Is the failure to specify Jews (and anti-Semitism) an outrage?
The omission of any mention of Jews in the inscription was immediately seized upon by opposition politicians, rights advocates and the Israeli news media. Some groups turned to social media to express criticism. The plaque was removed.Remember that President Trump was criticized for failing to specify Jews (and anti-Semitism) when he made a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Posts
80 comments:
So "Holocaust" is now reserved for Jews only?
Just curious.
Nearly as many non-Jews died in the Holocaust. They seem to be the forgotten ones.
There were many millions murdered by the NAZIs besides the Jews. There is nothing wrong with this inscription.
I have no problem with Jewish people highlighting the Holocaust as a crime against Jews. However I do have a problem when they suggest it must only be remembered as a crime against Jews.
Don't forget to mention the crippled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and gypsies next time!
Millions of men, women, and children deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable, that were aborted, under layer of privacy, no less... again, and again, and again.
"Is the failure to specify Jews (and anti-Semitism) an outrage?"
I don't think so. About as many non-Jews as Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. To word these things as if only Jewish victims count is to dishonor the memory of all the victims - and to feed the line peddled by those hostile to Jews that we forget the non-Jewish victims because of, well, you know who.
The murder machinery was planned and set up to murder Jews and rob them in death. The Nazis went to a tremendous logistical effort to keep rounding up Jews and shipping them in, at the expense of their war effort even as they were losing. But having built that machinery, they used it to murder six million others. You cannot honor and remember the Jewish victims without remembering these too.
I thought it wrong to criticize Trump over this, and I will not criticize the Canadians.
A brief statement or a plaque is not the place to get into a detailed discussion of the unique way that Jews were treated within the larger Holocaust, which was a massive crime against many other groups, as well.
In front of our local library, there is a monument depicting a Jewish family during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The statue is fine. The plaque mentions the 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust. Fine. But the plaque further notes that 6 million "others" also died. I'm probably alone here, but I always thought that the Skokie Library somehow minimized the suffering of these "other" people.
To me, it is a close call. Yes, there were millions exterminated in the concentration camps who were not Jewish, but the Jews were a target on which the Nazis were particularly focused.
Here is where I think the problem probably lies- the plaque could have been written in a way that acknowledges that being Jewish was the one greatest factor for why someone was killed in the camps, but it didn't, and I strongly suspect the reason it wasn't written that way was because the people in the decision making progress were more afraid of angering certain anti-Semitic groups in Canada. I can't prove it, but that is how I feel about it.
It's a measure of our hypersensitive and uncharitable times that we are concerned about this.
Like Yahweh, Hitler fucked around with a lot of people, but was especially fond of fucking around with the Jews. The lack of specificity in the plaque may help people remember that the Holocaust wasn't just about the Jews. And it is Canada, after all. They are under no obligation to commemorate the Holocaust at all.
I don't think that it is offensive, provided that it isn't intentionally meant to downplay the fact Jews were targeted (which I doubt the Canadian Holocaust Museum does.)
"Remember that President Trump was criticized for failing to specify Jews (and anti-Semitism) when he made a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day."
As yes, the NEVER TRUMPERS. Always trying for a cheap shot, no matter what.
Trump gets a pass because all adults paying attention knew what he was talking about.
There are political power benefits to having ownership of a problem, so you fight to keep it; and on the other side to take it away.
Disguised as a battle of shaming and empathy.
There were approximately 11 million people murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, of which approximately 6 million were Jews. Yes, the Nazis really hated the Jews but that doesn't make the other 5 million victims any less noteworthy. Their deaths were just as tragic but are often overlooked.
Yancey, that makes sense to me too. Why was it worded the way it was? Answer that question, and you get the whole story.
All this stuff could be called peacocking, as Scott Adams suggests for Vegas empathizers.
I heard the term first in 17 again (2009)
A: To the untrained eye, I look like a total idiot.
B: You do, in fact.
A: Ah. But it's actually a seduction technique known as "peacocking. " My outfit serves the dual function of icebreaker and attention-getter.
Secretary: You can go in now.
A: Watch.
Lady: Are you peacocking? Really? You think that's gonna work?
Why does Canada need a Holocaust museum? Does it have a Great Leap Forward museum? Of all the horrible depredations and enormities with which Canada had absolutely nothing to do, why is this atrocity different from all other atrocities?
Close enough for government work.
Depends somewhat on where you focus: on the evil (utterly unjust extinction of categories of humanity) or on those who actually suffered the evil (a mixture, subject to questions of when it was measured, and what proportion of what category was extinguished, etc).
Bottom line: evil is evil, this memorial is not wrong, it is a useful reminder of what any of us can do to any of us.
Read it, traveler, and be humbled.
Sited next to the Canadian War Museum, the striking new monument was designed by American architect Daniel Libeskind — himself the son of Holocaust survivors and also architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
“It was important that the monument tell the inclusive story of the Holocaust,” Liebeskind has stated, “which included homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political and religious prisoners”—all of whom were marked with triangle badges by the Nazis.
Two comments.
Yancy and MadisonMan, Most of those other groups were no less targeted than were the Jews. It's not like a nearly equal number of gentiles were randomly selected for death.
Second, John Henry can usually be relied upon to make this point. That he has not yet commented here, nor have I seen him comment elsewhere for some time causes me concern for his welfare. I hope he surfaces soon with an appropriately Mark Twain-ish comment.
Two main political parties in Canada, Liberal and Conservative, seem to be using Muslims and Jewish people as proxies - Stephen Harper conservative gov't went out of its way to side with Jews in Canada and Israelis abroad. I think Israel PM said Harper was best advocate in world while US had President Obama. Current Liberal gov't of Trudeau is making efforts to appease Muslims and I wonder if plaque kerfuffle is continuation of political games.
I have always understood the term Holocaust to be reserved for the Jews and especially those who perished in the German death camps.
I am Canadian who is not following this controversy in detail but there has been clash of views between Jewish people who live across Canada and Ukrainian people who are influential in prairie provinces. Former Conservative PM Harper was courting Canadian Jews and gave government money to Jewish businessman who wanted to build Holocaust museum with Jews front and centre. Ukrainians have objected, and they are also influential within Conservative circles, so focus of Holocaust has been expanded to include Holodomor and genocide of Armenians that Turkey carried out in early 1900s.
It was not, I think, equal parts Jews and non-Jews (6 million of the former, 4 million of the latter, not that either number is exactly trivial), and even if it had been, the systematic apparatus to capture every Jew in Europe was and remains unprecedented.
Rabel, I would add the mentally ill, who were actually the first victims of the Holocaust.
Holocaust turned up in Mallarme.
Holocaust of red and gold, as I recall. Some autumn leaf reference.
If not for the efforts by Jews to bring attention to the Holocaust no one would be mentioning it. The Jews did the heavy lifting to guarantee that this atrocity is never forgotten. Even now some people deny it happened or claim it was exaggerated. Yes, many other people were murdered and IMO they all should be named, not just lumped together anonymously.
I'm suspicious that there is a political agenda to this omission. I know that the Palestinian cause, in particular, wants to erase the history of the Holocaust and the history of the Jewish people altogether so as to deny the context of the founding of the State of Israel and to characterize the Jews as aggressive colonialists.
6-7 million Jews died in WWII, but a substantial number of those died in the general turmoil of Eastern Europe during the war and not in the camps.
"Rabel, I would add the mentally ill, who were actually the first victims of the Holocaust."
The point is that the non-specificity of the plaque can be traced back to the architect (his quoted comment came well before the current to-do), who has absolute moral authority, if I understand how those things work.
But Trudeau is so hot!!
Failing to mention Jews in the Holocaust is like failing to mention Islam in 9/11: You may reasonably assume someone is trying to hide something.
I wrote a book about the Holocaust in Poland. It was well received, won an award, and that's all I'll say about that. Except: please be very careful. And keep in mind always: the cruelty, and the sorrow.
Hagar, the "general turmoil of Eastern Europe" is not how I would categorize the Warsaw Ghetto, say. It's true, of course, that a lot of Jews didn't live long enough to make it to Auschwitz or Treblinka or Sobibor or Terezin or Belsen. Are you spinning that as a good thing?
Were there not three million Poles?
Allow me to put in a word. People could say 6 million, that's nothing, Russia lost 20 million people in World War Two!
Except that, there weren't, and I don't believe there are today, 20 million Jews alive on Earth. Jews were intended to become extinct like the passenger pigeon.
For those here who need a primer, killing large numbers of people is evil, and killing large numbers of people with the intent to exterminate their entire racial or ethnic group is especially, uniquely evil. It even has a name: genocide.
That's not antisemitism,this is antisemitism!, said the Nazi 2.0s, disguising themselves as Conservatives believing in Eugenic Science. They will explain that noble Hitler killed the Ashkenazis who were not really the Jews but were another Tribe from Asia Minor who had stolen the Hebrew tribes identity and customs CA 100AD after Rome had made room by killing off the real Hebrews. So Hitler's Holocaust was just a mistake when he incidentally killed the Ashkenazis, and the slavs, and the Russians because he needed to Make More Room.
But they are exactly wrong pure evil SOBs.
Yancey Ward: "Here is where I think the problem probably lies- the plaque could have been written in a way that acknowledges that being Jewish was the one greatest factor for why someone was killed in the camps, but it didn't, and I strongly suspect the reason it wasn't written that way was because the people in the decision making progress were more afraid of angering certain anti-Semitic groups in Canada. I can't prove it, but that is how I feel about it."
I agree. It smacks of deliberate avoidance. And it is in that deliberate avoidance that the problem lies.
Earnest Prole: "Failing to mention Jews in the Holocaust is like failing to mention Islam in 9/11: You may reasonably assume someone is trying to hide something."
Exactly.
I mean, it really is easy. Example " ... murdered because the nazis considered Jews, and most non-Aryans, racially inferior..."
There were actually six million Poles killed in the Holocaust, Luke Lea, of which slightly less than half were Jewish Poles, who usually get counted with the non-Polish Jews. All told, 17% of the population of Poland died in the camps. Hitler's plans was to exterminate 85% of the Poles and retain the remainder as literal slaves.
The Jews were first in line, but the Slavs were not that far down the line at all. Most of the rest of the victim classes were not so much not a priority, as just smaller in absolute terms. I don't really get why the Germans have such a big hate on for Jehovah's Witnesses, for instance.
If you are talking about the Holocaust, you are talking about genocide against Jewish people. Specifically mentioning that Jewish people were victims of the Holocaust seems redundant to me. If you say Holocaust to me, I'm thinking about a planned, systematic killing of Jews because they are Jews. I know that other people were killed in the Holocaust, but that is not going to be my primary thought.
Gahrie said...
There were many millions murdered by the NAZIs besides the Jews. There is nothing wrong with this inscription.
I have no problem with Jewish people highlighting the Holocaust as a crime against Jews. However I do have a problem when they suggest it must only be remembered as a crime against Jews.
10/5/17, 12:21 PM
I think the difference was that Jews were at the absolute bottom of the Nazi hierarchy of undesirables, with Nordic political prisoners being at the top of what was a pretty miserable heap. The huge majority of Jews sent to death camps went straight into the gas chambers; gentile Untermenschen were used as slave labor until their starving bodies gave out. (There was a difference between extermination camps and concentration campus.) Perhaps that was even more horrible a death than being gassed, but the slave laborers had a better chance at surviving.
You are correct, though. While the Nazis thought dealing with the "Jewish Question" was top priority, they fully intended to wipe out other peoples as well. They did not have the time to do so, thank God.
Do they also mention:
1) That prior to the outbreak of WW II, then Canadian government of Liberal PM William Lyon McKenzie-King (Canada's longest-serving PM) had a policy regarding Jews fleeing Europe that was summed up as "One Jew is one Jew too many?
2) That during WW II Pierre Elliot Trudeau (who went on to become Canada's 3rd longest-serving Prime Minister, and father of current Prime Minister Justin "Zoolander" Trudeau) dodged service in the Canadian military and advocated peace with Germany.
Earlier bgates asked the question, "Why does Canada need a Holocaust museum?" I too asked myself the question of "Why is there a Holocaust museum in Washington, when the US did so much to end WWII?" In the years since my visit, I've realized that one reason for having the museums here in the West, is that it only would take a simple change in government for the museums in the East to disappear or be modified into something unrecognizable. The power and persistence of the deniers is a little frightening.
The biggest Nazi holocaust was planned against the Russians. The Nazis planned to take all the excess Wheat/food and ship it west to Europe leaving the Russians to starve. Moscow and Lenningrad were to be leveled to the ground. Goering estimated in November 1941, that 20 million Russians would die of starvation.
Plenty of them died of starvation anyway, 13 million Russian Civilians were killed.
The Japanese didn't just "rape Naking" they caused the deaths of 20-30 million Chinese.
"William Lyon McKenzie-King" - 30,000 Canadians died fighting Hitler. That's equivalent to 300,000 Americans. King was instrumental in keeping Canada in the war.
The reason I feel uneasy about this is I wonder if it's a piece with the leftist delegitimization of Israel. One major argument for the creation and existence of Israel has always been that the Jews needed a state of their own to provide a haven for them and prevent another Holocaust from taking place. If you downplay the fact that the elimination of the Jews was priority Number One for the Nazis, you diminish the reason for Israel's existence.
My father-in-law fought in WW2 and helped to liberate a slave labor/death camp near Auschwitz. He doesn't talk about it much and, at age 95, I expect little more testimony from him.
But when he talks, he remarks on the way the prisoners died from eating too quickly what, in all innocence, the allied troops supplied.
Here we are bickering over who lost more. The simple fact is, everybody lost everything, and only a few came through clinging to the back of luck.
2) That during WW II Pierre Elliot Trudeau (who went on to become Canada's 3rd longest-serving Prime Minister, and father of current Prime Minister Justin "Zoolander" Trudeau) dodged service in the Canadian military and advocated peace with Germany."
That is correct. Trudeau sided openly with Vichy France. I don't know why that didn't hurt him in Canada as a whole. I can guess why it didn't hurt him in Quebec.
@Michelle DT,
Warzaw is western Europe, except for being in Poland. Eastern Europe goes back to the Urals and includes the Balkans. Here everybody was fighting everybody and the killing was frightful on all sides besides the main war between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. Read Anne Applebaum's book about it. (That woman must have an iron stomach to research, format, and write that up.)
There were many groups that suffered in the "Holocaust". It was not exclusive to Jews. I had a White Russian High School teacher in Rockford Il in the mid 60s that was in a German concentration camp as a child. In fact, more non jewish people died in the camps than Jews by a large margin. We should recognize all people that suffered.
I'm outraged that there are people who are outraged. Jews may have been by far the largest component of the Nazi Holocaust, but the gentiles who were murdered in concentration camps or worked to death in slave labor camps are just as dead as any Jew caught by the Gestapo.
Killing people for being "other" is quite common, has been done all through history, and is still going on.
Read your daily news out of Africa, for example.
In fact, more non jewish people died in the camps than Jews by a large margin.
Actually, no. Jews represented about 50% of the deaths. The next largest group was Soviet POWs.
Indeed, the Jews of Ancient Israel were natives of the region and made war in the Asian manner according to the accounts in the Old Testament.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, you can't fight in here.
This is the Canadian Holocaust Museum.
Let's just agree that everyone is a victim.
And that some victims are more equal than others.
As a rule of thumb I can't complain about snowflakes and then be one myself. FWIW I think there may be some PC cowardice involved but the plaque is simply true, if incomplete. I doubt the specific targeting of Jews is ignored in the museum itself. If this is the most offensive thing I come across in a given day I'm having a great one.
If you are going to specifically identify Jews, it seems other targeted groups should also be mentioned. Numerically, Jews were the largest single group. But what of all the other "Untermenschen" killed. What of the Roma, tinkers, handicapped, etc? This cuts both ways. You can't make the Holocaust just about Jews, because it wasn't just about Jews. It feels wrong not to mention Jews, and it feels wrong not to mention other groups.
Note: some people use the "Holocaust" to specifically mean the Jewish extermination:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-the-holocaust
But I think Canada meant to memorialize all of these people - religious minorities, gays, blind, Poles, etc.
@rcocean
McKenzie-King didn't have a choice - English Canada was solidly behind the war. If he had wavered, they would have revolted.
His cowardly pandering to Quebec's despicable sensibilities was nauseating, including his phony plebiscite and refusal to send draftees to the front.
To the Language Police:
Let's talk about the Holocaust unleashed by Hitler and Stalin. Let's also talk about the attempts of the German people to exterminate Jews out of fear and jealousy. Both are reminders of the sick shit that people do.
Thanks, CWJ, for your concern.
I am fine though Puerto Rico got hammered. No power, long gas lines (I waited 10 hours to buy $20 last week) most stores are not open. Very limited cell service and even more limited internet. Today is the first time I've been able to get online since the stornm.
I am OK, all my family is OK. No significant damage to any of our houses. But we are the lucky ones.
Re the "Holocaust": This is a fairly recent word, fist used in this context in the 70's, perhaps the late 60's. By definition it refers to the murder of the 6mm Jews. By definition, it ignores the other 6mm.
Jews are OK to do so but nobody else should. Nor should we ignore the other mass murderers of the 20th century such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and many more.
As for the extinction of the Jews, I am not sure that this was any more severe than what the National Socialists had planned for the Poles. Beginning even before the Jewish Holocaust, they began destroying the Polish nation. Not just the 6mm Poles murdered in the camps (about have Jewish/half non-Jewish) but destruction of libtraries, universities, churches, baptismal records, land titles legislative records all going back 500-1000 years.
They could never have wiped out the Jews completely since there are strong Jewish communities and cultures around the world. (They did make a pretty good try).
The goal with the Poles was to make them a slave race, no education, no culture, they would exist only to work the farms to feed the Germans. Any not needed for that were exterminated. 6 million of them.
Any monument that does not recognize the murder of the 12mm deserves nothing but scorn from all of us, Jews, Christians and others.
Including the National Holocaust Museum in DC which just barely recognizes the non-Jewish deaths and does not mention how many.
John Henry
Roughcoat,
Where can I find the book? I'd be interested in taking a look.
Given the spottiness of my communications these days can you email me at johnfajardohenry@gmail.com
Thanks.
John Henry
If you are talking numbers, the worst may be the near extinction of the American Indians following 1492. Just today's Mexico went fom an estimated 20 million down to about 2 million.
But that is different, perhaps, since it was not intentional. The results would have been the same if Europe had sent boatloads of saints over instead of conquistadores and "adventurers."
Percentage wise, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia would be a contender. Between 1975 and 1981 they killed an estimated 2 million out of a total population of 9½ million+/-. Of course, that was their own countrymen, so perhaps that does not count either, but that is communists for you.
Jung Chang holds Mao Zedong personally responsible for the deaths of about 70 million Chinese; 40 million of them in the "Great Leap Forward."
Holocaust and holomodor ... Are they cognate terms? Why memorialize one not the other?
Manipulation by narrow/tunnel focus history?
'Holodomor'
Etymology ... Holo+caust ... Burning in holy fire ... Iow ... Fire and brimstone thrown down by Zeus or Yahweh or God etc.
Or gas ovens and starvation by socialist scientifickers.
"If you are talking numbers, the worst may be the near extinction of the American Indians following 1492. Just today's Mexico went from an estimated 20 million down to about 2 million."
The 20 million is bullshit. Post WW 2 Leftist Historians and "anthropologists" have deliberately embarked upon a campaign to inflate the numbers of Aztecs and other Mexican Natives prior to 1492.
And Aztecs are not "American Indians" by the commonly used language. Yes, I know, you're a clever fellow and you're using North American and South American to equal "American". Nor did the Indians in what's now the United States of American ever face "extinction". That's just left wing/European Bullshit.
One would think that the Jews should at least be able to get an honorable mention when it comes the Holocaust.
I actually like the thought of classifying Jews as simply "men, women and children" - it seems to recognize their humanity in a way that separating them out as "Jews" does not.
Your commenters don't know the difference between murder and genocide.
tommyesq said...
I actually like the thought of classifying Jews as simply "men, women and children" - it seems to recognize their humanity in a way that separating them out as "Jews" does not.
10/5/17, 10:20 PM
But they were not targeted for eradication from the earth because they were men, women and children.
CWJ said...
The exception being that some of the camps were specifically built for the eradication of Jews. As the Reich moved forward it was the goal to eliminate from those areas any Jews. The others were ancillary to that goal. It was the Nazi purpose to eliminate Jews from the world. Not so much the others.
It's also not likely that a German industrialist who was found to have Polish ancestry would be dragged out of his factory, expropriated and murdered with his family, for that reason alone.
This is nothing against Poles. Poland has been the recipient of a lot of negative attention from its neighbors for a very long time.
"Your commenters don't know the difference between murder and genocide"
They're both just fancy names for Killing.
And the difference is academic when you're talking about millions of people.
But keep pushing the distinction. 'cause some deaths are more equal than others.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: NON SEQUITUR!
This whataboutism is both illogical & weak.
"Bottoms of barrels were scraped."
rcocean said...
"Your commenters don't know the difference between murder and genocide"
They're both just fancy names for Killing
Wait till you google "democide," the reason why Lefties tell themselves the USSR and PRC weren't as bad as the Nazis.
Post a Comment