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Question: How come other victims of war crimes or genicides don't try so hard to keep their past alive as the Jews!?
I am thinking about the Chinese during WWII killed by the Japanese, Koreans by the Japanese, Vietnamese by the French and Americans, Rwandans, Armenians,!.!.!.and many more!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
~Why not rephrase your question a little!. How about, Why is it that when we mention Nazi atrocities, most people automatically think of the Jews!?

The euthanasia program, Operation 14f13, was far more comprehensive than just the Final Solution!. About 5!.5 million people died in the Extermination Camps!. Only half of them were Jews!. About 18 million died in the Concentration Camps!. About 20% of them were Jews!. Many of the Jews would have been sent to the camps, one type or the other, had they not been Jewish!. The genocide of the Serbs and Romani was, as a percentage of population, more complete than that of the Jews!.

There is a HUGE difference between the camp types!. The Death Camps were operational only from late '41 until the Spring of '43!. Heinrich Himmler (probably with input from Goering and Heydrich) conceived of them,planned them and oversaw operation of them!. Hitler, in all likelihood, was briefed in only after construction was underway!. Himmler himself and ordered the Death Camps closed and operations terminated in '43 because he realized that they were wasting valuable resources, included a supply of necessary slave labor!. The Einstazgruppen were organized put in operation by Himmler before the Death Camps opened and Himmler realized the detrimental effect they were having on the troops involved!. They, too, were slaughtering as many non-Jews as they were killing Jews!.

Had the Red Army not repelled Operation Barbarossa, then decided the outcome of the war at Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk and Smolensk, as many as 30 million Slavs would have been eliminated!. Hitler put the genocide of the Poles on hold for practical reasons, but the goal was to erase them as well!.

National Socialist "racial purification" and "social cleansing" was hardly just a Jewish affair and the Jews represent a small minority of the victims!. That does not denigrate what happened to them, but is appalling, obscene and dangerous that the vast majority of the victims have been forgotten or at least relegated to a footnote!.

In your list you fail to mention the US Bureau of Indian Affairs and the genocide campaign against the American Indian by Uncle Sam!. That even included the near extinction of the bison as a by-product and tool of the campaign!. In 1838, Martin VanBuren opened the world's first concentration camps in Tennessee and Alabama!. He called them "emigration depots"!. It took the British to coin the term 'concentration camp' when they named their facilities during the Boer Wars in 1898/99!. The Nazis looked to the US/UK examples when they designed their programs!. You also don't mention the 2 million or so Japanese civilians killed by the incendiary and conventional bombing of 67 Japanese cities which had resulted in Tokyo sending out overtures for peace months before Little Boy and Fat Man incinerated a quarter million more in Hiroshima and Nagasaki!. Curtis LeMay himself acknowledged he'd likely have been tried for war crimes for his role in those 2 million deaths had the US been defeated!. When you're on the winning side you can do with impunity that which you execute the losers for doing!.

As to the Khmer Rouge, give Uncle Sam his due on that one too!. The Khmer Rouge were a radical fringe group with little support in 1970!. Then the CIA supported coup ousted Norodom Sihanouk, a reform leader who was wildly popular with his people!. Sihanouk alligned himself with the Khmer Rouge to oppose the USA backed government of the ineffective, incompetent Lon Nol!. Khmer Rouge influence and power mushroomed overnight as a result of Sihanouk's "endorsement" of them!. Lon Nol was bid adieu and Pol Pot took over!. But for the coup, the Khmer Rouge would never have been in position to do what they did!.


Vietnam is a different matter entirely!. It was not genocide!. Uncle Sam's bloody handprint is all over that one, too!. Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Mihn were 'patriots', 'freedom fighters' and 'nationalists' back in the day that FDR was supporting them against the Japanese in 1940/41 - when we were 'neutral' That support was but one of the reasons the Japanese decided they had no options left by to take out the Pacific Fleet at Pearl!. FDR stabbed Ho and the Viet Minh in the back at Yalta and Tehran, then Harry Truman double-crossed them in 1945 and again in 1946!. To make it bi-partisan, Ike rubbed salt in the wounds in 1954 and 1956!. Ike order CIA to make sure Ngo Dinh Diem was elected in South Viet Nam!. Diem carried some districts by more than 150% of the registered voters!. As they had done in a dozen other countries where the US had deposed democratically elected reform leaders and replace them with bloodthirsty tyrants, CIA then helped create and organize death squads to protect the despots and to keep the strings attached to the US puppets!. By refusing to allow the internationally supervised elections required by the 1954 Geneva Accords, which, if fairly held, would have seen Ho elected in a landslide, Ike insured that Anti-Americanism in Southeast Asia would be irreversible!. Diem's killing spree was impressive, but many of his victims are credited to the Viet Minh, the NLF and like nationalist groups who wanted Diem out, the elections held and the reunified!. They Vietnamese deaths are the result of civil war and dictatorial power plays!. (The indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in Laos and Cambodia as well as in both Vietnams were part of the war!. So too, I suppose, was the use of chemical weapons like Agent Orange and the other Rainbow Herbicides!. Had anyone else done the same thing, it is likely there would have been war crimes trials, but not for genocide!. Other folks placed in power by CIA include Saddam Hussein, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Papa Doc Duvalier - well, you should be seeing the pattern!. Back in '79 when the hostages were being held, we negotiated with their captors and made secret arms deals with them and we armed, trained, supplied and assisted Islamic fundamentalists in their insurrection in Afghanistan!. Today, we call those self-same people "terrorists", "warlords" and Taliban!. One of them was a fella named Osama bin Laden!. Many of the terrorists camps in Pakistan were are so concerned about today were built with US tax dollars and US help!.

The Nazis were not unique, not the first and not the worst!. The US/CIA body count rivals or exceeds theirs!. The Third Reich only lasted about a decade!. The US has been doing it for two centuries and is still doing it today!. Genocide and other forms of slaughter are part and parcel of the human psyche and the human condition and have gone on since the first humanoid learned to crack a skull with a rock!. As long as we crave personal and national wealth and power, as long as we have nation-states, as long as were adhere to conflicting superstitious beliefs about mythical deities, expect the bloodbath to continue and the bodies to keep piling up!. Imagine (thanks for that one, John) a world without the trappings of grandeur and greed!. You'll have to imagine it!. You won't see it in your lifetime!.
CHER:
Are you suggesting the Serbs, Slavs, Romani, Russians and Poles weren't targeted as a people!? The Jehovah's Witnesses aren't a race or ethnic group, but they were targeted for religious reasons!. (Gee, other than religion, what distinguishes the Jews from the majority of the Semites of the world!?) Clearly you can't be suggesting the other groups enjoyed better conditions in the camps and didn't represent a larger population in the camps!? Have you even heard of Jasenovac!? It had the third highest body count but is seldom, if ever, mentioned in Holocaust discussions because only 15% of its victims were Jews!. You are aware, aren't you, that at Auschwitz II (Birkenau), the busiest of the death camps, the death toll was about evenly split between Jews and non-Jews!? Every "fact based" drama of the camp makes it appear to be an exclusive Jewish operation!. Talk about the hubris of reverse bigotry!. And I know that you don't suggest that the Irgun, the Stern Gang and the other terrorist groups who coined and popularized the term "Holocaust" to refer to the atrocities against only the Jews, then began wearing it as some perverse and profane badge of honor as a tool in their campaign to compel creation of a Jewish homeland in the British Mandate of Palestine had no agenda!.

I trust you are not implying my remarks are anti-Semitic simply because I point out that others suffered the same fate alongside them in the same conditions in the same locations at the same hands!? If you are, I think you have proven a critical point about "Holocaust" discussions!. Nazi programs and pogroms were NOT aimed solely at the Jews and to pretend otherwise is to open the "Never Again" door to "When and Where Next"!. There is no monopoly on the horrors and it is a pretty sick mind, culture and society that claims one, don't you think!? Especially when the facts to the contrary are so compelling and so readily available!.
My references include visits to camps, discussions with survivors (Jewish and non-Jewish) and long term friendships and lengthy discussions with offspring and relatives of survivors, again Jew and non-Jew, as well as extensive reading over decades from multiple frames of reference and points of view!. On what do you base your opinions!?
Let's give the Japanese some credit!. They refused Hitler's demands to kill the tens of thousands of Jews who had fled from Germany to Shanghai and, in fact, treated the Jews in the ghettos they established far more humanely than they treated the British and Americans!.
I keep forgetting that sin of the American Indians!. They were alive!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Actually, I don't think your initial statement is strictly accurate!. I think many have worked hard to ensure that their suffering is not forgotten, have taken action for reparations etc!.

The numbers killed in the Holocaust are horrific by almost all standards I can imagine!. The proportion of the European Jewish community slaughtered during that time is almost beyond endurance!. The fact that a country renowned for its culture and civilisation (Germany) was the prime perpetrator made it seem especially shocking!. And, finally and importantly - the Jews wwere scattered throughout Europe, and were sought out in all the European countries occupied by the Axis powers!. They had no state of their own, and a very high proportion didn't even identify as Jewish - they were entirely agnostic, assimilated, secular people, some of whom had never given a moment's thought to their Jewish heritage (even those with one Jewish grandparent were targetted)!. They were not fighting anyone, were not soldiers or guerillas or causing any problems except in the paranoid imaginings of the Nazis!.

I am sorry for your grandfather's suffering, and having seen many crazed former Japanesse prisoners-of-war wandering the streets of my childhood town, I don't underestimate or dismiss that horror!. But it WAS different - the people targetted by the Japanese were a clearly identifiable group, mostly military!. The barbarity of the Japanese is not something I take lightly!. But the horror of the Nazi persecution and slaughter, the slow creeping corruption of a whole previously-respected culture, the perishing of such a high proportion of the Jewish population of Europe - this DOES surpass much else and because of ongoing persecution of Jews in some cultures and generalised anti-semitism (just look on these boards any day of the week) it has an ongoing resonance!.

The Roma and Sinti people suffered very similarly and should be remembered and commemorated!. I also remember Rwanda!. All slaughter and persecution should be marked and remembered - but the Holocaust of European Jewry shudders through the very body of almost every Jew of European origina!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Totally not true!. The Chinese talk about the Japanese atrocities plenty--it's just that that talk is mainly confined to Asia!. Likewise, Chinese and Japanese people know little to nothing about the Holocaust!. The Armenians have been trying really hard to get the word out about their genocide--because Turkey continues to deny it, it ends up being controversial though, a hot potato that many don't want to touch for fear of offending Turkey!. Etc!., etc!. Your comment is ethnocentric, as you're unaware of all the discussion of these things in other languages!. Since almost half of the world's Jews speak English, most of the talk about the Holocaust is in English, so you're familiar with it!. One group that DOESN'T talk about it is the Gypsies!. They mainly keep to themselves and don't talk about their genocide at the hands of the Nazis!. But this is consistent with their overall behavior of staying out of non-Gypsy life!. Plus, keep in mind that Jews didn't talk about the Holocaust for many years--it's only in the 1970s that people started to really write about it to a large extent, and films started to be made, and such!. And not until the 1990s that museums began to be created!. The vast majority of holocaust survivors don't want to ever talk about it!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

Says who!? Have you heard about the Armenian Genocide!? They keep their past very much alive!.

As to the atrocities committed during WW2 and the Korea and Vietnam wars they were all part of the war there was no declaration of one Japanese or French or American head of state that declared to exterminate all minorities in that country!. The one who did the Khmer Rouge you do not forget it for a moment!. Whatever happened in Vietnam or Korea was not genocide but war, in Russia 20 million died during the war and no one talks about it why!? It was war not concentration camps !. When the Stalinists started to build gulags every one knew about it and its never forgotten!. I think you have a problem with Jews and the Holocaust because its the one real scary example of how evil people can get!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

"the Jews are best at benefitting from it for their later generations"


Would you mind clarifying the above remark from your post!? I don't actually understand what you mean!.

Yes, of course there have been other terrible episodes and other religions and peoples that have suffered - I don't know any Jew that would ever dream of denying that!.

And honestly!? I don't know why some of these other groups don't, as you ask, memorialise their lost ones!. I can't answer that!.

There are some, sadly, 'unique' aspects to the Holocaust!. The sheer 'efficiency' for want of a better word, and industrialisation of the attempted genocide!. The grotesque nature of the 'experiments'!. The thought and work and planning that went into the construction of the death camps and the crematoria!.

Remember: almost every Jew in the world has directly lost relatives in the Holocaust!. It's very immediate for us!. Maybe that helps to answer your original question!?

And the sheer numbers involved are a massive factor!. Six million Jews!. Killed purely because they WERE Jews!.

______________________________

I can assure you, NO Jew has 'benefitted' from the Holocaust!. How is the loss of loved ones, the missing grandparents and cousins that my generation will never get to know, how are these things a 'benefit'!?!?!?

http://www!.nizkor!.com




OSCAR

I need to correct you:

The Irgun and Stern Gang are entirely irrelevant to this topic!. They did not, as you are trying very hard to suggest, 'exploit' the Holocaust!.

If you mean: did they try and help ensure that Jews would never be that vulnerable again then YES, damn right they did - can you not understand why!?!?!?

If we'd had Israel, we would not have lost six million Jews!. Simple as that, actually!.

And before anyone offers the ignorant remark that we got Israel 'because of' the Holocaust - well, this notion flies in the face OF historical fact!.

There were Palestinian Jews living IN the region of Palestine for the 3000 yrs BEFORE the Holocaust!.

And Jews in the diaspora were seeking to return to their homeland for CENTURIES before the Holocaust!.
zionism = belief in right of Israel to exist

Zionism was an idea with momentum LONG LONG before the Holocaust!.




EDIT TO ASKER *********************


So you are clearly not aware, then, that 75% of this 'obscene amount' of aid that Israel gets from America *must* then be spent ON American products!?

What other country, pray tell, that gets American aid must THEN spend it in that way!?
Answer: none

Do you feel that the aid *Saudi Arabia* gets from America is also 'obscene'!?

After all, in Saudi, a Christian cannot carry or own a bible, it's *illegal*!.
In Saudi, women can't drive!.

Yet I don't see you claiming that the millions and millions that America gives this repressive state is 'obscene'!?

-----------------------------

also, could you tell me: if as you state Israel does not get criticised then WHY do I have entire books, magazines, print outs from the internet FILLED with criticisms OF Israel!?!?!?

Some of them are valid!.
Some are not!.

But your statement is blatantly untrue!.

--------------------------------------!.!.!.

As for this 'monetary' benefit you refer to: the word you seek is 'reparations'!. Again, I don't see you claiming that other countries and groups that get reparations and compensation are 'wrong' - why is that!?

____________________________

Do you not see that your most recent edit is inherently irrational!?

You state that 'some of these people speak as if they are the only ones who have ever lost loved ones!.'

Er, hello!? You ASKED about the HOLOCAUST!.

So we have ANSWERED about those we lost in the HOLOCAUST!.

You brought the topic up!.
You asked us!.

And now you condemn us for answering!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

I'm not a jew but i grew up in a war country and it will be a part of me forever!. I think we should keep the past alive because we're talking about 6 million people tortured and killed!.It's hard to ignore and very heartbreaking! Keep it alive and never forget so that people don't repeat it! Www@QuestionHome@Com

Worldwide acknowledgment and education!.

Nearly everyone has heard of the atrocities inflicted upon the Jews during WWII, but ask the general public, and most can't tell you where Rwanda even is, let alone what has happened there!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

With all due respect, no other genocide even came close to the Holocaust, both in scope and in systematic cruelty!Www@QuestionHome@Com

First off your wrong!. Your don't live near the Rwandans or Japanese or Armenians!. If you did, you'd know their history well!.

Second the Holocaust genocide had a unique set of traits & dimension to it!.

There was NOTHING the victims had every done, even as a community, to trigger this!. Almost everything else you list is a consequence of war & militiary action & defense!. It's painful, but it's not the pure evil scapegoating to slaughter humans like animals!.

Only the Armenians were also in this situation!. Rwandans was a tribial retribution of past conflicts that turned into genocide!. Tutis & Huttis had political battled before!. Japan was to win a hard war, right or wrong!. Koreans and Chinese were political victims of Japanese aggression same as most of Europe!. All had moments of pure slaughter, but none was a scapegoating & systematic purposeful process designed to eliminate the whole population from the world!. None was on the size scale either, because they weren't systematic & efficient!.

It's why we need to remember the Holocaust, Jew, non-Jew!. People didn't know, we humans could reach this level of evil!. We need to remember so we never go there again!.


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By Japanese - I meant if you lived closer to there you'd realize how much effort they DO put into making sure others know!. Holocaust there is small news there by comparision!.

You don't see the difference because you're comparing individual horrors rather than the big picture!. Please research the Holocaust itself some more!. As I said, the intention of mass extermination of people to gain nothing!. Survivors have already learned, you can't compare horror stories, they're all into the threshold of horrid your granddad's included!.

You question comes through with a little classic resentment at Jews for something!. Maybe your own beliefs about Jews are getting in the way of your seeing this point of view!. I'm trying to be gentle here, but people don't realize the underlying incorrect generalized beliefs they've picked up that are leftovers of the anti-semitism!. Jews are "too full of themselves, & demanding" is classic!.

====
Sushi King
Actually those are all politically or personally motivated books to wipe out the Holocaust
- Finkelstein is extremely anti-Israel, child of survivors who couldn't cope & has been removed from his tenureship for bad research (misquotes & manipulations)!.
- Walt speaks for CAIR on the "israel lobby" & believes Jews have too much power no matter where they go!. If the Holocaust can be denied they think it weaken's Israel's right to exist!.

Oscar
Jews were particularly targetted for extermination, that's why!. Example, the camps they were given half rations of food, 400 calories a day, instead of the 800 given others!. They were singled out for humilation & special horrible treatment!. also, you're facts are taken from motivated sources (with an agenda) & are definitely arguable!.


It's hard for people to accept the horrors!. It's even harder to accept that Jews, who in antisemitism have no right to complain, now have a complaint that's near impossible to ignore!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

"The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" and "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History" by Norman Finkelstein!. "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" By Stephen Walt

Good books!. Www@QuestionHome@Com