Talk:The Holocaust/Archive 2

message: Please add new reference: Cautious 13:28, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of people who resisted the Holocaust]] 

message: It is not that any scholar of the Holocaust needs to believe in God:  far from it.  But it is, perhaps, necessary that any serious scholar needs to believe that the Nazis believed in God, and the relationship of the Jews - through time and history - to that God.  The SS Ahnenerbe (Cultural Research Unit) were involved in establishing a secular faith - man as superman - the Fuhrer eventually to displace a deconstructed God.  The history of God in Western Civilisation is indeed the history of the Jews - a Chosen Race, set apart by God.  The Nazi's evil demanded that the Jews become the Selected Race - a race thrown down by man.  The new (evil) Nazi Millenium was to have a man as the uttermost absolute:  all aspiration, all time, all experience, all history, and all meaning were to extend through him to posterity.  Previously, (to the Nazi mind) this had been fulfilled by the God of the Jews:  God entered human time, human history, and human experience through the Jews.  Any man that might take that function of the Godhead onto himself might (in all its evil of application) as the Nazis attempted, push Jewish history aside (and the Jewish Nation too).  The concept of Endlosung was born, commissioned and executed.  This unthinkable evil was stopped on January 27th - with the liberation of the camps.  Hitler was prevented from becoming the secular God as envisioned in Nietszche's "Man as Superman" phrase.  So, we can rest assured that there will be no further attempts to wrest the history of God from the Jews ever again...
:See From Here originator
Take a proud nation, with a strong identity, that has just lost a war.  Take it to, say, a railway-carriage in the backwoods of Compiegne, 1919, and make it pay the most swingeing war-reparations, which will eventually lead to it paying for its bread in notes by the barrow-load.  It endures a huge identity-crisis; its on its knees.  Let's wrench back our self-esteem they hear someone cry, and they forgive the most horrendous of crimes as that nation pulls itself up by its bootstraps once more.  But who has the strongest identity known to mankind?  Why, the Jews!  Let's get our once proud identity back in shape - we'll have something of theirs - if not their exact identity, at least its potency and strength, the fact that it has stood the test of millenia, and is as strong as ever.  Now who, do you suppose, in turning Germany into this identity-crisis in the first-place, unwittingly sewed the seeds of Endlosung?  A man with an overwhelming crisis in identity will often reach for the strongest idiom of self that he can imagine, in order to compensate for his weakness;  it is often messianic.  Are there parallels to be drawn between a mere man and an overthrown state - "man as superman"?
:See From Here 12:55, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why were the Jews so central to the evil brutality of the Nazis? 

message: Another question which I feel ought to be addressed in this article (by anyone who knows more than me) concerns the reaction of other countries to the holocaust. The Allies knew that the holocaust was happening, but they did very little to prevent it. Why was this?
- pir 23:38, 14. Sep 2003
There has been at least one book published (I don't recall its author or title) arguing the case that the Western Allies knew all about the Holocaust and could / should have done something / more to "stop" it. From what I have read, the first part of this proposition is incorrect. Of course everyone knew that Hitler was persecuting Jews, but the existence of the death camps was not known until (I think) 1943, when a few survivors' stories were smuggled out. Even then the systematic nature of the Holocaust was not realised until the end of the war. And what were the Allies supposed to do to stop it? Ask Hitler to desist? Threaten him with prosecution? The only thing the Allies could do was to defeat Hitler's armies and destroy his regime, which they did, at the cost of many millions dead. I might do some research on this and submit an article if that seems useful. Dr Adam Carr
: I find it impossible to imagine that a state can murder several million people without its enemies getting to know about it. The Allies' intelligence services must have had some information about it. What I can believe is that the Allies were unable to realise the industrial scale of the holocaust, combined maybe, given that anti-Semitism was also common outside of Nazi Germany at that time,  with a tendency to look the other way. 
: What could the Allies have done? It has been suggested they could have bombed the rail tracks that were necessary to transport inmates to death camps.
: Yes, it would be great if a historian like you could look into this issue. - pir 8:57, 19. Sep 2003
Of course there is a very large literature on this subject.  Most of it is rather polemical, which makes it difficult for the ordinary reader to get a reasonable understanding.  A large problem is the wisdom of hindsight --- just because someone was "informed" about something, that does not imply that they "knew" it.  Just because something was possible in principle, that doesn't imply that it was a reasonable decision at the time.  I would recommend reading both books like "Auschwitz and the Allies" by Martin Gilbert, which are very critical of the Allied behavior, and "The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis" by William Rubenstein, which argues in the other direction. --zero 10:18, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  The reaction of other countries to the Holocaust 

message: I don't agree that the Holocaust is used by people to exclusively mean the extermination of the Jews, I think that people just know very little about the numbers of Slavs, Roma, Political Dissidents, Homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses that were killed, mainly due to the groups lacking any kind of power base in the post-war period (whereas Jews in other countries held a fair bit of power.) I suggest 
"The term is primarily used to refer to the systematic extermination of the approximately 6 million of the 9.5 million Jews living in Europe before the war"
and
"Jewish Holocaust"
are changed. Although you could argue that that is my own POV.
Slizor
*This article is almost entirely Jewish POV only verses NPOV that Wiki prides itself on being. Just as the false morality of the post WWII period tries to falsely portray JEWS as innocents and the Aryans or White Nazi's as all evil, so too, has been the false "monsters" of Palestinians attacking the innocent Israeli's that had dispossessed them and that had murdered them: men, women, and children.
Moved revisionist links. Thanks for contributing, but it was in the wrong place.
Ronabop 08:01, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holocaust: POV & NPOV 

message: The link Chelmno in the paragraph Concentration and Extermination Camps is regrettably misleading as the article is on the old town Chelmno being located in the Polish district Kujawsko-Pomoskie, whereas the very small village Chelmno on Ner (Chelmno nad Nerem), the site of the extermination camp, is in Wielkopolskie district near Kolo indeed. I am a new wikipedian and don't what to do. Peter Witte 14:54, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Please check my changes in Chelmno concentration camp I did according to your notice. You may add more. Another thing to do is to change links from {[Chelmno]} to {[[Chelmno]|Chelmno]} where necessary. They may be easily found by the link "What links here". I will do it. Mikkalai 18:39, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concentration and Extermination Camps 

message: The text you keep trying to insert is not about the mid-20th-century Nazi genocide, therefore it does not belong here. Please stop adding it. The section on the aftereffects links to the places where these ramifications are discussed in full.  —No-One Jones 16:27, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page has a specific topic: the mid-20th-century Nazi genocide 

message: Palestinians are dying, unjustly, that is all that need to be said to act on this issue and change the situation. They live in poverty, unable to govern themselves and build themselves up as a nation due to the extremely strong restrictions that bind them. The anger of such groups as Hamas is understandable, but their use of terrorism hides the integrity of their cause. It is also understandable that Israel takes certain measures to protect their people from terrorism, but they are now destroying a race ? they are committing genocide. It is only when these humanitarian injustices of Palestinians are solved and this unrecognized Holocaust is put to an end that the true path to peace in the Middle East can begin. 
This has been an issue for well over 60 years but the international community as a whole has been unable to stop it: hence "Terrorism" and "Suicide Bombers" 
The section is both quite integral to today's genocide and Holocaust of the Palestinian People, today, and resulted in the creation of the Zionist Isreali State and is a critical lesson of history that obviously still needs to be learned by everyone. Therefore, that section is crucial to the article and it also keeps the "events" in proper historical and political and ethnic and religious context.-PV
:The section you quote is a brief note on modern usage of the term holocaust; the article itself is about one specific holocaust, i.e. The Holocaust. From the intro: Capitalized, the term Holocaust refers to the Nazis' systematic extermination of various groups they deemed undesirable during World War II. . . —No-One Jones 19:31, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: (I'll ignore the nonsense about "Jewish POV" for the time being.) If you just want to note that the term has been applied to Israeli policy in the occupied territories, then what you say is "[So-and-so] calls Israeli policy in the occupied territories a 'holocaust'."—but don't cut and paste that lengthy paragraph into the introduction. —No-One Jones 19:55, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Palestinian Holocaust and Genocide by Israel---1948-Present 

message: Perhaps what we need is a disambig on Holocaust. Or possibly a  section referring to other Holocausts. At the very least, the article does need some other holocausts. But the current Palestinian section at the beginning is a mess, and ought go away. Snowspinner 23:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relatedly, the term "Black Holocaust" has come into use to refer to African American slavery 

message: 1) Person editing in mentions of Palestinians is an anti-Semitic troll.
2) I am not opposed to discussing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I am largely sympathetic to the Palestinians. However, this is not the appropriate article for that issue.
3) Even if it were the appropriate article, the information being added was non-encyclopedic and not suitable for the position in the article in which it was being placed. Considering the aforementioned anti-Semitic troll nature of the author, I did not feel particularly inclined to waste my time revising it for them. 
Snowspinner 00:37, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Palestinians): OK, short form of where I am on this 

message: I'm placing this here to a certain blocked user, because I'm sure he will read it here at some point:
You have been blocked from editing: we have a no personal attacks policy. Attempts to evade your block and continued casting of blood curses will do nothing to further your cause. Thank you for your concern in this matter - Fennec 01:33, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As it stands, this is an article on what is typically referred to as "The Holocaust" - that is, the extermination of Jews by the Nazis in Europe. I would be quite open to making the page a disambiguation page, since other groups lay claim to the concept of Holocaust. However, it is not currently that. If you want to try setting up a disambig page, perhaps we can work from there. Snowspinner 17:38, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blood curses and ilks 

message: The Extent of the Holocaust section needs some reworking.  There are figures and groups of people listed that are not part of the Nazis systematic extermination plans. While Slavs (like me) were deemed inferior by the Nazis, there was never a "Final Solution" proposed for the "Slavic Question" nor were Slavs massivly interred in concentration camps/systematic death mechanism.
For the time being I've split the section into groups targetted directly by Nazi ideology and those not.
This may warrant two sections - one explaining the nature of the Holocaust as systematic planned industrial murder versus war brutality/attrocities/unplanned genocide.
David <dynerman@cs.wisc.edu> 06:40, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extent of the Holocaust 

message: I would, while you are at it, like to know what evidence you have that the person Himmler is speaking to was actually a Jew interned in Dachau for racial reasons and not a political prisoner of some sort. Not that I am belittling the suffering of others, mind you, but most inmates in Dachau in 1936 were not Jews who were slated for extermination. Danny 10:59, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture of Himmler at Dachau 

message: I am only trying to learn on the subject... Quote from above: "it seems obvious that until 1940, there was no clear attempt to kill Jews just because they were Jews." --- on January 30, 1939, Hitler spoke to the Reichstag ...: "If international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war," Hitler insisted, "the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and with it the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." (, ) BTW, note Jews as capitalist financiers and bolsheviks in the same sentence. --Humus sapiens|Talk 05:39, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: But "active genocide" is not simply an act of unprepared mass murder. It was a long sequence of steps: think about the census (thanks IBM), the logistics, etc. Officially announcing in Reichstag the impending annihilation seems crucial IMHO. --Humus sapiens|Talk 06:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The actual word Hitler used was "ausrottung". There is no clear english translation. Since I speak a bit of german, I would translate it as "out (aus) with the rotting matter (rottung)". Not "kill the rot", or "destroy anyone and everything related to the the rot, in brutal gas chambers and death and work camps", but simply "out with the rotting matter".
-> This is absolut wrong.better use dictionary. 'etwas ausrotten' = 'to exterminate something' http://dict.leo.org [mop] 
This phrase would be a sane and normal thing for any politician to say (eliminate the festering corruption of society, etc.) , even today. Politicians campaign all the time on "getting rid of corruption". Hitler started out with getting rid of "corrupt Jews", and kept going until the most innocent child was a target. Some discussion (via Irving): http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Ausrottung/argument.html Ronabop 11:19, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not quite correct.   "ausrotten" means "completely annihilate", or "extirpate", to pull out with the root (figuratively), or to "root out".  The word is related to "roden" = rooting out trees, to clear land for cultivation. (However, in the context of trees, only "roden" is used, never "ausrotten".) Aleph4 18:45, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: john old chap: 
*You say "there is no evidence": The guy just gave you a STATEMENT Hitler made in his own Reichstag (in law, statements by defendents count as testimy in case you don't know this). IZAK 02:26, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hitler's declarations 

message: Sorry, I see you have responded. All I see are assertions that the extremist Lucy Davidowicz intentionalist position is correct. The mass hypnosis stuff is particularly laughable - Leni Riefenstahl was creating propaganda films to create the impression that German people were hypnotized by Hitler. After Hitler was gone, it was very convenient for Germans to claim they had been hypnotized by Hitler's stunning oratory. That is to say, this is an apologetic argument made by Germans to avoid responsibility for Nazi crimes. The actual facts are rather more mundane. I'd add that your tendency to take offense at me using the occasional curse word instead of actually responding to the arguments I make makes debate with you rather difficult. John Kenney 03:35, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone who has read a large amount of serious historial research on the Holocaust, I'd like to say that Christopher Browning is one of the very best.  This is not only my opinion but also the opinion of many of the leading Jewish Holocaust scholars,such as Yehuda Bauer.  I find IZAK's comments on Browning to be exceedingly offensive.  His attack on Browning on account of his being a gentile reads just like attacks on Jews that can be found on neo-Nazi web sites.  --Zero 09:35, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Intentionalists" vs. ? 

message: IZAK, you are transitioning from the uninformed to the absolutely ridiculous. You have shown that you know very little about Jewish life in Eastern Europe, except as a projection of your own values in contemporary America (the number of Talmudic scholars in Eastern Europe prewar was lower than that of any borough of New York today), and a complete ignorance of Holocaust historiography: Browning is considered across the board as one of the pre-eminent Holocaust scholars today (though I'd be willing to cite Guttman and Bauer too if you like--both scholars, both survivors). The Einsatzgruppen did not begin operating until the invasion of the Soviet Union, long after Poland was occupied. There were two attempts to establish a ghetto in Warsaw--the first one failed because Czerniakow was able to negotiate successfully with the Nazi leadership and take advantage of the divisions that existed between the military, the SS, and the occupation government. As for starvation and work, the irony of Rumkovski is that Lodz came so close to surviving, and if they had, he would have been feted as a hero. Why not check some of the "true" Jewish scholars of the Holocaust (and by "true" I am assuming you mean "frum," though classifying one set of scholars as true is certainly not POV). I wonder if you even know who they are (and one sits down the hall from me). What bothers me most, however, is your statement "Again you show how you and others then and now underestimate/d Hitler's thoughts, speeches, and actions." You are saying that they made the wrong decision, and if they would have responded differently, they would not have been killed. Unfortunately, what you are actually doing with that statement is placing some of the blame on the victims, i.e., "they should have seen it coming, but didn't, so they got killed." I don't take to kindly to blaming victims for the deeds of the perpetrators. If the Gemara can talk about avak avodah zarah, that statement you made can certainly be compared to avak antishemiyut. Danny 11:19, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holocaust scholars: Who are they? 

message: Danny says:"What bothers me most, however, is your statement "Again you show how you and others then and now underestimate/d Hitler's thoughts, speeches, and actions." You are saying that they made the wrong decision, and if they would have responded differently, they would not have been killed." 
*And here YOU show how your total immersion in "Holocaust"-studies blinds you to what was happening in the NON-JEWISH POLITICAL and MILITARY domain. I was NOT refering to the Holocaust victims at all (only you, and probably the Brownings et al, seem to care about non-entities like "Czerniakow" and "Rumkovski"). I was talking about how Neville Chamberlain and his government and the governments of France and the USA, FAILED to stop Hitler and the Nazis (as the traditional German STRATEGIC threats to Britain and France based on the FIRST World War's experiences) when they could have done so very easily. It is well known that when Hitler marched into the Rhineland in 1936 in violation of the Versailles treaty, he was testing the geo-political military waters, and had the Allies, both the French, and the British who had a HUGE "exepeditionary force" (later "evacuated" at Dunkirk) near Germany, intervened and forced the German troops back home to Germany (by kicking them in their Aryan behinds), then Hitler would have backed off. Likewise when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, and tricked Chamberlain and the French in 1939 to give up the Sudetenland and hence destroy Czechoslovakia, there may still have been time to pre-empt and declare war on Germany and NOT wait for Germany to choose the time and place to its liking to commence war (on Poland), and, had the USA not been so isolationist and would have listened to the advice of Winston Churchill they should have mobilized immediately and sent over an invasion force in 1939 and not wait for 1944 after the Japanese had to shock-start them with a wake-up-call in 1941 at Pearl Harbor. The net result for the Jews was that because of the delays, procrastinations, (even pro-Nazi attitudes of some, such as Joe Kennedy Snr. the US ambassador to Britain) and the general SECULAR political and military cowardice of people like the British Chamberlain and his French friends, the Jews would be trapped and there would be no-one to help them against the GERMAN monster. Got it?IZAK 07:39, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apportioning "Blame" for the Holocaust 

message: I know the disambig notice is going to prove controversial. For the sake of my not having to repeat myself on three pages, would people mind discussing it at Talk:Holocaust (disambiguation) so I can limit my repetition to VfD and there? Thanks very much. Snowspinner 04:35, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambig reference 

message: I give notice that I intend completely rewriting this article, which in my opinion is a horrible mess. I will post a draft for discussion here within the next week. Adam 03:50, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking forward to it IZAK 03:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Just make sure you don't delete any valid info already here (such as dates and events). --mav 04:11, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Thanks Adam.  Your willingness to just go in and cut through all the crap and come out with a far better article often astounds me.  I'll be watching for your new version. john k 04:35, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Notice