Talk:The Holocaust/Archive 1

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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

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? If anyone would like a detailed article on this subject, leave a note for me on my page. 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

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 by 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

Sounds like a good idea.

BTW, Before Wansee conferention Himmler met Greiser (administrator of Greater Poland, so called then Warthegau) and they agreed that all Jews of mentioned region are to be killed. Concentration camp for killing them (Chelmno nad Nerem) was, if my memory serves me well, was also established before Wansee conference. Some 200.000 Jews from Greater Poland perished there. ~~

members of other churches (such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer) who opposed Nazism,

I vote for removing this part, since Bonhoeffer was killed as a dissident who happened to be Christian, not as a Christian per se, and the dissidents were already listed earlier. Also, I don't think it is appropriate to mention a single victim by name in the first paragraph. AxelBoldt

RK removed the following:

Ironically, the earliest instance of genocide of which we have good records is the one described in the Bible in which the Hebrews decimated the goddess-worshipping people of Canaan and took over their lands.

Which Clutch later reinstated. I have to say, although I swore never to get involved in anything that seemed even slightly controversial again, I do tend to agree with RK here - I don't see what relevance this has, and it does leave a slightly nasty taste in my mouth. Possibly whoever added it didn't mean to suggest that Jews deserved to be slaughtered in WWII, but that's beside the point - the information seems irrelevant to me. Perhaps it might be useful, Clutch, if you said why you think this is useful info to have in this article. (Just for the record: I'm not Jewish). --Camembert

Hi Camembert. I thought that it was interesting that "holocaust" used to describe the killing by Jews of other ethnic groups. It shows that the current meaning of the word isn't the same as it once was. I didn't get any sense that it was "gloating" or "justifying killing Jews". So, a) it was relevant and b) noone denies that it was truthful. Perhaps the sentence itself could be rephrased, but I believe the information itself is worthwhile and should remain with the article. --Clutch 02:10 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)
Ironically, the earliest holocausts were described in the Tanakh as being carried out by Hebrews against the polytheists of Canaan.
Personally I would put the above sentence in instead, but RK seems to have deleted the entire article. C'est la vie. --Clutch 02:18 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

If in fact the term Holocaust is to be taken in a broader context rather than that limited to the events that took place in the 1930s and 1940s, then perhaps it is OK to include other genocides that resemble it in spirit if not in scale. If, however, the Holocaust is to be strictly reserved for that, then a more generic article should exist. There should not be a decision by wikipedia about this, rather, it should be a reflection of humanity's way of thinking about this. Christopher Mahan


RK, Clutch, I recommend you both lay off editing pages you are too emotionally involved with for a while and let cooler heads do their work. I reverted this to pre-war state, and I left out the one sentence you two seem to be fighting about, not because it's anti-semitic (it's not--it's just a simple statement about a story in the Bible that everyone knows about), but because it just isn't very relevant. Clutch, just because RK might have a biased motive for removing the statement, it's still your obligation to evaluate the removal in terms of what makes the best article, and I think this article is better without it. --LDC

Thank you Lee. When I first saw RK's edit comment, without any corresponding Talk entry, it raised alarm bells in my head, and I acted too hastily in reverting his change. You are right that the sentence as it stood wasn't right for this entry. I have since read over the article and put in a more appropriate note, in a more appropriate place. --Clutch 02:28 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

Come on now, Clutch, your version is much more biased and you know that; I expect at least a modicum of personal integrity here. The mention of the destruction of Canaan is irrelevant here, because this is an article about real things, not legends and religious beliefs. --LDC

I disagree. Lot's of people know what happened between the Hebrews and Canaanites. It's appropriate to say that the word Holocaust doesn't apply to what happened there. If you wish to flesh it out with detail of why it's not appropriate, that would make it even better. --Clutch 02:45 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

Besides, if you look at the first paragraph in the article, the holocaust is strictly the Nazi Germany era. Christopher Mahan

In that case, there should have been no need to mention the Armenian Holocaust, right? Historical context is important. --Clutch 02:45 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

If the only reason to even mention an event that may not even have ever happened is to say that it's not an example of the subject of the article, that's pretty slim justification. --LDC

The Tanakh and most historians are in agreement that it did happen. I am surprised though that the information about the Holocausts of the middle ages aren't described like they used to be. It's been a while since I read and edited this article.

Clutch, yeah, actually. But the Armenian Genocide is in fact often referred to as a Holocaust. It is not ours to say if this is right or wrong. Christopher Mahan

Clutch claims "The Tanakh and most historians are in agreement that it did happen. I am surprised though that the information about the Holocausts of the middle ages aren't described like they used to be."

Clutch's claims, and his anti-Semitism, need to be condemned, and not treated with the respect that he currently is getting. So let us expose his three deliberate lies: (A) The Tanakh does not clarly agree that the Israelites committed genocide in the land of Cannaan. In fact, while the early books mention this as a command from God (which is also in the Chrisitan Bible, by the way), the later books of the Boble make absolutely clear that the event never occured. The later books of the Bible describe the long and tumultuous co-existence between the Israelies and the Canaanites, who obviously were not wiped out. Clutch's lies about this betray an anti-semitic agenda: Quote sentences of the Bible out of context in order to make Jews look bad. (B) Further, the great majority of modern day historians are in agreement that the supposed genocide never took place, period. There is simply no evidence that it occured. Clutch's attempt to pretend that this consensus does not exist betrays some kind of agenda. (C) No Holocaust ever took place in the middle ages. Clutch is simply rewriting the dictionary in order to remove the meaning of this word. Again, this betrays some kind of unhealthy agenda. RK
Hi Clutch, point by point:
  1. First, historical revisionism is respected by some people, in some cases. It is not universally respected. Second, the use of the word "respected" to describe historical revisionism in this context implies that holocaust revisionism is not to be respected. Indeed, this is precisely the reason you give above. Fine for most things, but not fine for NPOV.
  2. and
  3. I can only say that hasn't been my experience. Do you have any evidence for this or is it entirely anecdotal?

I'm not going to revert right now because I hate edit wars, but I think the article is better changed. DanKeshet 23:53 Nov 5, 2002 (UTC)

Clutch,

Holocaust revisionism is a point of view, based perhaps on some evidence, perhaps on personal beliefs. Just like some people think that when people die some go to Heaven. It's not now and will not for the foreseeable future be accepted as the official truth (because the Official Truth is Sanctioned by the Reigning World Power: The US of A).
While I agree with you and them that revisionism does have some interesting points, and while their attempt at debunking of the "Ordained Truth" have at least made people consider the notion that the history books were written (what's new) by the victors and may not be completely accurate in the Truth sense of the word, it leaves in my mouth the very bad taste of having to swallow a bigger lie.
As for the other two points, I doubt that. There are plenty of people who went down during WWII leaving family and friends behind that deeply care about such issues.
RK Some people don't like jews. They are entitled to their opinion. They are entitled to express that opinion. Nothing wrong there. Any attempt at stopping another man from speaking is called censorship, and it is not a trademark of civilized company.
I bet you that in the world, more people don't like Americans, Christians, or Muslims that don't like Jews, so please don't take it personally. Christopher Mahan
After the Holocaust, I don't think that people are entitled to a certain level of bigotry. We all now know where such things can lead. But that point aside, let's say that I agree with you, and that I agree that Clutch has a right to his views. I would still say that this is not relevant; this is not a free-flowing discussion forum. It is an earnest attempt to produce a historicaly accurate and unbiased encyclopedia. Its not the place to lambaste Jews about Holocaust-revisionism. Clutch is engaging in polemics deisgned to hurt people, while the rest of us are trying to summarize and write about scholarship. And just so that the linguistics don't throw anyone, many Jews themselvs engage in the respected scholarly endeavour of historical revisionism (in the original, technical sense of the term), even with regards to the Holocaust. What everyone is repelled by (and contra Clutch, not just "Jews") is the attempt by Neo-Nazis to use forgery, deception and fraud to create a misimpression with a scholarly veneer that the Holocaust didn't really occur. This holocaust revisionism is rejected by Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Unitarian-Universalists, Humanists, atheists, etc. Its just outside the bounds of legitimate history. It is as dishonest as claiming that millions of blacks were never held as slaves in America, and its only today's "uppity black folk" that disagree. Its that level of ridiculousness and dishonesty that I object to. Scholarship, on the other hand, is fine whatever the truth is. RK

RK, People are always entitled to being bigots. Lack of education is not a crime, nor is it a disqualifying factor for belonging to and participating in the endeavors of the human race. I agree with you that bigotry leads to hate, hate to suffering, and suffering to the Dark Side (thank you Yoda), but to stop people from speaking their piece is just as bad.

1.3 billion chinese and 1.3 billion indians don't believe in Catholicism. They have the majority (2.6 billion is a majority in just about every aspect of human thought). Does that make Catholicism untrue? No. Majorities may win elections, but majorities seldom are the arbiter of truth.

Scholarship also has problems. Scholars, for thousands of years, pounded into the rest of the population that the earth was flat, that it was the center of the universe, and that there was an ether out there where space is. Scientists change their minds about as often as my wife goes to the mall.

As far as being disonest and ridiculous: we are all human, and we have all done it, and we would fool ourselves if we thought we would not do it in the future. If Clutch is being a vandal, then let's ban him, but I don't think that is the case. If he is being unreasonable because of his advancement of his opinion as facts without proper reference, then I would say that you need to engage in healthy discussion about the merits of such beliefs, and so on, and perhaps some new information would surface that would change all of our opinion.

To make a long story short: to object to ridiculousness and dishonesty is fine and dandy as an opinion, but is not a valid reason to engage in censorship. Christopher Mahan

Chris Mahan -- censorship is a serious issue, if we are talking about the state preventing people from expressing themselves. Fortunately, we have a relatively low level of censorship in this country, and there are plenty of Holocaust revisionism sites on the web anyone can go to. neither RK nor the government are doing anything to preven people from expressing anti-semitic views.

What RK is trying to do is prevent people from using Wikipedia as a platform for expressing anti-semitic views. This is different.

Frankly, I am not sure what point you are making about censorship in this context. I have contributed to many pages in this project. Sometimes people cut what I write, or change it -- I do not accuse them of censorship. I have cut other people's contributions, and so far no one has accused me of censorship. You see, there is another perfectly good word we have here for what I am talking about. It is "editing."

Are you sincerely and seriously saying that we should not edit something that is, in your words, "ridiculous and dishonest? Are you seriously saying that an encyclopedia article should present "ridiculous and dishonest" statements as facts? Perhaps you should go over the various guidelines for Wikipedia. My experience over the past year or so is that people involved in Wikipedia are constantly editing one anothers contributions precisely in order to eliminate ridiculous and dishonest statements. Why do you object to this? Slrubenstein

Sl, editing is fine.

But let me give you an example. If three people walk into a room and say:

Person A: I believe this is the kitchen.
Person B: I also believe this is the kitchen.
Person C: I actually think we're in the living room.

The article should read: 2 out of three people who voiced their opinion think of this room as the kitchen, and the third thinks of this room as the living room.

This is a stupid analogy, and I find your comments destructive towards any attempt at creating and summarizing academic scholarship. Truth is not determined by votes. If what you said had any validity, then our encyclopedia entries should state as a matter of fact that all Jews are damned to hell, while a minority of stubborn Jews disagree. Why not say that - after all, most monotheists today still do believe that all Jews are damned to hell. The point of an encyclopedia is not to merely summarize popular opinions, including violately hateful slander. It it is to present facts in an authoritative way as possible. If you find yourself unable or unwilling to agree with these goals, then Wikipedia is not the community for you. RK


Instead, I sometimes find "This room is a kitchen". So when someone comes along and says: "Oh, and some people believe this room could be the living room," and he gets the door slammed in his face because he's an idiot and a vandal or what not, then I say wait a minute. An encyclopedia is not "Pax Americana Knowledge" but rather the knowledge of all mankind, and on issues which people don't agree on, there should be mutliple points of view. In journalism, it's called "balance".

Editing is okay, but shutting out dissenting views because of perceived bigotry is not. So while I completely disagree with Clutch, (see my paper on treblinka), I completely disagree that his views are in any less way important in an encyclopedia than anyone else. He himself admitted that they belonged in another article (see above) so that solved that issue.

My gripe is with "cutting" text just because it either "feels" wrong, cannot be proven (the fact that something cannot be proven does not make it automatically false, just unproven), or is perceived bigotry. Anything we say can be perceived as bigotry by someone else. Heck, anything we say can be considered "Against National Security" by someone else. We just ought to be extremely careful in cutting text, and certainly not do it when incensed. Christopher Mahan

Chris, I'm not sure what there is to agree or disagree with me about; I tried to make the statements about Holocaust Revisionism read neutrally. I can't help it that many people view neutrality on this topic as outright promotion. But I have the same genes as my Dissenter forbears. I'll defend The Truth no matter who wishes it to be buried. Since this is a sensitive topic, let me clarify that by "Truth" I am referring to accurately depicting what revisionists believe, as opposed to claiming that what they believe is "the truth". --Clutch

snippet of comment by RK removed by RK on 11/08/2002

You were busy a short while ago sticking similar accusations and slanders in the Jehovah's Witnesses article, and yelling "lies, propaganda, and vandalism!" when people tried to restore balance. I call foul. What's wrong, you can dish it out but you can't take it? Thank goodness I know a lot of Jews, because if you were the only Jew I knew, I'd find myself unable to refute the anti-Semites of this world. --Clutch
Are you serious Clutch? If the only Jew you knew were RK (or if all the Jews you knew were like RK), you couldn't refute Anti-Semitism? You really had better think about this. Racism is not wrong because it asserts as facts things that are not facts; it is wrong because it is hate towards a a class of people. It is wrong no matter what the facts are. I do not know any Samoans, but if someone told me that "Samoans are (put negative qualities here)" that kind of sentence would be enough for me to know that the speaker is a racist. I highly recommend Sartre's book Anti-Semite and Jew. Before you judge someone like RK, you had better take a closer look at yourself. Slrubenstein
Hatred is a natural human emotion, like jealousy. It is false and intellectually dishonest to pretend there is never a role for it. Instead of waving ones hands and saying "it's wrong to hate!", it's better to acknowledge peoples emotions, find out what is causing those emotions, and then work to change the causes, if you don't like the emotions. That is the pragmatic approach. All the Sartre in the world isn't going to change human nature. I find it interesting how such "you can't hate anyone!" rhetoric is used to marginalize people with legitimate grievances, while letting the aggressor avoid making any constructive changes to his own self. --Clutch
Trust me, Clutch, I would never say "You can't hate anyone!" As a matter of fact, there are some people I hate. Really, really, hate. Really. But I do think it is wrong to hate a whole class of people, and to attack them verbally with negative stereotypes. You know what? I hate people who do that. I really, really hate them ;) Slrubenstein
Clutch, there is a difference between spewing hateful statements, and asking that people stop doing so. I am sorry that you cannot see the difference. As for your claims about the articles on Jehovah's Witnesses, I find your claims to be flat-out lies and totally ridiculus. No one was using hatespeech and incitement against Jehovah's Witnesses. Instead, using books and publications from the Jehovah's Witnesses themselves, many of worked together to describe JW practices and beliefs. However, you lied to us, censored facts, and you flat-out engaged in a rewriting of history in order to hide facts about that religion which you seemed to find inconvenient. Frankly, it is obvious to many of us that you are just using your hatespeech against Jews as "revenge" for the fact that we won't allow you to vandalize out articles, and rewrite history to fir your religious beliefs. This isn't debateable Clutch. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't allow you to present ethnic slurs and libel as fact, in revenge. This only proves to us that you are not emotionally mature enough, let alone schooled enough, to participate in this project. RK

I think you guys just like arguing. You seem to get a lot of mileage out of it, anyway. Don't you have jobs, families, anything interesting to do?

If JWs became desperate enough for survival in Nazi Germany that they would make a pandering statement like "the commercial Jews financed the Anglo-American empire" -- which no doubt the Anti-Defamation League would denounce as anti-Semitic -- so what? Just put a sentence or 2 in the appropriate article and leave it at that. I know several Moonies who admit they lied during fundraising, just to avoid being rejected due to bigotry from potential donors. Does this mean they should be shunned? Or that the Unification Church should be condemned?

Agreeing with Adoph Hitler and trying to work with him on the basis of common hatred of the Jews is a very, very big deal. It is precisely this attitude among the Christians of Poland, Germany and Austria that allowed the Holocaust to occur. That is the whole point of it. When Clutch pretends otherwise, it is dishonest lying. ~~

Getting back to JWs and the Holocaust: assuming the source RK quoted is correct and JWs made some ingratiating statements to the Nazis, well, it didn't work, did it? JWs still went to concentration camps. One would think this common suffering would result in a shared bond of sorts. Why all the yak yak?

Perhaps Tolkien said it best in The Lord of the Rings (paraphrasing): "Nothing shows the power and reach of evil better than the fact that even people who oppose evil wind up being suspicious of each other and even fighting amongst themselves." --Ed Poor

Hi. Having read both this entire talk page and the subject page, I made a change that I think helps alleviate the problem here: people want to make it clear that others than jews died, while others don't want to take away from the jews who died. Hopefully this will help. Flame away.

In a surprisingly frank admission, our resident anti-Semitic vandal publicly admits "Thank goodness I know a lot of Jews, because if you were the only Jew I knew, I'd find myself unable to refute the anti-Semites of this world."

Folks, this says it all. Only an anti-Semitic Jew-hater could write such a hateful personal attack. And since my views on this subject are representative of many, many Jews, it is very clear that Clutch himself is admitting that its Ok to hate Jews. By what right can Wikipedia moderators allow confessed bigots to warp encyclopedia articles? He repeatedly taunts and slanders Jews. (its not just once.) he repeatedly makes apologetics for explicitly pro-Nazi and pro-Hitler entreaties. So at what point will his hatespeech be banned? This issue keeps coming up, and yet no does anything. Does someone have to actually murder a Jew to get banned from Wikipedia? Come on people, let's use some common sense here~ RK

It's me again, from three posts up. Since any actual work on this article stopped about three days ago, perhaps we should let this go. RK, you've proven that clutch is an anti-semite. Clutch, you've proved rk is really, really sensitive to this kind of stuff. We should just call it a stalemate and move on to less sensitive articles, like monkeys.

I have made some revisions. Before anyone edits them (because I am sure they could be improved) let me explain my motivation. I think the biggest problem with the material on Hlocaust revisionism is that it suggested that "revisionism" is a technique. It is not. "Revisionists" and other historians use the same basic techniques, and hold to the same academic standards (or at least claim to). "Revisionism" is a word that is meaningful only in the context of some controvery, usually political, over historical material. To call someone a "revisionist" is to claim that their historical interpretation is politically motivated or that they are trying to correct a previously held, but politically motivated, historical interpretation.

In this sense the term "revisionism" certainly applies to some people who write about the Holocaust. But what I really objected to in the earlier version is the suggestion that there is a consensus among non-revisionist scholars. This is just not true. The article on Holocaust revisionism is clearly based on the work of a few scholars who make a specific set of claims -- in other words, that article defines (usefully, I think) HR rather narrowly. But there are many other scholars who do not share the views of Holocaust revisionists as stated in that article, who nonetheless are vigorously debating a variety of issues of fact and interpretation concerning the Holocaust.

So I have tried to revise the section on "interpretation" to make clear that "non-revisionists" are constantly questioning what happened too, and using historical techniques to figure out what "really" happened and why. I do not think "revisionists" are using different techniques by the way, I just do not think they are as skilled in historian's craft. Slrubenstein

Does hating one Jew makes someone an anti-Semite? Does hating one black make someone a racist? Does hating one woman make someone a sexist? RK is very sensitive, but I don't blame him for that. Anyone who's had relatives (however intimate or distant) murdered en masse is liable to be sensitive to the tiniest hint of another attack. But even if Clutch came right out and said "I hate Jews" and even "I joined the Jehovah's Witnesses because I know they hate Jews too" -- that would not be grounds for expelling him from this project. He just has to write from the neutral point of view. To give a personal example, I am 100% against homosexuality and gay rights legislation. Yet neither Maveric, Montrealais or Easter Bradford has called for my expulsion. Why? Because they rejoice in my POV? Hardly likely. No, it's because I am scrupulously careful to write from the NPOV. --Ed Poor

I also grew up in a culture that had suffered mass extermination at the Nazis hands. Yet I and most people in that culture don't go around whining and attacking people on account of it, the way RK and a few other bad apples do. It hilights the difference between the Christian concept of love, and the Judaic concept of "never forgive, never forget", which doesn't show any love at all. --Clutch
RK and I both quoted one example of an anti-semitic comment above. Now you provide us with another example, the anti-semitic slander that their is some "Judaic" concept "never forgive, never forget." Are you explicitly asking RK and I to forgive you for the two offensive things you have said? Slrubenstein

If you believe in the Christian concept of love, then please try to avoid getting into pissing contests with RK. --Ed Poor

Mr. Rubenstein, please don't be so thin-skinned. If there is no such thing as "never forgive, never forget" then why not just say so? If you rub a puppy's nose in shit every time he messes up the house, will that really accelerate his house-breaking? The Bible says, "A soft answer turneth away wrath." Is that a Jewish concept? How about, "Train up a child when he is young, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

Let's get back to building a good article. If someone needs some instruction along the way, let's provide it. But try not to be so quick to condemn. As another Jew once said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." (Don't make me bend down and start writing in the sand...) --Ed Poor

It wasn't poor len - just someone quoting him.

Thanks for that! You're correct; I said those words on a completely different subject. Putting them into this context and signing my name is libel. 64.7.145.36 is an IP owned by Sentex.net in Canada; I am working with the abuse department at Sentex to track down the person who did this. When found, he is in some serious trouble. --Len

The term Holocaust is being used increasingly to describe other genocides. In fact, this same article says that at the bottom of the page. Also, the numbers got confused--was it ten million victims of concentration and death camps or 16 million. A sentence I removed--Nazis also killed more than ten million more people in death camps--implied the latter. Danny

The mention of Eichmann in paragraph 3 seems out of place. The topic of the paragraph is the distinction of the Nazi Holocaust w.r.t. its systematic nature; it concludes with a completely out-of-context mention of one particular Nazi behind the Holocaust. --Len

I agree about Eichmann. It is just a leftover sentence from a previous version and should be removed. I will remove it. I'm also not sure if the comment on Zyklon B is accurate in this context--yes they did get more sophisticated in their methods of killing, but is that true only of the Nazi Holocaust in World War 2 or is it common to other attempts at genocide as well? I am not sure. Danny
It may be true about other genocides as well, but I think it still speaks to the general point that the Holocaust was a singularly systematic example of genocide, of a piece with the meticulous record-keeping, etc.. --Len

I reverted the "the killing of individuals." Individuals were not targeted--entire groups were. In the case of racial groups (Jews, Gypsies) there was no possibility of reprive for any individuals, which is what I think that sentence implies. I also don't like the new addition on numbers, which seems to give more credence to speculation than is deserved, but am leaving it for now till I find a way to word it that better explains both the records and the figures that can be extrapolated from them, as well as other sources for numbers (population registers and censuses, etc.). Danny