Auschwitz and other mass murder

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,skipy
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 06:02 PM

and then they came for me!
Skipy.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 05 Mar 05 - 06:16 AM

Shambles recommended Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist, which I gladly second. It had a limited release, so the best chance to see it now will be tv/DVD.

But also make every effort to see Hotel Rwanda. It's just been released in the UK, so maybe it's been out in the US for a while now. It has none of the gloss or budget of, for instance, Spielberg's Holywood entertainment, Schindler's List, but you will come away reeling. And if you thought Auschwitz was unique in the annals of human depravity, I guarantee that after seeing Hotel Rwanda you would rethink that perspective.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: dianavan
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 10:57 PM

Actually Robomatic, I have been reading and posting to this thread longer than you have. I was referring to the link Donuel provided. Did you read it?

In fact, if you bothered to read any of what I posted you would see that we agree on many points.

Its easy to bad-mouth someone and then run away but it doesn't earn much respect.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 12:46 PM

Indeed.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 12:44 PM

The story of Auschwitz and the industrical complex that was put together to destroy peoples is now an icon of our understanding. It isn't about any one people, either as perpetrators or as victims. It's a lesson in what the Human Race is capable of, for good or ill. We have proven our capability of rendering hell on earth.

A better summing-up of this thread and the issue would be difficult to find..........

We know we can do better, but like the first ascent of a precipice, the way is not known. We don't know if everyone at the base of the mountain is worth tying a rope to but we have no choice, we have to tie up with someone.

The question is - do we know we can do better? Sometimes I feel that there appears to be little real will to make the attempt to learn from our past mistakes - and to do it better. But as we don't have any choice but to go on - there does seem very little point in knowingly repeating our past mistakes and recreating 'hell on earth'.....

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 12:26 PM

I agree with what you said, robomatic. The Messiah that can save us exists only within ourselves....as the best that we are each capable of.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 12:16 PM

divan: you seem to be willing to vent without doing any research, i.e. reading the posts in this thread, or a book even.
The US signed a treaty with the USSR restricting just the research you are b*tching about. The US abided by the treaty. The USSR did not. The double standard I perceive here is coming from you. We are now looking at a world made more dangerous both in the nuclear and in the chem bioweapons field due in part to the disintegration of the USSR and the dissemination of raw materials and information to points unknown. A considerable amount of American national treasure is going around the world to buy up weapons grade materials and secure the loyalty of weapons engineers. Where this succeeds it makes us all safer, including your country, your people, your family, and yourself. So a lot of my money is going to make you safer, and I'm okay with that and you don't even have to say thanks.

As far as bioweapons tech goes, you can count on more of this stuff going down. The weapons are capable of being developed anywhere with easily obtainable materials and tools.

Remember that a half-blind Japanese madman was able to establish a world-wide group of followers and develop a nasty gas and attempt to kill a lot of people in downtown Tokyo. We are all living with nightmare scenarios that don't even involve angry Arabs.

We are not off topic, because what controls these nightmare scenarios is our own grasp on sanity. If we are true to our principles and respect ourselves and others as ourselves, we have a chance. Otherwise, all it takes for us to literally dismember ourselves and our society is enough machetes.

If we are bent on making ourselves and our world better and free of superstition, nothing will stop us. If we surrender to fear and dogma, very little will save us.

I personally don't buy into the idea of an EXTERNAL messiah to solve our problems for us. We are the problem. We are the solution. The messiah either is us or will be us.

The story of Auschwitz and the industrical complex that was put together to destroy peoples is now an icon of our understanding. It isn't about any one people, either as perpetrators or as victims. It's a lesson in what the Human Race is capable of, for good or ill. We have proven our capability of rendering hell on earth. We know we can do better, but like the first ascent of a precipice, the way is not known. We don't know if everyone at the base of the mountain is worth tying a rope to but we have no choice, we have to tie up with someone.

Have a great time, have a great weekend. I'm done with this thread.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: dianavan
Date: 04 Mar 05 - 01:41 AM

Talk about weapons of mass destruction!!!

Quite frankly I am sick of the U.S. thinking they are entitled to develop biological weapons and space weapons but have the nerve to invade countries that they think are doing the same thing. Talk about a double standard!

Nobody should be allowed to pump money into destruction when people are starving! This is insane!

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 11:48 PM

Boy, I don't really even want to think about the bio-war thing too much. Creepy! I suspect it would have a way of getting out of control and screwing up the expectations of the perpetrators pretty quickly. Poison gas often did that in WWI, when the wind changed.

I'm glad I don't think that this physical life is "all there is" or this sort of thing would really depress me.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 09:16 PM

bio "defense" explosion

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4309315.stm

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 10:58 AM

Don'l:
You've actually said something with a modicum of sense behind it! (Was it a random event?) As usual, I suspect that your 'specific' count of how many research facilities and where things are are pulled out of your posterior, but the basic idea of bioweaponry capabilities is quite real. The Soviet Union in violation of bioweapons treaties with the US, came up with some really creepy stuff that is way worse than weaponized anthrax.

Have you read Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six"? It puts a thriller aspect to the subject much as you put a cartoonish aspect to it. He has a group of "killer greenies" who decide to reduce the planet's human population by about 99.9% and of course, after they do that they don't need to be greenies no more.

I DOUBT that technology can come up with race specific weapons because of the extreme variability within races (and there are respectable folk who believe of course that 'race' has no scientific meaning).

But you can probably target a sub-species. And if you have a sample of a person's DNA, you can probably in future develop a poison that will shut down that DNA, in other words you'll be able to come up with a poison, put it in the reservoir, and kill one selected person.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 08:55 AM

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/biowar.jpg

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 08:49 AM

I am convinced the next holocaust will be in the form of a bio war event.

The holy grail in the bio war lab enviorment is a race specific killer virus. SARS was suspected of be such a virulent varient.

During the cold war the USSR had 20 tons of small pox virus to use as a follow up to nuclear weapons. Today research is concentrating on retro and flu virus in the US and China.

Extreme FEMA regulations have been in place for 10 years regarding a pandemic. The threat of a biowar event is not strange or far out.
To speculate as to who will initiate it intentionally or by accident is not the issue. To wonder why several dozen highly respected bio war scientists have been murdered in the last several years brings up more unworthwhile debate.

Nothing makes me sadder to admit that the issue of population control by man made viri is a very real one. There is currently a huge proliferation of class 4 bio weapon labs sprouting up through out the country. We have 5 within a half hour drive from our house a 6th brand new one nearly completed on Rockville Pike.

I have cartooned the issue many times over the last 4 years and there still seems to be a profound disbelief in the whole issue.

By international treaty, most of the bio war research done in the US is of course illegal and has been so since the Nixon years.

Can anyone think of a more effective albeit cowardly weapon that does not destroy real estate but culls a selected population?

It is grimly preferable to neutron bombs in that respect.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 08:47 AM

I entirely agree, Eagle Wing, that the Israelis are entitled to defend their home ground, meaning "within the 1948 borders of Israel".

You are correct that the surrounding Arab states attacked Israel in 1948. True enough. You do not mention, however, that the new state of Israel had been carved out in the previous 3 years by acts of violence and terrorism on the part of European Jews (Ashkenazim) who had come into that area from outside with the intention of taking over a piece of land they had never lived on in their lives before! Would that not seem illegitimate to the local people and the surrounding Muslim populations, and why would they not take up arms and resist it? Anyone would, under the same circumstance.

You cannot justify an invasion of a foreign land by quoting passages from a 2,600 or 3,000 year-old holy book...unless you're just plain crazy.

What if the Arabs had gone to Holland or some place and tried to pull off such a move? What do you think would happen? It's just beyond imagination, really. Only an extraordinary horror like the Nazi Holocaust could have resulted in the World allowing such a situation to develop in the first place. People were not behaving rationally. Local Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, after all, had been getting along fine for a long time before the Ashkenazim came in and decided to create "Israel" out of thin air.

(Since they did succeed in creating it, however, I believe they should be allowed to maintain it now, and protect themselves.)

The Yom Kippur War was the inevitable Egyptian and Syrian response to the Six-Day War, and of course it was carried out on that day. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on a Sunday for the same reason...the element of surprise. In the Six-Day War the Israelis achieved total surprise in their initial air attacks, and that allowed them to wipe out the Egyptian air force at almost no loss to themselves and win an easy victory. The lesson was not lost on the Egyptians...but they DID lose a whole bunch of land. The Yom Kippur War was launched to regain that land...and partially succeeded. It could theoretically have resulted in the destruction of Israel as well, but did not, for at least 3 reasons:

1. the USA airlifed supplies to the Israelis, allowing them to replace their initial losses of equipment, particularly tanks.

2. the Israelis, being a very elite force, responded quickly to the changing situation and eventually turned the tables

3. the Arabs did not have a way of quickly replacing their lost equipment that could match the USA's help for Israel

Once you decide to fight such a war..against a more sophisticated opponent...you absolutely MUST achieve surprise. Anwar Sadat went to a great deal of troube to do that, and it resulted in the Egyptians regaining Sinai and reaching a peace accord with Israel, so from the point of view of both Israel and Egypt, it had a fairly good result, I'd say, in the long run.

In any case, my impression is that Sadat launched the war to regain Egpytian and Syrian territory lost in the Six-Day War, not to destroy Israel...but I may be wrong about that. I'm sure the Syrians would have gladly destroyed Israel if the opportunity presented itself.

As for God being on anyone's side...well, I don't actually think God takes sides. I think God is on everyone's side, in that they are constantly provided with life and consciousness and being and all that goes with it. God is like the sun. It doesn't shine on some people and withhold itself from others on same basis of favoritism...it shines indiscriminately in all directions all the time. That is Love, not favoritism. (But I don't think you were being serious, were you?)

I admire the Isrealis' military expertise and their intelligence and efficiency. I do not admire their general aggressive policy...nor do I admire the general aggressive policy of those who wish to destroy them.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 06:09 AM

"Equivalence" is not a verb, robomatic, it's a noun. Look it up in the dictionary. I am not "equivalencing". It's not possible to do that. It would be like impotencing or continuancing. Just doesn't work. :-)

Recognising the smiley, I still think it's a red herring to introduce semantics especially in a language that is shared by so many peoples. I simply assumed, when I saw that particular use of the word, that it was just another difference between American and Real English [insert smiley before thousands of US citizens attack me].

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 05:55 AM

"I remember, way back in the late 60's, when I had no real opinion of any sort about Israel, and the 6-day war happened. Everyone was very impressed how "little Israel" so utterly defeated the larger Arab forces around it. I was impressed. I thought, "Boy, that's a plucky little outfit, that Israel!" I started collecting their stamps, because the whole thing got me interested."

Have you also read about the Yom Kippur war when that same "little Israel" was attacked by it's surrounding nations on the one day in the year when they felt that no-one would attack - the most holy "day of atonement"? They were unprepared for this attack yet they still managed eventually to win. I'd almost have to agree with Martin that they were the chosen people - or at least that God was on their side if only during this unprovoked and cowardly attempt to destroy them as a nation.

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 05:45 AM

Little Hawk says "I'm suggesting that the Israelis, ever since World War II, have been getting even with the Nazis by fighting with Muslims."

Actually it was the Muslim nations that surround Israel that declared war on the new born Israel NOT the other way around. (I am not sure but I believe that not all of those states have rescinded that declaration of war which was intended to wipe out the state of Israel).
We constantly hear on UK news programs that Palestinian or other Muslim terrorists have blown up a bus carrying Israeli school children or some similar act. This is stated but there is little judgement about it. The following day the Israeli soldiers attack a "terrorist stronghold" and some civilians get killed too. There is international horror and prime-ministers and presidents get hot under the collar and accuse the Israelis of attrocity. Seems to me that we sometimes do find ourselves a little one-sided in our judgements.
Muslim leaders are regularly assuring us that theirs is a religion of peace. During the first Gulf War I taught a class that was about 80% Muslim. They confided in me that they were being taught to hate Jews - and that this teaching was given at the mosque.
Your statement about the Jews getting their own back by fighting Muslims seems rather strange to me.

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 05:32 AM

Robomatic says:
"But the forgiveness is not ours to give."

I appreciate what you are saying, Robomatic, but I have to disagree, for if the present generation cannot forgive the actions of past generations then the hatred will go on forever as has the hatred between Arab and Jew from the time of Ishmael.

The generation that experienced the Holocaust are passing on. If their descendants will not forgive, then they will engender more hatred and perhaps (though God forbid) a future holocaust.

It should never be forgotten - but it must be forgiven.

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 05:20 AM

"I support people who fight against a foreign invading force, period."

But, LH, are you not forgetting that, from the day Israel was declared a nation, the surrounding nations declared war on Israel and that there have been several occasions when the surrounding nations have attacked in great force. Are not Israel entitled to defend themselves against that as well as against the constant attacks by terrorists from Palestine?

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 05:02 AM

M.TED said "I am especially alarmed when I read, "Unless you have the tattoo, I suggest you shut up about the Holocaust experience, because you never experienced it"--it is a particularly aggressive effort to suppress the Holocaust, and even has a bit of implied threat built into it--"

I agree in principle, but I think you have to put that quote in the context of answering a person who calls everybody who is not a Jew, anti-semitic, neonazi etc. and who actually seems to have racial theories of his own as rabid as those he claims to oppose.

Frank L

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 04:32 AM

On 28.1.05 an unnamed GUEST said:
"How many Christians had the Jews killed through usery, starvation, and servitude?"

I don't know about elsewhere but my understanding of my own country's history is that Jews were forced into the usery business by English laws in Meieval times which limited the number of trades they could be involved in.

As a Christian, I think the above statement is about as anti-semitic as you can get.

I'd need some evidence about Jews starving or enslaving Christians (even in the first century AD).

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: EagleWing
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 04:25 AM

On 28 jan Mr Gibson said:
"Anti-semitism is at an all-time high on Mudcat at this time and I am sure many of you have noticed this."

Having read some of your recent posts, it seems to me that you actually and actively court anti-semitism. Anybody who dares to disagree with you, Martin, is cursed and insulted and called anti-semtic and neonazi with no regard to what the person has said or claimed.

I, personally, cannot think of anything more basically evil than the Nazi "solution" of Auschwitz and it's like. The haulocaust seems to me about the most evil act of modern times. But your insults towards anyone who thinks that other mass-murders also matter do not help non-jews to sympathise with your point of view.

Frank L.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 02:09 AM

Before you can forgive - or expect anyone else to forgive - it is probably a necessary part of the process to first cease sitting in judgement.

A good start would be to just respond or not to the views of others that add to this debate here - rather than feeling judging the worth of the posters (from their posts) was the object.

But in truth there has been very little of folk posting here - saying that things are black or white or seeing it as good guys v bad guys.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 12:57 AM

Yeah...it's wearing itself out all right, Gargoyle. Sheer, mind-numbing, paranoid obsession with one's own problems to the exclusion of all other people's problems can wear out anyone's credibility eventually.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 12:51 AM

"Equivalence" is not a verb, robomatic, it's a noun. Look it up in the dictionary. I am not "equivalencing". It's not possible to do that. It would be like impotencing or continuancing. Just doesn't work. :-)

And I guess we will just have to agree to disagree about whether my list is a list of equal things or not. I say it's not. It's a list of rather similar things (in basic intent), but not equal things in either content, result or dimension. Nothing in nature is equal to anything else, in my experience, but all things may share certain qualities in common. Recognizing which things are in common and which not is what allows us to make value judgements.

Zealots and fanatics always insist on seeing actions (and other people) in black and white terms. "the good guys and the bad guys" It's not a good way to go. It leads to absolutism, narcissism, and unresolvable disputes. To say that that leads to the conclusion that everything is equal is so patently ridiculous that I don't know why I should even have to point it out.

Try not thinking in polar opposites for a change, and then we won't disagree so much.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 12:44 AM

A FRANK THANK YOU Mr. Parks!!!!

You point is well taken within a forum that all too frequently turns is myopic gaze upon their special interest group...or their special atrocity, or their special purge.

Man's in humanity has spanned centuries. Fortunately the "Jewish Agenda" is appearing to wearing itself out....and a broader view may advance.

Sincerely,

Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 12:37 AM

it's a simple use of one word for another LH. You are making your own point and defining your own terms. Your list is a hodgepodge ofr many different events at different times. And you are indeed rendering them all equivalent. Saying it's all gray. It simply ain't that way. We've had this same discussion at least once before. You are off on your own hobby. And your are way off topic unless you are proposing to equivalence genocide again.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 09:37 PM

Well, there is very little risk of that ocurring, John... :-)

But, hey! I've seen worse looking bodies than mine out there! And you haven't seen William Shatner undressed...

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 06:43 PM

If I saw you unclothed, LH, I'd ask you to drink hemlock too! :^)

...I'd say please though. I wouldn't want to come across as, you know, a terrorist.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 06:34 PM

And who exactly is "Bill"? Not Shatner, I hope.

What baffles me is how anyone could NOT think of war as terrorism. It is mega-terrorism, because its literal intent is to terrify other people enough to make them submit to another's will...or just to destroy them, period, and take their land and possessions.

I'll give you some notable examples of terrorism in history:

1. the Japanese rape of Nanking and their general behaviour in their invasion of China
2. the British armies expulsion of the Acadians in order to grab their fertile lands
3. George Washington's destruction of Iroquois villages and orchards
4. Iroquois massacres of the Hurons
5. Apache massacres of white settlers
6. US Army destruction of the Apaches' way of life
7. USA bombing in Southeast Asia
8. USA atomic bombings of Japan
9. Hitler's bombings of such cities as Belgrade, Rotterdam, Warsaw, London, and Stalingrad, among others.
10. The RAF's bombing of German cities such as Hamburg, Dresden, and many others.
11. The USAAF's firebombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities
12. Saddam's attacks on Kurds, Shiites, and Iranians
13. Turkish attacks on Armenians and Kurds
14. Sherman's march through Georgia

And so on, and so on...all of it intended to terrorize and destroy...all of it strutting around under the false mask of legitimacy called "War". War is for the big guys...who call the little guys "terrorists" because the little guys can't afford to do things on a big enough scale to be allowed into the big guys' exclusive professional club: "Murder Incorporated"

To call it war and think that war is different from terrorism is to believe that a euphemism, a mere word, can sanctify an act of premeditated murder.

I am a philosopher, robomatic, I am not a mute acceptor of my society's convenient mythologies. If I were living in classical Athens, they would probably force me to drink hemlock, just like they did Socrates...because most people don't like seeing the truth unclothed. It would require them to rethink a whole lot of their standard learned behaviours.

Now, what among your points have I not given proper consideration to?

Do you deny that Israelis have progressively encroached on other people's land through settlement? (I am talking about outside the 1948 borders of Israel...I accept the legitimacy of those borders.)

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 04:48 PM

LH I think you are repeating yourself and not giving enough thought to some of the messages written by others, hence to some extent you are making it not so worthwhile to exchange ideas since you are more of a broadcaster and less an exchanger here, kinda like that O'Reilly guy.

Oh, and your equivalence: war AS terrorism is you again using your definitions to make your points rather than willingness to use the dictionary terms we all know and love. Again kinda like Bill.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 09:27 AM

I regard war AS terrorism, BB. It's terrorism on a much larger and better organized scale. In fact, war is the ULTIMATE terrorism. That makes George Bush the World's number one terrorist commander at the present.

In World War II, Hitler was the World's number one terrorist commander. I expect history will judge them in a somewhat similar fashion when the dust settles after the misnamed "War on Terrorism"...although I think Hitler was probably a bit crazier than Bush. I'm not sure, though.

Can you guys try to give up this word "equivalence" for a bit? I'm not trying to equivalence anything. I'm trying to draw parallels between various things. There's a difference. I'm not saying things are EQUAL to one another in degree, I'm saying they bear some notable similarities in certain ways. None of them are EQUAL, because they are all different and unique.

Thus, no, I am not trying to equivalence Israel and Nazi Germany...there are many differences between them...but I am pointing out that victims of historical persecution often morph into the new persecutors of someone else. It has happened over and over again in history.

Look, if you bring your kids up with a constant sense of paranoia ("lots of people out there hate us") and persecution ("we have been attacked over and over again and can expect to be attacked again by those evil people who hate us") and you keep hammering that into them as they grow up...then your kids grow up with a chip on their shoulders, and they become hypersensitive to criticism and they see enemies where enemies may not even exist.

That has happened with black kids in the USA since the 60's. It's not a pretty situation. It has turned victims of racism INTO racists themselves, in many cases! It has happened with some Native Americans too, and I know, cos I've hung out with them for years. The same bloody-minded sense of "all those damn whites are out to get me, and I know it". It doesn't help anyone. It has happened with much of the Jewish community since WWII, and it's not one bit healthy or helpful to them or anyone else. AND...it has happened to Muslims since the creation of Israel.

It's what happens with people who are incapable of forgiving or coming to terms with the past. In their constant zeal to avenge the past, they become just like the people they regarded as their worst enemies.

Vengeance is the path of a fool, bent upon self-destruction and the destruction of others, most of whom will prove to have been basically innocent bystanders.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 07:49 AM

LH,

"How would you feel about the Arabs sending well-trained agent assassins in civilian clothes (they'd have to be) to kill off Israeli leaders and officers who give attack orders that result in the death of Arabs or the loss of Palestinian homes and lives?"

That would be acts of war, not terrorism. It is too bad that WE do NOT target the leaders who cause the problems, as that would reduce the lives lost by quite a few. If we had just assasinated Saddam....


"They don't have the means to, so they strike elsewhere instead."

The "they" you are referring to here are terrorists. If a suicide bomb goes off in Israel, the Israelis target the leader who sent it, or the family home (NOT the people). Israel does NOT just randomely blow up any group of Palestinians. THAT is what you seem to be ignoring.

The houses being bulldozed are, for the most part, the ones where rockets have been fired from, or tunnel have been found. Is the destruction of THOSE houses legitimate self-defense?

I do not claim that Israel is perfect, or has been able to surpress human emotions. But Israel has prosecuted the mis-use of force, while ( in the recent past) Palistinians have celebrated and rewarded it.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 07:38 AM

Actually LH you were equivalencing the Israelis with the Nazis to which I responded and you have not re-responded.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 11:57 PM

It's debatable, I guess. How would you feel about the Arabs sending well-trained agent assassins in civilian clothes (they'd have to be) to kill off Israeli leaders and officers who give attack orders that result in the death of Arabs or the loss of Palestinian homes and lives?

And I'm sure they've tried... :-) (and occasionally succeeded)

I don't believe for a minute that Israeli attacks are not launched in a spirit of hatred...but I feel your point is to some extent worth considering, as far as it goes. It has its merits.

I just see that you are still trying to divide the conflict into "good guys" and "bad guys". I don't see it that way. I see 2 sets of people who lack the goodwill to try to work things out peacefully.

The Arab fighter is attacking out of hatred, unquestionably. But in his own mind, he is attacking in defence of some martyrs (as he sees it) among his own people. You cannot eliminate that perception by knocking off the latest leader of Hamas. They will just appoint a new leader. And so it goes. They thrive on martyrdom.

The USA sent all kinds of special forces people around in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. One of their jobs was to assassinate any politician or officer who was considered a notable asset to the Viet Cong or the NVA...even if he was in Cambodia or Laos at the time. They did it with high-powered rifles and bombs mostly. Every person they killed gave the Vietnamese one more reason to keep fighting until the Americans were driven out. And they did. This kind of thing just doesn't work. It doesn't work for Israel, and it doesn't work for the Arabs either. It just keeps the pot boiling.

But, if you were a commander in the Israeli forces, then naturally you would continue targeting those particular guys you mention...until you got the order not to. That would just be doing your job. And if you were a Hamas fighter...same deal. They all figure they are doing their duty. They would nail Sharon with a rocket if they had the means to. No doubt about it. They don't have the means to, so they strike elsewhere instead.

Guerrilla war always results in dirty tactics. It is the nature of the beast.

Anyway, Mr Bush has managed to kill more people in a year than Hamas or Islamic Jihad ever will, I suspect. And he did it with high tech stuff, not suicide bombers. At the end of the day, what difference does it make to the ones who die or those who survive them?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 11:19 PM

You miss the point- the suicide attacker is attacking out of hate, and kills innocent civilians intentionally.
The rocket into the car of a terrorist leader is to remove that person from being able to attack, thus it is defensive- NO hate is needed, just good information. You have stated that defense is allowable- yet you criticise the Israelis for it.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 11:13 PM

I don't "eqivalence" (as you put it) any one particular violent act with another violent act.

I say that the way to break the cycle of violence is to stop attacking and stop retaliating. I do not say "stop defending".

There are many ways of attacking people. One is with a bomb. Another is with a gun, a tank, a rocket or an airplane. Another is by attacking them economically or legally in some way that worsens their lives and marginalizes them. Another is by spreading malicious talk about them and raising hatred against them. Another is by bulldozing down their houses.

The reason the Arabs attack with concealed bombs is because the Israelis have military supremacy. In such a situation, the Arab will attack in a clandestine manner, the Israeli will attack in an open and obvious manner. That's always the way it goes. The weak attack from the shadows, the strong come down main street in a tank or an airplane. Each uses the method that works best for him in order to do some significant damage to the one he thinks is the "enemy".

I am not interested in trying to decide whose way of attacking is nicer or nastier and lining them up on a comparative "evil" scale...in order to determine who the "good guys" are. The end result is the same in both cases. Many innocent people suffer and die. The real good guys are the people who leave other people alone to live in peace.

I am recommending breaking the cycle of vengeance. I would recommend the same thing in Ireland or Cyprus or Chechenya or the Balkans or in any other place where there has been a long history of hatred between communities.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 09:30 PM

How is it hate to target the specific person who planned, and continues to plan, those suicide bombers? Isn't it just self-defense?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 09:27 PM

LH,

So, you equivilence Israel targeting a terrorist leader, and killing civilians that are around him, with the intentional targeting of non-combatent civilians by suicide bombers?

I agree that it would be best for all sides to stop killing each other- But how can one side do so if the other uses that as a chance to inflict even more killing?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 09:11 PM

I trust you are right about that ROE, Guest. If you are, then what I suggest is exactly what Iraqis should do, without delay. Non-violent resistance en masse. But I don't think they are aware enough or confident enough to get it together to do that.

I was suggesting that some American units (or individual soldiers) might panic if that happened and break the ROE. Such things happened in India now and then with the British, and it only hastened their exit as a colonial power.

You said: "In a "perfect " world, we all could let the misguided blow up whomever they like, and forgive them. I would rather stop them, and prevent the loss of innocent lives. "

No. That's not what I am suggesting. I suggested forgiveness, I did not suggest refusing to defend oneself and uphold civil laws! One must be able to take forceful action to prevent any such violent and unlawful behaviour wherever it arises. That is job 1. Job 2 is to forgive, and not hold lasting grudges.

It's simple. If a suicide bomber tries to blow up people, you prevent him by any means possible. That involves police, intelligence agents, and military safeguards. If he succeeds anyway, you do NOT use it as an excuse to go roaring off and viciously attack some other people who happen belong to HIS tribe or culture. Israel has traditionally responded to every terrorist attack with a retaliatory attack, and it often kills civilians. They have no conception of forgiveness. The Muslim zealots also have traditionally responded to every Israeli attack with a retaliatory attack. They likewise have no conception of forgiveness. And THAT is why they are both going down a long road of disaster together, like two cats with their tails tied together...

If either one of them were to learn forgiveness and sincerely practice it...for a year...the vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence would be broken.

I have NEVER suggested passively standing by and doing nothing to stop an attack by a suicide bomber or by anyone else. Never. Everyone is fully entitled to resist an attack or an invasion of their land by whatever means necessary. That is not lack of forgiveness...it's just plain common sense self-defence. You don't have to hate people to defend yourself. Lack of forgiveness occurs when the attack is used to justify your own future attack on some other people somewhere else, and the carrying on of a vendetta.

Again, you are putting thoughts in my head that were never there in order to score an illusory point. Nope. I am not telling you to stand helplessly by and let people kill other people. No way. I'm just telling you not to nurse hatreds.

Sorry. No cigar.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 08:31 PM

LH,

The ROE for our forces in Iraq would indicate that, if they are NOT fired upon, they would not fire back. IE, if the "insurgents" stop attacking the US troops, there would be no deaths, and we would leave. Since they do not, I have to presume that the ones fighting want a US presence there in order to give them an excuse to murder innocents.

I do not judge Iraqis, Iranians, or Palestinians as any less worthy of life than any other group- I DO judge that those who commit acts of violence against innocent people should be routed out and destroyed, if only to protect the greater good.

In a "perfect " world, we all could let the misguided blow up whomever they like, and forgive them. I would rather stop them, and prevent the loss of innocent lives.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 08:24 PM

No...I wasn't suggesting equality of suffering in that case BB...I was simply pointing out that many have suffered. I would not dream of suggesting that the internment of Japanese immigrants in North America was an equivalent level of suffering to what the Jews suffered in the Holocaust. Would not DREAM of it. Okay? Don't put such notions in your head, just to score illusory debating points...

We probably ARE all members of some group that once persecuted another group...yes. Which is to say: we are all human. And that is what should unite us, not divide us.

I'm not particularly interested in comparing various people to Hitler and trying to decide where they stand on the "evil" scale. It's not helpful. I don't look upon people as evil, I look upon them as frightened, angry, desperate, in pain, and suffering from mental delusions. Because of that, they may commit destructive acts, and you can call those acts "evil" if you so desire, but you do so mainly because you want to nurse some sort of hatred and thereby justify your own retaliation on someone.

I recommend forgiveness for past grievances, attention to fairly resolving present ones, and an end to violent retaliation by all parties. I also recommend not taking anyone else's land by force, whoever they are. Not with a gun, and not with a bulldozer either, and not with money, and not with a court order or some fancy legal maneuver.

If the Iraqis had spiritual leaders of high enough awareness right now, they could get the Americans out of their country in a year with completely non-violent resistance and non-cooperation on the part of many millions of citizens...the way Gandhi got the British out. Some Iraqi lives would almost certainly be lost by that method, as the Americans responded to it in an uncertain and confused fashion...but not many. The occupying forces would be shamed into leaving.

Unfortunately, Iraqis do not have such leaders to inspire such a movement. Because of that, there will be lengthy bloodshed, and many innocent on both sides will suffer and die. Why? Because they have chosen judgement and condemnation of the other, rather than Love of humanity as a motivator. Judgement and condemnation leads to violence and death.

Judgement and condemnation. It's the credo of the Old Testament. I do not care much at all for the Old Testament and its notions of a wrathful God. I regard such a concept of God to be insane and completely untrue.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 08:00 PM

LH,

"There are many more who do not appreciate what happened to the Gypsies, the Armenians, the Kurds, the various Christian sects wiped out by the Church of Rome, the "witches" and other people killed by the Inquisition, the Japanese interned in North America in WWII, the Tibetans, the Cherokees, the Nez Perce, the Iroquois, the Beothuks, the Acadians, the Palestinians, the Poles, and a hundred other unfortunate nations or groups all over the place who have been massacred by other people at various times in history"


Gypsies, the Armenians, the Kurds, the various Christian sects wiped out by the Church of Rome I will give you suffered as greatly as the Jews, if not in quite the systematic, industrialized fashion. I fail, though, to see how you can equivalence the internment of the Japanese, as bad as it was, to those dedicated attempts to destroy and entire group.

Human history is full of massacres- but the number of genocidal efforts to destroy rather than control a large group are far fewer, and stand out as different.

I see now how you can set as equal the kidnapping and execution of an innocent civilian and the internment of suspected enemy combatents, the suicide bomber going into a children's birthday party and the use of a rocket to kill a terrorist leader.

By the standards you have set, there is no difference between Hitler and anyone else. We are ALL members of some group that at some time unfairly inflicted some suffering on some other group.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 06:58 PM

LH:

Very interesting post, LH. In the days leading up to the Six Day War, I remember a profound sense of isolation. Somewhere along the line I picked up a story sort of relvant and at-odds with your viewpoint, and I don't know how to check up on it. But what I picked up was that Israel had all their men at arms in this period, and were asked NOT to respond yet by President Johnson (this in the period where UN GenSec U Thant pulled UN troops from the Sinai at the request of Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian dictator who was fomenting the whole thing. The Israelis were citizen soldiers, so while they were standing at arms, the crops weren't being harvested.

Again, I think you are up front and I have no question of your motives, but making a significant error in forcing the comparison between German methods and German aims of the war. German military methods such as blitzkrieg are just that, significant 'improvements' in methods of warfare. Intelligent armed forces have been paying attention to such items since before the Egyptians sent an army of bronze swordsmen against an army of iron swordsmen (Hittites?) (The Egyptians learned two lessons from this encounter: Go over to iron and lie about who won).

Y'know, if Hitler said two and two are four, that don't make it wrong.

I was never raised to believe that Arabs are less than human. If that were Israeli policy, as you are comparing it with Nazi German policy, and if the Israelis were as efficient as you seem to think, then there woudln't be a Palestinian problem. The very essence of the difference is the Israeli policy of bulldozing homes. It is a crushing blow to a family that produced an accused terrorist or killer, but it is NOT the Nazi German response, which would have been to kill ten people for every victim (Or, in the case of the assadination of Heydrich, the utter destruction of one town from people to pilaster).

Contrast that with the habit of Palestinians burning their own people in public who were accused of being collaborators (without trial).

I remember 1973, where the Israelis were caught by surprise by an attack on the Holiest Day of the Jewish calendar. They did not come off as expert stromtroopers to those who were paying attention.

How about 1976, when Arab terrorists commandeered a jet plane, flew it to Uganda, and in league with one of the bloodiest dictators of the era isolated out the Jewish passengers and held them hostage? Do you remember what the French pilot said when he heard the sound of gunfire? "I knew the Israelis had arrived."

"How did you know they were Israelis?"

"Mais qui d'autre?" (Who else?)

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 04:40 PM

I think you are partially right about the other Arabs using the Palestinians in that cynical fashion, robomatic. Agreed.

However, regarding the Israeli government, I think its behaviour and psychology from its inception has been strikingly similar to that of Nazi Germany...but without the specific matter of the death camps, that's all. Such death camps would not have been politically feasible in that time and place after WWII. The key difference has been that Israel is only a small regional power on a very small area of land, rather than a world power like Germany was in the 30's and 40's...

The Israelis have an elitist view of their own special mission in the World, their own special status, their own special historical grievances, their own superior culture and identity, their own special religious status. I find all that very similar to Naziism in its zealotry and intent, but under a different set of outer labels, that's all. It's extreme elitism. It's narcissistic. It's extremism justified by a sense of prior martyrdom...and that's precisely what the Nazis were.

Those same attitudes can be seen likewise in Islamic fundamentalists and suicide bombers. Such people feel justified in being very cruel and merciless to their perceived "enemies", because they have a sense of martyrdom fueling their anger.

The Israelis are also masters of an absolutely elite blitzkrieg-style armed forces, which wins wars by superior weaponry and sudden, unexpected attacks by elite air and ground units.

That again, is just like the Nazis...who won military victories in the same fashion as Israel does...by using fast-moving, highly-trained forces to launch crippling air strikes and armoured breakthroughs. The Nazis, like the Israelis, were very enamoured of the glories of military supremacy, and sought it in every way possible. Like the Israelis, they were often able to defeat far great numbers of enemy forces in the field, through using modern blitzkrieg tactics.

There are so many similarities. It would not be the first time that a victim of a violent abuser has grown up to become a violent abuser himself, would it? If you automatically think of the Israelis only as "good guys", however...or only as "victims", then I can understand that you don't see that connection the way I do.

I remember, way back in the late 60's, when I had no real opinion of any sort about Israel, and the 6-day war happened. Everyone was very impressed how "little Israel" so utterly defeated the larger Arab forces around it. I was impressed. I thought, "Boy, that's a plucky little outfit, that Israel!" I started collecting their stamps, because the whole thing got me interested.

By about 1973, I had begun to see it in a very different way. I had begun to see that an apparently small, yet elite force can easily become a very powerful bully-boy...as England did, for example, when they pretty much dominated the World for a couple of hundred years by having an elite Navy. Size can be misleading. I don't really care much for bully-boys, although one can't help but admire good fighting ability for its own sake.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 04:12 PM

Don'l: I'm privileged to be associated in your mind with Little Big Man in any context, it's one of my favorite books. The sequel didn't suck, either.

LH: I disagree with your psych evaluation of the Israelis using the Palestinians as a bunching bag with a Nazi head pasted on the top. That is flat out inaccurate, i.e. wrong. The Palestinians have been trying to make the Israelis into Nazis, but at the same time they have not stinted from using Nazi and holocaust denial propaganda where they could. I witnessed this in Alaska. I think the Palestinians have been callously used by the surrounding Arab states as a bully boy, a minion to push into the contest and then avenge onself over. The principle is well known from playground to bars to nation states.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 02:34 PM

Those who watched the allied bombers flying over their death camps - without bombing the shit out of the camps or the railway lines that fed them - would have thought that the world had forgotten them. They were most probably right. Through hearing to stories of those few that did survive - the outside world has slowly become to appreciate the human reality behind the statistics. A relity that transcended religous and cultural boundaries. Those survivors will not always be here to remind us.

I am not asking anyone to forgive anyone - that must always be a matter for them. But please don't judge so harshly. When you learn that you cannot rely on others to help you - this may make you very determined never to place yourself again in position where you have to rely on others.

In these terrible circumstances - the idea of a universal love that transcended religous and cultural boundaries must be very difficult to accept.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 01:20 PM

Oh, I'm not suggesting to forget. Just to forgive. When people carry a bitter grievance, they frequently allow it to push them into violent acts against new outer enemies when what they are really doing is still fighting the same old enemies from their past that live hidden inside them like malicious ghosts.

You see that all the time even in individual behaviour. Somebody's parents terrorized him when he was a kid...so he goes out and terrorizes other kids in the playground, joins a gang, and mugs strangers and has fights with people and beats up his wife. And what is he really doing? He's getting even with his mother and father, seen through the mask of other individuals.

I'm suggesting that the Israelis, ever since World War II, have been getting even with the Nazis by fighting with Muslims. That simply doesn't make any sense. Now you have several generations of angry Muslims growing up who are personifying all their dark subconscious hurts and grievances of the past in the outer mask of Israel. Same basic fallacy. People can't get over this kind of thing until they confront their own inner habit of hatred, let go of it, and forgive. That doesn't require forgetting anything, it simply requires greater love and self-knowledge. The greatest love is that which can embrace all humanity, and beyond that...all life, not just one's own tribal or national or species affiliation.

That's why both Jesus and Gandhi gave a teaching which superceded specific tribal, national, racial or religious identities and boundaries. Love is Universal, it's not restricted behind borders or religious or cultural identities. If it is so restricted, it's not really Love, but some kind of a conditional arrangement.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 10:50 AM

Those who wish to to be greedy, selfish and cruel and to generally 'stick the boot in' and shape the world around them in this fashion - often justify this as just being 'human nature' - and indeed it.

It is also another (if less celebrated part) of human nature - not to do this.

Trapped in the middle of all these mad systems - there are still people to be found who try to do the right thing. And even those who do chose to follow the party line and not to do the right thing - are also capable, at times of acts of surprising compassion. It is not so very easy to predict how human beings may behave.

The trick is to try and always ensure that we live in system where the choice to do the right thing - is one that is open to us.....

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 10:12 AM

Get over it - album title? ...wonders never cease. http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/tutsis.jpg

Caring feeling human beings are usually viewed as strange by the robomatic minions of violence and war.

I am reminded of Little Big Man being taught by the human beings.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 09:39 AM

And yes, robomatic, there ARE some people, specially younger ones, who do not appreciate what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust.

SOME people? There's plenty of older ones too- don't forget the "holocaust denial" movement is an up-and-coming nutcase group with a growing number of adherents. The media even give them air time, and book sales are booming.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 08:31 AM

Yeah LH, you're wielding too big a brush, painting everything gray, and then saying we should call it all the same. Well, you should know from other threads that people don't tend to think that way. You remind me a bit of the argument fixer who says to the nazis, "you say you didn't kill any Jews" then says to the Jews, "You say 6 million were killed" then proposes "let's call it three million and shake hands!"

Yeah, that's not quite what you're saying, but the effect is similar, and I'm letting you try it on for size.

I think LH you mean well but you lack a real understanding of events and people in this case, both for the intent of this thread and for the events commemmorated in this thread. But that's okay. I've run into it before from way more self-righteous people than you. The ex-mayor of Anchrage once wrote an article in the main newspaper suggesting that Jews should try a little Xtian forgiveness for the crimes of the past.

But the forgiveness is not ours to give.

There is a lot of "re-chewing of the past" going on as well, and I agree with you that it is futile from the point of view of 'getting on with it'. But it is very very human. And there is something else going on that I don't see you acknowledging. There is a re-introduction of the subject of what humans are capable of, and a seeking to understand in greater the depth the why and wherefores of it. And it actually has more to do with mankind in general than Jews or Gypsies or Armenians or Tutsis or Hutus. This is a quality that we own, in ourselves and in our neighbors. The United States has been mercifully low in this compared to Europe, but if you were one of the condemned witches in Salem this might not make you feel better.

So I suggest we acknowledge the humanity of our fellow sufferers and yet continue to 'get on with it' as best as we can (sounds like a good album title, oh wait, it is one).

Peace

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 03:01 AM

Or else we could finally just understand, accept, and forgive the past and get on with dealing with present injustices in an effective and fair manner.

Whether one can forgive - is a personal matter. But it is not the same as forgetting. No one should forget any of this - or be urged to.
For there is no reason that present injustices cannnot be dealt with - as well as learning all the lessons of the past. They are not mutually exclusive and learning from the close study of these things rather than rushing to judge all parties involved - will possibly avoid any of us finding ourselves equally helpless - in similar systems.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 02:16 AM

BB - Well, thanks for giving my point fair consideration. I wish there were a way to sort out exactly what is a "fair fighting" tactic and what is not in a guerrilla war, but we'll never get that one figured out. It's too volatile and too complicated. (these same things were argued about during the American revolution...the British considered American tactics to be downright criminal...and vice versa)

In general, I don't have a very good feeling about anyone using himself as a bomb in a suicide attack....but I do recognize that he, like all people, imagines at the time that he is doing something justifiable and necessary...or he wouldn't do it. I think he's mistaken in his assessment of the action. He doesn't think so. I think Bush was mistaken to invade Iraq. He doesn't think so. So it goes.

And yes, robomatic, there ARE some people, specially younger ones, who do not appreciate what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust.

There are many more who do not appreciate what happened to the Gypsies, the Armenians, the Kurds, the various Christian sects wiped out by the Church of Rome, the "witches" and other people killed by the Inquisition, the Japanese interned in North America in WWII, the Tibetans, the Cherokees, the Nez Perce, the Iroquois, the Beothuks, the Acadians, the Palestinians, the Poles, and a hundred other unfortunate nations or groups all over the place who have been massacred by other people at various times in history.

I guess it might be good if we either give them all equal time and news coverage in the "victim" sweepstakes...which could take all year every year...and go on forever...

Or else we could finally just understand, accept, and forgive the past and get on with dealing with present injustices in an effective and fair manner.

It takes far more courage to forgive the past than it does to endlessly chew on old and bitter grievances. I have read writings by Jewish survivors of concentration camps who had the wisdom to forgive even the guards and executioners. There are a handful of such people. They are people of the highest wisdom, and they have found the only way to heal a terrible past and put it to rest.

Jesus forgave his torturers and executioners. Gandhi blessed the man who shot him. Even in the extreme of dying, they recognized the innocence of those lost people who killed them. It is possible to forgive such things. It's not easy. You have to surrender some very hostile and righteous pride in your defensive self that most people are simply not willing to surrender. (They're rather be "right" than be happy or harmonious or forgiving...and they're rather make the other guy "wrong" forever than become his friend.) You have to see the other guy AS yourself, and realize that in his mental and emotional blindness he actually thinks he's doing the right thing. Or else he thinks he has no other choice. Otherwise, he wouldn't do it.

And that is not hateful, it is merely very, very sad.

I'm saying that both Jews and Arabs have to forgive each other for all the hurt that has occurred between them, and then they could live peacefully side by side.

Since most are not willing to do that yet, I suppose we will see a great deal more suffering in the near future. A few will be willing. More power to them.

I bear no ill will toward those whom I radically disagree with on this forum, although I do sometimes get briefly a bit exasperated... It's an occupational hazard of debating issues with people.

If it wears me out too much, I will take a break and give you guys who like Mr Bush's foreign policy a rest too. :-)

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 09:40 PM

Actually LH there have been some "man in the street" interviews which indicate that a lot of people have forgot and some kids have never learned, re the subject of this thread

Don'l the poetry was okay and I didn't mind your self promotion a few msgs back, but you're getting a bit strange, now.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 07:38 PM

There are factions who still differentiate between mass murder and the selective enforcment of population control via biological agents and economic sanctions.

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/bushwaroom.jpg

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 07:13 PM

LH,

I agree with the general point you make, but have to differ on the specifics.

Is the foreign suicide bomber who blows up a car-bomb in a crowd of Iraqi civilians applying for work "fight(ing) against a foreign invading force"? I think we can both agree it is not.

Is the Iraqi Ba'th party member who fires an RPG at a US convoy bringing food and water into central Bagdad?

And what if he makes sure there are innocent civilians surrounding him, so that the ( predictable) US counter-fire inflicts casualties on Iraqi civilans?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:55 PM

Numbers, numbers, numbers... trying to quantify human tragedy...
I suppose it's just easier to talk in facts and figures, rather than talking about that dead mother that could have been your mother, that dead kid that could have been your kid...

What worries me is, how the fuck can we stop the next act of genocide from happening if we can't even think about it without hiding behind statistics?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:06 PM

No one could possible forget about the atrocities the Nazis committed, guys...and I most certainly have not forgotten about it. Nor do I minimize it. It's totally obvious. It has been covered exhaustively, and indeed to a point that would amount to the greatest media coverage of such an atrocity in history...and there have been many such.

My point was, that it is being used to focus attention away from present oppressors of other people, not Jews...and that those present oppressors even use it as an indirect emotional blackmail to SUPPORT their destructive actions. They lay a guilt trip on people who weren't there, and who had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

To be "anti-semitic" (against Jews, I mean, since that is what most people interpret that term to mean) is very similar to being anti-Muslim or anti-Kurd or anti-Hindu or anti-anyone else. It all amounts to being anti-human in a particularly prejudiced and specific and exclusive way. We are all humans. That's more important than being a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu. HUMAN!

It isn't the Germans who are committing anti-human crimes at this particular moment in history. It's others, and they would like the World only to notice when Germans or somebody other than themselves behaves in an anti-human manner. That is hypocrisy, and I don't tolerate it, because there is no nation, race or creed out there that is more special than other people, that has suffered more than other people, or that is allowed to break laws that other people are not allowed to break because they think they have suffered more.

Self-defence is legitimate. Attack and land theft is not.

There are no supermen. No "God's Chosen". No people more equal or special in the sight of God or Man than any other.

And if they think they are, then they are imitating the behaviour and psychology of the Nazis, whether they know it or not. That is the dark truth that they dare not face or admit to. That, to them, is blasphemy, because nothing hurts like the truth.

It is Palestinians, Iraqis, and other impoverished Muslims who are the new victims of a spreading Holocaust, the new vermin to be stamped on and rendered landless by the masters of the modern Blitzkrieg, the new scum to be reviled and spat upon by their more well-armed and organized executioners in uniform. It is they who are rendered powerless and wretched in their own lands. And it requires no gas ovens. It can be very nicely done with B-52's, tank divisions, bulldozers, fighter jets, starvation, and uranium-enriched explosive shells that kill even the children for years after they were detonated.

You don't need another Auschwitz to have a Holocaust. It would be too obvious. You just need plenty of firepower, and well-trained zealots who feel justified in using it when ordered to.

The Jews rose up in the Warsaw ghetto and fought their Nazi jailers. I am totally in support of that. They were justified. They were moved by the same basic impulse that moves despairing Muslims to fight back today in the shattered cities and towns of Iraq.

You see, I don't defend people on the basis of their tribal identity. I defend them on the basis of the actual situation they are in and what they are doing...or having done to them. Their tribal identity is completely irrelevant. All "tribes" are capable of either good or evil actions. All can become either the oppressor or the oppressed at one time or another. The Jews did not, in 1945, inherit the exclusive badge of "World's permanent martyrs", but they keep imagining that they did, and that allows them to become killers themselves and feel totally justified, it seems. I don't buy it. Such behaviour is anti-human and wrong.

I also do not in any way support suicide bombers who blow up civilians in Israel or the USA or Iraq or anywhere else...so don't waste your breath accusing me of that. I support people who fight against a foreign invading force, period.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 11:49 AM

The rest of the poem

Yes there was the smell
but we didn't know
Yes there was a glow
but we didn't know
Yes we know of hell
but we didn't know
Yes there were trains
but we didn't know
Yes the ashes rain
but we didn't know.
But one night
while the Commander's house was aglow
from the oven smokestacks
I swear I could see
a Hebrew letter in the clouds.
So I understand why you now say
I didn't know.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 11:35 AM

John Hardly: Thanks for the clarification, I had no idea what you were implying by the shorter statement. Your comment reminds me of the very last line from "Judgment At Nuremberg"

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 11:34 AM

"One night while the Commandant's house was aglow in the flames from the oven smokestacks, I swear to God I could see a Hebrew letter forming in the clouds..."
DH

illustration: http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/cloudb.jpg

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 11:31 AM

Don't fear the Hitler of yesterday. He's dead and gone. Fear the little rising Hitlers of today. They hide behind the cloak of righteousness and respectability. They are leading other countries now...not Germany. They don't use a swastika. They have other sacred symbols with which to sanction their attacks upon others. One day their symbols may be seen as people now see the swastika.

This is exactly why all the details of this particular case (and indeed all of the others) are so important for us all to remember and why many are quite happy for us to forget). Not as dusty history but as daily warnings.

The choices we may (just) have the freedom to make today - may not seem to be all that important. However, making a few of them them now in our daily lives - may ensure that we never have to make some of the terrible choices that still haunt those few - who manage somehow to at least live through these horrors. And who provide us with the evidence we can and must still learn from.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 11:05 AM

Meaning that the sentiments within this thread (antisemitism, equating Bush with the minimizing of genocide, etc.) are illustrative of what Jesus most likely meant when he said, (and I paraphrase) "You say that it is unlawful for to commit murder -- but I say, if you have hate for him in your heart, you have committed murder already".

Humanity's ugly side, to be sure.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 10:51 AM

meaning what?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 10:17 AM

if saying were doing, this thread would be reason enough to quell free speech.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 10:04 AM

While I'm not sure this thread deserved resurrection it's here and in the interim I have seen the 1961 flick "Judgment at Nuremberg" which because of its title I thought I had seen but in fact it's a well done movie and I don't remember seeing it. It takes an interesting look at the past by its focus on not the prime defendents (the big bastards of the Nazi leadership years) rather a set of judges who adminstered 'justice' in the period, particularly a formerly respected academician played by Burt Lancaster.

The surrounding polical atmosphere is brought in as well, with the allies realizing that cooperation from a renewed Germany is desirable against the power of the Communist bloc as the cold war 'heats' up.

Anyhow, I found the movie totally engrossing due to the charisma of the actors, Burt, Spencer Tracy, an unknown Maximilian Schell, who was brilliant in his first major role and I believe won an oscar for his portrayal of the German defense, and a bit part by a very young William Shatner.

LH, I disagree with your post because I believe what happened 60 years ago is incredibly relevant and the lessons from it have either not been learned, been twisted, or learned and quickly forgotten. In fact, I find your words self-contradictory because the purpose of these words is not simply to remember the past, but to show that the forces of the past are very much with us because we are still human. I'm starting a book by Samantha Power, "A Problem From Hell: American and the Age of Genocide". I'm not yet thoroughly into it, but she starts with the Armenian slaughter in early 20th century Turkey before there was a common word such as genocide which I believe she traces to a refugee from the Nazis named Lemkin, who tried to raise awareness of the Final Solution during the war years of WW II. After all, the title of the thread is Auschwitz AND OTHER mass murder.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 09:17 AM

That was the realpolitik of the time. Everyone was covering his own ass, as usual. If you look beneath the surface of virtually any important political decision, you will discover self-interest, pragmatism, and the search for material gain at the heart of it.

Such is true of American policy in the Middle East right now, although the official line is "fighting terrorism" and "promoting democracy" and "making the World safer". The first of those is, at best, only a half-truth. The 2nd is a bold-faced lie. The 3rd is patently ridiculous.

To fixate on Hitler, whose regime and cause was utterly defeated and destroyed 60 years ago, is less useful at this point than to put one's attention on present political crimes and injustices.

It is, in fact, a case of beating a very dead horse. Sort of like railing on about Genghis Khan...

It would be hard to find one person now in the average 25,000 who is in favor of the WWII Nazis and their outrageous attacks on the Jews. So why go on and on about it? Worry about today's destroyers of human life. They are a real threat. Like Hitler, they consciously believe that they are hunting down the "evildoers" and fighting for right, truth, and justice. They believe that their society is "the best in the World". They are mistaken. They fail to see their own dark selves in the mirror of their own fear-driven rhetoric.

Don't fear the Hitler of yesterday. He's dead and gone. Fear the little rising Hitlers of today. They hide behind the cloak of righteousness and respectability. They are leading other countries now...not Germany. They don't use a swastika. They have other sacred symbols with which to sanction their attacks upon others. One day their symbols may be seen as people now see the swastika.

But symbols don't matter. They are neutral in themselves. How people USE them is what matters.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 06:36 AM

Dinavan said.

I have always believed that it was not just the Nazis who were responsible for the holocaust but the entire world. All of humanity turned their backs and looked away. Many, many countries gave refuge to former Nazis and many, many countries denied immigration to surviving Jews.

Ain't that the very sad truth we all have to face?

The allies had been perfectly aware of Hitler's mad intentions and the resulting theft, persecution, legal judgements and human rights abuses since the early 30s. From 1942 they were made well aware of the ultimate fate that awaited those persecuted and abused and whom no one else wished to accept across their borders --- the death camps.

While it was true that at this time - the allies had their own problems and the outcome of the war was very uncertain - the facts and official quotes in this book - do not provide any of us with much comfort.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0805014624/002-2941193-1482446

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:27 PM

This extract from the site's introduction - will give the background.

A Commentary on the Justice Case
by Doug Linder (c) 2000

No one contends, of course, that German judges and prosecutors destroyed as many lives as did the SS, Gestapo, or other agencies of the Nazi machine. Their victims number in the thousands, not the millions. A judge who knowingly sentenced even one innocent Jew or Pole to death was, however, guilty in the eyes of the prosecutors and judges at the Justice Trial in Nuremberg. There would be no "only a couple of atrocities" defense.

Ingo Muller, in Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, provides a penetrating picture of the workings of the criminal justice system in Nazi Germany. Muller's analysis of the evidence suggests that most German judges--contrary to common opinion--were ultraconservative nationalists who were largely sympathetic to Nazi goals. The "Nazification" of German law occurred with the willing and enthusiatic help of judges, rather than over their principled objections.

Many judges appointed before the Nazi rise to power--because of the economic and social circles that judges were drawn from--had views that were quite compatible with the Nazi party. A few Jewish judges sat on the bench when the Nazis assumed power--but only a very few. A 1933 law removed those few Jewish judges from officee.

Only a handful of the non-Jewish judges demonstrated real courage in the face of Nazi persecution and violations of civil liberties. One who did was Lothar Kressig, a county court judge who issued injunctions agains sending hospital patients to extermination camps. When ordered to withdraw his injunctions, Kreyssig refused. He also attempted to initiate a prosecution of Nazis for their role in the program. Kreyssig, under pressure, eventually resigned.

In the Justice trial, American prosecutors sought to demonstrate a pattern of judicial and prosecutorial support for Nazi programs of persecution, sterilization, extermination, and other gross violations of human rights. In order to prove an individual defendant guilty, prosecutors had to show that the defendant consciously furthered these human rights abuses.

The violations of human rights progressively worsened as the Nazis solidified power and began their wars of aggression. In 1938, laws were adopted that imposed different levels of punishment for the same crime--a tougher punishment for Jews, a lighter one for other Germans. By 1940, sterilization programs were underway. By 1942, the "Final Solution," the wholesale extermination of Jews and other persons deemed undesirable, was in full swing.

Two features of German law combined to facilitate the Nazi's evil schemes. The first was that German law, unlike the law of the United States and many other nations, lacked "higher law" (constitutional or ethical standards) that might be resorted to by judges to avoid the harsh effects of discriminatory laws adopted by the Nazi regime. The second difficulty was that there was no separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government. Hitler declared, and the Reichstag agreed, had the power "to intervene in any case." This was done, legally, through what was called "an extraordinary appeal for nullification of sentence." The nullification invariably resulted in a sentence the Nazis thought was too light being replaced by a more severe sentence, often death. If these features of German law weren't enough, the Nazis also assigned a member of the Security Service to each judge to funnel secret information about the judges back to Hitler and his henchmen.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:21 PM

More details on the trials on which the movie was based can be found on the following site.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Alstoetter.htm

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:11 PM

Stanley Kamer's movie - Judgement at Nuremburg (details and story on the follwing link) - is really good at showing the true extent of the German people's (and other's) knowledge or what was happening and especially that of those who made and enforced the terrible and unjust laws. It centres on certain show trails - featuring in the later trials of the judges involved.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/JudgmentAtNuremberg.html

It also shows the political Cold-War realities of the time. And makes the point that all those judges subsequently convicted and sent to prison for life - were all free after a few years. Because the West needed the German people on their side and placing and keeping all these influential judges etc - in prison was not popular, when everyone seem to want to be allowed to forget the whole affair.

I would like to believe in good moral and honest judges - fighting off political pressure - like the US one played Spencer Tracy but I am slowly and sadly coming to accept that these attributes only really occur in parts played by actors in the movies.

There is even a small part in this film - for a young Willian Shatner.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Nemesis
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 07:06 PM

"A worse or meaner sentence than the first one from you I have quoted I have not read in Mudcat for a long time. "

I second that too

I never thought I'd agree with anything Tony Blair says - but this last week at the Holocaust service he said (along the lines of) "The Holocaust didn't start with Auschwitz... it started with a racist insult in the street, a brick through the window ... Auschwitz was the result"
Nem

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Wolfgang
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 06:32 PM

Unless you have the tattoo, I suggest you shut up about the Holocaust experience, because you never experienced it, leave alone any of the others.

I have never had the arrogance to try to claim someone else's experience as my own. (Raedwulf)

Raedwulf, that's utter nonsense, insulting and wrong, wrong, wrong.
If your mother has been raped and nearly killed nine months before your birth and is still often crying many years later, her reliving the bad experience becomes your own experience. Would you like me to tell you to shut up about that experience because you have not experienced it yourself?

If you know people (friends or relations) who wake up sometimes at night screaming, who start crying when seeing a German uniform or hearing German words, who seldom laugh for having lost all close relations don't you think their visible and audible reactions become a part of your experience in another, more direct, way than by just reading a book?

Go tell a parent whose kid has been abused and who lives daily with the tears, the bad dreams, the completely different behaviour than before the abuse to shut up about the experience because it is not her own experience.

A worse or meaner sentence than the first one from you I have quoted I have not read in Mudcat for a long time.

I agree with you that Martin Gibson is or plays the Vitriolic Bigot of the Year, a pain in the arse and all that and more, but that doesn't matter in this context.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 03:47 PM

Martin,

I have experienced more than you will ever know.

Invalid & irrelevant. I can say the same back & it is just as true.

I have aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends who first hand experienced the holocaust.

So what? All that means is that your experience is every bit as second-hand as mine. I've seen/read/heard testimony from those who actually experienced it too. True, they weren't my relatives (as far as I know). But, then again, they weren't my relatives. Which removes a major source of bias from any opinion I might express...

I don't have the tattoo on my body, but I do in my mind.

Who put it there, Martin? Unlike your aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends, it wasn't Nazi's. You put it there, Martin, you. No-one else. I have never had the arrogance to try to claim someone else's experience as my own.

So shut up Raedwulf, as you are nothing more than a pathetic and very bigoted Nazi anti-semite.

Scream it 10,000 times, Martin. A label doesn't define the object the first time, nor the 10,000th, no matter how loud you shout. All it does is expose the ignorance of the loudmouth. I console myself with the thought that if any vote for "Mudcat Narrow-minded Vitriolic Bigot of the Year" happens, my name will be mentioned only by you & any trolls you care to create.

Bet a few more genuine members think of you though!

Bye, bye, Martin.

R

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: dianavan
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 02:25 AM

From Elie Wiesel's article linked above:

"All we know is that Auschwitz did not descend ready-made from heaven. Human beings imagined it, built it, served it, used it against other human beings. When all is said and done, it represents a grave theological challenge to Christianity, an immoral abdication on the part of humankind."

I have always believed that it was not just the Nazis who were responsible for the holocaust but the entire world. All of humanity turned their backs and looked away. Many, many countries gave refuge to former Nazis and many, many countries denied immigration to surviving Jews.

Its easy to blame others and as long as we blame others, we don't have to look at our part in it. Just as we don't have to look at our part in what is happening in the Suddan.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:41 PM

Any person with a depth of human compassion must agree that the atrocities of Auschwitz and the Nazis must be remembered for it's absolute barbarity and taken as a warning as to how depraved some humans can become.

At the same time, Pol Pot, the extermination of Native Americans,
the Slave Trade in the US, the Stalinist purges, the Armenian slaughter..........

Hiroshima, Nagasaki.....................................................

And yes, 100,000 Iraqis, many women and children must be included in this memory.

Frank

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raptor
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 03:29 PM

I'm not sure what you mean?

Raptor

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 03:21 PM

Shambles when did the jewish people get critised for fighting back?

Just before and just about every day since they have been organised into a nation state.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raptor
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 01:44 PM

Guest you have said something against Martin Gibson!
Shambles when did the jewish people get critised for fighting back?

Raptor

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 12:51 PM

I often question why the jewish people are critised for not being prepared to fight back and critised by the same people when they do?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Amos
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 12:43 PM

Elie Wiesel's Article

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 12:36 PM

Why Does the Holocost Tower above all other atrocities? Is it because the Jews are the "Chosen People"?

Why is it that the Jewish people are the only ones who have a word for when people don't respect them (anti-semetic) I don't recall any words for dissliking Irish, or blacks, or polish,or anyone else for that matter.

Should we take a week to comemerate all the different groups that were treated badly

Finkelstien is just a man with an opinon.

So is Raedwulf.

I,ve read nothing hatefull in any of his posts

Martin Gibson however is famous for his hatefull insulting bashing posts. Isn't this the kind of thing that remembering is hoped to abolish?

Why did the Jewish comunity want to stop Mel Gibson from depicting the jews roll in the death of Christ?

Wasn't that another atrocity of hate and fear that we could learn from?

Does wondering about these questions make me Hatefull?

Am I anit-semetic?

Have I said one thing against anyone Jewish or not?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 12:31 PM

A site on The Pianist.

http://www.thepianist-themovie.com/

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 11:29 AM

You're right, APC. The officers of the 1944 plot against Hitler were heroes who nearly succeeded in killing him. (Had someone not kicked the briefcase full of explosives under the heavy conference table, the Fuehrer would have been dead, dead, dead, and history rather different. They all paid with their lives after tortures that included being hung up on meat hooks.

However, the vast majority of Germans were perfectly satisfied with Nazi rule, until they began to lose. The Gestapo was not, as is usually thought, "superefficient." They didn't have to be, because their hands were usually full checking up on citizens denounced by disgruntled neighbors as "Jews" or "suspicious."

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 09:13 AM

It is commonly said that "the Germans" should have stood up to Hitler and his genocidal policies, but by the time those policies were in full swing, any mild criticism, never mind overt resistance, could easily prove fatal to the person voicing criticism.

Compare that with the present day, when US and EU governments alike, elected through free, democratic processes but in hock to powerful economic interests, pursue agricultural, trade, financial, intellectual-property and other policies whose combined effect is effectively genocidal in their impact on the people of the third world.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Big Mick
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 08:58 AM

Elie Wiesel had a powerful piece in the paper yesterday. Look it up. You won't be disappointed.

Mick

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:02 AM

Today the greatest form of genocide from a Pentagon cost benefit perspective is to have people die in thier homes from inexpensive biologic agents.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:45 AM

I saw a fine film last night call The Pianist. If you have not seen it - this is one to look out for. This showed pretty well the points that many of us find difficult to express the right words for.

The slow - piece-by-piece but inevitable move from small legal restrictions to their terrible consequences.

When the mad and totally impractical ideas of a few - are efficiently administrated by tens of thousands and how millions of others (inside and outside) do their best to try and ignore it.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 12:19 PM

Steve Parke's message today of 5:00 AM could stand as an exemplar of civilized discourse to make this place more useful.

It is not a particularly easy concept that the Holocost is necessarily distinct from other genocides, and I have learned quite a bit here at his expense.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 11:26 AM

Raedwulf, Steve, I stand corrected, and my hackles are down.

I think there is more than one message in the facts of the Holocaust, and I could go on at length about why I find it uniquely horrible. I don't think this is the place for it, and from the point of view of a Tutsi or a Bosnian or a sufferer in Darfur, what they understand is their own unique situation, and it is a poor sign that so much of this has followed the Holocaust, the establishment of the UN, and the supposed sensitivities of the nations post WWII. And it's going on right now in Darfur and what with Kim Il Song is doing to his people right now.

Thank you and peace be unto you.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 10:45 AM

Raedwulf,

I have experienced more than you will ever know.

I have aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends who first hand experienced the holocaust.

I don't have the tattoo on my body, but I do in my mind.

So shut up Raedwulf, as you are nothing more than a pathetic and very bigoted Nazi anti-semite.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 05:00 AM

robomatic, you said "I think your post is a troll designed to blame the Jews for their part in the suffering. I think you tried to create a nasty thread consisting of a feral competition of who has suffered the most."

It isn't, and I didn't. I apologise if it came across like that. I can be clever with words when I'm being facile and trying to be witty, but I'm not so good at expressing myself over serious matters. Over the years I've often been told I should talk less and listen more, then maybe I'd learn something. That's what I intended when I started this thread: I am genuinely interested in what other people have to say about this, because (a) I think I wil benefit from hearing other opinions than my own and (b) I think it's worth discussing anyway. The reason I haven't posted anything is simply because I haven't been near a computer over the weekend till I got back to work this morning.

I was prompted to start this thread when I saw on local tv that a woman who survived Auschwitz was visiting schools in our region and talking to the kids about it. One or two of the kids were interviewed afterwards and said things like "We mustn't ever let it happen again." My first thoughts were that if it did happen again it would be very hard to realise it was happening, and very hard to make sure it had been prevented, and that mass exterminations ARE still happening in parts of the world, even though they are not done with the same degree of industrialisation.

My aim in starting a discussion is to promote understanding (particularly my own), not to set you all at each other's throats. Forgive my ignorance: I am ready to learn from what you can teach me.

Steve

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: M.Ted
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 07:32 PM

The Holocaust is a somethng that all of us must acknowledge, and come to terms with-- a little warning light goes off when I hear expressions like "I don't see why we have to" or "there is too much emphasis placed", or, in this case, "others died in other terrible circumstances"--because, though they don't overtly deny, they are attempts to diminish, minimize, and ultimately, avoid dealing with it, and I am compelled to ask myself why someone would have the need to do that--

I am especially alarmed when I read, "Unless you have the tattoo, I suggest you shut up about the Holocaust experience, because you never experienced it"--it is a particularly aggressive effort to suppress the Holocaust, and even has a bit of implied threat built into it--

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 07:04 PM

For the past few weeks, TV stations in all the countries of Northwestern Europe which we receive here by cable have been broadcasting an unprecedented number of programmes to commemorate or inform people about the holocaust. The culmination was on 27 January, when quite a few did live broadcasts of the commemoration ceremonies which took place in Auschwitz on the anniversary of that camp's liberation. Some speakers on that occasion couldn't resist the temptation to instrumentalise the occasion for their own purposes, but on the whole it was an impressive effort.

That such a level of commemoration is necessary is reflected in the fact that, in spite of all the cynical press hoo-ha about young Prince Harry's distasteful fancy-dress costume, according to a recent survey something like one-third of people in Britain and no less than two-thirds of those under 30 years of age had never heard of Auschwitz.

My own little country managed, by accident of geography as much as of history, to remain neutral during the second world war, but its shame is its failure to take in Jewish refugees in the years preceding the war. Most countries have similar reason not to boast.

To its credit, West Germany has done much to apply the lessons of the past to the present, but I am not sure that countries like the former East Germany, Austria, or the countries which either allied themselves to Nazi Germany or were "liberated" by it have made the same efforts. I am, nevertheless, a little uneasy about the recent trend in history programming on German TV, and the timing of some of the recent programmes on the holocaust suggests that management felt they'd better put on something, but not at a time when it would upset prime-time viewership figures.

I was pleased that it was a Jewish interviewee on BBC who reminded the interviewer that Jews were not the only victims. He was able to make the point without misunderstanding, but it was courageous and dignified on his part. One of the more incongruous beam-in-thine-own-eye moments, on the other hand, was Jeremy Paxman suggesting to a German spokesman that Germany has not come to terms with its history. Prince Harry's gaffe was the incarnation of Britain's failure in this respect, a failure sustained by the tabloid rags that attacked him.

The Council of Europe has for many years been promoting the teaching of remembrance and preventing crimes against humanity. At its suggestion, many countries have designated a special day devoted to teaching these messages in schools. Anyone interested in educational materials which they have jointly produced can check out
this website.

The European Parliament has now recommended that all EU countries make 27 January a day of remembrance of genocide. The idea is not to wallow in the sordid events of the past, but to draw lessons from it for the present and future.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 05:25 PM

Martin, you wouldn't know shit if you fell into a cess pit. And I'm still none the wiser as to who the hell Finkelstien is, so well done for useless disinformation.

R

P.S. The only reason I refer to the "Jewish Holocaust" is because you chose to make a distinction between the inhumanity perpetrated upon different sections of humanity. Any time you want to stop pretending the persecution of the Jews under Hitler is more "special" than the experience of any other genocide victim under their tormentors, I'll stop referring to the Jewish Holocaust.

Unless you have the tattoo, I suggest you shut up about the Holocaust experience, because you never experienced it, leave alone any of the others.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 05:18 PM

Martin, please go steady...the guy obviously has a heart, not just for Jews but for people in general....
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 05:06 PM

Raedwulf. Nice tap dance. I know what I read.

You continue to diminish the holocaust, even with your last post.

You still come across as an anti-semite. Just by calling it the "Jewish" Holocaust.

You're pegged, pal. Don't feel so bad. You have some other company here on this forum.

And Norman Finkelstein has been continuously ridiculed in all of the Jewish periodicals. I get them. I'm sure you sure as fuck don't.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 04:51 PM

My bad, robo, & my apologies. I lost track of the fact that Steve started the thread. Nevertheless, you did give a certain impression, I'm afraid. Perhaps to me only, & perhaps I, unconsciously, linked your post too much to Martin's egocentric trolling.

Rereading it, actually, I don't think we disagree. Auschwitz isn't only for the Jews, but I believe it does still emphasis the Jewish Holocaust, & too much so at the expense of other horrific events (i.e. in the minds of some, you may not suggest that anything else could ever be as bad...).

We remember the Nazi persecution, but there is no memorial for the Cambodians, for the Rwandans, for ... In the UK, we recently had a 3 minute silence, yes a three bloody minute silence silence for the tsunami victims. I do not wish death upon anyone, but can someone explain to me why the quarter of a million-odd victims of that natural disaster are worth 50% more than the millions who went, willingly & unwillingly, to their deaths in two world wars? We only give them 2 minutes, & there are those who seem to begrudge them that much!

Perhaps I've just lost track of my humanity somewhere along the line, but I can't see where the recent dead are worth more silence than the ones who willingly served & died what they believed in, that we might live. Or how the persecution under Hitler (of whoever) is more evil or noticeworthy than that under Stalin, Pol Pot, & so on...

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 04:14 PM

alanabit, I believe you. What I noticed was that 'Steve' set this thing in motion and then did not re-enter the conversation. His words were also a bit confusing, and I've come to look at certain framing phrases such as "It's difficult to make this point without sounding as though I'm detracting from the horror and revulsion of the Nazi extermination programme, but believe me when I say I don't mean to do that." To me this is a warning sign like the words "don't take this personally"

Like you I believe there is no harm in discussing it. I think I already said it was a good thread, a thread in which 'Steve' has yet to re-participate.

Raedwulf, you might not agree with my impressions from Steve's first and only two posts to date. But you go on to ascribe to me an 'agenda' beyond my words. I made an observation based on the instigation of the thread, also that the thread 'turned good'. You said above "Auschwitz IS, largely, a commemoration of Jewish suffering". What I said was "A commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz is NOT just for Jews. Plenty of gypsies and Russian and other prisoners died there in a most horrible manner." Playing the 'who sufferend more' game is exactly what I am against. Please re-read my previous post if this is not clear.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 02:15 PM

robomatic - as with Martin, I think you are reading your own agenda into a post that never said what you wanted to imply it did.

Steve never blamed the Jews for the Holocaust. For you to imply such is a flagrant libel. Steve has made the same point that I did. Humanity has been insufferably cruel to humanity down through the centuries. Jews don't have a monopoly on that suffering. Some of us can see past Jewishness, & can see the hatefulness in all of that suffering.

The commemoration of Auschwitz IS, largely, a commemoration of Jewish suffering. It's not lessened by that. The problem, though, is exactly that which you & Martin are trying to promote. "No-one's suffering can ever be as much as our suffering!" Now, you who has not suffered as they did, justify your dismissal of all that other suffering, that you have also never experienced.

I don't believe you can. I'd like to believe that, if you think about the impression you've given to others, you wouldn't want to because it isn't what you meant.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: dianavan
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 02:10 PM

M Ted @ 12:57 - That was an excellent link and if you believe it will never happen again, you should read this article. It is time to wake up!

"Fertik and others, including former Justice Department Nazi war crimes prosecutor John Loftus, a Constitutional attorney in Miami, and a former Veterans Administration official, believe Prescott Bush and the Harrimans should have been tried for treason"

Trading with the enemy is trading with the enemy! Anyone who does not question the business dealings of George Bush with the Saudi family and the bin Ladens has their head in the sand. Lies and deceit have been the trademark of the Bush family since their dealings with the Nazis. Why would it change now?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: alanabit
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 01:47 PM

I don't think Steve meant that at all. I think he was more emphasising the fact that although we wish to observe the horror of Auschwitz, genocide has reappeared all over the world. The actual differences of opinion have largely been on the issue of degree and emphasis. Nobody here is trivialising the monstrousness of what the Nazis did (with one obnoxious, anonymous exception).
I don't know whether I will eventually decide that Auschwitz was unique in its scale in the history of inhumanity. I see no harm in discussing the issue though. I have learned something from reading all the better tempered posts here. May it continue.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 12:49 PM

Steve Parkes wrote:
"It's difficult to make this point without sounding as though I'm detracting from the horror and revulsion of the Nazi extermination programme, but believe me when I say I don't mean to do that.

What I want to say is: don't let us forget all the other horrors that have gone on in our lifetimes. The Nazis killed ten million non-jews (I think -- the numbers don't matter, it's the fact that's important); Stalin killed similar numbers of Russians; I can think of the civil wars in Biafra, Rwanda, Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia and more ... mass murders are still taking place today. I suppose the particular horror of Hitler's works is the enormous organisation that was created to make it happen.
Please don't forget -- it's not history, it's happening NOW. It will happen again, and I can easily believe it could happen on the same scale as before. I wish I could say something constructive now, But I can't.

Steve "

I think that is just what you are doing Steve. A commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz is NOT just for Jews. Plenty of gypsies and Russian and other prisoners died there in a most horrible manner. I think your post is a troll designed to blame the Jews for their part in the suffering. I think you tried to create a nasty thread consisting of a feral competition of who has suffered the most. And I think you failed. This has become a good thread.

If you really cared about the other horrendous atrocities across the planet you are free to create a fresh thread without trying to piggy back on the suffering commemmorated this week.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 11:41 AM

Martin,

You are worse than a fool. Anti-semite? I'm not only unlikely to be able to spot the average Jew in the average street, it would never occur to me that there was a reason why I needed to.

Skinhead? ROFLMFAO! No-one that has ever met me would use that word to describe me! Why is it that whenever anyone disagrees with your p-o-v, your response is crude abuse & meaningless insults? Not got the wit or intelligence to actually express your p-o-v in a rational non-abusive way?

R

P.S. Not only was I not diminishing the Holocaust (though I don't expect to find that you are capable of either believing or understanding that), I've never heard of Finkelstein. So what exactly was your diatribe intended to convey?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 07:43 AM

Norman Finkelstein is worthless and is a self-hating Jew. The Jewish community is aware of him and he is ridiculted in the Jewish press. - Martin Gibson

Ever heard of Raul Hilberg, Martin? He has said this, among many other things: "When I read Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, I was in the middle of my own investigations of these matters, and I came to the conclusion that he was on the right track. I refer here to the part of the book that deals with class actions against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the research, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results. I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years, will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough."

In case you don't know, Professor Hilberg is the author of The Destruction of European Jewry and is widely regarded as the foremost historian of the Holocaust. Presumably your reading is confined to propagandist comics, or you would have encountered such views.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: alanabit
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 06:59 AM

It's probably a five beer problem, Roger, which throws up more questions than answers. In the last local elections, the Fascist parties took around eleven per cent of the vote even in a liberal city like Cologne. Their sympathies were clearly Nazi, but there were certain restraints to what they could put on their posters. There will always be a condundrum of how to guarantee freedom of speech for everyone - including Fascists - but while imposing some restrictions on what sort of language can be used in public. I don't claim to know any better than you where that line should be drawn. I believe it has to be though.
Holocaust denial is a specific offence in German law - as is any overt incitement to racial hatred. This has placed a poweful weapon in the hands of the Berlin chief of police, for instance. He (bless him) has taken a very firm stance on the neo Nazis in his city.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 06:31 AM

I share your view on grounds of taste but differ only on the suggested 'solution'.

For what good would prosecution of such things acually achieve in Germany? It would only result in more publicity for those who would still hold those views and who would simply express them elsewhere. Ironically such legal action may even be opposed (on principle) by many who would also share our view on the comments.

I agree totally with the reasons why such laws exist but not with the wisdom of them. The fact that Germany now has such laws may be thought noble and understandable but this does worry me.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: alanabit
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 05:54 AM

I see your point Roger, as I do in the earlier case of Big Mick's - another Mudcatter for whom I have the greatest respect. My own feeling is that this poster has overstepped the mark of what is acceptable in manners or taste on Mudcat. That is why I would like to see the same rules applied as would be applied to any other deliberately offensive poster. It is possible that a similar comment in a German newspaper would result in prosecution.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 03:42 AM

Oh! & Joe take that 11.16 individual out of the game.

Views like those in the 11.16 post - the reasons they are expressed - and who express them - can't really ever be taken 'out of the game' (to use your term). All that Joe and Co can do here is to remove posts, entire threads or to close them.

None of these actions will have changed the fact that this post (and possibly others) will have been placed on this forum open to the public.

Attempts by the Nazi's and others - to rewrite history are rightly being critised here, so are their attempts to limit individual freedoms, silence any opposing views and ultimately take total control through these methods. For these to succeed not only will have good folk done nothing to prevent it - many other good folk will have actively supported these methods - and for what they consider (or are told to consider) are the very best reasons....

Many posts here express how difficult it is to understand how we do these terrible things to our fellow human beings. If we are to ever understand this and most importantly to stop doing it - it is vital that we first enable all views to be expressed - no matter how offensive we may think them to be. I would go further and say that the more we all agree how offensive these views are - the more important it is that we ensure that they remain for all to see.....

It is undersatndable that folk are offended by things like this but any resulting 'blinkered' or censored view of the world - will not be a true one. It is only though accepting the truth (no matter how unpleasant we may find the truth to be) that there is any hope for any of us.

The 11.16 post has been seen by many of us and noted - but largely ignored and not responded to. Is that not judgement enough? But fair judgement?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 01:16 AM

An unusual Holocaust exhibit once came to our local university. It featured dozens and dozens of stamped envelopes mailed by folks who had been rounded up by the Nazis and were being processed before their departure for the camps. The envelopes were all addressed by hand to friends, family, and business associates.

The enclosed letters explained that the writers were being "resettled in the East" for their own "protection" from extremists who might otherwise harm them. Of course, their next stop was a place like Treblinka.

Every stamp had Hitler's profile on it.

The exhibit got to me like nothing else.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,bflat
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 11:59 PM

I was born in the second half of 1945. It wasn't until I saw photos in Life magazine that I had any understanding of WWII. I wa perhaps eight or nine. I remember seeing the photos in Life magazine of the frail people and of course those piles of bodies of those who had not survived. I grew up among loving people, fiendly, diverse neighbors and I couldn't understand how people could do such things to others. I cried then and I'm crying now as I write this. I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. twice, and also to Auschwitz. If there is doubt in your mind about how horrific, calculated and evil the intentional extermination of Jews was then there is no hope for you as a human being. There are many additional examples of evil but the totality of the Holocaust is beyond all else.

Ellen

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:53 PM

Stalin and/or Mao might have caused more deaths in the long run than Hitler, but they were just mostly disposing of anyone they thought might interfere with their political aims.... Hitler's 'final solution' deserves a special place in infamy for its almost unimaginable rationale. Defending those horrendous crimes with insane ideas of 'racial purity' brought murder into a special realm.

It is depressing, yet useful, to read some detailed accounts of the individual camps, complete with news articles, historical documents of the time and film. No one who truly absorbs what really happened there can ever be blasé about the Holocaust again. It is pretty strong...take it in small doses....

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 08:59 PM

Was it George Steiner that said the only valid reaction is silence.

I didn't really understand that as a kid, but I think maybe shame and pity is about all you really feel. Unfathomable shame for our species. Pity because who can really have an insight into that measure of suffering.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 08:49 PM

The Guest of 11:16 can stay to show that only made her/herjust looks like the demented pig they are.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,Skipy
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 05:56 PM

Lets just remember that it was only 2 generations ago & that we (the human race) are still very very capable of doing it again, but now we have computers any lots more technology!
Oh! & Joe take that 11.16 individual out of the game.
Skipy

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: dianavan
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 05:51 PM

Big Mick - You said that well.

When you leave Dachau, there is plaque that says, Never Again in several languages. That is a way of lulling us into believing that it only happened once.

For the Jews it only happened once but for millions of others it has happened before and will happen again. The first recorded case of systematic genocide occurred against the Cathars by the Roman Catholic church. How many North American native people died as a result U.S. govt. policy? How many cultures have been destroyed as a result of slavery. It happens over and over again.

Until we wake up to hate mongering and quit closing our eyes to the death and destruction being waged against our 'so-called' enemies, we will continue to be ruled by manipulative politicians.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Big Mick
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 05:08 PM

Fair enough, Peter. It is an important distinction to point out that Hitler, and the atrocities of the Nazi's in the name of the German people, didn't just come like a bolt out of the sky. They came over a period of time when the Germans were suffering, when the gap between the richest and poorest was rising, when the Government was struggling with the economy ... in fact, there are a number of lessons to be learned here that are relevant to today. If we isolate the atrocities of the Holocaust, and universally damn them as we should, as the most horrific crime ever perpetuated by mankind, and then examine the whole of the rise of the Nazi's, we will learn things that are relevant to today. I am not...... let me repeat this emphatically.... I am not comparing this country and it's leadership to the Nazi's. But when you examine the conditions that exist, there are some parallels that should be noted. This is not to imply we are headed down the same path. But the German people are no more or less evil than any other group of people. When one examines what led these otherwise decent folks to allow such horror in their names, then we can truly learn and grow. This is one of the reasons why I find jingoistic "we are the greatest nation in history", or the God is on our side, type of language so frightening and distateful. It is this type of philosophy that leads down frightening paths.

Mick

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 04:27 PM

If the opinion leaders in Germany at the time had said the right things - Big Mick. ...education and voting would be more productive (bulwarks against these crimes) - Bill D

Unfortunately a big part of the problem was that Hitler and his cronies were saying exactly what people wanted to hear, and not just in Germany - though Germans as a nation tasted more humiliation between the wars than most have faced before or since. Hitler became chancellor perfectly legally, within the rules of Germany's democracy. The only political party large enough to have caused him serious difficulties was one run by the Catholic Church. But the Vatican signed a concordance with Hitler, a condition of which was that the Catholic church would withdraw from all political activity. This was done over the heads of the German hierarchy, among whom were some brave souls who did speak out against this blatant capitulation to the Nazis. The Vatican of course, and in particular Pope Pious XII (Pacelli), never wavered from its Nazi-accommodating stance, and played an active part at the end of the war in spiriting away many Nazi and Ustase suspected war criminals to safe havens in South America.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 03:22 PM

"Inasmuch as ye DO IT unto the least of these, my brethren, ye DO IT unto me." Jesus Christ (KJV, from memory, not looked up)
Jeri, you and Keith Marsden are part of a fine chorus of Truth. Thanks for the goose.          Tw

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 03:21 PM

The answer is to strenuously question authority and reject automatic agreement, know why you decide what you do and double check your premises.
Independent thought is a precious commodity in a brainwashed era.

Amen to that.....

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 02:50 PM

Could and may be starting to. The answer is to strenuously question authority and reject automatic agreement, know why you decide what you do and double check your premises.
Independent thought is a precious commodity in a brainwashed era.


A

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 02:28 PM

I don't think the saying typically comes with the doing. I think there are folks who think if they discuss something enough, they've gotten something accomplished. Mostly not.

There DOES come a point when doing and saying are the same thing, but not unless you're talking to people who listen. The internet doesn't count, because people don't pay attention. They're often reading a message looking for something to argue with. At the very least, they're thinking about what they want to say, not what they're reading. Speeches, editorials, letters to the editor - these things might fit into the "doing" category. It's fine to talk, to debate, simply for debate's sake. Somebody might discover a question or think about an answer. It's not likely to make the world a better place though. Anyway, on topic...

Human beings can and do find enough justification for just about everything, and small things gradually become more acceptable, more 'normal'. Sometimes those small things pile up into one big horror. I'll agree that there's nothing even close to the Holocaust in terms of numbers of people killed. It should be remembered, and it should be studied, if only so we can recognize that particular evil when it comes around again. The problem is that people may not see or admit it's starting because they're too busy making excuses and saying why now is different from then.

Auschwitz was the horror it was not because of numbers of victims, but because of everything that had to happen in order for all those people to be murdered. All of the blind eyes turned, all of the rationalizing and excuses made for a charismatic leader, all of the desensitizing, all the lies believed because people wanted to believe, all of the questions left unasked because questioning wasn't patriotic, and all of it starting so small and slow and righteous that people never noticed - never imagined how it would turn out. We have to recognize that process when it starts in order to keep it from happening again, and it could happen again.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Big Mick
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 02:04 PM

You know, Jeri, the saying goes with the doing. If one only does one or the other, it diminishes the final impact. One leads by example. But one draws attention by the rhetoric. If the opinion leaders in Germany at the time had said the right things, then led by example they very well could have stopped these folks. That is supposition, of course, but certainly a possibility. Like it or not, it is "around the water cooler" that action starts. Action starts with an idea well expressed. The part of your comment I agree with is that if your activism is confined to "the water cooler" then nothing will happen. But if one takes what is expressed around the water cooler and acts on it, then things happen.

I am sure that there are many expressing opinions on this forum who have spent much of their lives to solving problems and causing societal change.

Mick

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 01:19 PM

Please cant we remember the poor people murdered at Auschwitz and elsewhere with respect and dignity, and not denigrate into petty arguments. We must never forget these happenings and strive not to allow it to happen again. As has already been mentioned it was educated human beings that were responsible in a very well organised manner. Rest in Peace.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Biskit
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 01:18 PM

Oh My God Bobert! I actually agree with something you've said,...I..I'm feeling light headed...

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: M.Ted
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 12:57 PM

As long as we are mentioning American investment in the   Nazi war machine--let us not forget Senator Prescott Bush, father of one American President, Grandfather of another--ÒBush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951Ó If you read carefully, you will note that he continued to manage Nazi investments well after the beginning of the war, and did not stop until the were seized by the US gov't--

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 11:55 AM

It's worth keeping in mind that anti-semitism was virulent across most of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. The authorities in France, for instance, unhesitatingly handed over their Jews to the Nazis, though they were under no real pressure to do so. ("Occupied" France was in fact occupied by less than 3,000 German troops for most of the time.) This widespread hatred was an easy thing for the Nazis to exploit, and they had no difficulty getting the German business community on board either. Companies such as I G Farben and Bayer were complicit in the crimes, taking advantage of the ready supply of slave labour and human guinea pigs, and helping to design ever more efficient killing and cremation systems etc. And American investors in Nazi Germany, such as IBM and the Rothschilds, could not have been unaware of the intense and systematic persecution of German and Austrian Jews in the 1930s.

The only reason anti-semitism was less evident in the UK (but still a strong undercurrent ebbing through the so-called Establishment) was that Britain had killed or driven out most of its Jews in medieval persecutions centuries earlier.

Wolfgang, I have no problem with Auschwitz being emblematic of the Holocaust, and indeed of all genocides (thus I would like to see 27 January observed as something wider, such as Genocide Awareness Day) but the numbers game can be misleading. Deaths at Auschwitz are almost universally put at 1.1 to 1.5 million, with most latter-day historians now tending towards the lower estimate. Deaths at Treblinka were 700,000-850,000, but that was achieved in a single year, not five years like Auschwitz. Think what the story might have been if Treblinka had not been destroyed by an uprising of prisoners in August 1943.

When I said Holocaust Memorial Day was a recent innovation, I meant to add that Jews have of course been commemorating the Shoah for 50 years or more. (It started to be known as the Holocaust only around 1960 and the Eichmann trial.) Yom HaShoah is observed on 27 of Nissan (which usually falls in March or April I think). I can't remember the significance of the specific date, but I think it might relate to the Warsaw uprising, which would be as appropriate an event as any to relate it to.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peace
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 11:36 AM

"Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and other Slavs, by the way, were regarded by true Nazis as just human enough to be "Aryan" slaves after "final victory.""

And many also helped willingly to exterminate Jews.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 11:26 AM

I should not have omitted the Gypsies (Roma), equally victims of "weird, largely faked-up racial "theories." Had there been more of them, the Nazis would have killed more. In Nazi theory, Gypsies and Jews were considered, literally, not to belong to the human species.

By contrast, the vast majority of American scholars during slave days (before the theory of evolution) recognized Blacks as being biologically human beings, though of a presumably "primitive" type. Nobody advocated their extermination.

Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and other Slavs, by the way, were regarded by true Nazis as just human enough to be "Aryan" slaves after "final victory."

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:58 AM

Oddly, the guest of 11:16 clipped a section explicitly about non-Jews and then proceeded to rant as if it said Jews.

It is always worth remembering that Hitler's ambitions were by no means restricted to eliminating Jews: some half a million gypsies were also killed in those same camps for equally racist reasons. And I would say that (in the part of the world I live) anti-semitic and most other racist comments are condemned by the majority of people, but such comments against gypsies are largely accepted.

(My sister now lives near Bergen-Belsen, and I have not yet visited her without spending at least half a day in silent thought at the camp.)

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:51 AM

Unlike most lesser mass murders, the Holocaust didn't come from extensive simmering social (and only secondarily "ethnic") tensions. Instead the Nazi genocide was built on weird, largely faked-up racial
"theories." Not even the most rabid antisemites before the Nazis openly advocated the slaughter of all of Europe's Jewish men, women, and children. The earlier maniacs, like American black-haters, just wanted them out of the country, or kept "in their place."

And as others have noted, the genocidal horror was not created in some benighted backwards tribal society but in one of the most intelectually sophisticated and best educated nations in earth.

It's pointless to compare holocausts. Stalin and Mao each probably killed more people than Hitler (though the 30 million other Europeans who died as a result of Hitler's invasion should not be left off his rap sheet). Auschwitz is an appropriate symbol for all of them, because it was the Nazis, after all, who invented the very idea of a "death camp."

(At least the Aztecs and Mayas, also mass slaughterers of the innocent, truly believed that was the only way to keep the sun burning. The Nazis knew better.)

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:50 AM

Mick: "all it takes for evil to flourish is for one decent person to say or do nothing in the face of it"

It's DO. "Say" doesn't mean jack shit, and especially on the internet it doesn't mean jack shit. The more voices speak out, the more noise there is, the louder the noise, the less apt people are to hear the message and the more apt they are to tune it out.

This is what gets me about people that say "Why didn't everyone speak out against that horrible thing?" Because it doesn't do anything except create noise.

Powerful Keith Marsden song called "Idlers and Skivers," basically about the government of a certain time period in the UK screwing the poor, but it works for different places, different times, and different types of screwing. The last verse:

But you haven't done your duty when you've sung about the poor
If you never lift a hand to ease their plight
If you sing the chorus louder it might ease you're conscience more,
But pious thoughts do not excuse you from the fight.
For the times are getting harder, and we haven't seen the worst,
They still foul the wells of plenty while so many die of thirst
So we will rebuild Jerusalem, but clean the temple first
And they'll wish they'd taken pity on the poor.

So flapping one's metaphorical jaws around the internet version of the office water cooler has absolutely no effect other than easing consciences. Oh, and keeping the jerk spouting the obnoxious stuff feeling significant and involved in the conversation. It's DO.

And with regards to removing it, if we remove all the evidence of atrocity, in whatever form the evidence exists, it gets a whole lot easier to say that atrocity never existed, and the perpetrators weren't really as bad as you claim now, were they...

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:40 AM

President Bush and the poster of 11:16 on January 28 are both indicative of a species-wide malaise -- women who are unable, unwilling or too unaware to be good mothers, whatever the reason. Someone took a perfectly good potential human being and trained it crooked somehow. A shame...


A

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peace
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:23 AM

I like the paraphrase also, Big Mick: All it takes for bad things to happen is for good people to do nothing.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Big Mick
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 10:11 AM

Actually, Alan, I am opposed to removing the post of 11:16. I think it is important to let such disgusting people reveal themselves. Anti Semites, in fact all racists, are the most despicable incarnation of the creature known as man. Decent folks, reading that post or worse, hopefully will do some self examination. It's only in asking the questions that M. Ted posted that there is any hope for avoiding a repeat of these horrific atrocities. Who was it who said something on the order of, all it takes for evil to flourish is for one decent person to say or do nothing in the face of it.

Mick

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: alanabit
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 05:51 AM

Our "Guest" at 11.16 has just hit a new low on Mudcat. Joe, please remove this despicable post.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 02:54 AM

Statistic are statistics. Murder is murder. It is a crime yes and the best way to look at crime is never through statistics but through the effects of it upon individuals - just like you me and our families.

The sex act itself is pretty much just the sex act. What makes the difference with the sex act - is the foreplay (or sometimes lack of it especially when this is in the form of rape). Many crimes other than murder are committed in these cases and especially - I would say, in the case of the events that slowly buit-up to what became the horrors of Auschwitz and other such camps.

I feel that it is the foreplay involved in this particular atrocity that does not alone make it worse - or not so bad - as the other terrible genocides - but it is this aspect of it that possibly makes it different and why none of us must ever allow anyone to forget or excuse it.

It may well be that (as suggested) it is mainly because we know less about the other events - for many reasons - and if we did find out more details of these - we may view them diffently. But it is unlikely that we will - so this is why always remembering all aspects of the well-documented holocaust is so important. Especially as over time we slowly loose those who survived to tell us their stories and the details - that many would prefer were not given.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:44 PM

Why is this murder like no other murder?

Oh, come on, stop the juvinile crap, OK?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peace
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:34 PM

Hey Guest of Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:16 PM : Are you Aryan Nations or American Nazi Party?

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:26 PM

The planet can no long afford the *luxary* of war. It is too interconnected...

Time for the US to set the example and create a Department of Peace and fund it accordingly...

Bobert

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:16 PM

The Nazis killed ten million non-jews

Give Us a BREAK!

How many Christians had the Jews killed through usery, starvation, and servitude? (Jews are not "kindest" of "God's creatures!)

Ying and Yang -

It appears the universal score was was equalled - Perhaps, we can ALL move forward and stop tabulating questionable numbers.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: M.Ted
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 10:48 PM

It is all to convenient to think that the Holocaust was conceived by madmen and perpetrated by inhuman monsters. It could never have happened without the willing participation and cooperation of millions of reasonable, educated, seemingly moral and law-abiding citizens.

The obvious questions that we are encouraged to ask ourselves are, "Would I have recognized what was happening for what it was?" and then,"What would I have done?"--But the real question is, 'When I've witnessed evil, what have I done?'

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: frogprince
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 09:43 PM

Please, if you are in D.C., do not miss the Holocost Museum. Many details of the presentation bring the horror of the thing home in an extremely effective way. It never occurred to me think of it as denigrating the tragedy of lives lost in other genocidal incidents.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 08:53 PM

I have a friend who is a Mennonite. As I'm sure you're aware, the Mennonites are a pacifistic church.

Kevin has been nearly disenfellowshipped a couple of times, because Kevin believes that war is not always evil -- that sometimes war is not only justified, but demanded.

Kevin told me he learned that when he visited Dachau.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,The Shambles
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 07:59 PM

Insults have no place in this discussion and we have had more than enough senseless hate. We must never forget where this leads us and none of us would really ever wish to go there.

All aspects of this sorry subject requires a little respect.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:46 PM

Big Mick. My fedora is off to you, too for coming forward and saying that.

Anti-semitism is at an all-time high on Mudcat at this time and I am sure many of you have noticed this.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:44 PM

I find the comments linking other mass murders to be troubling also. While I absolutely agree that they are horrific to a degree that is almost undescribable, there are significant differences in the Holocaust. It was financed by a world power, a significant portion of the populace looked away, and the justification for the systematic rooting out and dispossessing of the Jews from their property was seen as legitimate. There is no parallel and when taken in its entirety, it ranks as the worst of crimes ever perpetuated.

Mick

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:38 PM

Bless you, Wolfgang. I appreciate you coming forward and saying that.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:32 PM

There's no equal to Auschwitz regarding planned mass murder. There's no other place of similar size on earth that has seen so may murders. More than 1000 a day were killed and burned to ashes and disposed of amounting to roughly 1,500,000 meticuously planned (you couldn't have three trains arriving at the same time, could you?) murders in less than four years.

It saddens me that some arguments I read here (and in other threads) are undistinguishable from arguments by German Neonazis.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Megan L
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:27 PM

Each life is precious regardless of age sex colour ethnic origin or creed. the wanton destruction of ONE life diminishes us all.

To those who have lost, the pain is deep regardless of who or what caused the death.

No nation has the monopoly in suffering, all nations cause it and all people bear it.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:26 PM

raedwulf

I didn't expect anything less than you diminishing the holocaust you anti-semitic skinhead Nazi. I'm sure your ancestors are smiling in their graves with their swastikas.

As for my behavior. Your anti-semitism takes the cake. I wish I could put it in your ignorant face.

You haven't got a clue what evil is unless you look at yourself in a mirror.

BTW, Peter F. Norman Finkelstein is worthless and is a self-hating Jew. The Jewish community is aware of him and he is ridiculted in the Jewish press.

You are also a Jew-hater. One of the biggest ones here.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 05:14 PM

Although it doesn't diminish the horror, for the record.

Belson was not the same as Auschwitz
It is often quoted as a death camp, all the indications were at the time that it was a forced labour camp and in the latter stages of the war the logistics and maybe priorities of getting food to the camp were difficult in the extreme.

I have never seen the film but media people who were alive at the time report they saw a film of the surrender/handover of the camp to the British commander who had just arrived with his troops. The German commondant handed over a symbolic leather stick, The Brit apparently took it without any emotion lifted up and brought it hard down on the German. I doubt it went public for at least 20 years. And a court marshal would be extremely difficult to administer.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 04:38 PM

Most European countries, including the UK, have been observing Holocaust Day on 27 January for about five years, and not before time. That they do so is due in part to the unstinting efforts of a family near Lincoln whose extraordinary work you will find HERE if you are unable to visit their Holocaust museum and research centre.

The family behind this project, are wholly unconnected with the Jewish community. They just thought after visiting Yad Vashem how ridiculous it was that people had to travel to the middle-east to find out about a crime that went on in the heart of Europe. So they put that right in their own home, out in rural countryside, and now world statespeople beat a path to their door. This was well before Shindler's Ark/List, and the exponential growth of the US "Holcaust industry" (as Norman Finkelstein has called it).

Much as I applaud their work, I am uneasy about commemorating the Holocaust specifically - not out of any disrespect to its victims but because it tends to let us off the hook by making genocide a specifically German crime when the reality, as I've said here before, is that we all have blood on our hands.

I could understand Martin's rage if it was about,say, the way 9/11, is seen in relation to far greater crimes, but in relating one genocide to another I think there is a degree of common ground.

Consider Rwanda. This occurred some time after the Smiths had completed their project, with its over-arching aim to help ensure, through education, that "never again" would come to mean just that. How then could they ignore Rwanda? It is a tribute to their tact that they have brought Rwanda and other crimes within their aegis without offending their core supporters (who include just about every Holocaust survivor in the UK).

Don't think that Rwanda wasa spontaneous onslaught. It was preceded by extensive use of "hate radio" to dehumanise the Tutsis (and anyone else unaceptable to the Interahamwe youth movement). Within a day, some 690 road blocks were established in the capital, Kigali. That required serious organisation. And after 100 days nearly a million people had been killed, mostly with machetes. Much as comparisons can be invidious, it is worth noting that this rate of slaughter exceeded nearly five-fold the rate at which the Nazis, with their industrialised processes, exterminated Jews (and others).

Steve, I think it is probably right to count as genocide the crimes of the Ustashe in Croatia and Bosnia, 1941-45.Most historians put Serb deaths then at 700,000 and of course all the Jews (30,000?) and Roma were murdered apart from those the Ustashe paid the Nazis 30 deutchmarks a head to take away.This was a planned process, announced in advance in chilling detail. Thousands who were not murdered were driven out or forcibly converted to catholicism.

It would be stretching a point to class the 1990s crimes in the Balkans as genocide, if that is what you were implying, Steve. All sides were guilty of crimes, and Tudjman (who always counted on much support from the US) is more despised than Milosevic by many Bosnians. The ICTY, largely financed by the US, could hardly be said to have played an even hand. For instance three Croatian officers who admitted their part in serious war crimes, and testified against colleagues, have been largely ignored by successive ICTY prosecutors. Unlike witnesses against Serb crimes, they were put on no protection programme, and at least one of them has since been murdered.

At Srebrenica maybe 4,000 people were murdered out of 40,000 in the region of that enclave - this 40,000 being only a small part of the Muslim population in Bosnia. A crime unqestionably, but it was mindless vengeance, not genocide. (Many from the enclave had been involved in trashing some 117 surrounding Serb villages and their populations.) And is it not a strange form of genocide to separate out women and children and murder only the men of fighting age (who were originally singled out to be vetted for war criminals, which was the practice of all the fighting factions)?

But from the plight of the Armenians onwards the last century and, alas, this one, are littered with examples that should show us that in other circumstances any one of us might be steered into the depravity that makes these things possible. And the easiest way to manipulate us in that direction is to spread fear through the masses.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 04:36 PM

So what are you saying Martin? All those people that Stlin killed are less important than the Jews that Hitler slaughtered? "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic" as Stalin (more or less, I don't have the exact quote to hand) said...

How nice to have your small-minded, ego-centric, Judo-centric view of the world that considers that there has only ever been one Holocaust. So presumably Cambodia doesn't matter to you? Or Rwanda? Or...

Because lots of people have died at various times, and whilst I've never actually seen any statistics calculated, I would not be at all surprised to find the Holocaust does not come top of the averages of "People massacred / available world population".

There have been too many Holocausts, Martin, because it's all too easy to channel human nature in that direction. Oh, & I read your link. Puerile. An essay from a teen with enough intelligence to follow the forms of institutional learning (quoting 'authorities' left, right & centre), but without the background, understanding & knowledge to make any sort of sense of an event that she never experienced.

What did you think that link proved exactly? What's worse about Mengele's worthless unscientific experiments, than burning alive several hundred people who sought sanctuary in a church (Rwanda), or working them to death on starvation rations (e.g. Buchenwald or Cambodia in general)? Everyone's dead in the end...

If you know history, instead of looking at just the limited set that you can use as a stick to beat everyone else with (which might not be true of you, Martin, but given your general attitude & behaviour on this board over time, you've no grounds for complaint if you're judged by your posting history), the scary thing is that the Hitlers throughout history have not been evil. Just people that were utterly convinced they were right & acting in the best interests of their people...

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 02:45 PM

raedwulf, Stalin did it but not better. Who was the Dr. Josef Mengele type that reported to Stalin?

Please read the article at this URL:

http://remember.org/imagine/doctors.html

There is only one Holocaust that towers above all other atrocities.

Especially of so called educated men.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Raedwulf
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 02:12 PM

Amos - Think again. Stalin did it, & did it better. I believe the standard estimate is something like 20 million. I'm not entirely sure what the proportion of Jews was, but a vague memory says Stalin killed more than Hitler did (perhaps only because he started with more).

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 01:55 PM

This site reviews a fine TV film called Conspiracy. This was based on the surviving minutes of the meeting (mainly of lawers and ex-lawyers) - which coldly decided the fate of so many.

http://hem.passagen.se/lmw/conspiracy3.html

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 01:34 PM

unless you are in the candle business, I'd think that education and voting would be more productive. If prayer could have stopped this evil, it would be just a rumor by now.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 01:19 PM

Lets not forget the "Trail of Tears" and the Spain conquering South America. From what I've read their were a few million aztec that died
from just the diseases the conquistadors brought with them. Not to mention the actual "war". And they say there is no need for Environmental Impact Statements!

Anybody whose interested, there's a good holocaust museum in D.C. next to the mint.

Light a candle and pray that it all stops!

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: The Shambles
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 01:04 PM

Possibly the biggest factor was that intelligent and educated men of the law changed the laws of a civilised land - and first made all of it perfectly legal.

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 12:02 PM

I don't think it was ever done with as much technology, organization and institutionalized evil mechanism as it was in Germany -- it was as if every ability of the human mind from organizational know how to chermistry to logistiocs and engineering were all suddenly bent to a hugely destructive intent; that is why it epitomizes the worst that humans can become -- not just waves of destructive power and passion, but organized and knowledgeable and calculatingly evil.


A

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:58 AM

Sorry Martin -- I meant the precise number is less significant than the intention to commit murder on such a scale. Maybe that's the same thing after all.

Steve

Subject: RE: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Once Famous
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:49 AM

To us Jews, please believe that the numbers DO matter.

all of it is horrific.

Subject: Auschwitz and other mass murder
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 11:46 AM

It's difficult to make this point without sounding as though I'm detracting from the horror and revulsion of the Nazi extermination programme, but believe me when I say I don't mean to do that.

What I want to say is: don't let us forget all the other horrors that have gone on in our lifetimes. The Nazis killed ten million non-jews (I think -- the numbers don't matter, it's the fact that's important); Stalin killed similar numbers of Russians; I can think of the civil wars in Biafra, Rwanda, Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia and more ... mass murders are still taking place today. I suppose the particular horror of Hitler's works is the enormous organisation that was created to make it happen.

Please don't forget -- it's not history, it's happening NOW. It will happen again, and I can easily believe it could happen on the same scale as before. I wish I could say something constructive now, But I can't.

Steve