Talk:The Holocaust/Archive 3

message: The article contains two different translations: 
# Shoa ... Hebrew for "Calamity" 
# 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)
thread_title:  Origin and use of the term 

message: 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)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea. Jayjg 16:06, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: External links

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

text: 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)
thread_title: edits to Intro by wereit

message: 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)
thread_title:  [[Holocaust Memorial Day]] 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Yad vaShem db recently gone online 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Jews were the main targets

message: 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  -
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)
thread_title:  Non-Jewish Poles Part of Holocaust 

message: 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)
thread_title: Resource page

message: 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)
thread_title:  Karaites and the Holocaust 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: =