This House Believes That On Balance The Holocaust Was Detrimental To Society!

Thanks to Ajabi for inviting me to debate this intriguing topic. As both a Jew and one who has spent a great deal of time studying history (particularly Jewish history), I must confess that I am biased. Nonetheless, I will attempt to look at this through an objective lens, starting with definitions. This House: In this case, "This House" refers to the judges. Our aim here is to convince the audience that the resolution is true or false, as this is a debate of fact. As the judges are expressing the voice of that audience (or rather, that of many of its more prominent members), they are effectively the "House" involved here. On Balance: Equal burden of proof. It is just as much my burden to show that the Holocaust was detrimental to society as it is Con's to show that it was beneficial to society. The Holocaust: "The mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941"45. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz." [1] Detrimental to Society: Detrimental means tending to cause harm, society refers to a group or groups of people living within some ordered community. Hence, we are discussing both the short and long term implications of the Holocaust on human communities worldwide. Onto the arguments. 1. Death On a basic level, Con has to overcome the harms of an absolutely massive death toll in order to win this debate. "Between five and six million Jews More than three million Soviet prisoners of war More than two million Soviet civilians More than one million Polish civilians More than one million Yugoslav civilians About 70,000 men, women and children with mental and physical handicaps More than 200,000 gipsies Unknown numbers of political prisoners, resistance fighters, homosexuals and deportees"[2] I don't think I have to explain the harms inherent to those deaths " I'll leave it to my opponent to contest that their lives were either meaningless or harmful, if he so chooses, and rebut those arguments " but loss of their future contributions to society, distress of their relatives and friends, and the general dehumanization that accompanies such a large loss of life (people are reduced to numbers due to the impossible task of cataloging their stories) are simple reasons to view this as harmful. I would argue that mass murder is never beneficial, particularly in the case of genocide. Moreover, these weren't just simple deaths. The Jewish population wasn't just picked out by random chance, nor were the gypsies, those with mental and physical handicaps, and homosexuals. The Holocaust was fundamentally a mechanism of genocide, seeking not just to wreak death, but rather to end whole populations of people on the basis of immutable characteristics, religion, or ways of life, all on the basis of some perceived genetic deficiencies that made their continued existence sub-optimal. Numerous bodies of international and national law have all come down against genocide, often on the basic reasoning that "the most elementary principles of humanity and morality" must be affirmed in order to safeguard the continued existence of humanity and our most basic social obligations.[3] To treat the Holocaust as anything but a detriment to humanity as a whole would not only be utterly insensitive and ghastly (essentially telling the survivors and their families that they should embrace that terror as beneficial), but also harmful to perceptions of other genocides. We cannot begin to treat genocides as beneficial without questioning our perception of all genocides, thus condemning efforts to stop or ameliorate recent genocides such as those in Sudan-Darfur, Rwanda, and Bosnia, not to mention calling into question any and all future genocides. There should be no uncertainty on this " mass killings, especially for the purpose of wiping out subsets of the human population, should always be viewed as one of the worst transgressions against human rights. 2. Short- and long-term effects A. Personal, social and economic All I've discussed so far is solely deaths, but there's a larger concern regarding degradation of human life. Many of the groups involved, particularly the Jews, were treated as subhuman, often used as nothing more than lab specimens for the purpose of subjecting them to various tortures and experiments. Often compared to rats, "leeches, lice, bacteria, or vectors of contagion," their humanity was stripped away entirely as they were made out to be actual dangers to society, making their deaths and pain seem not only justified, but beneficial. Just to give some idea of what these experiments entailed: "...deprived of oxygen to simulate high altitude parachute jumps... frozen, infested with malaria, or exposed to mustard gas... incisions in their flesh to simulate wounds, inserted pieces of broken glass or wood shavings into them, and then, tying off the blood vessels, introduced bacteria to induce gangrene... made to drink seawater, were infected with typhus and other deadly diseases, were poisoned and burned with phosphorus, and how medical personnel conscientiously recorded their agonized screams and violent convulsions."[4] Estimates of the number of displaced persons following the end of WWII run between 11 and 20 million people, with a significant proportion of those coming from concentration camps.[5] Many of them had had to watch their families die away to nothing; they were homeless, their property stolen from them before they were imprisoned, much of which was never returned.[6] They were forced to live in refugee camps, often for years, where they were vulnerable to any number of hardships from abuse and murder to illness and malnutrition.[5] Taken together, the social effect of this is mass quality of life reductions, and tremendous dehumanization, as these people became part of an ever growing mass of humans degraded to mere numbers both during the Holocaust and in its aftermath. The willingness to subject a human being to egregious torture in the name of scientific advancement is regarded as an egregious breach of human rights, and the realities involved with handling the living victims of the Holocaust furthered their spiral into anonymity and despair. The effects of their deaths and displacements aren't limited to the individuals and their families. Locations where many were directly affected by the Holocaust also suffered from reduced economic growth. "The Holocaust wiped out many of the most educated and productive people in western Russia. It was a major shock to the social structure of the invaded regions, dramatically reducing the size of the Russian middle class."[7] This shows that the effects of the Holocaust weren't solely perceptual, but rather included deep and lasting impacts on local economies. B. Physical and Psychological To compound this, the survivors of the Holocaust and their children are haunted by both their physical and psychological traumas. The physical aspects are straightforward, including signs of premature aging, numerous digestive tract problems including peptic ulcers and chronic diarrhea, rampant heart disease, respiratory tract infections, and bone density concerns.[8] The psychological issues are much broader. Among the psychological traumas faced by survivors, the most common are "(1) Massive repression, numbing of responsiveness, amnesia, alexithymia; (2) Intrusive memories, Holocaust-related associations, "shattered assumptions"; (3) Anhedonia, suicidal ideation, depression, chronic state of mourning; (4) Survivor guilt; (5) Sleep disturbances and nightmares; (6) Problems with anger regulation and in dealing with interpersonal conflicts; (7) Excessive worries, anxieties, catastrophic expectancy, fear of renewed persecution; (8) Suspiciousness, paranoia, isolation from the community, lack of trust, loneliness; (9) Utilization of survival strategies "from there"; and (10) Low threshold for stress in difficult situations." Common among Holocaust survivors is also habitual panic (which has a broad array of triggers commonly seen in much of life) leading to violent emotional responses, and grief reactions to happy occasions. This has a very long term effect that actually gets worse with time. "The indelible emotional scars created by the impossible choices of life and death during the Holocaust gradually or suddenly burst open and a mixture of survival guilt and repressed aggression start to torment them again late in life... all survivors seem to be "at risk" of mental disturbances, especially at times of renewed stress and traumatization. At these points in life, the most suitable diagnostic label seems to be "Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" (PTSD) with depression as a frequent associated feature."[9] While the effects are more muted on the next generation, they are still apparent, as high anxiety, low self-esteem, inhibited aggression and relational ambivalence plague their children as well.[10] These mental concerns are obviously harmful to the quality of life of the survivors, as well as their families and friends. Moreover, it's incredibly damaging to societies at large, making these individuals unstable and reducing their beneficial contributions to those around them as a result. These people become a burden on their families, engendering large health and mental care costs and remaining distant as a result of their continued distress. Moreover, their lives are once again placed outside of their control, cyclically engendering much of the same fears, depressions and anxieties that they felt during their captivity. 1. http://bit.ly... 2. http://bit.ly... 3. http://bit.ly... 4. http://n.pr... 5. http://bit.ly... 6. http://to.pbs.org... 7. http://bit.ly... 8. http://bit.ly... 9. http://bit.ly... 10. http://bit.ly...