. Recently in the article on Gays Under Nazi Germany some wikis have been adding texts that asserts such things as: the Holocaust was a myth, only Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, most Nazis were gay men, etc. And also adding links to books that have been published that are sold on Amazon.com that try to offer "evidence" backing the claims. All of such books have been denounced by governments, and Holocaust organizations. I have been trying to keep an eye out, but I cannot check everyday. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Jan 20th.

Recent edits

The picture of a Jewish woman pleading for her life seems to have lost its caption. Any ideas on how to get it back? Jayjg 06:45, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Actually, if you look at the article version before I started re-arranging the images, the caption wasn't there, just as with two other images. I tried to use the |thumb| function but it only blew up the image and distorted it; I've just found out that |frame| is what allows for captions with already small images, and I've edited the section accordingly.
Also, two notes on the "Bibliography" - 1) apologies to whosever hard work I erased by removing ISBNs and publisher names, but as I have explained here (I didn't link it correctly in my edit remark), ISBNs and naming specific publishers, etc only limit the options of book searchers (ie they only point to one edition that may not be the one available in the reader's country, or the most recent copy, etc.) - however the years of publication still need to be added to most of the works; 2) the majority of the books focus on Western Europe, there is not enough about Central and Eastern European nations apart from Poland (Ukrainians suffered huge losses because of Nazi deportations and anti-Slav/anti-Semitic atrocities) which could probably be ironed out, though the bibliography is already rather long. -- Simonides 08:22, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Curious approach. The bibliography, in theory, could be seen as listing the works (with varying dates of publication, not necessarily the most recent) which were employed by the respective contributor(s), it isn't necessraily designed to serve as the source for the very latest edition, though that might still be desriable in some format or another, as is noting the original date of publication, which I attempted to provide with my latest revision (for example, one of the works I dated here was originally published in 1947, but the latest edition is from 2004). Bibliographically, this is probably noteworthy. As for ISBN no., it certainly could be helpful, if not pivotal (that is, we are presuming that if a reader is capabale of searching-for/reading a scholarly work, they can work around ISBN discrapencies and ambiguities). In my opinion, it is not necessary (or even pressing), but since it has already been compiled, it should be undeleted and reinserted. Likewise with publishers, though again, I do not consider it a pressing matter (not so much as having bibliographical items dated, for example). Many more thoughts on the bibiliography as well as the article in general, but I will save those for a later date. El_C

The external links section has suffered a lot of unreviewed additions, and I think the article would not be affected negatively by removing links to individual victim's sites/lists. There is no structure in the list, perhaps this can be introduced. I'll have a go at trimming this list very soon if there are no objections. JFW | T@lk 16:01, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Jayjg 16:06, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Table Of Contents and Organization

Why is there so much information crammed into the opening paragraphs that the TOC doesn't even appear on the page, you have to scroll down to get to it. I thought the opening paragraph or two set the stage for the document that follows, with information organized into sections and presented logically and orderly. This is a good case of lots of people thinking their particular fact is so important it needs to be seen first, instead of creating a document of value it is a giant hair ball that one must deconstruct to understand. It is a shame given the importance of the topic that there is not better organization. Stbalbach 07:59, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. El_C

Clicking on reference [1] as of today yields this result:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/FrontPage/FrontPage&cid=1002116796299
- irismeister 20:37, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
Introducing
http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/20.May.1997/News/Article-2.html
inside the search box on the page where clicking the reference brings the reader yield this result, as of today:

No Articles Found

No articles were found for the search you submitted. Please try one of the following suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different search terms. Check the FAQ for info about searching. More search tips... Please click here to try another search.
- irismeister 20:42, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)

Clicking on reference [1] as of today yields this result:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/FrontPage/FrontPage&cid=1002116796299
- irismeister 20:37, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
Introducing
http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/20.May.1997/News/Article-2.html
inside the search box on the page where clicking the reference brings the reader yield this result, as of today:

No Articles Found

No articles were found for the search you submitted. Please try one of the following suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different search terms. Check the FAQ for info about searching. More search tips... Please click here to try another search.

Please do not vandalize this page, user 82.82.52.240

http://www.webyield.net/cgi-bin/ipwhois.cgi?addr=82.82.52.240 gives the dsl-082-082-052-240.arcor-ip.net or the 82.82.52.240 vandal. We'll follow, and I already wrote a note to vandal 82.82.52.240 - irismeister 19:04, 2004 Oct 10 (UTC)

Clicking on reference [1] as of today yields this result:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/FrontPage/FrontPage&cid=1002116796299
- irismeister 20:37, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
Introducing
http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/20.May.1997/News/Article-2.html
inside the search box on the page where clicking the reference brings the reader yield this result, as of today:

No Articles Found

No articles were found for the search you submitted. Please try one of the following suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different search terms. Check the FAQ for info about searching. More search tips... Please click here to try another search.

Clicking on reference [1] as of today yields this result:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/FrontPage/FrontPage&cid=1002116796299
- irismeister 20:37, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
Introducing
http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/20.May.1997/News/Article-2.html
inside the search box on the page where clicking the reference brings the reader yield this result, as of today:

No Articles Found

No articles were found for the search you submitted. Please try one of the following suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different search terms. Check the FAQ for info about searching. More search tips... Please click here to try another search.


edits to Intro by wereit

actually, i thought that paragraph 4. he added today was kind of interesting/relevant. agree? disagree? anyone? Gzuckier 18:47, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Made a minor change to the intro, the grammar and sentence structure still needs some editing for cohesion. Ronabop

I see jayjg removed my additions w/o a comment. If people feel it should not be included, so be it. However, what was written was true, in so far, as its indentification of Germany's role in the world and its culture and Germany's turn to Nazism. This insight is definitly something that is always jarring to people but usually on a subconcious level and not fully expressed. Jayjg seems [just from a glance at a few things; may not be true at all] to be very worried and wary of additions and always more comfortable with the status quo. But the status quo is not always correct. Just because someone wrote something first does not mean that person had any idea as to what she or he was writing.

Point in case, one of the things that struck me about this article was its relative disregard for the Nazi's targeting of Jews. Although, the Nazis did massacre many other people as indicated in the article, all historical testimonies and documentation turn to the fact that the goal and attention of the Nazi regime was directed towards the Jews. Obviously, to say the least, while they were at it, they hated and murdered other groups. Just because the original writer of the article took a more detached point of view does not mean that view corners the market. Wereit [Sorry to sign like this, still getting acclimated to active participation].

I'm concerned about changes to the status quo which aren't achieved first through consensus in Talk:, particularly on controversial topics like the Holocaust. Jayjg 15:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, getting off on a tangent, one of the more unusual sides to the holocaust in question was the germans' role. After all, sad to say, genocide itself is not all that remarkable, even today. People kind of expect Turks (from 100 years ago) and Somalis and Rwandans and Bosnians and Serbs to enjoy the sports of genocide and mass murder; that's kind of one reason many Jews avoided those countries and settled in the civilized, cosmopolitan, educated cities of Germany. Therefore, all the more remarkable that that's where this malignancy took root; it's hard now to imagine what it must have been like when the Nazis entered power, kind of like imagining what it would be like if the US suddenly turned to such lunacy. It serves as evidence that, in fact, no country, including the US, can ever be trusted to be so free and progressive and advanced as to be considered absolutely immune to a sudden attack of homicidal insanity. Toss in the efficiency with which bad deeds can be conducted due to modern technology and organizational management in a first world nation, then or now, and you have a scary picture. Which is kind of what you were saying, yes?

Gzuckier 22:00, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • I tried a new version of the introduction, with an explicit statement that Jews were the largest group targeted. A lot of the other information was already in parts of the article, and didn't seem appropriate to the introduction. I think that adding other information to the section on Jews might be appropriate. The article seems fairly clear that anti-Semitism was a major motivating factor, and that the Jews suffered the largest number of deaths, but I'm sure it could be improved. I wouldn't be against stronger statements being added to the paragraph I wrote; I just don't think that the specific details should be added to the Introduction. -- Creidieki 03:04, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Holocaust Memorial Day

Can someone with a bit of time take a look at this please? You've got until the end of January. Dunc|☺ 15:28, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yad vaShem db recently gone online

The computerized portion of the archives has become available online last week at http://names.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/IY_HON_Entrance . I believe that this is the same thing that was previously accessible via the local network access for the museum visitors. Please update the article accordingly — the link has to be incorporated and the quote changed to reflect the news. BACbKA 21:27, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jews were the main targets

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I hesitate to wade in with heavy editing of this article because I've not been involved in the discussion. But it struck me immediately that there's been almost a minimization of the fact that Jews were the largest group incarcerated and killed, and that Jews were the main targets. In the list of things that made this mass-killing different from others, there was no mention of the fact that it was a concerted effort to wipe out an entire race of people. (I have added that point, although I put it in as point 4, when I feel it should be point 1). I feel that the balance of this article needs to be changed to reflect the facts: viz. (i) the people who were killed were predominantly Jews; (ii) the ways the Jews were treated in the camps (zero privileges, compared with other groups, which meant they died sooner of starvation, lack of medical care, beatings, as well as in the gas chambers); and (iii) the fact that the Nazis specifically discussed the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. They didn't discuss the Final Solution of the Gypsy Question. That is not to minimize what happened to the other groups, but the Jewish people were the targets.

I don't know what the consensus is, so I won't edit it, but I hope some more discussion takes place around this because it's an important article. Slim 08:00, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

I suppose the question is was the 'apparatus' of the Holocaust established for the extermination of the Jews with the other groups included as an 'after thought', or would the mass killing of the other groups have happened anyway? I believe this should determine the emphasis of the article. Sean3000 14:16, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Slimvirgin i can understand that your intentions are meant in the best spirit but feel i must dissagree - I was imediately struck by how refreshing it was that all of the unfortunate recipients of this dark period of history are refered to fairly evenly throughout this article.

(i) in the light of the utter tragedy it seems a bit churlish to insist on some kind of numerical ranking of tragedy. every single death is an outrage. for any one to lay claim to being more wronged than others is simply the first act of politicising victimisation.

(ii) One can be fairly sure that the camps were no picnic for any of the inmates - to quote from the Porajmos page on the wikipedia "According to testimonies of Jewish and Nazi witnesses, Gypsies sent to the death camps often suffered even worse than Jews. In some instances, the Nazis were so appalled by the sight of Roma arriving in the transports that they would not even let them in the gates of the camps for selection and simply murdered them by the railway platforms. In one remarkable instance, the victims were so terrified that they would be killed on the spot that they actually stormed the gates of the death camp, demanding to be allowed in."

(iii) The polish question was discussed and used as an excuse to invade that country in the first place, therefore to use your reasoning one could then suggest that the jewish question was an afterthought. Of course that is not the point here, the point is that evil intent was aimed at many groups and individuals - in an event that has come to be widely refered to by a term borrowed from the yiddish language.

But perhaps I am missing the point, this page is about the holocaust, which strictly speaking is the jewish term for a tragedy visited upon the jewish people. the nazis planned a final solution to the perceived impurity of their 'so called' aryan race, the term holocaust was not applied by them just as much as the term Porajmos wasnt. there is an issue with the common usage of the term to denote the genocide that took place - either we are describing the jewish experience here or we are describing the genocide, if it is as i suspect the latter then it does nobody any justice to clamour for priority.

David

no. jews cannot be named the only victims. many other groups, like homosexuals, suffered just as much but the death rate of these groups is only lower because the number of people in these groups were smaller. soviet POWs were used to make soap in 1945 (i cant remember the exact page but this is from beavor's berlin book).--GregLoutsenko 20:58, 13 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Number of Jews killed

I am unclear about the number of Jews killed. In the relevant section it states about 6 Million Jews were killed. The next line states that 3-3.5 Million Polich jews were killed. Is that including the six million killed or is it a seperate number?

Holden 27

I'm pretty sure the 3.5 million is supposed to be included in the 6 million. The section does seem to be formatted badly so as not to make that clear. Lemme see what I can do. Gzuckier 16:07, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Several editors have been changing the total death toll in the introduction, which in recent edits has been 4-6 million, or 40-60 million. I believe the accepted figures by scholars are 12-26 million all groups, six million of them Jewish victims, so those are the figures I've inserted today. Slim 17:32, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
Slim, please quote your sources. What you believe is irrelevant, what reputable sources actually say is not. jguk 18:56, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Politeness would be appreciated.
http://veritas3.holocaust-history.org/jews-central/ for low estimate of 12 million
http://www.uca.edu/divisions/academic/history/cahr/holocaust.htm for high estimate of between 15 and 26 million. Source for high estimate on this website is "Service d'Information des Crimes de Guerre: Crimes contre la Personne Humain", Camps de Concentration (Paris, 1946), 197, though the author notes true figure will likely never be known. Slim 20:26, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
I can't seem to be able to open those links. The figure 12-26 million seems far to high I think, and approches the total number of war dead rather then the Holocaust alone. Six million Jewish victims and two million non-Jewish victims are the figures I have generally seen. Sean3000 14:10, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The links are working for me, but note that the word "for" isn't part of the first link, as it seemed to be before this edit. It's this [1] Slim 01:18, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
The links work for me as well. Jayjg 01:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I’ve managed to open those links, I don’t know what I was doing before. I couldn’t find a figure for non - Jewish victims in the first link, but I’m even more suspicious of those figures now I’ve read the second link. The thrust of his argument seems to be that some of the 6 million Jews killed were done so outside of concentration camps, and other nationalities were killed out side the concentration camps, so they should be included too; which I think is shoddy reasoning. The fact the article is written be a prospective MA student of no stated discipline should be considered too. My Britannica puts the total war dead as between 35,000,000 to 60,000,000; I suspect Karen’s Holocause figure is that minus the dead of the Pacific theatre, Britain’s, America’s and the colonies. While I didn't see a break down there, have a look at top left corner of http://remember.org/ . Sean3000 13:10, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here is a good summary of the relevant scholarship:

There is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The figure commonly used is the six million quoted by Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official. Most research confirms that the number of victims was between five and six million. Early calculations range from 5.1 million (Professor Raul Hilberg) to 5.95 million (Jacob Leschinsky). More recent research, by Professor Yisrael Gutman and Dr. Robert Rozett in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, estimates the Jewish losses at 5.59-5.86 million, and a study headed by Dr. Wolfgang Benz presents a range from 5.29 million to six million. The main sources for these statistics are comparisons of prewar censuses with postwar censuses and population estimates. Nazi documentation containing partial data on various deportations and murders is also used. " [2]

The quote was pasted on the article. I have removed it, and replaced the "six million" with "between five and six million". Sir Paul 01:22, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

If this : "dead as between 35,000,000 to 60,000,000; I suspect Karen’s Holocause figure is that minus the dead of the Pacific theatre, Britain’s, America’s and the colonies." is the basis of the figure for the total victims of the holocaust, it's including the german and eastern front military casualties as well, which does not seem appropriate.

Are there "scholerly" estmates for the total number of victims, corrisponding to the estimates of jewish victims given above?

Shoka

In the Hitler article, under Holocaust [3] it says 3.5 million Jews. When you get to Wiki's actual Holocaust page -- this one -- it says 6 million 'victims'. The numbers on both pages are too vague to derive any sense of. Please, anyone who is available and knowledgeable, clear them up. Thank you.

The Hitler page [[4]] says 3.5 million Jews died in concentration camps, vs. 6 million total, as calculated from census figures before and after the war. Gzuckier 15:49, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The upper totals on this page are approximately correct. However, 5 million Jews is not the lowest reputable total. Reitlinger estimated 4.2 to 4.6 million. I therefore suggest replacing 5 with 4.2 as the lower limit in the relevant section. The number who died in death camps is also given as various numbers: Hilberg quotes it as 2.7 million, rather than 3.5. If no-one objects, I propose altering this article to reflect the full range of reputable scholarly opinion (only excluding the prejudices of anti-Semitic cranks). 82.36.26.229 17:07, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Logistical considerations

I will state flat out that I am a holocaust revisionist. I believe the true number to have died at camps to be somewhere around 400,000 and primarly from causes of disease, starvation and old age. Before you jump on me and label me anti-semite or whatever, hear me out on this point.

Just to begin with: You've provided a reasonable factual summary of your skeptical reasoning without evident bias, which is a reasonable position. I will offer my comments in the same vein. Gzuckier 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why is there no section on how this supposed mass murder was actually accomplished from a logicistal point of view? You can't just say offhand 6 million people (12 including the non-Jews) were gassed to death. Most people don't immediately come to terms with just how many people that is, because it's just something they've been told all their lives.

One point: I don't think the majority would argue that all 6 million Jews, 12 million total were gassed. If you look at the detailed explanation, that's the total death toll, of which the death camps would be only a part, and the actual gas chambers an even smaller part.Gzuckier 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC) - If I could just add to this - the main thrust of this argument seems to revolve around the fact it is impossible to gas and cremate so many millions of people and not leave evidence. Well, as Gzuckier touches on, the majority of the people killed in the holocaust were not gassed at all. Within the first few weeks of the war, soldiers were carrying out unsystematic massacres of Jews who they came across in the pushes into Poland. As the war went on these occurances became greater in number, as did organised shootings. Often whole towns would be forced to dig their own grave and then would be shot. Just because they were shot, rather than gassed, does not make their deaths not "count" towards the overall toll of the Holocaust. CiderDaemon 17:04, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A core argument to holocaust revisionism is the fact it was technically impossible to exterminate 6 million people and leave no evidence, let alone do it in the time frame required. For one, there would be over 30,000 square kilometres of ash from the cremation of bodies alone (conservative estimate). That is enough ash to blanket Europe!

That seems excessive offhand, let me do some calculations 'out loud' here. (To begin with, note that 2 million people a year die in the US and most of them aren't even cremated, so if your numbers are anywhere near correct we ought to be one giant graveyard by now). Let's say 6 million to start with. A cremation results in about 2 kilograms (5 lbs) of remains, taking up about a gallon of volume (4 liters). So 6 million cremated would be about 12 million kilograms = 12,000 metric tons, about 24 million liters = 24 * 10^9 cc. Over 30,000 square kilometeres that would be 24*10^9cc/30000*10^6 sq meters =24*10^9cc/30000*10^10sqcm = something less than 10^-4. In other words, the absolute total ashes of everyone of those 6 million if all were cremated would cover your hypothetical 30,000 sq kilometers to a depth of 1/10,000 centimetres. Therefore, I find your estimated 30,000 sq kilometres vastly too large. Looking at it another way, if you had a pile of ashes from 6 million people that was 10 centimetre deep, about 4 inches, then it would cover an area about 24*10^8 sqcm, or about 50,000 cm on a side, or about 500 meters by 500 meters, about a third of a mile by a third of a mile. That's a far cry from blanketing Europe, even if you double it to include the entire 12 million victims of all races being every single one of them cremated. Out of curiosity, where did you get this 30,000 sq KM number?
Large quantities of ashes were apparently found. A web search comes up with references to 'In an article in the journal published by the same IHR that publishes these Q&A, the Journal's editor reported that a Polish commission in 1946 found human ash at the Treblinka death camp to a depth of over twenty feet. This article is available on [holocaust denier] Greg Raven's web site.' I haven't verified the original source myself, though. There are referenceson Raven's site to piles of ashes at Majdanek: 'One experience that deeply affected Galler was seeing a huge mound of ashes preserved next to a crematory at Majdanek. "My credibility increases," Galler said, "when I can say I've seen a crematorium ... and I've seen ashes as big as [our] school."' [5]. No explanation of why he regards this as 'remarkable nonsense'. References on Raven's site to ashes being dumped into the river at Auschwitz: 'The ashes were then collected. Bones were pounded into a powder. All of the remains were then dumped into the river'.(Auschwitz camp commander Rudolf Hoess) which he dismisses as the result of a coerced confession. [6] Gzuckier 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Photos we see are of starvation and typhus victims at the end of the war, not victims of gassing.

With respect, I don't think starvation and typhus at the end of the war would reduce the inmates to actual literal bare skulls. [7] Gzuckier 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not going to go into the many other areas of evidence brought up by revisionists and deniers, but I think this one is the most important for you to address as believers, as well as from a historical point of view.

Dead people leave evidence. 12 million dead in the space of 3 years should have left a LOT of evidence.

Really? Over 3 years, 6 million people die in the US, with not only no attempt to conceal it or clean up the results, but in fact great efforts to memorialize the dead. Yet, we don't see the entire country covered in ashes, and in fact if you don't go specifically looking for the evidence of their deaths it's not very apparent. I don't think the amount of evidence that exists for the deaths of 6 or 12 million over 3 years in wartime Europe with some efforts at minimizing the evidence and reducing the clutter of dead bodies all over the place is proportionately unreasonably less than the evidence of the US death rate.
And that still leaves the testimony of those who were there. Gzuckier 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you would like to move this to the discussion page for holocaust denial, then do so. Thank you!

Holocaust addendum

"before making any further edits, and please cease adding inflammatory material without so much as a source to back it up"

I challenge you to point out the lack of citation of sources in the comment I posted, which I will paste below in it's entirety: -

In March 1933, international Jewish organizations declared an international boycott of German goods. Newspapers around the world reported the declaration of war upon Germany. A front-page headline in the London Daily Express (March 24, 1933), for example, announced "Judea Declares War on Germany."

Ugh, this 1933 headline gets thrown into the argument by every neonazi on the internet. See! The Jews declared war on germany! The holocaust didn't happen, but even if it, it was justified self-defense! The sensationalist headline of a london tabloid does not history make. Or would you consider the boycott of Israeli goods a declaration of war and justification for anything their army does? --Cypherx 19:38, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The hostilities of the Jewish community, especially with the focal point of the Jewish Commisars of Russia impended them as a direct threat to all Christendom in Europe. During the Commisars regime in Russia in excess of 105,000,000 (105 million) people were killed purely on the basis that they were Christian at the hands of the Jewish Commisar 'red brigades'.


I quoted the exact newspaper, and as for the death toll of the Commisars, it's a well established historical fact, even more founded than the Holocaust figures. Just because factual information disagrees with the information posted doesn't instantly mean it's anti-semetic inflammatory subject material.

Posted by 211.31.12.95 at 05:39, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A call for a boycott by some Jewish organzations in reaction to Nazi actions is not a "declaration of war", regardless of what an editor writes as a headline in order to sell newspapers. As for the 105 million Christians being killed by Jews for being Christian, you have provided no credible evidence for this absurd claim. Jayjg | (Talk) 15:33, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
105 million? Sorry, not even Stalin killed that many people, and as far as I know he and Hitler hold the record for the two most (unless you count certain Chinese policies as such).
105 million is more than a third of the population of the United States. 105 million is TWICE the modern population of France. It doesn't take much thought to state that 105 million people were not exterminated in Russia, much less by Jews - that would be roughly 2 people killed per Jew alive TODAY. No, sorry, someone made up that number. Not even that many people were killed in Russia PERIOD. Most people killed by Stalin were killed because they were political dissentors or PoWs. Titanium Dragon 13:16, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Jesus Christ, however many people died under the Bolsheviks (it was certainly nowhere near 100 million), they were certainly not killed "by the Jews" - for a start, neither Lenin nor Stalin were Jewish, and the Bolshevik ideology was not particularly Jewish in any notable way. Can we just ban the anti-semitic trolls? john k 06:48, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wasn't the Offical Jewish Death Toll 1.1 Million, Not 6.

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

As far as I knew the offical death toll was revised to 1.1 million as a minimum death count resulting from emcampment and a 4 million figure of deaths as a threshold if not going by camp records.

The 6 million is a pre-eighties estimate.

The Auschwitz toll was 4 million, but it was later (quietly) revised down to 1.1 million. However, the holy "6 million" figure was not similarly changed. They obviously found some other way to fill in the missing numbers, or it could just be that the figure is such an accepted part of the holocaust story that it just couldn't be changed.Darkfalz 05:55, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Why do you imagine that historians took the Soviet "4 million" number seriously, or used it in their calculations of total casualties? By the way, the Soviet 4 million number included 2 million non-Jews, so even if it had been used (which it was not), the number of Jews killed would have been "revised down" by only 1 million. Jayjg |

(Talk) 03:57, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Only 1 million? 1 million is still 1 million, leaving 5 million. But obviously the Jews aren't willing to make even that concession, maybe for semi-legitimate reasons (ie. fuelling revisionist debate) or maybe just because they are obsessed with the mystical 6 million figure. And historians did take it seriously as it appeared in most books on the subject before the figure was revised.
You have missed the point; the Auschwitcz numbers were not used to calculate the death totals, so even if there were 1 million fewer Jews killed at Auschwitz, it wouldn't affect the totals, since the Auschwitz death numbers weren't used to calculate the death totals. I don't know how to explain that any more clearly. In what way did "historians take it seriously", and why do you imagine it "appeared in most books"? Most books contained numbers under 2 million. As for the "mystical" 6 million figure, it's just a round number estimate, actual historians have estimated all sorts of numbers from near 5 million to near 7 million. Jayjg | (Talk) 22:49, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The statistics below are also suspect, not only because nizkor is hardly an independant group (they are just as biased towards the holocaust story as neo-nazis would be against it) but also because, after the war, it obviously wasn't considered popular to be a Jew in Europe.
No kidding. See, I would have thought that it wasn't popular to be a Jew in Europe under Nazi rule, but after they lost it would have been unpopular to be a German in Europe. Or the US. Certainly there was a lot of de-germanization of names and words. Did we see a lot of Germans disappear, to be explained because they changed their names and laid low, that we don't know about? But you say it was the Jews who went into hiding after the war. Go figure. Gzuckier 18:06, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Many Jews changed their names and when censuses were conducted, many Russian Jews chose, for example, to simply call themselves "Russian" rather than "Jewish". Personally, I don't believe in the 6 million figure. I am not entirely convinced about the existance of gas chambers either. But I don't have much argument with the rest of the holocaust story, or that mass killings took place, but generally in an ad hoc fashion by SS units who were sick of the burden of transporting trainloads of Jews and Poles around when they had a war to fight (which they were losing). I truly believe millions of Jewish and millions more non-Jewish lives would have been saved if Churchill had accepted Hitler's peace proposal in 1941, but I guess we'll never know for sure. It is clear, however, that it's not a line of thinking that western world, at large, can afford to have... which is basically why I believe the Hitler and Third Reich has been stripped of all postive aspects and had the negative ones blown out of proportion, distorted or entirely fabricated.Darkfalz 16:02, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
<satire>Actually, the entire Holocaust of the Jews is a statistical abberation. Due to the war there were a lot of traffic accidents. Of course, these would occur in the cities and larger town; and that is where the Jews lived, so it looks like their death rate was inflated.</satire> Gzuckier 18:08, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have yet to see 100% convincing evidence that there ever was a person named Adolf Hitler or a movement called the Nazi Party. Indeed, I have my doubts that there ever was a Second World War and that it's not just a myth concocted by a certain generation in order to swindle "veteran's" pensions and other benefits from a gullible population. Really, can anyone *prove* absolutely that there was a world war from 1939 to 1945? Sure there are a lot of old people who say there was but memories are unreliable, especially 50 years after the fact, and they could have just been all making it up. Also, if you line up stories told by different individuals you can come up with dozens of contradictions among those who claim there was a "war". AndyL 23:34, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
That's a good point. Both a war and a holocaust would mean that lots of people died. Yet, I have never met anyone who died in the war, and nobody I know has ever met anyone who died in the war. Clearly, it's exaggerated. Gzuckier 20:53, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's a neo-nazi myth. see here and see this site for a breakdown of the numbers: Numbers of missing Jews (post-war minus pre-war):

  • Germany 195,000
  • Austria 53,000
  • Czechoslovakia 255,000
  • Denmark 1,500
  • France 140,000
  • Belgium 57,000
  • Luxemburg 3,000
  • Norway 1,000
  • Holland 120,000
  • Italy 20,000
  • Jugoslavia 64,000
  • Greece 64,000
  • Bulgaria 5,000
  • Rumania 530,000
  • Hungary 200,000
  • Poland 3,271,000
  • USSR 1,050,000
  • Less dispersed refugees (308,000)
  • Total number of Jews that were exterminated 5,721,500

AndyL 03:18, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sadly you are mistaken. The 1.1 million or thereabouts is the estimate of those killed at Auschwitz alone. The estimate for all Jews killed in the Holocaust is between 5.3. and 6 million. AndyL 07:07, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) .

There wasn't 6 million Jews killed, suggesting that there were is crazy. The real number is more like 3 million but, of course with America's current media the number will never changed.


---

The figures above do, at least concerning Denmark and Norway, not represent the historians' figures. Most of the Danish Jews - about 7000 - were saved by fleeing to Sweden, which was neutral in the World War II. According to my sources, 77 of the Danish jews died in concentration camps. Regarding Norway, my sources say that about 700 jews managed to flee to Sweden, while about 900 were killed in concentration camps. Source: Nordens Historia (Roughly:A history of the north European contries), by Prof. Harald Gustafsson of the University of Lund. ISBN 91-44-49031-3, page 239. Simon

Simon, you are right, the US Holocaust Museum also gives 77 Danish Jews as the number killed. The list above came from the Anglo-American Committee, and I believe it included the Danish Jews under "dispersed refugees" which it subtracted from the total. --Goodoldpolonius2 14:38, 8 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Exterminating the disabled?

I recently read a fairly comprehensive book on the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth).

In it, I was rather surprised to learn that disabled boys and girls were encouraged to join the Hitler youth, and that they were able to participate in all the wholesome activities that the other youths enjoyed. The only thing that was denied to them (or protected from, if you like) was military training and service.

I found this quite intereresting. The structure of the Hitler youth was more or less by Hitler's own design, to create a generation of well disciplined, strong bodied and loyal Germans. If Hitler viewed the disabled as a "burden" that must be exterminated, why did he in fact encourage them to join in group activities? And they weren't to be used as cannon fodder either.

Makes me wonder what little bits and pieces here and there are truly legitimate concerns about the orthodox holocaust story. Anyone who hears a reigeme which systematically kills disabled people would immediately make the assumption it was a purely "evil" reigeme, but we obviously never get the complete truth when it comes to things like that. The truth may be that we can't afford to know the real truth, because the cost of the war had to be justified somehow.Darkfalz 10:00, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to add something to this. I was discussing it with a friend today. The "disabled" people who were sent to the camps probably weren't the physically handicapped, but most likely the mentally insane. That is, people who were a danger to themselves or society. Remember that before the camps became "death camps", they were more or less just prisons (like Dachau) where people dangerous to the state were held. Not all opponents to the NSDAP were there, obviously, since there was just over 50% of Germans that didn't vote for them. But some of the more dangerous aspects to the government, just like we have today, were detained. No government can afford to have people roaming around plotting violence and attacks against them. And likewise for the mentally unstable, we keep those people in asylums or institutes even today. It's not like there weren't criminally insane and crazy people in Germany too.
But then when the "death camps" story got around, anyone who was in those camps suddenly became a "target of extermination". I think that would explain a heck of a lot. Being a practicing homosexual, for example, was against the law. So if caught, they would have been sent to one of the prison/work camps. After the gas chambers story gets out, these too become "targets of extermination".
It's actually a tad more nuanced than that, because the policies were based on early 20th century theories of eugenics. Those who were considered "disabled" in terms of being targets of sterilization and extermination were the individuals who (rightly or not) were thought to be *genetically disabled*. Thus, a person who was disabled from a war wound (as Hitler was), or a childhood accident or disease, was not considered to be a "genetic liability" in the same way that somebody who was born with a disability was considered. Ronabop 09:42, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Non-Jewish Poles Part of Holocaust

I am questioning this statement from the Holocaust death toll.

"The following groups of people were also killed by the Nazi regime but there is little evidence that the Nazis planned to systematically target them for genocide as was the case for the groups above. 

   * 2.5 – 3.5 million non-Jewish Poles"

I have been investigating this throughout the internet and have found websites that bring up quotes by Hitler and Himmler that if accurate suggest that there was a goal to eliminate all Poles as well.

http://www.polandsholocaust.org/1939.html

August 22 1939. Hitler authorizes killing "without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language."

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_east.html#Poland

An order issued by Hitler stated that 'no German soldier could be brought to trial for any act committed against Polish or Russian citizens'.

Head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, had said 'All Poles will disappear from the World'.

This is reiterated in more detail here.

http://www.citinet.net/ak/polska_26_f2.html

On August 22, 1939, a few days before the official start of World War II, Hitler authorized his commanders, with these infamous words, to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space [lebensraum] we need".

Heinrich Himmler echoed Hitler's decree: "All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles."

It may just be that it was more convenient in their minds to eventually kill all Poles, I'm just a Pole wondering if the above websites are accurate on this?

Thanks


Hello, I have found this in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh ISBN 0333644875 -

The aims of Nazi policy towards Poland - which changed according to external contraints over time - were to destroy her social and intellectual elites and her intergrity as a nation; to effect large-scale ethnic cleansing, involving the deportation of Polesa and Jews , policies eventuating in the deplettion of the former and the mass murder of the latter; and, finally, to barbarise Polish cultural life , with a view to converting Poles into semi-educated helots labouring for Germany. ... (p441)

Burleigh goes on to say (p442): around 48000 intellectuals fell under the Nazi designation.

On page 416 he states that 3000 Poles a day died during the occupation. I cannot find an total amount of deaths of Polish non-jews but I believe it is in the millions. I do agree of course with most commentators such as Burleigh in that not only were Polish Jews decimated (with some of the largest death camps sited in the General Government/ Occupied Poland ) but the Nazi apparatus from SS , Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo were involved with murdering intellectuals , so-called undesirables and anyone else. Mr Burleigh is well-known historian (research professor) based at Cardiff University. He also specialises in the study of the Nazi's euthanasia programs. I will keep looking for the Polish Jew Holocaust figures and non-Jewish Polish deaths .. although I am sure they are near by - perhaps under another article? max rspct 02:33, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Globalization

The major point to the validity of history is the sway of political trends and their need to survive. Capitalistic globalites needed to demonize National Socialism, as the fundamental aspect of nationalism is the protection of race and cultures of the World. Hitler obviously put most response on protecting his own.

From what? global capitalism? Hitler was the best friend the huge German corporations like IGFarben ever had. Or would they have instituted a more German form of global capitalism than, say, Ford? Gzuckier 18:11, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If England and France never declared war over Germany reclaiming pre War World 1 land, then the future may have been in a very different light of understanding and outcome. As readers should know, a declaration of war on someone is a statement to fight to the end. How many declared wars have ended with an agreement to stop on good terms, I guess not many. There is usually a winner or a losser. Once war was declared on Germany, they had to fight it out for regional power. I couldn't see England revoking a war stance once made.

Regarding death tolls, it is a fact that many people died from disease. Example one million Russian soldiers supposedly died in German run camps. Many German soldiers also died in camps controlled by Americians/Allies. So it is easy to see conditions of the time. Many Jew survived the entire duration of German enternment camp and that includes now famous people.

Most movies of the time show camp worker groups in good health and most shots are showing them working without guards. The worse state of people I hvae seen in film was from the Warsaw Ghetto and the people that starved the last weeks of the war when no supplies were coming to camps and disease was at its height. The Ghetto shots could have been showing the worse case situations of a poor social system, in why dead were left in the streets, etc. Also the fairness of food handouts may have played hard on people that couldn't demand their share from others stronger to claim it. Alot of people look well fed and trading on the streets, whilst others are starving and begging.

Looks a little more systematic than folks who died in the last few weeksGzuckier 18:18, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well said, although you'll probably still be labelled a "Neo Nazi" for your well thought out and expressed words.

Resource page

Why exactly did the 'resources' section get moved to its own page, again? Squelches further reading when Wikipedia is going through a periodic slowdown. Gzuckier 15:51, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Karaites and the Holocaust

I am told that the Karaites, an early splinter from mainstream Judaism were not targetted by the Nazis, but were more or less left alone. Their number was a lot smaller (a few thousand), than mainstream Judaism.

Can anyone confirm this, or is it just hearsay? I have found nothing much on karaites in the Third Reich.

The story is much more complicated than that. The Nazis weren't sure what to do with them, and treatment varied, with many questions being asked. In general, though, they were left alone. Jayjg (talk) 22:03, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Significance?

I'll try to word this as gently as possible, but I'll probably end up offending some anyway:

What makes The Jewish Holocaust so much more important than all the other holocausts and genocides that have prededed and followed it? I'm sure there's a reason, I just can't think of one right now. I mean, it's not very hard to find references of it everywhere, while most others are almost completely ignored, at least by people outside the respective nationalities.

It's not the recentness of it (Rwanda), it's not the enormity of it (can't think of a larger one at the moment, but I'm sure there are), it's not the fact that the victims were Jewish (previous Jewish Holocausts); and yet, as proven in the Prince Harry incident, people are much more sensitive about this than anything else. If this would be either addressed in the article or explained, I'd very much appreciate it.

If I put a rhetorical question on the main article, people would be out for my blood. Come on, doesn't anyone have an answer?
Perhaps no-one noticed your questions because they were on the top of the page, not the bottom. Or perhaps they considered them troll-bait. Jayjg (talk) 23:33, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Well, anyone's free to reword it any way they want to make it sound nicer, but seriously, I tried pretty hard to keep it unoffensive. By the way, thanks for moving it. Anonymous
Well, I think I'm kind of a maverick on this from previous discussions, but for my money, the fact that it happened to Jews is less significant; people have been picking on Jews for a looooong time. What I find remarkable is that it came out of Germany, a place where not only were Jews assimilated to a great degree and felt safe, but overall one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of civilization, philosophy, culture, etc. etc. etc. (largely through the participation of Jews). It's difficult now, after the Holocaust has colored everything, to imagine what a surprise that must have been. Nowadays, not only is Germany still tainted, but the world's innocence is lost and we wouldn't be as surprised if the US, for instance (just as an example of a civilized tolerant country, no hidden political implications or insinuations) went nuts over a period of several years and started concentration camps. I mean, people would be pretty surprised, certainly, but it wouldn't be the first time it happened in the civilized world any more. Like I said before, nobody bats an eye when some African despotism or even some place like Turkey goes and massacres a million people, we sort of view the non-first world countries as being prone to that kind of thing and we have to go repair the damage periodically.
So that sort of leaves the significance of the Jews vis a vis the Holocaust as kind of the canary in the coal mine of sociological pathology, I guess. Gzuckier 05:48, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. It doesn't explain why people are so sensitive about it, but it explains nicely why it's important. I'll go out on a limb here and say the sensitivity is because of extended wartime propaganda directed towards the axis by the allies (so the whole world knew in gruesome detail), whereas Rwanda and the like got nowhere as much publicity, but needless to say I won't include any of this in the main article.
I'll try to answer succinctly: Why did it have enormous impact? Among the reasons: (1) It was an intentional, premeditated and institutionalized genocide on a scale not seen before. (2) It was perpetrated by people we were actively at war against. (3) It was done to relatives of people who live in this country and throughout Europe (4) There were newsreels that revealed the horror to a level never before seen. Why are we so sensitive about it? That one is easy, because there is a history of holocaust denial that is motivated, at least for many, by undeniable anti-Semitism; so extra vigilance is called for. Jliberty 03:35, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Why are we sensitive about it? People were herded into camps and murdered in vast numbers, solely on account of their race. Rwanda happened to black people; most people in Europe and North America are white. They looked like us, they lived in our cities, they were people just like us. Join the dots. Dr Zen 09:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think people make a big deal about it because Jews can pass for Whites. I suspect Gzuckier's explanation above, is partially correct (although I think the real shock to Europeans' faith in "civilization" was World War I). Another reason may be the temporal proximity between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel commemorates the Holocaust each year and it is possible that if Israel did not exist, commemorations of the Holocause wouldn't have become common in Jewish communities world wide. That said, my own sense from the scholarship is this: it is of special importance to Jews because unlike other slaughters, Hitler really seemed to want the extermination of all Jews (this I think is the view taken by Fackenheim). And I think that it is of special importance more generally because it represents the first time Fordist methods were applied to murder, so it epitomizes something about modernity.
But this is only may vague sense. Ultimately, it is irrelevant, just as Dr. Zen's "join the dots" argument is irrelevant. There is a host of literature out there on the Holocaust and its more universal meaning. It is not for us to speculate as to why it is so special; it is for us to actually research that literature and report the various ways people (Jewish leaders, historians, etc.) have explained why it is special. The last time I immersed myself in the academic and critical literature from Holocause studies was a little over twenty years ago. I know that there has been an explosion in the field of Holocaust studies, but I haven't followed it. Are there any editors out there who have? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:33, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Why the page is protected from editing

I, and an internet buddy of mine, edited it to where it said "It never happened".

I'm sorry I spoiled whatever revisions that were going to take place, but you have to admit, it did cause some chuckles. Anyways, I just wanted to say I'm sorry and it won't happen again.

No joke. Your better off writing articles on Arctic circle weather stations or such like. max rspct 22:21, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Here's an book extract for the un-hinged or insidious to contemplate - (BACKGROUND- the war is drawing to a close and the mass killings are accelerated)

"Every evening fifty trucks brought the victims, 4000 at a time, to the crematoriums. A horrible sight, this caravan of trucks, their headlights stabbing the darkness, each bearing a human cargo of eighty women who either filled the air with their screams or sat mute, paralyzed with fear . In slow succession the trucks rolled up and dumped the women, who had already been stripped of their clothes, at the top of the stairway leading down into the gas chamber . From there they were quickly pushed below."

Dr Miklos Nyiszli - Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eye-witness Account ISBN 559702028

Oh please, let's just use cold reasoning instead of emotional stories to settle arguments and showcase points. I hate to say it, but otherwise it's almost like the "wave pictures of dead fetuses in your face" approach used by pro-life groups. Sorry if I sound like an insensitive prick, by the way, but I hate it when people try to make their argument "sacred" and label any opposing points as "blasphemy", so to speak. User:Some Guy Who Wasn't Previously Part of the Argument
You're right it won't happen again, because if it does, you'll be banned. Jayjg (talk) 01:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)


=

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

OK, OK. It was just a stupid experiment. I had no idea it would cause this much commotion. Having said that, I understand the offensive nature of what I did. I'm sure that you all can find it in your hearts to forgive me. I really do want to contribute, and, yes, I did submit Nord, Greenland. As a history major, I fully understand the magnitude of the Holocaust.

"Every evening fifty trucks brought the victims, 4000 at a time, to the crematoriums. A horrible sight, this caravan of trucks, their headlights stabbing the darkness, each bearing a human cargo of eighty women who either filled the air with their screams or sat mute, paralyzed with fear . In slow succession the trucks rolled up and dumped the women, who had already been stripped of their clothes, at the top of the stairway leading down into the gas chamber . From there they were quickly pushed below."

I would just like to point out the stupidity of this quote. Assuming that the so called "eye witness" is talking about Auschwitz, in which there were four crematoria, the number of 4000 people per day is extremely exaggerated. This is because 4000 people, would lead to a cremation rate of 0,694 per minute per crematorium. The real figure of the cremation rate would of course have been different, as the crematoria were not operated "around the clock", and were sometimes under repair. As such, I can say that person must have either been lying, or we are not talking of the same Holocaust. Therefore, this quote is just an emotional pile of crap, not proving anything at all.

Well, we also have, independently,
"Dr Ada Bimko, a Polish-Jewish physician, arrived at Auschwitz in August 1943 with 5,000 other Jews. According to her account, of these 4,500, including her close relatives, were sent straight to the crematoria."
"On 10 April 1945 Radio Luxembourg broadcast the account of an unnamed survivor of Auschwitz, who had subsequently been evacuated to Buchenwald. In the interview this witness stated that Auschwitz was an extermination camp which killed between 12,000 and 20,000 people a day. He described how the transports arrived, how the selection took place, and how those who were chosen to die were killed instantly and cremated."
"Stanislaw Jankowksi gave evidence to the Polish Central Commission in 1946. ...His evidence was that the killing reached its zenith with the Hungarian Jews in about July 1944 when, he claimed, 18,000 were being killed per day. Jankowski reckoned that Crematoria 2 and 3 had a daily incineration capacity of 2,500 corpses while Crematoria 4 and 5 could incinerate 1,500."
"Dr Charles Bendel, a Rumanian Jewish physician who had been living in Paris before he was deported to Auschwitz, gave evidence that he had been detailed to work as a sonderkommando and in that capacity observed the gas chambers and crematoria in action. He testified that on occasion the Nazis would burn corpses in pits because the ovens could not cope with the number of people who had been killed."
and
"a letter dated 28 June 1943 from Bischoff, Chief of Central Construction Managemnent at the camp, to SS Brigadefuhrer Kammler setting figures for the incineration capacity of the five crematoria, according to which their total capacity is 4756 people in every 24 hours. ... The apparent urgency of the installation of the ovens, together with their huge capacity which, according to van Pelt, was far in excess of what could possibly have been required to cope with future typhus epidemics, reflects the policy adopted following Himmler’s visit to the camp in July 1942... this capacity was at that time deemed to be necessary to burn the bodies of the Jews who were to be brought to Auschwitz to be gassed."
(from the judge's decision in Irving vs. Lipstadt). I guess these are all examples of stupidity, as well, particularly the letter from the contractor setting the capacity of the ovens. Whereas your superior intellect allows you to come to the correct conclusion, based on completely hypothetical considerations. You are to be congratulated. Gzuckier 17:40, 15 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
no, as i said just before the excerpt - the mass killings were accelerated as the war was drawing to a close. Understand? It was written by the camp doctor - max rspct 21:51, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to add a legitimate Holocaust Controversy Page

Holocaust Controversy. I don't know why it's being deleted as vandalism. I posted a page to talk about the politics of the history of the Holocaust and put some links up. I did not post links to Holocaust denial, which I, as most, regard as an untenable position that is a form of anti-Semitism, and there is already an article for it. However, it is obvious from the article and the discussion and the disambiguation page that there is a lot to talk about regarding the histories of the Holocaust excluding denial.

There is legitimate debate about numbers of non-Jews who died during the Holocaust. There is also legitimate debate about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Many evil genocides have occcurred. Nazis certainly talked about Jews rhetorically as inferior or some kind of disease, etc etc, but this is not a serious belief people can take on. A more likely explanation is to examine the nationalistic reasons for creating a scapegoat and looking at reasons for historical anti-Semitism. If this is true, then there is much more similarity between the motivations for Nazis to mass murder Poles and Russians as they did Jews.

The very fact that the wiki discussion is so controversial and the disambiguation page is so controversial seems to make it obvious to me that there should be a Holocaust Controversy page.

Why don't you work on that article, and get consensus for introducing changes to this article on the Talk: page. As for the Nazis, I don't know why you think they didn't believe their rhetoric, or think that it is "not a serious belief people can take on". Also, please review the Wikipedia:No original research policy before proceeding. Jayjg (talk) 04:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The author of that article seems to be pointing towards unresolved controversies. Not everything should be presented from one point of view since there may be no consensus among historians. Also, newer historical views that are up and coming may be deemed more accurate, but past historical views may still dominate. In the sense that these new views are revisions of the old, they should be talked about from multiple perspectives and some clarity should be given to what is the old and what is the new.

Could the anon IP provide a citation from a credible publication for the claim that the non-Jewish Poles were actively singled out? Many thanks, SlimVirgin 05:15, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but there was an early effort to target Poles. It was abandoned due to military exigencies, however, many millions of Poles were killed as a result. See, for instance, Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust subtitled the Poles under German Occupation, 1939-1944 or something like that. The book is not challenged in contemporary scholarship, as far as I know. Danny 05:18, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My understanding was that the endeavour was to kill the Polish elites - educated middle and upper class people, and especially the clergy. john k 05:26, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
There were efforts to kill Poles in areas slated for German colonization as well. Danny 05:27, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The issue is whether non-Jewish Poles can correctly be added as one of the "groups that were actively singled out in Nazi ideology as being 'unfit for life' and were part of the Nazi's planned and systematic genocide." If someone wants to add that, they're going to have to provide a citation to a credible source who actually makes that claim. SlimVirgin 05:37, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

Lukas does make that claim. See here [8] SlimVirgin 05:52, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
Does he? I think you mis-linked that, but I read the editorial reviews and I'm not sure that he does. To suggest that the Nazis considred Christian Poles as destined for a (perhaps especial, as Lukas seems to claim) genocide of pacification –intended to establish an Eastern slave labour population (there and elsewhere)– is very different from extermination, wiping Poles off of the face of the earth ala the Jews, the homosexuals, etc. It wasn't, then (to respond to the Anon), limited to rhetoric, but rather, (indeed) how rhetoric was put into practice. Fact is, though, that we don't see the Nazis seeking out any and all Polish nationals outside of Poland in other annexed, occupied, ally, and neutral countries. El_C
I agree. I thought I had linked to page three but it doesn't work with Amazon. Lukas refers to Hitler's speech of August 22, 1939, where Lukas said he "authorized killing", in Hitler's words, "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." In the next sentence, Lukas says the German army and SS engaged in what Polish historians have described as a "merciless and systematic campaign of biological desctruction." At the end of page three, he writes: "The Nazi theory of colonial empire in Poland was based on the denial of humanity to Poles whom, next to the Jews, Hitler hated the most." There are footnotes throughout but they're not online. But the last point you made still stands, regardless. SlimVirgin 07:05, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
I stand corrected. Thanks for the info. El_C 07:14, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Holocaust historian, Michael Marrus (The Holocaust in history) writes that:

Unlike the case with any other group, and unlike the massacres before or since, every single one of the millions of targeted Jews was to be murdered. Eradication was to be total. In principle, no Jew was to escape. In this important respect, the Nazis' assault upon Jewry differed from the campaign against other people's and groups——Gypsies, Jehova's Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles, Ukrainian, and so on. Assaults on those people could indeed be murderous; their victims number in the millions, and their ashes mingle with those of the Jews in Auschwitz and many other camps across Europe. But, Nazi ideology did not requiere their total dissaperence. In this respect, the fate of the Jews was unique. (p. 24, italics in the original)
El_C 07:44, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't feel happy about changing the thrust of the article as it now stands. SlimVirgin 07:47, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
Neither would I, on that front, I agree. But vast improvements are still warranted, I think. Perhaps, though, nothing short of a rewrite can meaningfuly accomplish this... El_C 08:00, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Someone has done a rewrite and a very good one, but hasn't put it up for some reason, and I don't know whether s/he intends to or not. SlimVirgin 08:34, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
S/he, how enigmatic of you, Slim (and how engimatic of me, too!). ;) Yes, I found part 2 of it via google, and though I only glanced at it, I agree. I'm sure the author is just puting the finishing touches on it, and not as you are otherwise implying. El_C 10:21, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Ha, didn't realize it was on the Web; part one is too, I've just found out. Perhaps we should just take it. ;-) SlimVirgin 10:31, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
Heh, legally, we can. As I said, I'm sure sh/e is just putting the finishing touches on it. :p El_C 10:36, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
He is not working on it, and has no plans to. In what I can frankly only describe as a fit of pique he decided to cease all work on topics not relating to Australia. Jayjg (talk) 15:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Now that the editors who triggered that withdrawal have been effectively banned, I wonder whether he could be persuaded to allow the rewrite to be used. SlimVirgin 23:43, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
I don't think the issue was over specific editors. Jayjg (talk) 00:30, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I see the Jewish Holocaust experience as unique. At the same time, the Poles according to these citations of Nazi rhetoric and ideology, were targeted for extermination as well. Was it done with the same thoroughness and efficiency? No. Might they have if they had more resources? Probably. Did 6 million Poles die, half-Jewish and half-non-Jewish, about 1/5 of their then population? Yes. Then on those grounds there are only two choices: 1) either completely exclude non-Jews from the Holocaust, which from the rest of the article, few would be willing to do or 2) include Poles along with Roma, gay men, people with disabilities, and Jehovah's witnesses. I'm going to go ahead and revert to Poles under the targeted list. There are plenty of citations here. If you don't think it is worth including them there, then please also rethink Roma, gays, disabled, and Jehovah's witnesses. Because the Jewish experience is distinct from them as well. 160.39.194.93

This is fallacious. Please review False dilemma. --Viriditas | Talk 12:21, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Haha, Viriditas, you cannot call fallacy without explaining why it is that particular fallacy. It is you whose logic is questionable. Recapping: 1) Evidence from authorities quote Hitler as stating that the complete destruction of Poles is necessary for Germans to have space to live. Other authorities are cited to support the assertion that Poles as a people were targeted for genocide. 2) People state discomfort and a different authority is cited claiming uniqueness to the Jewish experience but unique apart from Roma, gays, disabled, and Jehovah's witnesses. But no authority is cited disputing 1). 3) Given claims 1) and 2), then, according to the authorities provided here, we can either set Jews apart from everyone else that suffered under the Holocaust or we can include Poles as targeted since there is evidence that they were at least at first, but were later delayed in their destruction due to military exigency. In any case, 3 million non-Jewish Poles are killed. What evidence do you provide for their non-targetedness disputing the evidence that has already been provided? An argument can be made that Jews were most targeted given the evidence, but then they are unique apart from Roma, gays, etc. as well. Ball's in your court.

By the way this whole discussion is under the wrong topic.

Shooting

To the anon editor, I'm not sure what this means: "Initially they tried shooting them, putting them one after another (like Soviets did), so several people could be killed with one bullet, but they found it to be too slow and too expensive." I would copy edit this, but I can't see what you're getting at by "putting them one after another . . ." SlimVirgin 04:36, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

I think the editor is referring to putting one person in front of another, single file, a few people deep. I recall this being done in a specific mass execution by the Nazis, but can't recall the name. Some people survived to tell about it after their bodies were dumped in a mass grave and left for dead. --Viriditas | Talk 05:11, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What a terrible header I put on this section . . . I hope you don't mind, but I've had to change it. Viriditas, what would be a better way of saying "putting them one after another"? How about: "Initially they tried shooting them by having them stand one behind the other, so that several people could be killed with one bullet . . ." First, is that the right way of putting it; second, why would it be too expensive? SlimVirgin 05:47, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
It sounds fine. I believe the term is called a "paired column", but I could be wrong. I'm assuming that it would be "cheaper" to save bullets, using one bullet to kill two. This technique was allegedly used by the Iraqis during Saddam Hussein's regime when they murdered ~15,000 people and buried them in the mass graves at al-Hillah. --Viriditas | Talk 06:54, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I got rid of it being too expensive, because I can't see what's meant. I understand it would be cheaper to use one bullet for several people, but the sentence as it stood said it was too slow and too expensive to use one bullet; by which I suppose the editor meant too expensive because they had to use more bullets in the end anyway, but it's not clear, and as I don't know what was meant, I deleted it. SlimVirgin 07:10, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

"The commonly used figure for the number of Jewish victims is six million, so much so that the phrase 'six million' is now almost universally interpreted as referring to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, though estimates by historians of the exact number range from five million to over six and a half million."

Statistics

What mainstream historians use 6.5 figure? If such fringes are incuded, Reitlinger's ~4 million should be included too. The maximum substantiated estimate is that by Benz, 6,144,839. So I will change the upper bound to 6m.

Poles ARE Slavs. Hence modification.

Murder records

"For example, detailed lists of potential victims were made and maintained using Dehomag statistical machinery, and meticulous records of the killings were produced."

What records? What is the source for this? This gives an impression that most Holocaust murders were meticulously recorded. Either give a source, or this paragraph goes.

Targets

"The victims of the Holocaust were primarily Jews, who were the targets of the Final Solution. However, other groups regarded as undesirable were also persecuted and murdered, including Communists, gay men, Roma and Sinti (also known as gypsies), the mentally ill and the physically disabled, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish, Russian, and other Slavic intelligentsia, political activists, Jehovah's Witnesses, some Catholic and Protestant clergy, trade unionists, psychiatric patients, common criminals and people labeled as "enemies of the state". These victims all perished alongside one another in the camps, according to the extensive documentation left behind by the Nazis themselves (written and photographed), eye-witness testimony (by survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders), and the statistical records of the various countries under occupation."

I suggest using Prof. Richard J. Evans's definition, by which the word Holocaust is used to denote only Jewish victims. Because otherwise Jews can't be said to be its primary targets. E.g. far more Slavic civilians were killed during WWII.

Moreover, ONLY Jews were targets of the "Final Solution" program. This needs to be changed also.

5 million

"5 million gentile deaths" is Simon Wiesenthal's crude fabrication, as pointed out by Peter Novick at http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-holocaust&month=0005&week=c&msg=%2b6jdxOXCMf4wOdVQyiqttA&user=&pw= and by Jon Petrie at http://www.berkeleyinternet.com/holocaust/

Thus it does not deserve mention, except to debunk the myth.

Roma vs. Rroma

I reverted the change of Roma to Rroma because Rroma is a redirect to Roma --Silas Snider (talk) 19:40, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

In recent years there has been a movement towards use of the "double-R" spellings of "Rroma" for the people and "Rromanes" for the language, as in the Romani language, "r" and "rr" represent two different phonemes. see: Roma people article

Ah. Thank you. Gzuckier 18:43, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Non-Jewish Deaths per Camp?

Is there, anywhere, any information which essentially breaks down the non-Jewish death toll in the Holocaust into either camps or areas? Thank you to any assistance!

Concentration Camps vs Death Camps

It should be made clearer that concentration camps are a different thing from death camps. The purpose of the concentration camps was to make life very unpleasant for the inmates (so unpleasant in fact that by 1939 50% of the people in the concentration camps were dying), but the purpose of the concentration camps was not to exterminate the people there. The purpose of the deaths camp was extermination.

There were Jews in the concentration camps right from their founding in 1933, but there were a minority. The majority of the people in the concentration camps in 1933 were political opponents of the Nazis, mostly Social Democrats and Communists. The Jews sent to the concentration camps in the 1930s were there usually there because they were SPD or KPD members or because they had broke the Nuremberg Laws. I'm not trying to defend the Nazis in any way, but the general princple for most of the 1930s was that a Jew would have to do something first like breaking the Nuremberg Laws before being sent to a concentration camp. Just being Jewish was not sufficient enough. The first time that Jews were sent to the concentration camps just for being Jewish in large numbers was in 1938. By contrast, when the death camps opened in 1941, being Jewish was considered sufficient grounds to be sent there.

OK, but also clarify that most people use the words interchangably.Gzuckier 15:25, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is a very important distinction when it comes to identifying camps. Concentration and Death camps were often paired, e.g. Auschwitz was the concentration camp, Berkinau was the death camp. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:44, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Targets to victims

Jez has changed the word "targets" in the intro from: "The Jews of Europe were the main targets of the Holocaust in what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" to "main victims." I prefer targets because the Final solution was aimed at Jews. They didn't just end up being its victims. They were its targets. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:19, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Also main "victims" almost minimizes the other victims who were equally victims once they were victimized. The main "targets", however, were indisputably Jews. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 19:32, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
That's a good point, Mperel. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:56, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
OK - hadn't thought about it like that. Targets it is, then. Jez 21:22, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Polish government in exile and the knowledge of the outside world

I think it should be noted in the article that POlish government-in-exile was publishing documents (e.g. so called black books) documents, organised meetings etc since the very beginning to populatise situation in Poland, icnluding fate of Jews. It also demanded to organise revenge terror bombing in Germany. I can't remember whether under Polish pressure United Nations had issued the decree that they know about crimes and guilty will be punished, but Polish gvt had issued such notes several times, while pressing other government to do the same.

So the world DID know about what was happening. It just didn't believed. When Sikorski arrived to USA. no single Jewish organisation reacted to pubilcations of Polish government, and instead in the meeting they were criticising Sikorski for publicatoin of anti-semitic newspaper (which was already banned by Polish gvt) and pre-War discrimination of Jews in Poland.

I think something about that should be mentioned in article. Szopen 06:57, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree... especially since the section "Who knew about the killings?" says: "The full extent of what was happening in German-controlled areas was not known until after the war." Of course, the full extent was not known, but significant amount of information about the German treatment of Jews inside occupied Poland, including that in Auschwitz was coming from the Home Army and Jewish organizations in Poland. Information was well known and publicized in the Great Britain and US by the Polish government in exile. Some examples:
File:Polish note.jpg
Polish Note
  • The German Occupation of Poland, Note to Allied and Neutral Powers on May 3, 1941.
  • The German New Order in Poland, book published in London (1941?) and reprinted in the US under the title The Black Book of Poland, New York, 1942, covering period Sept. 1939-late June 1941.
  • "Oświęcim (Auschwitz) Concentration Camp", article published in the Polish Fortnightly Review on Nov. 15, 1941.
  • The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, note from the Polish government in exile to the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1942
  • Jan Karski, Polish underground emissary and eyewitness to extermination of Jews in occupied Poland, met in July 1943, with, among others, President Franklin Roosevelt and Felix Frankfurter to inform them about the ongoing Holocaust.
Also, a number of reports from Auschwitz escapees e.g. Jerzy Tabeau, Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler, Czesław Mordowicz, and Arnošt Rosin were publicized in the US in 1944.
IMHO, the section "Who knew about the killings?" needs revisions and ext. link to The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland full text [9]. --Ttyre 19:08, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bodies

Hi, I'm a Holocaust agnostic (or skeptic, if you prefer). I've been taught a tiny bit about the Jewish Holocaust of WWII in school of course, and I've heard about these revisionists and read some of their claims. So, I put my critical thinking cap on. I'd like very much to see a detailed section on the actual evidence of the crime itself, the bodies. I'd like to know how many corpses or parts of corpses have been exhumed, where, etc. I'd like to see the number of tons of cremated ash or lime found and where. I'd like to see the radar surveys.

I'd like to see the attempts made in this direction as well (i.e., who is searching for this evidence, where they're looking, the press coverage, etc. I'd like to see how they're determining the alleged Jewishness of any corpses as well.

Hey there. I can't offer the ___location of the bodies/ash/etc from the camps, but equally I can't find all of the Jews who disappeared around the same time. Really, where are they? The population of Ashkenazi jews dropped dramatically around the time of the holocaust, and I can't see any other causative factors.
I was approached by the "Revisionists" in my first year of college at UCC. I have to say, they can put forward a very convincing arguments, but that is not due to the veracity of their statements. They employ techniques of speech common to experienced debators, such as the artful use of what appears to be an "impassive" view of events, and straw man arguments. The guy trying to convince me of his view of events even started saying that it was a hateful race attack by the Jews upon Germans. Please explain to me how the Jewish population would have the resources to rewrite history? And even if this were true (and it is a common debate/political technique in any case - set an enemy up to bolster your argument), how is this version of history any less hateful than the existing one?
The Germans themselves alknowledge what happened in their country during WWII. I can't see why the rest of the world can't accept it and move on, keeping only the memory of the holocaust as a warning. And note here, that the German people are not blamed by anyone for the sins of their forefathers. The view that the Jews have set them up for hatred is a non-issue, an argument rooted in air.
Yes, it is true that the winners write history, and it is because of a persons right to their opinion that the Revisionists are allowed to preach at all. Note here that if our societies were based upon Nazi fascism, a radical group that questioned the norm such as the Revisionists would not be tolerated. However, it is also very easy to criticise history. For example; where is the evidence that Alexander the Great existed at all? Having done classical studies in secondary school, I could give you reams of data on this. However, to the layman or the uninformed (how many of the Revisionists have PhDs in Nazi German history and governmental structure?), Alexander could well seem to be a mythical figure.
The techniques they use to convince you about the events of the holocaust are similar to those used by cult indoctrinators, and indeed I wouldn't be surprised if the structure of their society was similar in essence to a cult of personality. Be very careful, and do some research on the net (or here) about cult techniques - they are frighteningly effective and the supposition that intelligent people are immune is woefully untrue.
Also, please remember to sign your work (you are a member, right? It's free!), the better to be recognised. Yours truly, Cathal


6 million?

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I want someone to prove 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust right now, I want hard evidence to back it, a list of 6 million names with definative proof that they died due to Nazi involvement. 24.141.214.87 (talk · contribs)

The task of Wikipedia is not to respond to individual queries. What you read in the article is the mainstream historical account, which you are free to disagree with, but you will have to find your own source material.
The Nazis themselves kept pretty good records of the people they killed in concentration camps, and most of these records are accessible to serious researchers. The Einsatzgruppen kept less accurate records, but that would lead to an under- rather than an overstatement of the death toll. If you dispute the veracity of the Nazis' own record, there is probably little that will convince you. JFW | T@lk 13:48, 29 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Eugenics and stuff

Mostly just staggered photos (the page looked boring) and, more importantly, upsized many of the photos. Odd that the pics of Hitler and Eli Weisel seemed to dwarf the others. I thought the ones which illustrated the horrors of the Holocaust deserved more prominence.

I also added a bit more on eugenics; I thought it important. I really do think the article should be expanded in this regard. People continually ask, "How could such a thing happen?" The success of the eugenics movement in Germany and the extremes of popularized German thought in that regard go a long way toward answering that question. (The language of Ploetz and Hoche is both eye-opening and appalling.) IMO, there should be a separate section in Eugenics. I didn't read the entire article, but it also could probably use a good once over, copy edit-wise. deeceevoice 12:01, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Other comments: While a good start, this article actually could use a lot of fleshing out and reorganization. I question the order of elements. Why does the examination of the term (a relatively minor point) precede the really important stuff? A lot of the subheads are really choppy, with not enough information. They amount to little more than a sketchy outline.

How about recruiting some of the contributors to New anti-Semitism to expend some of that energy and knowledge here? This article really needs some help. The writing and content are uneven. What about the network of individuals and organizations working to save Jews? What about Kristallnacht? What about more info on the wholesale obliteration of Jewish communities and the destruction of synagogues and torah scrolls? What about the heroes among the public and the sellouts who turned in Jewish friends and neighbors? How have these towns and nations dealt with their collective culpability in this regard? What about a section on the Catholic Church? I'm wondering about a section on bringing Nazi war criminals to justice and related immigration laws internationally. What about Adolf Eichmann and the Nuremburg trials? What about more on Nazi torture and experimentation? What about related cases since? What about a segment on the treatment of the Holocaust in popular culture, in literature and films (theatrical, e.g., "The Boys from Brazil" and "Schindler's List"; and documentary, e.g., "There Once was a World" releases)? What about the concentration-camp-as-paradise "documentary" filmed by Gerron, a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstatd, who was summarily excuted once the Nazis had no further use for him? What about the research in the U.S. National Archives records that led to the discovery of the list and the success of the reparations movement?

I was surprised to see that this article was once nominated for featured article status. It has a very long way to go before it's ready for prime time. deeceevoice 12:38, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=genocide
Though related to the holocaust from an ethical viewpoint, the nazi eugenics program wasn't a part of the holocaust. The holocaust is commonly considered to be genocide, and eugenics isn't genocide, nor were the eugenics programs of the nazis.
I understand the need to push eugenics to dramatize the holocaust, but it's not a neutral POV.
--Scandum 14:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Blacks and The Holocaust

I added blacks to the list of groups targeted by Nazi Germany and receive an inquiry from another Wikipedian. I've reproduced my response below. More information about the treatment of blacks also should be included in the article.

Just as Jews were throughout Europe, so, too, were blacks -- but in far smaller numbers. Most were "mixed-race." They were discriminated against and marginalized and segregated from mainstream German society. Most were forcibly sterilized, but it is estimated that at least 400 German blacks were sent to concentration camps. African-American woman jazz musician Valaida Snow was arrested in Denmark while living in and touring Europe and survived 18 months in Wester-Faengler, a Nazi concentration camp. She was released, along with some Allied troops, as part of a prisoner swap. And there were others. A relatively quick search on the Internet should yeild at least spotty information. Here's one web site w/a blurb.[10] Just as non-Jewish victims of The Holocaust are continually overlooked, its black victims are almost never mentioned.

deeceevoice 20:57, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

400 blacks in total? Jayjg (talk) 21:00, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's German citizens; and it's, of course, only an estimate. That doesn't account for others from other countries. And I don't recall when or where I read that statistic. Long time ago. Here's another link which may be of interest.[11] deeceevoice 21:48, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Collaborators

Removed the sentence In Poland, before the WW II, Jews and non-Jews had very uneasy relations and anti-semitism was rampant. During the German occupation, many Poles actively collaborated in rounding up the Jews by Nazis and others closed their eyes when their Jewish countrymen were taken to the concentration camps and the eventual death. It was not a coincidence that Auschwitz was set up on Polish soil. for extreme POV. --Ttyre 19:22, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes that sentence has overwheling bias, but I hope it gets resurrected in some more neutral form. In both Poland and Ukraine the local feeling towards jews was very negative and many people were willing to help in the killing of Jews. --Cypherx 17:32, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cypherx, do you realize that your comment contains the same stereotype and POV as the one I had removed? Please read again the Collaborators section to see how universal complicity in the Holocaust was in most of the WWII Europe. Also, the association you are making between alleged "very negative feelings toward Jews" and "willingness to help in the killings" is a huge logical stretch. --Ttyre 14:53, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying the entire populations of Poland and Ukraine took part in the killing of Jews, or that the anti-semitism in those countries was entirely unique. However, the hatred of Jews was stronger and more common. Pogroms weren't that distant of a memory. I'm not a holocaust scholar and I haven't researched the issue extensively, but from what I've read it seems there was less resistance to, and greater willingness to participate in, the extermination of local Jews. Perhaps it seems this way because Poland and Ukraine had greater Jewish populations than other countries...I'm not sure. --Cypherx 00:15, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How would you quantify "...stronger and more common..." as well as "...less resistance to, and greater willingness to participate in..." to support your point? Could you cite a source(s)? Otherwise it's your POV. --Ttyre 12:50, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The point about Auschwitz and the other death camps being in Poland being related to Polish Anti-Semitism is irreverent. I don't want to get into discussion about the subject of Polish anti-semitism, because I would have to type a long more then what I feel like doing right now, but I will say it's more complicated subject then many Polish Catholics or Jews are willing to admit. On one hand, it is clear that was a lot of anti-semitism in Poland before and after 1939, and that a certain segment of Polish Catholic population was not too sad about the Holocaust and another segment didn't really care about the fate of their Jewish neighbors. Before 1939, the National Democratic Party had a frankly anti-semitic platform. But on the other hand, it is also clear that a good number of Polish Catholics were opposed to anti-semitism before and after 1939, and that greatest number of the Righteous Among The Nations (that is gentiles who saved Jews) came from Poland. Never during the histoy of the Second Republic were the National Democrats were able to get their platform turned into law. My point is that the evidence reads my ways. Having said this much is probably too much, and I know I am going to get a ton of hate mail from both Poles and Jews.

Getting to my main point, the reason why the death camps were Poland had nothing to do with how anti-semitic the gentiles of Poland may or may have not been. The largest Jewish population in Europe outside of the Soviet Union was in Poland, and having the death camps there made for shorter train journay from the ghettos to the death camps. In 1941, 42, 43 and 44, World War Two was raging, and the Germans needed trains to supply their armies in the field. Without proper logistical support, no army can last long in the field. Every train taken to send Jews to the death camps was one less train that could supply the German army, and in fact the Holocaust at times caused the German army serious logistic problems by diverting trains that were needed to supply the military away from that work. From the German viewpoint, the best thing to do would be to ensure that the train trips from the ghettos to the death camps were as short as possible, because it allowed those trains to get back to supplying the German army. That is why the death camps were in Poland. The Germans could have cared less what the Polish gentiles thought about the Jews. I hope this adds to the discussion, and please accept my apologies if I came across as rude. A.S. Brown 28 June 2005 06:26 (UTC)

One-sided

The acticle starts from the premise that all the dogmas concerning the 'holocaust' are true, even though many of those are highly controversial. This clearly does not fall within the objectivity status. The same way, is it utterly incorrect to state that revisionists reverse the proper methodology for historical research OR that they generally have an ideological agenda behind their findings. Several revisionists are liberals or libertarians, and a very prominent revisionist even is jewish. What agenda could they possibly have? Also, few of the historians defending the official views ever prove their claims, while revisionists tend to come up with an abundance of proof, which is usually ignored.

Some resources on the revisionist view are :

websites :

books :

(a) Stop spamming those links on holocaust-related articles; anyone who wants them can just go to vho-land anyway. (b) Consensus will knock out that {{POV}} notice; you're hardly the first one to put it in. It will be removed every time; don't waste your energy. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:54, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How about neutrallity? --IlluSionS667 19:11, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Rehashed POV baloney. None of those are neutral sources. NPOV does not require that false views be given equal time with true views. Now go away. --FCYTravis 18:56, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Then what makes a source neutral? Is a source only neutral when it is n compiance with the official story? Each of the books provided is neutral, in the way that they use objective historical methods to come to their conclusions, and in the way that they do not promote any opinion whatsoever. This is NOT the case for this article. --IlluSionS667 19:11, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There is already a section noting that some people do not believe the Holocaust happened, and linking to the article on that belief - Holocaust denial. That is all the space such a belief merits on this page, which is about a widely accepted historical fact. --FCYTravis 19:13, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Being widely accepted, does not make it a fact. It used to be widely accepted that the earth was flat. It used to be widely accepted that black people were an inferior, more primitive kind of man. It used to be widely accepted that there was something called an "ether". All of these things have been disproven be science. Why not allow these so-called facts about the so-called 'holocaust' to be objectively researched and discussed? Why still claim that something is fact, when there is an abundance of evidence that disproves those so-called facts? --IlluSionS667 19:20, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Because the so-called evidence is bullshit, it's repeatedly been demonstrated to be bullshit, and it's a waste of time and finger movements for sane, intelligent, well-intentioned people to debate with dedicated deniers. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 19:26, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
What makes it BS? The evidence is solid and has NEVER been disproven whatsoever. Your claim that is it "a waste of time" to discuss with revisionists, merely shows how little evidence you guys really have. Revisionists don't shun debate, because they are backed up by evidence, which is something those defending the official story are not. --IlluSionS667 19:29, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've talked with an American soldier who liberated a Nazi concentration camp. That was evidence enough for me. You can deny everything you want, but you can't deny the memories of those who were there. Pity that as their generation passes into history, it will become easier for your ilk to pretend the greatest mass murder of all time never happened. --FCYTravis 19:32, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
What did the American soldier see, that can not be explained by revisionist history? I'm not the denier here. You're the one denying all the available evidence, by clinging on to old war-propaganda and the testimonies of the few Elie 'Weasel's and the Primo Levi's out there, who use their lies either to make profit, for revenge or to promore an agenda, while the majority of testomonies is perfectly in line with revisionist history. That's true denial ! ! --IlluSionS667 19:35, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, I'm not going to bother about this anymore. I don't care for being part of a community as hypocritical as this one, that claims to be objective by all means, but that fails to show any objectivity whatsoever on certain issues. I would have loved to input my knowledge on many other subjects to the advancement of WIKIPEDIA and the general knowledge of its visitors, but with this climate I rather go elswhere. You guys just keep playing in your little sandbox.

One shudders to think of our narrow escape. 100 white supremacist/antisemitic edits in 8 hours..... Gzuckier 22:54, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Are you calling my edits white supremacist/antisemitic? That's funny.

All I have to add, are the following quotes from famous people who do know what they're talking about, unlike you guys :

  • "In general it should not be forgotten that the highest aim of human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a government, but the preservation of the species. ---- The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and spiritually similar beings. This preservation comprises first of all existence as a race, and thereby permits free development of all the forces dormant in this race. ---- For in the long run systems of government are not maintained by the pressure of force, but by faith in their soundness and in the truthfulness with which they represent and advance the interests of a people." (Adolf Hitler, leader and imperial chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945.)

....... IlluSionS667 out .......

Good riddance. john k 22:41, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Neutrality

I disagree with a line about Jews "popularizing" it to further their cause. I have attached a POV boilerplate text to the article.

Looking at the context, I think the term was used by someone whose first language is not English in the sense of "make well known". I've corrected the text. In future, rather than slap on a POV message, why not just edit the article to deal with the item you are objecting to? NPOV warnings should not be the first resort. AndyL 02:17, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

References on Ernst Rohm's sexuality provided at [[Talk:Ernst_R%F6hm]]. DJ Clayworth 17:40, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Homosexality section

As a matter of comparison, I added in the Gay men section the phrase that onanism was also considered harmful to the Reich. In fact, I rememebre reading about an episode from SS/SD internal quarrels that one official was filmed while he was onanized, withe the goal of discrediting, but it missed the target: the verdict was to find him a wife, a Party member in good standing. Does anyone remember this? mikka (t) 16:47, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No offence is intended, but can I suggest that a vague memory of something you read isn't a verifiable source? We should leave this out until someone can confirm it. DJ Clayworth 17:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A vague memory is about the particular incident. But I do not really insist here; it is but a tangential support of trhe topic of the section. mikka (t) 03:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An editor added "allegedly" before gay throughout the section. A second editor removed all these. I edited it to have one statement of "Germans who were or were believed to be gay" because certainly some men persecuted as gay were not in fact homosexual. That said, I have two objections to the original edit: first it makes too much of the fact that there may have been some misidentifications (indeed there were probably misidentificaitons of Jews and others) and second, the word alleged is inherently pejorative. No literate English speaker says "allegedly Jewish" or "allegedly brilliant" -- the conotation is that you are accusing someone of wrong doing. Jliberty July 1, 2005 02:05 (UTC)

  • I kinda disagree that it's pejorative. All it means is "believed or stated to be XX, but not proven to be so". So, for example, if the Nazis killed a bunch of folk on the pretext that they were gay, but some weren't, it's accurate to say that the Nazis killed a bunch of alleged homosexuals, since it was the Nazis making the allegations -- and to the nazis, indeed, being gay was doing something wrong. It can be used as a sneer, certainly; but I think it's correct in this context. Once, anyway. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 1 July 2005 03:44 (UTC)

One use of "alleged" is fine; 10 or so in a couple of paragraphs is terrible style. Jayjg (talk) 1 July 2005 06:34 (UTC)

Principal target

Latest comment: 20 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

AndyL claims, "Ideologically, the Jews were the principal targets of the Nazis even if they were not the most numerous victims." This is questionable. Communists were a major and long-term target of Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler was introduced to the Nazi party when he agreed to infilitrate the party for German army intelligence and communists were a major enemy in Mein Kampf. Hitler's first major act of repression after seizing power was directed at communists. Of course, in Hitler's mind there was no neat line between Jews and communists.

Also, there were Romany or "Gypsy losses by 1945, proportionately at least matching, and almost certainly exceeding, that of Jewish victims." See Jewish Response to the Porrajmos (The Romani Holocaust). So, how do you rightly decide who the "principal targets" were and how do you do so without diminishing the suffering of others?

The phrase "The Jews of Europe constituted the largest single group of victims of the Holocaust" is factually correct. It better reflects a NPOV and more accurately reflects the reality that the Nazis killed anyone viewed as a threat to ideological or 'racial' purity and nearly as many or more non-Jews than Jews were killed. --Whiterose 05:23, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Hitler almost always referred to Communists as "Judeo-Bolsheviks" so there indeed was a "neat line between Jews and Communists" in Hitler's brain. I am unaware of any serious historian of the Holocaust who would not assert that the Jews were Hitler's principal target. AndyL 04:42, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Do you have any evidence that Hitler "almost always referred to Communists as Judeo-Bolsheviks"? For instance, Volume Two, Chapter VII of Mein Kampf, "The Struggle with the Red Front" contains at least 18 references to Marxism. It contains exactly two references to Jews; one is a reference to "the Jewish Press" and the other is to alleged Jewish conspirators in the events of 1848. Neither explicitly articulates a link between Jews and Marxism. In any event, I have already acknowledged that Hitler often lumped Jews and communists together but my point is that he was also able to and did distinguish between the two groups. FWIW, being a non-Jewish communist was no pass on persecution.
You are "unaware of any serious historian of the Holocaust who would not assert that the Jews were Hitler's principal target." I haven't really researched this but I'll give you two examples. How about Arno J. Mayer of Princeton University, a Holocaust survivor and author of Why Did the Heavens Darken? I haven't read Mayer's book but I trust that Yehuda Bauer got it essentially correct when he disparagingly characterizes Mayer's premise as "the Nazis saw in Marxism and bolshevism their main enemy, and the Jews unfortunately got caught up in this." Norman Finkelstein may not be popular but he is a serious Holocaust scholar at a respected university and he contends in A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth that "Not the Jews but Marxism and Social Democracy served as the prime scapegoats of Nazi propaganda."--Whiterose 06:40, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Whatever Hitler's persecution of communists may have been, it is not generally considered to have been part of "the Holocaust." john k 04:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Fine, but perhaps it should be and the fact that it isn't is probably more a reflection of post-WWII anti-communism than anything else. I would also mention that the Wikipedia article on the Holocaust points out that the Nazis killed "1–1.5 million political dissidents." In any event, my point was not to claim that communists (or any other group) were the "principal targets" of the Nazis; rather, I wanted to point out the problems with claiming that "the Jews were the principal targets."--Whiterose 06:40, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Fine, but perhaps it should be" - it's not our role to change things, that would be original research.

Agreed, and I have not advocated that we should change the characterization of communists in the Holocaust. I am advocating that we adopt more neutral, accurate, and inclusive language regarding the "principals targets" of the Nazis. Communists and the Roma can also be accurately identified as "principal targets" of the Nazis. To implicitly or explicitly characterize Jews as the sole main or principal targets of the Nazis is ahistorical and marginalizes the suffering of other groups. My proposed edit is: "The Jews of Europe constituted the largest single group of victims of the Holocaust." This is factually correct and does not suffer from the problems of the current language.--Whiterose 21:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In any case, you've completely ignored Hitler's well documented views that Communism was a Jewish ideology ("Judeo-Bolshevism"?). AndyL 12:15, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You are quite mistaken, in my first remarks on this thread I noted, "Of course, in Hitler's mind there was no neat line between Jews and communists." Meaning that Hitler often, but not always, conflated the two groups.--Whiterose 21:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
My mistake, I misunderstood your comment as meaning he saw no connection between the two when you meant to imply he saw no distinction. Anyway, since we agree on that point, I think you should see that it would follow that Hitler's anti-Communism was, for him, indistinguishable from his anti-Semitism. AndyL 22:32, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm hesitant to accept Whiterose's evidence from such a controversial figure as Finkelstein. Nevertheless, I support his campaign to ensure that we are factually accurate if we assert that there was a principal target in the Holocaust, considering how many groups were targeted. Perhaps if he can produce more evidence that Marxism was a target, we should consider using a more appropriate wording. Acegikmo1 23:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Norman Finkelstein is a legitimate scholar and his work should be evaluated on its scholarly merits and not on whether he hews to the "politically correct" version of events or not. In any event, Arno Mayer is a less controversial historian and, as I read Yehuda Bauer, Mayer's main premise is that Hitler's principal target was communism. However, I am not advocating that we adopt Mayer's premise, I am advocating that we adopt the neutral and factually correct statement that, "The Jews of Europe constituted the largest single group of victims of the Holocaust."--Whiterose 21:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Finklestein is controversial but he is also a legitimate academic. He's also not some obsure professor who has escaped notice outside of the lunatic fringe. Given the amount of reaction and debate his book on the "Holocaust industry" has generated it's quite legitimate for the article to reference Finklestein though it is also legitimate to refer to his views as controversial and include a referenced counterargument. I'm not a particular fan of the Goldhagen thesis but I wouldn't for a moment suggest that because Goldhagen is controversial and his views contested we shouldn't mention him. (Personally, I think Finklestein is off base on the Holocaust but he is not "beyond the Pale" and certainly not a Holocaust revisionist ie his arguments do not touch on the veracity of the Holocaust, but on its alleged exploitation after the fact. On Whitehorse's other point, since you yourself accept that Hitler blurred the lines between Jews and Communism I don't see why you can't accept that Jews and "Jewish influence" were the principal target of the Nazis and that his anti-Communism was an extension of that. I think there is a consensus on that in the academic community. Mayer's premise simply gives it a different nuance but it certainly doesn't contradict the evidence of the centrality of the Jews in Hitler's world view as Hitler saw Judaism and Communism as indistinguishable from each other. AndyL 22:41, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Do you have any evidence that Hitler "almost always referred to Communists as Judeo-Bolsheviks"?" He also used the term "Jewish Communism". I might not be literally correct implying he always used the term "Judeo-Bolshevism" instead of Communism but Kershaw amongst others make it quite clear he and the Nazis saw Communism as a creation of the Jews and under their control and used terms like "Judeo Bolshevism" as synonyms for Communism. See, for example, Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A dialogue between Adolf Hitler and me which was a Nazi-era pamphelt


Surely the "principal target" is a matter of perception. It is unlikely that Hitler (if the Holocaust is to be be blamed entirely on him) designated a principal target but instead just imprisoned and killed all groups that he did not like. It would appear that an article straining towards a NPOV should not include an issue which is totally subjective. And this is not even mentioning that the horror of one death is not worse or more significant than another death of a group that are not "the principal target." Enough groups died in the Holocaust that it is unneccessary to try and highlight one particular group - especially when one group recieves a far far greater recognition already.

Slizor 16:28, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

"Unlikely Hitler designated a principal target"? Are you familiar with the contents of Mein Kampf, or his speeches, or his party platform? Only a profound ignorance of Hitler, the Nazi party, and the Holocaust would excuse suggesting that there wasn't a "principal target". Jayjg (talk) 18:38, 14 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Okay then. Provide a airtight fucking argument for who the principal target was, you arrogant bastard. Clearly with your massive amount of knowledge of "Hitler, the Nazi party and the Holocaust" you can enlighten us poor fools who have been unable to find decisive proof and are yet to resolve the historical disputes about Hitler's positions, the position of the Nazi Party and the nature and causes of the Holocaust. Slizor 23:01, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Sigh. Well, your inability to find decisive proof does not constitute even indecisive evidence about the absence of said proof. In no particular order (sorry):
In his diary Goebbels recorded a meeting with Hitler on 21 November 1941 in terms which included the following:
"The Fuhrer also completely agrees with my views with reference to the Jewish question. He wants an energetic policy against the Jews, which, however, does not cause us unnecessary difficulties".
In a speech made by Hitler to the Gauleiter on 12 December 1941, according to Goebbels’s diary (in Longerich’s translation):
"As concerns the Jewish question, the Fuhrer is determined to make a clean sweep. He had prophesied to the Jews that if they once again brought about a world war they would experience their own extermination (vernichtung). This was not just an empty phrase. The World War is there, the extermination of Jewry (Judentum) must be the necessary consequence. This question must be seen without sentimentality. We are not here in order to have sympathy with the Jews, rather we sympathise with our own German people."
In the account of General Governor Hans Frank who was in Berlin when Hitler spoke to the Gauleiter:
“But what is to happen to the Jews? Do you believe that they will be lodged in the settlements in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: why all this trouble, we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you: arm yourselves against any thoughts of compassion. We must destroy the Jews, wherever we encounter them and wherever it is possible, in order to preserve the entire structure of the Reich … we cannot shoot these 3.5 million Jews. We can’t poison them. But we will, nonetheless, take some kind of action that will lead to a successful destruction, and indeed in conjunction with the important measures to be discussed in the Reich. The General Government must become just as free of Jews as the Reich is. Where and how that happens is a matter for the institutions which we must put into action and create here and the effectiveness I will report on to you in good time”.
As Frank had told his audience it would be, a meeting was convened in Berlin and took place in Berlin on 20 January 1942 under the chairmanship of Heydrich, known as the Wannsee conference. The invitations to the conference were accompanied by an authorisation, signed by Goering, to prepare a European-wide Final Solution to the Jewish problem. State Secretaries, ranking just below Cabinet ministers, attended, as did amongst others Muller, Hofmann and Eichmann. According to the Defendants, it marks an important milestone in the evolution of the policy of extermination. Shortly after Wannsee the construction of the death camps at Sobibor and Treblinka started and gas chambers were built at Auschwitz.
A manuscript note made by Himmler of a conversation he had with Hitler on 16 December 1941: “Jewish question / to be extirpated (auszurotten) as partisans”. It is consistent with the way in which the killing of 363,211 Jews was treated in report by the Einsatzgruppen of 26 December 1942: in that report the number of Jews killed was included as a separate category under the heading of partisan accomplices. This report is endorsed in manuscript “laid before [vorgelegt] Hitler”.
Statements repeatedly made by Hitler from 1941 onwards that the Jews must be eliminated and that they were a “bacillus” which needed to be eliminated. Examples are to be found in the entries made by Goebbels in his diary on 15 February and 20 March 1942 and in Hitler’s Table Talk on 22 February 1942.
In January 1942 Hitler again confirmed in his New Year’s address that it would be the Jews who would be ausgerottet (exterminated). He spoke in similar terms at the Reichstag on 30 January 1942 and thereafter on 14, 22 and 24 February 1942.
Several references made by Hitler in January and February 1942 to the extermination (ausrottung) of Jews, for example in his Table Talk on 25 January 1942. Hitler is there recorded as having said on that occasion:
“The Jew has to get out of Europe … If he collapses in the course of it, I can’t help there. I can see only one thing: absolute extermination, if they don’t go of their own accord ..”.
Goebbels’s diary entry for 20 March records that on the previous day Hitler had displayed a merciless attitude towards the Jews and had stated that the Jews must be got out of Europe, if necessary by the most brutal means.
On 28 July 1942 Ganzenmuller, a senior official in the Ministry of Transport, reported to Wolff, an SS officer close to Hitler, that trains were regularly transporting Jews in large numbers to both Treblinka and Belzec. On 13 August Wolff, writing from Hitler’s headquarters, wrote to Ganzenmuller expressing his joy at the assurance that for the next two weeks there would be a daily train carrying 5,000 of the “chosen people” to Treblinka.
In a letter written in 1977 to a journalist named Gita Sereny by Christa Schroeder, formerly personal secretary to Hitler, Frau Schroeder wrote: “As far as the Judenfrage, I consider it improbably that Hitler knew nothing. He had frequent conversations with Himmler which took place tete-a-tete”.
Hitler’s statements in the Table Talk for 22 February 1942: “We will get well when we eliminate the Jew”
A similar remark by Hitler to NSDAP party members on 24 February 1942 when Hitler again talked of extermination and removing parasites.
The "Kinna report" dated 16 December 1942, written by an SS corporal from Zamosk in Poland about the transport of Poles to Auschwitz, states “in contrast to the measures applied to the Jews, the Poles must die a natural death”.
On 24 and 27 July 1942 Himmler lunched with Hitler. Three days later Himmler wrote to Berger, a senior officer at the SS Headquarters, that the occupied Eastern territories were to be free of Jews by the end of the year. Himmler added that the “carrying out of this very hard order had been placed on his shoulders by the Fuhrer”.
On 1 May 1942 Greiser wrote to Himmler, following a meeting with Globocnik in May 1942, that “the special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) of around 100,000 Jews in his district, which had been authorised by Himmler in agreement with Heydrich, could be completed in the next 2-3 months.
Goebbel's diary for March 27 1942:
" A pretty barbaric procedure is being applied here, and it is not to be described in any more detail, and not much is left of the Jews themselves. In general one may conclude that 60% of them must be liquidated, while only 40% can be put to work. The former Gauleiter of Vienna [Globocnik], who is carrying out this action, is doing it pretty prudently and with a procedure that doesn’t work too conspicuously. The Jews are being punished barbarically, to be sure, but they have fully deserved it. The prophesy that the Fuhrer issued to them on the way, for the eventuality that they started a new world war, is beginning to realise itself in the most terrible manner. One must not allow any sentimentalities to rule in these matters. If we did not defend ourselves against them, the Jews would annihilate us. It is a struggle for life and death between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime could muster the strength for a general solution of the question. Here too the Fuhrer is the persistent pioneer and spokesman of a radical solution, which is demanded by the way things are and thus appears to be unavoidable."
Goebbel's diary for 20 March 1942
“We speak in conclusion about the Jewish question. Here the Fuhrer remains now as before unrelenting. The Jews must get out of Europe, if necessary, with the application of the most brutal means”.
In Himmler’s note for his meeting with Hitler on 10 December 1942 one of the points he lists is “Jews in France 600-700,000”. Alongside those words there appears a tick. Himmler has also added in manuscript the word “abschaffen”. Longerich translated this as “to liquidate”.
On 12/13 April 1943, Hitler met the military dictator of Romania, Antonescu in order to discuss Romania’s position in the war. In the course of their discussion the question of the Jews in Romania was raised. The minutes record him as having said:
“Therefore, in contrast to Marshal Antonescu, the Fuhrer took the view that one must proceed against the Jews, the more radically the better. He … would rather burn all his bridges behind him because the Jewish hatred is so enormously great anyway. In Germany, as a consequence of the clearing up of the Jewish question, one had a united people without opposition at one’s disposal … however, once the way had been embarked on, there was no turning back”.
A meeting was arranged between Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Admiral Horthy, in charge of the Hungarian government (who had already deported thousands of Jews to Germany where they were killed, but were stalling on the remainder) on 16 and 17 April 1943. Minutes of the meeting on 17 April were taken by Dr Paul-Otto Schmidt. They record Ribbentrop saying in the presence of Hitler:
“On Horthy’s retort, what should he do with the Jews then, after he had taken pretty well all means of living from them – he surely couldn’t beat them to death – the Reich Foreign Minister replied that the Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There was no other way”.
and Hitler's saying
“If the Jews [in Poland] didn’t want to work, they were shot. If they couldn’t work, they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body can be infected. That was not cruel; if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us bolshevism? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished”.
On 6 October 1943 the SS chief in Rome received an order to transfer 12,000 Roman Jews to northern Italy (despite strong opposition in Rome) where they would be liquidated. Hitler directed via Ribbentrop that the Roman Jews were to be left in the hands of the SS, i.e. Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler. They were taken to Auschwitz and killed.
On 6 October 1943 Himmler spoke to a gathering of Reichsleiter and Gauleiter. He said:
“I do ask you to keep secret, to listen to what I am saying and never to speak about it, what I am saying in these circles. We came up against the question, what about the women and children, and I took the decision here too for a clear solution. I did not consider myself justified in liquidating just the men to leave alive the children to act as the avengers against our sons and grandchildren. There had to be taken the grave decision to have this people disappear from the face of the earth”.
On 5 May 1944, Himmler spoke to the generals of the Wehrmacht. According to the transcript of his speech he said:
“The Jewish question has been solved within Germany itself and in general within the countries occupied by Germany. It was solved in an uncompromising fashion in accordance with the life and death struggle of our nation in which the existence of our blood is at stake. You can understand how difficult it was for me to carry out this soldierly order (soldatische Befehl) and which I carried out from obedience and from a sense of complete conviction”.
On 24 May 1944 Himmler spoke to the generals again, saying:
“Another question which was decisive for the inner security of the Reich in Europe was the Jewish question. It was uncompromisingly solved after orders and rational recognition. I believe gentlemen that you know me well enough to know that I am not a bloodthirsty person. I am not a man who takes pleasure or joy when something rough must be done. However, on the other hand I have such good nerves and such a developed sense of duty I could say that much for myself. When I recognise something as necessary, I can implement it without compromise. I have not considered myself entitled, this concerns especially the Jewish women and children, to allow the children to grow into the avengers who will murder our fathers and grandchildren. That would have been cowardly. Consequently, the question was uncompromisingly resolved”.
Hitler addressed senior officers of the Wehrmacht on 26 May 1944 in the following terms:
“By removing the Jew, I abolished in Germany the possibility to build up a revolutionary core or nucleus. One could naturally say to me: Yes, couldn’t you have solved this more simply – or not simply since all other mans would have been more complicated – but more humanely? My dear officers, we are engaged in a life or death struggle. If our opponents win in this struggle, then the German people would be extirpated”.
Notes made by Ribbentrop when incarcerated in the prison at Nuremberg:
“...judging from [Hitler’s] Last Will, one must suppose that he at least knew about it, if, in his fanaticism against the Jews, he didn’t also order [it]”.
The prison psychologist at Nuremberg, Dr Gilbert, reports Ribbentrop conceding that Hitler ordered the extermination of the Jews in 1941.
In correspondence in 1919 Hitler outlined the differences between what he called emotional and rational forms of anti-semitism. The latter form ultimately led Hitler to call for the removal of the Jews altogether. By 1920 he was already using terms such as extirpation, annihilation and extermination in relation to the Jews. He referred to the Jews as a plague, an epidemic, germ carriers, a harmful bacillus, a cancer and as maggots. In his writings and speeches Hitler blamed the situation of Germany at the end of the First World War on an international Jewish conspiracy. His basic wish throughout had been by one means or another to remove the Jews from German soil. As is evident from the Goebbels diaries, Hitler and Goebbels devoted much time to the prosecution of anti-semitic policy.
In Mein Kampf, published in 1926, Hitler developed his anti-semitism by placing his desire to remove the Jews in the context of a wider theory of the struggle between races for living space. In Hitler’s view the Jews, lacking a state of their own, were parasites trying to destroy those states which had been established by superior races. This idea was developed in his ‘Second Book’ which was written in 1927 although not published in his lifetime. In his speeches in the late 1920’s Hitler stated that Jews were not able to work productively because they lacked a proper relationship with the soil. As a consequence they were parasites and spongers. This did not prevent Hitler from claiming that the Jews had achieved economic dominance and the ability to control and manipulate the media to their own advantage. He spoke of the need to eliminate the economic ascendancy of the Jews, if necessary by means of their physical removal. Longerich asserts that anti-semitism was an integral part of Hitler’s Weltanshauung.
From 1935 onwards Hitler’s attitude towards the Jews was reflected in the anti-semitic policies pursued by the Nazi government. Longerich cites Hitler’s role in organising the boycott of Jewish businesses on 1st April 1933 and the enactment between 1935 and 1937 of various discriminatory laws. Jews were excluded from holding public office and the practice of law. Quotas for Jewish pupils and students were brought in.
Hitler’s anti-semitism is evident in his public statements in the 1930s. In his speech to the Reich Party Congress in 1937 Hitler talked of Jewish-Bolshevist subversion. The pogrom of 9th November 1938, Reichskristallnacht, marks the first occasion when Jews and their property were subjected to serious and widespread violence and destruction. Hitler addressed the Reichstag on 30th January 1939 on the topic of the Jewish question. He said:
“During my struggle for power it was mostly the Jewish people who laughed at my prophecies that I would some day assume the leadership of the state and thereby of the entire Volk and them, among many other things, achieve a solution of the Jewish problem. I believe that in the meantime the then resounding laughter of Jewry in Germany is now choking in their throats. Today I will be a prophet again; if international Jewry within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a world war, then the consequence will be not the Bolshevisation of the world and therewith a victory of Jewry, but on the contrary, the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”.
In a footnote to a report by the leader of an Einsatzkommando, Jager, dated 2 August 1941 (Jager had advocated the ghettoisation of the Jews in the Ostland) his superior, Stahlecker, informed him of the receipt of “general orders from above which cannot be discussed in writing”. Thereafter Jager’s Kommando shot all Jews, including women and children. Jager later reported 134,000 people killed by Einsatzkommando 3 in Lithuania in the period to December 1941, including only 2,042 nonJews (1.5%). Stahlecker, reporting on 15 October 1941, admitted that it had been realised from the start that ghettos would not solve the Jewish problem and that “basic orders” had therefore called for the most complete means possible of the Jews. 33,000 Jews in Kiev were killed on 29-30 September 1941. Not only were the Jewish inhabitants of the ghettos in large cities exterminated, smaller towns and rural areas were also rendered Judenfrei (free of Jews). On 1 August 1941 Muller, the head of the Gestapo within Heydrich’s Security Police, had ordered the Einsatzgruppen “The Fuhrer is to be kept informed continually from here about the work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East” Copies of the reports went to the Reich Chancellery and to Bormann. Report no. 51 dated 26 December 1942 on the campaign against partisans in the Ukraine, Southern Russia and Bialystok, was retyped three days later with the heading “Reports to the Fuhrer on combating partisans submitted 31.12.42” in larger type (Hitler's eyesight was failing at this time). It reports the numbers killed over the preceding four months, including the number of Jews executed in the Ukraine and Bialystok as 363,211; even Jewish labourers who might have made a contribution to the Nazi war effort were not spared.
On 1 August 1941 an “explicit order” was issued to SS units who were preparing to sweep the Pripet marshes by Himmler: “All Jews must be shot. Drive the female Jews into the swamp”.
In the spring of 1941, whilst preparations were under way for Barbarossa (the invasion of Russia), Hitler made clear his view that a war of destruction was about to start and called for the destruction of the Judaeo-Bolshevik intelligentsia. Instructions given by Hitler to General Jodl, Chief of the Army Leadership Staff, on 3 March 1941:
"The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, the hitherto oppressor of the people must be eliminated (beseitigt)”
On 25 October 1941, according to his table talk Hitler said:
“This criminal race [the Jews] has the two million dead from the World War on its conscience, now again hundreds of thousands. Noone can say to me: we cannot send them in the morass! Who then cares about our people? It is good if the terror (Schrecken) we are exterminating Jewry goes before us”.
An entry in Himmler’s appointment book for 18 December 1941 recorded that one of the proposed topics for discussion between himself and Hitler at their forthcoming meeting was the Judenfrage (the Jewish question). Against that entry, Himmler has noted “als Partisanane auszurotten” (all to be annihilated as if partisans).
An entry in Goebbels’s diary for 24 August 1938:
“We discuss the Jewish question. The Fuhrer approves my procedures in Berlin. What the foreign press writes is insignificant. The main thing is that the Jews be pushed out. In 10 years they must be removed from Germany. But in the interim we still want to keep the Jews here as pawns”.
On 18 September Himmler wrote to the Gauleiter in Warthegau, Greiser, informing him:
“The Fuhrer wishes that the Old Reich and the Protectorate be emptied and freed of Jews from west to east as quickly as possible. I am therefore striving to transport the Jews of the Altreich and the Protektorat in the Eastern territories that became part of the Reich two years ago. It is desirable that this be accomplished by the end of this year, as a first and initial step in deporting them even further to the East next spring. I intend to remove a full 60,000 Jews of the Altreich and the Protektorat to the Litzmannstadt ghetto for the winter. This has, I have heard, the space to accommodate them”.
Deportations, which were initially to ghettoes in Lodz, Rikga and Misk, began in early to mid-October 1941. Six trainloads of Jews were summarily executed on their arrival at Kovno and in Riga.
On 25 October 1941 Wetzel of the Ostministerium in Berlin met, firstly, Brack, a senior official of the Reich Chancellery who had been involved in the euthanasia programme, and later Eichmann. Wetzel drafted a letter to Rosenberg (Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories) and Lohse (Reichskomissar for the Ostland) that Brack was prepared to help set up gassing apparatuses in Riga and that there were no objections if Jews who were not fit for work were “removed” by these apparatuses. From about that date Hitler made repeated references to the extermination of the Jews and to doing away with them. On 16 November 1941 Rosenberg met Hitler and Himmler, who the next day (according to his Dienstkalendar) told Heydrich by telephone that he had discussed the Beseitigung (doing away with) of the Jews. Two days later Rosenberg gave a confidential briefing to the press in which he spoke of the biological eradication of the whole of Jewry in Europe. From this date onwards, Hitler’s pronouncements on the Jewish question, become more frequent and increasingly blunt.
Well, there's a lot more, but I don't want to monopolize the space here. Gzuckier 07:34, 15 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
Offensive comments do not belong anywhere in WP, but in this article they are doubly inappropriate. If some users are unable to restrain themselves to civilized discussion, please at least find another place. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 00:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

I was unaware that I was questioning, nor indeed looking for proof of, Hitler's anti-semitism. Did Hitler not also want the extermination of all Communists, or all gypsies or all Homosexuals? So what if he focused more on the issue of the jews then on the communists or homosexuals - jews were a bigger group. Also when considering if there was even a "principal target" we must at least acknowledge the Functionalism versus intentionalism debate. And just because you have provided so much evidence to support you case I just thought I'd bring out a tiny scrap of evidence.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me-- and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Slizor 14:37, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Well then, shouldn't you be posting "a [sic] airtight fucking argument for who the principal target was, you arrogant bastard", such as at least one quote from Hitler stating that all Gypsies/Rroma must be eradicated for the survival of the German people, or some indication that Hitler received frequent reports detailing the number of deaths of homosexuals? Gzuckier 17:48, 15 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Not at all. My point remains that it is a matter of opinion. Do you take into account the wealth of evidence with regards to his hatred of jews and disregard the fact that they would be seen as a bigger problem because of their size, or do you consider his declaring war on the USSR when there was no need at all (and the fact "first they came for the communists") or do you look at the evidence (provided earlier in this topic) about the nazi treatment of Gypsies, etc, etc.

It is not my intention to suggest a different principal target and never has been. I am saying that there are sufficient grounds for considering this a matter of opinion and therefore not in line with Wikipedia. Slizor 13:33, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but given that Hitler was already writing at the end of World War I about the need to eradicate Jews, and kept reiterating that thought publicly to the point of requiring periodic reports on how many Jews were being killed during 1942, it's not really a matter of opinion to require that consideration of other groups as equally primary targets be backed up with at least some evidence of similar obsession on Hitler's part. I'm not being dogmatic about this, if there is such evidence (and there may well be) I will be more than happy to stuff it into my Big Bag O' Holocaust Facts. Gzuckier 00:05, 18 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Cruel Medical Experiments

Under the section on Mengele's experiments, it only lists trying to change eye color as an example. I know for a fact there were much more horrific instances. Can someone find a source that details some of these? Superm401 | Talk July 3, 2005 15:30 (UTC)

Dubious (POV) Brewing

Latest comment: 20 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion

Under section "Jews" the reversion is wrong , the previous to my edit was wrong , the present 'electoral' success is wrong . Someone else could easily prevent this article from needing a POV notice .

The words electoral success- what do they mean -that the Nazis gained a mandate electorally ? This is what they suggest . The Nazi vote in the 5 march 1933 Reichstag election was 43.9 % - up from 33.1 % on 6 November 1932 which had itself been a fall from their 31 July 1932 of 37.4 % .

It is well known that the Rhenish-Westphalian Industrial Magnates bailed the Nazis out prior to this 5 March electoral success' and that their electoral success was even then not enough to bring them the power they sought . They existed with the support of the discredited Nationalists' 8 % so their majority as a party was no-existent . The period from 5 March brought them the opportunity to build upon this capitalist-corporate collaboration by removing the Communists entirely from the equation ( 11.7) by proscription , and with the connivance of the church ( Pope Pius XII and Monsignor Ludwig Kaas , adding to themselves the Catholic Centre Party's and Bavarian People's Party's 14.4 % votes.

Here we are talking seats in the Reichstag following the provacateur , supposedly Communist , but in fact Nazi , burning of the Reichstag building. What is absolutely true is that Hitler chose specifically to achieve power by legal parliamentary means , so the use of the words here electoral success are similar in substance to that actual historic aim  : that it be thought , even now, that this was all legal . The Nuremberg trials decided that they couldn't try the magnate bosses nor individuals such as Franz von Papen , and it was impossible for them to interview Ludwig Kaas , even if the church's connivance with Hitler towards this supposed and minority electoral success had been analysed  : Kaas "escaped" into the Vatican within days of operating as the effective papal tool never to re-emerge . The historical fact and recognition of the fact that the catholic political party assented to what really happened is disputed here on WP right now, and mediation is sought , because of the continuing insidious nature of the mis-representation . The catholic Centre Paty provided the crucial extra , non-Nazi bloc vote which allowed for a parliamentary institution of Hitler's Party under a two-thirds rule upon the already Communist diminuished Reichstag seats .

Electoral success could more accurately be called quid pro quo with interests . It should have been left as I wrote it, fairly and briefly . However now an analysis of the change may become required . I therefore have to alert the reader unaware of the disputes and the mediation , to visit all pages pertaining to myself and my editing and particularly discussions in this matter. These are wide as they touch upon the rules to do with the church or its servants (Kaas was a churchman Leader or Chairman of the centre bloc, and mysteriously cast the bloc's vote such that historians notice and more or less, analyse the mystery ). Start with Pope Pius XII for the historical accusation , Centre Party Germany ( discussion re: mediation called) , Ludwig Kaas ( discussion re: mediation) , Hitler's Pope (mediation /dispute) , Pope's Hitler (which is under 'request for deletion , and needs your vote otherwise deletion with 3 days remaining ) .

The questions arising from small edits such as this here , two words , are large . The good faith ruling the WP is severely tested, and my own ability or otherwise to sustain this is clearly stressed . I will say that to me the use of electoral success - because the only possible reason for its use can be to erroneously legitimize the otherwise extremly suspect , and , since the editor using these words is highly informed - say it does not suggest a will to legitimise Hitler electorally . I see no logic in so doing -though I may be wrong . I see the necessity to remove reference to what really happened . This is the inescapable logic of reason , running against WP civil code . If something is inescusably excluded contrary to sources etc., there has to be a further logic.

I edit at length elsewhere , before this rv I was hoping to stay clear , yet here I tried to insert with purest precision. You will see that neither length nor brevity are allowed , but subject to rv. I could refer you to archives under Pope Benedict XVI for the moral-legal crossover discussion, to his Theology of Pope Benedict XVI for more , to the AIDS discussion where there is modern cross-over . Even though there is some urgency to preserve the space required under the accurately (googling) described special source page for these collaborations between the church and Hitler under Pope's Hitler , and your votes are needed - I will wait until it is removed , and simply re-insert now my earlier dubious signal .If this is removed , I will have to call POV tag here on the Holocaust article itself or the section ,if possible .Famekeeper 13:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

I agree, Famekeeper. I just reverted because of the tag, and El C kindly put it back. When you've had some more response here, could you suggest a NPOV-sensitive phrasing for the sentence in question? JFW | T@lk 14:08, 25 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Ancillary to this is the suggestion under relevant page for deletion Catholic Holocaust Conspiracy to move here . I would never have dreamt of this , out of respect etc, and I leave it all to brew a bit . A parallel to my (candidate for deletion) Pope's Hitler suggested by PatGallacher is that the sourced references to papal collaboration in 1932 and 1933 be placed under Holocaust . I agree , and will write it and provide at least the source for the suspicions , and the standard historical sources showing historical remark of the catholic (papal) involvement . The complete absence of reference to papal anti-semitism and christian antisemitism on the page is noticeable , but I accept that it reflects the majority perception . However , along with Haffner's thesis , the papal involvement is relevant given the out-come and the historical comment . I believe the ___location could be Hitler's Pope , but without the limitations being forced on it presently (that it should relate to Cornwell's analysis alone ) . And , JFW , I thought it was Str1977 who rv 'd my correction - from the "history" , Famekeeper 20:38, 25 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Str1977 should now simply replace that which he reverted . The text would be NPOV and accurate with a return to : On April 1, 1933, the recently un-elected but two-thirds majority-instituted dictatorship of the Nazis, organized , under Julius Streicher , a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany. . I will accept that , otherwise I consider it a POV violation . I couldn't have been shorter , and it cannot be more accurate . The present edit must revert to that which is a true explanation . You do not dispute this , Str1977 , so to save two words for the sake of the true explanation of the facts is wrong . It is so wrong , as to support POV call . Accession is , I believe , generally used about people who ascend , as well as referring to things to which someone has acceeded . And Hitler did not accede -though he wished it to look like he was the saviour , he engineered it . People get sick of our analyses, but at this rate we will have to return to the catholic pages for another long round of explanation , and there's lots to explain . "Please" revert to mine as above which explains the accession .Famekeeper 00:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

FK, I won't revert to your version because
a) it is very circumstantial
b) it is not actually relevant to this passage. IMHO all that the original version wanted to give was a time frame, about when the boycott (which BTW was no success) took place, namely after Hitler was in power.
Hitler's accession to power and Germany's way into a dictatorshop is a process starting with his appointment (30 January) and ending only with him succeeding to Hindenburg as head of state. We can not include every stage of development (appointment - Reichstag Fire decree - electoral success (yes, it Hitler won the elections, though not the absolute majority) - Enabling Act - Dissolution of parties and unions) up to the boycott.
c) "un-elected" is clearly wrong: Hitler's coalition government won the March elections -this government was still in office during the boycott. Of course, the elections were not the only factor (even according to the Constitution: government was appointed by the President), but use "un-elected" is just plainly untrue.
d) again, it is you pushing your "message" - otherwise why don't you want to include other stages in this process. Well, I know why!
For these reasons I will not accept your version, even if you consider it a POV violation.
Str1977 15:50, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

I have changed the text per the proof . I am closer to the truth, yours is as , everywhere designed to neutralize . And I notice nowhere ever is there any reference to the historical fact of the quid pro quo re: the Concordat and the catholic Church's position in history , where it is contributory , not on Holocaust not in Weimar nor anti-semitism .

They were not an elected government , it was a president appointed co-alition , un-elected by majority and stitched together by interests and talked in by Papen . Lets go to arbitration on this very edit , where it is simple . Will you go for arbitration with me on this single as you call it message . This particular edit demonstrates enough our respective positions . OK? Famekeeper 16:12, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

FK, the thing is that this entry is about the Shoa, as I prefer to call it, and the passage in question about the boycott. IMHO the words in dispute are merely giving the time frame. Please consider this: "On April 1, 1933, the Nazis organized a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany." This is the gist of the sentence, anything else additional information - Streicher and SA on the actual subject of the sentence, the disputed one mere chronological. Your addition would be going beyond this.
Of course they were not elected. But which German government was elected? Certainly not before 1918 and also not after 1918, according to the Constitution. All governments of the Weimar Republic were appointed by the President, sometimes based on a majority in parliament (1919-1920, 1923, 1928-1930), more often based on a plurality (1920-1923,1923-1928, 1930-1932), and sometimes even without any real support in parliament (Papen, Schleicher). The Hitler government coalition (NSDAP-DNVP) however gained a majority in parliament in the March elections - a success that proved to be crucial.
IMHO this issue is way beyond what this sentence actually tries to say. However, since you want arbitration, please go ahead.

Str1977 17:05, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

  • (For what it's worth, that's the way a parliamentary government often works; the head of state (Queen, Reichspraesident, whatever) appoints the head of government (Chancellor, Prime Minister), who is usually, but not always, the head of the ruling party or coalition. Is this an "elected" government? Or something else?)--jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:33, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
Indeed but not relevant to German democracy under Decree 48 etc. This page should speak the truth or be taken down , deleted .
The sentence in question suggested that Hitler had a government that was in power on April 1 1933 because of electoral success that allowed it to be operating on that day this particluar disgusting anti-semitic policy , A Hitler co-alition government was returned on 5 March with a 16 seat majority but was unable to govern and certainly would have not been embarking on the particular policy of 1 April (Hitler was too careful before the Enabling Act gave him free reign . It is misleading because the 15th March Cabinet meeting (analysed at the Nuremberg Trials ) decision was to ceremonially open parliament on the 21 March amidst pomp and guarantees , to hood-wink the President down , and in fact the action of this co-alition was to negotiate the mysterious Pope's Hitler [[Centre Party Germany}} Pope Pius XII Reichskonkordat and Monsignor Ludwig Kaas figuring Enabling Act for the 23 March opening of the [[Reichstag}}. The parliament didn't exist , as the Nazis had burnt it , so the ceremonial was for the 21 st , and later ,the convening of parliament was for 23 March in the Kroll Opera House . William L Shirer p250 'The street gangs ' in the words of Alan Bullock , ' had seized control of the resources of a great modern State , the gutter had come to power.' But - as Hitler never ceased to boast - 'legally' , by an overwhelming vote of Parliament . The Germans had no one to blame but themselves . This is the electoral success, inside the Kroll Opera House , Ludwig Kaas gave the over-whelming nature of the vote , and in fact the Germans do have someone other than themselves to blame . Kaas' organised Pope's Hitler quid pro quo . go there and save it from deletion , now...Famekeeper 00:53, 28 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
Indeed the whole issue is not relevant to sentence in question. Str1977 21:07, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply


To whom it may concern

Latest comment: 20 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Please whoever reads this, have a look at the edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Holocaust&diff=19649128&oldid=19648664

and post your view on the question, which version is more suitable. Str1977 22:55, 26 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

  • The second version is concise and exact. Readers interested in the mechanics and details of Hitler's rise to power will have clicked through to any number of links in the article. "Accession" is a good neutral word, too. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 01:29, 27 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • Agreed. The first version looks like an argument. Jayjg (talk) 16:11, 27 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • Ditto, the second version is better-written and accurate. If there is a need for a more detailed discussion of Hitler's rise to power, it belongs in the articles on Hitler, Naziism, and German history. Here, the consitutional, legal, and political mechanics of Hitler's rise are just tangential. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:14, 27 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Reason To Fear Revisionism

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

As relevant , I post this reply from where it could have gone instead , to here where it could do more good . It is tojohn on the Robert McClenon discussion- I claim good faith provocation from a bad-faith editor (ie denialist or revisionist) who denies cited source info entry . John you are over-stating the argument , when have I accused everyone who disagrees with me of anything to do with the holocaust ? If I did , I may be right as only Str1977 really disagrees . you qualified your difference rather minutely in fact .The holocaust only just came into this church dispute :revisionism may be specified in the limited world of the WP to Holocaust Denial but that is quite wrong and simplistic . To me revisionism has always been concerned with a separately dangerous creeping , insidious re-writing of history . This is reminiscent of the post WWI German denials that led to WWII , and without wishing to diminuish the people of the Holocaust , the 60 million resulting deaths overshadow The Shoah : therein is the real subject of revisionism for me , and others who may be dead by now . Revisionism is the most dangerous thing there is , and it is what keeps me in the WP , and did from day one . Revisionism is again brewing - it is inter-european scandal which it seems ,maybe un-wishingly , that you support . I only know Str1977 from his actual WP actions , he is highly useful only in that he focuses us on revisionism . Maybe I'm wrong and he's just a guy , another normal bozo as they say about someone un-rquiring suspicion . But I go by actions , and the history shows that he is at least two people , one of whom writes in english for the other, or is a larger group - even ,as I wonder , the Inquisition or CDF. See 4 th May/history for Pope Pius XII to judge . But the NPOV of "History" itself is that there was separate but in axis church conspiracy , which finally succeeded with the fall of Communism. The Which axis cost , I was tired the last time and said 80 but its only 60,000,000 people like you or me or our granny . Pius I / Pacelli helped the future-holocaust-maker knowing of the pogroms under way/ planned , and knowing of the plan for nazi-imperial war ,and with welcome to that likelihood(sourced) . As to others ,they are digging holes for themselves still , against my kind advice . If this Holocaust situation festers further , it serves history's purpose : murder will out . See Rfc against Famekeeper here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Famekeeper#Response Famekeeper 20:48, 27 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Just to put a few things straight:

  • To cite a source means to bring in from a source what the source says, not some misrepresentation of it, as FK did in the case of Klemperer, Lewy, John Kenney's quote, Dilectissima Nobis.
  • The causes of WWII are much more complex than you claim. It's not just mere WWI denial (whatever that means).
  • Yes, maybe you're wrong and I'm just a guy. You may call be Bozo but not Bryan.
  • I am not at least two people. I don't want to sound mean, but do you know any other human being in the real world? Do you ever talk to them about this stuff here? Since you refer to 4 May you must mean my Protestant friend. All he did was read Dilectissima Nobis for me. I wanted to find out whether your claim about what it said was just escaping my Catholic eyes or whether you were misrepresenting the content. Just as me he couldn't find what you found. Just one instance of you creating huge allegations out of thin air. Unfortunately not the last.

One more thing I'm interested in:

What's the point in your linking? Why should anyone want to read this?

Str1977 21:28, 27 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Entire Holocaust Article Is Dubious

Latest comment: 20 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

The complete lack of any explanation as to how the Nazis became empowered is obfuscated by the above dubious row and by the complete ignoral of the Reichskonkordat quid pro quo that empowered them . I dispute this whole article and call for editors to rectify the lack of clarity for the origins of the holocaust . They should revert the one revealing reference I placed , before they do their duty to the murdered by relating the balanced history where it should be -on this article , and showing up as a contrib ution to this holocaust stain upon our bleak world history . I also object to the revisionism analysis for sparate reasons- I consider the analysis of revisionism to be itself a serious case of dangerous revisionism . I am not POV or MPOV , I'm out-raged at this vacillation and weakness , and error . The least that must happen is that the conclusions of the Reichskonkordat be averred here- and note that I have nothing whatever to do with the history of the Reichskonkordat ,which clears me of the smears and innuendo . Do it someone or I will have to myself .Famekeeper 02:04, 28 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

If you want to put more background into the article, go ahead. These articles may help in your research: Eugenics, Racial hygiene, Eugen Fischer, Werner Heyde, Ernst Kretschmer, J. F. Lehmann, Friedrich Mauz, Friedrich Panse, Alfred Ploetz, Paul Rostock, Ernst Rüdin, Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn, Werner Villinger, Bethel Institution, Racial policy of Nazi Germany, T-4 Euthanasia Program, Compulsory sterilization, Nazi, Nazism, Third Reich --AI 03:39, 28 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Very good of you , however Nazism linking thru to History of Germany couples with what I see everywhere ,cept Reichskonkordat and my own sullied Pius XII . Fraid friend , this is a big problem : the absence of crucial little-understood highly relevant sourceable history of March 5 - July 15 , 1933 . I FK am simply not allowed to rectify this , because the notice of bad faith that it brings to my attention, disables me as a pedian right now . The whole WP article situation is in need of the same understanding , explanatory fact is entirely absent , and I am neutralised by attack wherever I go to help . I can only refer readers to follow my discussions , not the articles . A Deal with the blocking of FK is the only way forward, but your very presence here on the page , AI , prevents your formal help . Vote to save FK is all that seems to be going . The page for the sources is deleting on Pope's Hitler, an entirely descriptive self -explanatory link . Run yourself a check thru year 1933 thru history links for all end of Weimar links and you will find no reference to the 2/3 majority vote or the centre and above all not to the church axis quid pro quo . Then get disturbed yourself and then struggle for reason . Thanks , I need your good faith .Famekeeper 13:58, 28 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

I think those articles need some peer review and severe authentication of references, etc. I am not in a position to do this, for one reason I am a significant contributor to those articles. What is this about FK (you?) and your mentions of a "block". Send a message to my talk page. --AI 19:48, 28 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Explanation, maybe

As far as I can tell, I think that Famekeeper is saying that this article is dubious or incomplete because it only blames the Holocaust on the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler and not on the Catholic Church. I have tried to request that he summarize what his issues are, but his anger prevents him from providing a concise summary. Robert McClenon 01:00, 29 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

I'll try to help both you while doing my best to maintain a neutral point of view. Just keep discussing things and providing citations. Keep things simple in discussion to avoid confusing any disputes. --AI 02:06, 29 July 2005 (UTC)Reply


My edits

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Just wanted to explain the edits I have made over the last couple days (in addition to the maps and pictures added). There were two large problems I saw with the article: first, it did not actually explain how the Holocaust was carried out -- as much space was devoted to the subject of badges as to concentration camps AND extermination camps combined, dates were unclear, the Ghettos and Einsatzgruppen were barely mentioned, etc -- which I think may have led to some of the questions on this page about how so many millions were killed. The second issue was the end of the article, which contained some vague words about the fact that the Holocaust helped start the Arab-Israeli conflict thanks to new immigrants to Israel, and that there were also other terrible things that happened during WW II -- nothing about Nuremberg, Displaced Persons, world reaction, or anything else.

I tried to address the first problem by putting in the chronology and details of the industrialized mass-murder of the Holocaust, including, roughly, the phases during which various types of killing methods were used by the Nazis. I tried to address the second by rewriting a bit, but it still requires more work. I would also suggest that we do a little more clean-up. Specifically, I think the badge section should be reduced to merely a link - we have so little room, and we haven't even touched major issues (liberation of the camps, the Catholic Church, reperations, etc.). Second, I think we should organize the collaborators section a bit more to explain what happened in each country, right now it is randomly organized, it seems. Finally, we need to expand the aftermath section - how did various countries deal with the issues of collaboration? What was the political reaction after the war? Thoughts are appreciated. --Goodoldpolonius2 04:39, 29 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

And I am uploading a wikipedians "shortest explanation" version for the death of democracy that was the Enabling Act . Where it will reside yet to be determined . I agree with Goodoldpolonius that whatever is needed to be must be included. Someone reading the article should be able to leave with the whole Holocaust issue as clear in their mind as it is today possible to be clear , including summary of all the historical effects . Famekeeper 07:55, 29 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Reverting dubious tags

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

DO NOT revert Famekeeper's addition of dubious tags. Discuss them here instead of just removing them. See Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute. --AI 23:50, 31 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

So far Famekeeper has added nothing relevant to this article. And even this one addition has been discussed on this talk page and "his wording" has found no support. Str1977 09:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Relevance of Jews as Targets

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Purely in reference to the discussions on this page about Jews as targets of the Holocaust , my threepenny worth thinking is this .

That the anti-semitic nature of Hitler goes back to being over-shadowed by a Jewish school-fellow who was or wasn't Wittgenstein , and this was re-inforced by the widespread cultural anti-semitism of central Europe filtering through into his petty bourgeois childhood . Hitler's very success in formulating a usefulness for this anti-semitism holds the attention after the shock of the actual mass-murder is felt .

I tend towards the opinion that the Polish subject of murder , is not to be accorded this prominence or description simply because it did not have the same philosophical basis .

I think the lesson of the history for the present is related to the pseudo- reasoning of anti-semitism , as the basis for it lies in conjunction with the christian revulsion at that church which christianity derived from . In this respect Polish or other national questions , but especially Polish - muddy the waters by needing cognizance of the contemporary Polish national anti-semitic political tendency .

The relevance of all debate to our learning from history is in order not to be condemned into its' repetition . I see the philosophical or legalistic Hitlerian anti-semitism through a contemporary prism: the question arising is the same question / law/ permissal/ as that which justifies Islamic counter-terror . Perish the Jew was the constant refrain in 1932 .

The legal roots of christian anti-semitism are found in the Biblical references to the passing of sins unto succeeding generations , and the Islamic roots come from the exception after the general murder proscription , for those who spread evil/wrong/calumny/apostasy/etc in the land . This seems a reflection of the Judaic .As everyone who has read it knows , the Qoran , almost by chapter relates to the biblical , with many/every chapters' ending in threat at anyone who suggests it is simply such a repetition . I do not suggest this is the entire of the Qoran , indeed I have not read it since the Rushdie insults created his 'affair' ( The relevance of Rushdie lies in his attack on the veracity of the very words in these chapters ,plus the female insult towards the many wives of the prophet . )

War is one thing - action instills re-action of force . But philosophical conceptions , such as pollute the minds of man ( to whomsoever so claims ) - anti-semitism , anti-christianity as here described - become cardinal to an explanation . Hitler did not operate in a vacuum , but tapped the philosophical undercurrent for strength . Equally the 'exception' of the Qoran makes of nearly everyone but the adherent , a justifiable culpable target , a non-innocent similar to the non-innocnce of the born Jew to the christian militant .

For the Holocaust article to avoid the scrupulous explanation of the 'currents' both popular and Hitlerian , is humanly un-useful . For the world to forget where it all comes from , or to forget the subjugation of the mass-mind conscience in Europe so attained , is to misunderstand the philosophical hurdles we presently face .

The editor rising hereabove is highly useful , as he requires considerable effort in rebuttal and this leads to evidence . At all times he seeks however to prevent any such historical linkage as that to which I philosophically refer - hence his reverts here . He has been particularly useful in relation to an analysis of "christian law" - which relates to the collaboration (or, he states ,otherwise) of christians , but especially very powerful christians -towards the evident Hitlerian centrality accorded , throughout , to the Jews . Famekeeper 10:55, 1 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

JWales Final Responsibility re:Auschwitz Testimony Against Pope Pius XII etc

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
self -expanatory tangent fromJWuserpage

I'm sorry Jimbo , but I see the responsibility to settle intractable disputes rests with you . I seem to run into intractable dispute on your WP , so I ask you to take responsibility . No one else can take this your place . I refer you to the articles Pope Pius XII and Hitler's Pope as the centre of this dispute and ask you to put yourself into the position of final arbiter now, OK ? I particularly think that the surviving Roman Jewess's words be taken as an issue : I wish you therefore to show or not show , that an Auschwitz survivor be called POV ( rv'd ,Pius in WWar 2) . You will see that the difference between the two articles at this minute is simple : one (PPII) is the 'censored' or whatever version of the other (H's P).

Having been battling to and beyond the brink for 8 months on the one article , I say that only you can survey this with any authority to do anything about it . Let you be the judge of all the WP requisites, knowing that your judgements are real , and that ultimately you yourself will equally be judged . Auschwitz survivors are definitely in a minority and this responsibility for arbitration I lay at you because you are the organ . I will consider myself in-active until you please let me know that I am required . As various users may find this disappearance odd , I post this letter to you for them to see elsewhere . Famekeeper 09:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

opening section

Latest comment: 20 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion

I scanned the talk page - please excuse me if I cant see a relevant section - if there is one please point it out. The reason for my proposed change is that when I read the section it didn't make sense. Clearly the largest group affected in numbers was the Jews of Europe (as stated) but hos can this be the "main" target as stated when they form a absolute minority of the number - as outlined in the rest of the paragraph? My chenge tried to reflect that the largest single identifiable group was the Jews whilst removing "main" a word which I think has connotations of them being in the absolute (ie >51%) majority.

Perhaps we need to change the second half of the section? At the moment it just looks logically inconsisten to me. 62.252.0.7 22:35, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

See "Targets to victims" and "Principal target" sections above. Jayjg (talk) 22:41, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Fair comment - many thanks - my fault here. I still think the second paragraph doesn't really work though. Perhaps split into two separate paragraphs? one setting out the "main victims" (who were undoubtely - ideologically at least - the Jews) and another talking about absolute numbers? 62.252.0.7 22:47, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

As an aside - do we like the word "victim"? I'm not sure that "target" wouldn't be better. 62.252.0.7 22:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
To me "victim" sounds passive - and glosses over some heroic resistance (warsaw - sobibor etc). 62.252.0.7 22:55, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
If someone's trying to kill me, and I resist, and they kill me anyway, I'm a victim. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:44, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
I could well be wrong - been wrong before <g>. 62.252.0.7 23:55, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Anyone want to comment on my main arguement regarding the second para? 62.252.0.7 23:55, 10 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Given the arguments over getting consensus for the paragraph, it does not read awkwardly enough to justify the pain of changing right now. It would be a bit cleaner to move " Other groups deemed "undesirable", especially Poles, Roman Catholics, Russians and other Slavs , Roma, Sinti, the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political dissidents, were also persecuted and murdered," right after the first sentence about the Jews, but I am pretty neutral, and do not think the current paragraph is particularly bad. --Goodoldpolonius2 01:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Request for expansion of subsection 8.2 / Proposal

On August 8th, Jeftrokat requested an expansion of the subsection 8.2 Why did people participate in, authorize, or tacitly accept the killing?.

In his 1994 book "Warum Auschwitz? Hitlers Plan und die Ratlosigkeit der Nachwelt" (ISBN 3499136260) Gunnar Heinsohn lists up 42 of the more popular theories regarding the motivation behind the Holocaust (or Churban, as the author prefers). These include the functionalist and intentionalist positions already mentioned in the article as well as other historical, political and theological theories (e.g. "Auschwitz as a revenge for the defeat at Stalingrad", "Auschwitz as a deflection from Germany's domestic politics", as well as the different propositions that have been made during the Historikerstreit) and a 43rd theory by the author himself.

I want to make a proposal. Listing up all of these theories would probably be too much for this article. The collected theories are far too many for the subsection as it is. Maybe a new article for this would be in order which could be linked from the subsection in this article?

Right now I'd like to know what the opinion is on these few points:

  • Should an attempt be made to list the theories regarding the motivation for the Holocaust / the explanation for the Holocaust in Wikipedia at all?
  • If yes, should they be reduced to an excerpt (according to some criteria which would still have to be defined)?
  • If there is reason for them not to be reduced, should they be all listed in the Holocaust article or should a new article be made for a listing that aims to be complete?
  • Regardless, should an excerpt be integrated into the existing subsection?

Part of the reason I am asking all of this is because the book is in German and it would take me some time to translate the relevant passages. I also don't think there is an official translation into English and I don't know of any translations or comparable publications in other languages so I have no real idea on how much help on the article(s) can be expected.

ugh, forgot to sign this... zerofoks 06:11:44, 2005-08-15 (UTC)

Regarding this edit [12]

Latest comment: 20 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

"remove unsourced POV; violent conflicts had been going on since the 20s, and the claim that Israel is a "tragic legacy" of the Holocaust is POV]"

What exactly is being challenged? I just added a source of the article that pretty much ellaborates on that last edit. Also the article says "instability in the Middle East...is another major tragic legacy of the Holocaust", not " Israel is a 'tragic legacy' of the Holocaust is POV" as you claim. --Vizcarra 19:18, 17 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

What are you talking about? You added no source to the article; point out the edit in which you did so. As for the insertion, it is factually wrong, since conflicts between Jews and Arabs were happening all through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, they didn't break out after Jewish refugees started immigrating after the Holocaust. As well, attributing current Middle East instability to the Holocaust is brazen POV. And finally, this article is about The Holocaust, not the Arab-Israeli conflict. Let's try not to have that conflict spill over into every article. Jayjg (talk) 19:45, 17 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
That's true. for some reason my source did not show. I will add it next time. You have to spend more time reading the edits and less time reverting them. The first time, "instability Middle East" did not imply "Israel". Now #2 (Violent conflicts quickly broke out between Jews and Arabs, and conflicts continued after the establishment of Israel in 1948.) That does not imply that there weren't any conflicts between Jews and Arabs, but that conflicts arose after the settlement of Israel between Jews and Arabs. But I won't add that after tomorrow, I won't fall into a 3RR trap a second time.
  1. 3 You deleted "The resulting instability in the Middle East, which still continues to this day, is another major tragic legacy of the Holocaust." which is, obviously, related to the Holocaust. I will re-add that tomorrow as well if no opposition is shown. --Vizcarra 20:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)Reply


Regarding #3, the allegation that the "resulting instability in the Middle East" can be attributed to the influx of Holocaust survivors, and that this alleged phenomenon is "another major tragic legacy of the Holocaust", are both POVs. At a minimum, they would have to be sourced, and shown to be significant views. Jayjg (talk) 21:03, 17 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

If there are others (i.e. non-Wikipedia editors) out there — scholars, political activists, let's say someone like Noam Chomsky or Edward Said, but these are just two examples — who have written that exacerbated conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was "another major tragic legacy of the Holocaust," and they explicitlyy use the word Holocaust, then I do think we need to make room for it in this article. If scholars and politicians have discussed the role of Holocaust survivors in the I-P conflict in general, however, I think that that discussion belongs specifically in an article on the I-P conflict (although we could have a link here in this article). Be that as it may, the way this phrase was originally introduced into this article is just editorializing and it has no place in an encyclopedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Victims of the Holocaust

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

First of all, I deem it very good that in the English wikipedia, all victims of the Holocaust are addressed. In the German wikipedia, it is held that "Holocaust" only attributes the Jewish victims; that has the "nice" effect to relativise the other victims, so that only the Jews must be remembered.

Two groups of victims I do not see: The "Roman Catholic" - no catholic was murdered just for his/her faith - and the Esperanto speakers. Esperanto was forbidden, but so was hearing allied radio broadcasts. I would rather subsumize that under "political dissidents" (which was also true for protestant people like Dietrich Bonnhöfer), as those people were prosecuted for their actions, not their race as were the gypsies, the Jews and the Slaws. --Dingo 22:17, 20 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

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