My sense is that the discussion of
Anti-Semitism and it's causes is not appropriate here and should have it's own entry.
Also such phrases as "Neo-Nazi groups and people associated with them" sounds prejudicial and weakens the scholarly tone of this work. It is a [false dichotomy]? to suggest that anyone who questions the official ideology that 6 million is the correct number of Jews killed by Nazis is a Neo-Nazi.
Certainly a mention of anti-semitism is totally relevant here, and certainly a link to more detailed info on that topic. Where the actual text goes is a matter of style. Also, the particular sentence starting with "Neo-Nazi" groups talks about those who actually deny the holocaust itself, such as David Irving, not those who merely quibble over numbers. It would be innaccurate
not to call such groups "Neo-Nazi". --
LDC
As long as people are filling other Wiki Encyclopaedia entries with antisemitism, why not here as well? Why not add the PLO's claims that the Holcaust never took place, in the name of offering a "neutral point of view". After all, you already have the "fact" here that the Jews use it to make money! The Holocaust did take place, and Zionists have an industry to profit from it! Any more racism that you want to add? Why not blame AIDS on the Jews? After all, the entire entry on [Christian antisemitism]? has been deleted for the third time by historical revisionists. Is this section next? --RK
- Kindly stop vandalising Wikipedia entries. The text of the entry on Christian antisemitism that you provided was a collection of distortions, and that fact is available for everyone's judgement. --AV
AV, it is YOU who are the one vandalizing Wiki entries - by deleting them wholesale. I merely pointed out what your actions are, but you were too dense to see the point. If you disagree with someone, say why, but don't engage in wholesale entry destruction. Your vandalism of this project is unethical, and still smacks of outright antisemitism. --RK
- You have vandalised the Holocaust entry a few minutes ago by adding discussion and innuendo to it that don't belong there. As for deleting your entry, I have already explained my reasons several times, including one explanation on my personal page, which you then proceeded to delete. --AV
Btw, do we suppose that AV would be any slower in deleting material that had a clear antisemitic bias than in deleting the material he did? I suspect not, in which case he is not an antisemite. Let's leave our insults at home, and maybe try to understand that wikipedia is not a forum for promotion. --JG
JG
?, I'm a Jew living in Jerusalem. [Simon J. Kissane]
? can attest to the fact that I opposed some changes of his because I thought they were biased against Israel or Jews. We managed to resolve our differences and come closer to a NPOV, hopefully. --
AV
Ok, then I know rather than suspect not. Personally I applaud you for your perseverance in enforcing the no bias rule. It must quickly get frustrating when you have to do the same thing over and over again.
I am deleting two groups of people from the list of Nazi targets for extermination: The Polish people (which were called Poles); and homosexuals. The Nazis killed many Poles, and if they had won they were sure to have killed many more. But they had any plan to exterminate the Polish people. The same is true of homosexuals. In fact, the homosexuals are one of the few categories of people that Nazis believed that they went "too far" in persecuting, and thus they actually relaxed their laws on this subject.
- this is false, see below. szopen
We can tell that they wanted to exterminate all Jewish people because (a) they said that they wanted to do this, (b) they actually tried to do this, (c) they did not allow Jewish people to go free, as long as they gave up their religion. In contrast, people arrested as homosexuals were often let go; no attempt was made to identify and round up all homosexuals; the Nazis never claimed that they wanted to kill all homosexuals, and a number of Nazi officials were themselves homosexual (this was a semi-open secret.) The Nazis discriminated against homosexuals, they sent some to concentration camps, and they certainly murdered many of them. But they never wanted to exterminate them as they did the Jews and the Roma/Gypsies?. I can provide much more documentation if anyone would like, but it is copyrighted material. I guess it would be Ok to copy a page or two, and temporarilly put it here on a Talk page, and not on the main entry?RK
- I really question that. The wholesale murder of these other people were part of the Holocaust. If this were the Genocide article I would agree with you, because genocide calls for a higher standard, but there is no doubt the murder of Poles, homosexuals, Roma and others were part of the Holocaust!
I am uncomfortable broadening the use of the word Holocaust to include all people who died at the Nazi's hands. That would make it practically synonmous with "Axis induced casualties of WW II", which neuters and dilutes its very meaning and use. I would put it this way - the Nazi's attempt at genocide of the Jewish people is what most people mean by the word "Holocaust".
- I think that Poles gassed in auschwitz are part of Holocaust too. Anyway, see this: http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/
,,But what about "the others"? There were five million of them. Who were they? Whose children, whose mothers and fathers were they? How could five million human beings have been killed and forgotten? '' ,,Eleven million precious lives were lost during the Holocaust of World War II. Six million of these were Polish citizens. Half of these Polish citizens were non-Jews. 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."
- On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from three directions. Hitler's invincible troops attacked from the west, the north and the south. Poland never had a chance. By October 8, 1939, Polish Jews and non-Jews were stripped of all rights and, were subject to special legislation. Rationing, which allowed for only bare sustenance of food and medicine was quickly set up. Young Polish men were forcibly drafted into the German army. The Polish language was forbidden. Only the German language was allowed. All secondary schools and colleges were closed. The Polish press was liquidated. Libraries and bookshops were burned. Polish Art and culture were destroyed. Polish churches and religious buildings were burned. Most of the priests were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Street signs were either destroyed or changed to new German names. Polish cities and towns were renamed in German. It was Hitler's goal to obliterate all traces of Polish history and culture.
- Hundreds of Polish community leaders, mayors, local officials, priests, teachers, lawyers, judges, senators, doctors were executed in public. Much of the rest of the so-called Intelligentsia, the Polish leading class, was sent to concentration camps where they later died.
- The first mass execution of World War II took place in Wawer, a town near Warsaw, Poland on December 27, 1939 when 107 Polish non-Jewish men were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and shot. This was just the beginning of the street roundups and mass executions that continued throughout the war. The goal of these executions, deportations, and the ruthless domination of citizens was to terrorize all Poles into docile subservience.''
- i would want to discuss more about that, because i think, that people of other religion and nationality than Jewish, no matter gassed, burned alive, or shooted, are part of Holocaust too. szopen
- Note that Jews are just one of the Semitic races. Arabs are also considered Semitic.
Anti-Semitism was coined by Wilhelm Mahr in 1877, specifically as "hatred of the Jews". Moreover, it has hardly been used in any other meaning elsewhere - look up
[Webster] or
[Public domain dictionaries]. In addition, during World War II, numerous Arab leaders (among them the Jerusalem mufti Abd El-Qadr Al-Husseni) enjoyed a very positive relationship with the Nazi regime, the uniting force being the hatred towards the Jews and the British. So indeed this sentence seems to me quite irrelevant (and misleading), so I would like it removed. What do you think? --
Uriyan
I removed the reference to the Armenian genocide, since it is already covered on
genocide, and I don't see a need to mention it here specifically.
I have a question about the Functionalism/Intentionalism? debate. I have not heard of this debate. Are there any references? Functionalism seems to be obviously false in view of the Wannsee conference and the strict hierarchical organization of the Nazi bureaucracy. --AxelBoldt
Uriyan, I second your motion...delete away, if you ask me.--
Paul Drye
AxelBoldt: The Armenian genocide should be mentioned here, because it is often called the Armenian Holocaust.
You may think functionalism is "obviously false", but many serious historians believe it. Exactly what the Wannsee confrence ordered is controversial. And many contend that the Nazi bureaucracy was not a "strict hierarchial organization", but an anarchic mess of competing organisations (the SS, Gestapo, the Germany military, the Nazi Party, etc.) which spent more time at each others necks than doing much else.
- To varying degrees, that is true of all governments. In any case, many years before World War II, Hitler explicitly stated in his tome "Mein Kapmpf" that all the Jews should be destroyed. What kind of person denies that he meant what he said? He planned this for years, and I cannot imagine how honest people can make Hitler and his followers into less evil people who never planned the Holocaust. They planned it all along, and in the 1930s they were open about it. Case closed.
- Functionalists would argue that while Hitler did make statements about destroying the Jews, they were mostly just rhetoric and antisemitic fantasies. There is no evidence of any detailed plans by Hitler, just an unfleshed-out idea. Indeed, he looked with much more detail at deportation, which if his intention at the time was extermination would be the last thing he'd want to do. Jews in Madagascar are much harder to shoot or gas than Jews in Europe. -- SJK
For a reference, try Schleunes, Karl A. The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews, 1933-1939. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1990., which I've been told started the whole debate, though I must admit I have not actually read it. -- SJK
Article spoke of the mentally retarded being killed in extermination camps. While the Nazis did kill tens of thousands (or was it hundreds of thousands? -- i can't remember) of mentally retarted persons, AFAIK they were largely carried out in hospitals and other institutions, not at extermination camps. And I've never heard of the killing of the mentally retarted reffered to as part of the Holocaust, although it may well have helped lay the groundwork for it, especially wrt methods of killing. --
SJK
- I think that the treatment of the mentally retarded byt the Nazis helps serve to emphasize their ability to ascribe a lower level of humanity to some groups, thus justifying their actions. The same types of arguments used to justify experimentation on the mentally retarded were also used to prove that Jews and other non-Aryan racial groups were "less than human." Inasmuch as this does go directly to Nazi theory, I would vote for leaving in at least a mention the experimentation on and extermination of the mentally retarded by the Third Reich in connection with the Holocaust. JHK
I have absolutely no objection to the Nazi treatment of the mentally retarted being mentioned; I was only objecting to how it was being mentioned, i.e. as part of the Holocaust: it was spatially and temporally distinct, and possibly not as evil.
On a moral level I don't think the Nazi treatment of the mentally retarted was necessarily equal to the Holocaust. The extermination of the mentally retarted was done in a significantly kinder manner, with a lot less malice.
Also, at least one contemporary philosopher (i.e. Peter Singer) has argued that there is nothing wrong with euthanasising the mentally retarted in certain circumstances. I don't agree with Singer on that, but I think his views demonstrate that it is somewhat more reasonable to defend the euthanasia of the mentally retarted than it is to defend the extermination of Jews or other ethnic or racial groups. (I might add he doesn't defend the Nazi's particular euthanasia program; he is speaking more in general terms, and he's mainly speaking of infants, not adults.) -- SJK
It's clear that the Nazi program of murdering retarded and disabled people and sterilizing others should definitely be mentioned somewhere. I also agree that the sentence in the main article was factually wrong: the retarded were not killed in the extermination camps and I don't think people normally call their murder part of the holocaust proper. So it needs to be mentioned on the Nazi page or on a separate euthanasia page; it's a Nazi policy separate from the holocaust. --AxelBoldt
- The physical evidence and the documentary proof, which included records of train shipments of Jews to the camps, orders for tons of cyanide and other poisons, and other explicit details of how the genocide was pursued.
These poisons were officially meant for delousing, so they don't make a really good proof. --Taw
- ummmm is cyanide usually used for delousing?? Sometimes, historians are allowed to make inferences -- especially ones backed up by first hand accounts.JHK
Please see, for example, "The Efficiency
of Prussic Acid Fumigation at Low Temperatures" (trans.)
http://www.holocaust-history.org/works/peters-rasch-1941/htm/intro000.htm
Would it be appropriate to identify the various people and groups who endeavored to save or rescue some Jews from the Nazis? Should a brief mention be made of the Holocaust's effect on the Zionist movement with a link to an article on Zionism? --Wesley
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