The Holocaust

Originally posted by willwhittle
You're really caught up on this aren't you? Why does this particular aspect niggle at you so much? Yeah, okay, BUT this was military attack, whether or not there was defense. The Holocaust was a systematic and lengthy extermination of the Jewish population of a country. It's a very different thing and shouldn't be looked upon as the same thing.

We are forgetting the fact that not all the Jews in Germany were killed,the wealthy and important were kept alive.I have a German neighbour who was in Germany at the time and he hated Hitler but he also said that the holocaust was made out to be a lot worse than what actually happened.He told me a lot of the people killed were German prisoners that were in jail at the time the war broke out,eg murderers,thieves etc.
He also did not deny that Jewish citizens were rounded up and taken to the gas chambers,this was witnessed by him but he strongly disagrees with how many were actually killed ,the figure quoted is blown way out of proportion.
The holocaust did happen according to this man but just not on the scale it is made out to believe.

Originally posted by boarman
We are forgetting the fact that not all the Jews in Germany were killed,the wealthy and important were kept alive.I have a German neighbour who was in Germany at the time and he hated Hitler but he also said that the holocaust was made out to be a lot worse than what actually happened.He told me a lot of the people killed were German prisoners that were in j ...[text shortened]... holocaust did happen according to this man but just not on the scale it is made out to believe.

But how is one individual going to see anything like 6 million people rounded up?

How can one person possibly judge what the scale of this was from just his own observations?

Originally posted by Redmike
But how is one individual going to see anything like 6 million people rounded up?

How can one person possibly judge what the scale of this was from just his own observations?

Because he actually worked at one of these camps,and he is in a far better position to judge than us who were not there and do not know what happened for sure.

Originally posted by boarman
Because he actually worked at one of these camps,and he is in a far better position to judge than us who were not there and do not know what happened for sure.

The fact that he worked in the camps is a pertinent detail you missed from your previous post, but I still maintain that one individual is never going to be in a position to see the overall picture.

I'd say he was in a worse position to judge than the people who methodically researced these thing immediately after the war.

With large scale events like these, just because you are 'there' doesn't mean you can see the whole picture.

Originally posted by cmsMaster
I don't even get this argument, is saying that "only 1 million were killed" make it much better? No.

Actually yes.
Imagine if the converse was true - is 20 million no worse than 6 million?
Of course it is.
Hence 1 million is not as bad as 6 million.

Originally posted by cmsMaster
I was going to fix some of the spelling errors in here after seeing "Intelegent", but there are WAY TOO MANY. Any point that you might have been trying to prove has been totally ruined because you lack the ability to spell.

😞

Whereas any point you might have been trying to prove has been totally ruined because you're an idiot!

Originally posted by Redmike
The fact that he worked in the camps is a pertinent detail you missed from your previous post, but I still maintain that one individual is never going to be in a position to see the overall picture.

I'd say he was in a worse position to judge than the people who methodically researced these thing immediately after the war.

With large scale events like these, just because you are 'there' doesn't mean you can see the whole picture.

Sorry i left that information out but you might be right when you say that he can not give an overall position but what he did see you would think that this was widespread throughout the camps.
I can not deny that he witnessed horrible acts but i was just saying what he told me about the holocaust.And i will still stick with my original theory of him being in a better position to judge than we are.

Originally posted by cmsMaster
I was going to fix some of the spelling errors in here after seeing "Intelegent", but there are WAY TOO MANY. Any point that you might have been trying to prove has been totally ruined because you lack the ability to spell.

😞

If you could understand the meaning of the words then the only reason you couldn't see the point in them is, with all due respect, your inability to get your head out of your rectum. Was that clear enough for you?

Originally posted by boarman
Sorry i left that information out but you might be right when you say that he can not give an overall position but what he did see you would think that this was widespread throughout the camps.
I can not deny that he witnessed horrible acts but i was just saying what he told me about the holocaust.And i will still stick with my original theory of him being in a better position to judge than we are.

Hmmm.

Who to believe - a former camp worker, who
- will have a vested interest in playing down the scale of the exercise he contributed to;
- only saw a small part of it, but is apparently able to extrapolate that to the massive, industrial-scale machine that the Holacaust was;

Or,
the many military, academic and historical experts who examined the circumstances imediately following the war and subsequently and who pretty much share a consensus of the scale of the murders.

I'll stick with these experts, most of whom have no axe to grind, being in a better position to judge than we are, or than your neighbour is.

Originally posted by Varg
Actually yes.
Imagine if the converse was true - is 20 million no worse than 6 million?
Of course it is.
Hence 1 million is not as bad as 6 million.

So which would have been really worse, to have murdered only the talented peopled like doctors and engineers and teachers and nurses and the musically gifted. If they had left them alone and only killed the struggling less succesfull Jews, then by your logic would that be better still, would it?

Or maybe as long as it was only ugly people or you know those really annoying short ones.

I'll be honest, I dont know much about other massacres or atrocities, but it seems overwhelmingly that Jews were identified, labelled, targeted and exterminated. For a long period from Kristal Nagte onwards you have a span of about a decade where against all unbelief that it would still happen, people were targetted and were rounded up and removed. I dont know if other holocausts ever had that particular edge to them. The specific targeting of one distinct differentiated group.

You dont have to be a genius to work out why it has been remembered more than most of equally or more so horrific events. I dont think any other group that was killed so indiscriminately, was done so at the hands of a power in a position to take over the whole world. That the hatred manifest by the nazi's was also a culmination of an age old European preoccupation of persecuting the Jews is a fairly unique aspect of the Jewish Holocaust.

If in any of the conflicts there were similar trends in the selection of enemies of the state then I stand corrected, but it would seem that the horror associated with the death camps is made even more so by the processing done to its victims. No need for any of the gold to go to waste. The harvesting of the victims prior to their murder is just another goulish aspect of the crimes perpetrated by the nazi's that in my opinion is more than enough reason why people would seek to revise and argue for a less extreme version of events.

Its mind-numbingly devastating to think of the precision and organisational genius brought to bear by the germans to efficiently carry out the Fuhrer's wishes. No wonder that people would try and soften the record and attempt to water down the actual scope and verocity that was all too much on display during those 5 years of earths dark history.

Originally posted by Varg
Actually yes.
Imagine if the converse was true - is 20 million no worse than 6 million?
Of course it is.
Hence 1 million is not as bad as 6 million.

He asked would it have made it "much better"?

One million people died in the Rwandan genocide. Was that "much better" than the holocaust?

Originally posted by dottewell
He asked would it have made it "much better"?

One million people died in the Rwandan genocide. Was that "much better" than the holocaust?

I wouldn't put it quite like that, but surely it is "less bad".
(not for those involved, of course).

Originally posted by Varg
I wouldn't put it quite like that...

So he wasn't wrong?

Originally posted by kmax87
so which would have been really worse to have murdered only the talented peopled like doctors and engineers and teachers and nurses and the musically gifted. If they had left them alone and only killed the struggling less succesfull Jews by your logic that would be better still, would it?

Or maybe as long as it was only ugly people or you know those really ...[text shortened]... e and verocity that was all too much on display during those 5 years of earths dark history.

I'm not disagreeing with that (although I think some other conflicts have singled out "enemies of the state" along similar lines).
My point was that if more people were killed it is worse, if less people were killed it is less bad.
Simple logic, unlike this:
"If they had left them alone and only killed the struggling less succesfull Jews by your logic that would be better still, would it?".
Not sure how you have worked that out from what I said.

Originally posted by dottewell
So he wasn't wrong?

Just in the way it was phrased.
If you say the Rwandan genocide was much better than the Holocaust I think you'd get some strange looks.
If you said it wasn't as bad I think most people would agree.