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The Holocaust

Last posted Apr 21, 2012 at 10:49AM EDT. Added Apr 19, 2012 at 10:38AM EDT
41 posts from 25 users

Today is the national day when the Holocaust is being remembered.. you all probebly know this. 6 million jews were massacred in countless horrific ways across the world because of an insane ideology.

But a lot of people can say "meh big deal, 10 million russian civillians, 5 million polish, were murdered by the gamans, 7 million chainese were murdered by the japanse etc. the Jews are not special…..

Well i actually highly disagree. I, and many others claim that the Jewish holocaust was completly uniqe by its nature and it is in fact the worst atrocity ever commited in human history.

First, the Jews were first loyal to their killer. the loved germany and many tried to be so called "more German than Germans" they weren't civilians loyal to an eveny nation, they didn't stand out and didn't try to cause trouble or rebel, yet they were massacred by their own brothers.

Second it wasn't just a massacre, it was an intetional extermination. every other massacre was either to repress a rebellion, to enslave a nation, or to convert them. Never to exterminate. the Germans did everything they could to kill every single one they could find. punished horribly anyone who dared to protect them.
And even near the end when recources were running out they still prefered to kill Jews with any way they can and not send supplies to their front.
they never stopped untill The Russians invaded Nazi Germany.

Lastly, this was the only Organized massacre in human history. it was all planned it advance. every single little detail. to wasn't just mindless ramapages and satisfying aggresion. it was perfectly and efficently planned. They had death factories so that the killing will be cost efficient. they had the getto's so that they could intentionally starve them to death.
Loaded them into trains like they were cattle, and were gassed as though they were cockroaches.
NOTHING like that ever happened in human histroy. to have a completly loyal people, be exterminated to their last one. in the most efficient and carefully plannned ways there could be devized, just because of their race…

And it's sad that this horrific atrocity is slowly starting to lose it's magnitude.. when people will stop caring, it will most likly happen again. maybe to another nation….

what are your opinions on this grave matter?

(please, no trolling this is a serious thread)

@Wsxdas

It's been more than 10 years since 9/11. The World trade centers are being rebuilt. Why don't we just forget about it?

We won't. And the reason why we won't is the same reason why we will never forget about WWII.

These things in history will always be remembered, even when the time comes when everyone stops caring about it because the future needs to know the past in order to avoid it happening again.

Eventually, in the distant future we may need to stop caring. Imagine if we still cared about the Crusades? In fact some middle eastern tribes still do, look how thats working out for them. When that much time has passed, then it's time to move on. But should it be forgotten? Never.

But for now I respect that this is a day of remembrance for something that still burns in Jewish Culture and it will continue hurting for a long time. Have a little sympathy.


@Dr.Meme

I don't know either, but I'll let it slide.

Last edited Apr 19, 2012 at 11:20AM EDT

The biggest issue that I have is the fact that the Jews apparently deserve special treatment when there were similar things done. I'm not saying we shouldn't remember it, I just think we all need to recognize every victim of WWII. They all deserve to be remembered, not just the Jews. So let's all have a moment of silence for the lost ones.

Sunhammer wrote:

The biggest issue that I have is the fact that the Jews apparently deserve special treatment when there were similar things done. I'm not saying we shouldn't remember it, I just think we all need to recognize every victim of WWII. They all deserve to be remembered, not just the Jews. So let's all have a moment of silence for the lost ones.

you have'nt read any of haven't you?

i did a pretty constructive explanation why it's NOT similar to other genocides.

@DR,meme
because this site has intelligent people that can discuss this matter in a civilized way.

@coolface.

i never had any jolly to begin with…

🅱ank 🅱ill wrote:

the KYM Forums are the PERFECT PLACE for this thread to be taken seriously

thanks Jolly Jew

thanks wikipedia

i thought the General forum was a serious enough place…

Wsxdas, The Last Kramabender wrote:

It's been more than 50 years, most of the people involved are dead. Why not just forget about it?

WHOOOOOAAAwhoawhoawhoawhoawhoawhoa…

This is shortcoming of how history is presented. Of course, there is the saying along the lines of being doomed to repeat history if you don't learn about it, which is true.
 
For example, I personally believe that some people have a lot to contribute to society (e.g., the intelligent, the otherwise talented, the charismatic, the confident (not arrogant,)) and there are those who take away more and deteriorate society (e.g., criminals, the untalented, the unintelligent, among many others that I can't say because it sounds awful and insensitive.)

I find many people in the latter group to be annoying. I don't usually care to have much to do with them. I choose to associate myself with other people. I don't tend to think many of these attributes can be changed due to situation and innate tendencies.

If I were to forget how poorly some people have been treated over the course of history and failed to see the effects of those harms (even over several generations,) then I wouldn't be as opposed to the ideology that would lead to extremists gaining power and being able to remove people.

So I come to the conclusion that it is best to deal with the collective ills of society than to try to eliminate the people causing them. (Of course, other morals such as a respect for life comes into play, but there are instances where life becomes secondary in priority.)


But there is also the fact that history, even over the course of centuries, affects people today. It requires a class of discrimination to properly explain it, but suffice it to say that there are groups of people whose predecessors had been the victims of events like The Holocaust and racial and gender discrimination in the US (and in other countries) cause harm to their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, and so forth.

How?

  1. People who are exposed to stress or poor conditions (e.g., like those in a concentration camp or being in the state of malnutrition) causes mothers to have children who have worse health outcomes than those mothers who aren't ever exposed to those atrocities even after they've been removed from those situations.
  2. In some situations, the ideology. The same is true for blacks who otherwise have the same status as well-off whites (i.e., blacks who are upper class, eat well, exercise regularly, have a relatively low to moderately stressful job, live in a nice neighborhood, are highly educated end up having significantly worse health outcomes than whites who have the same socioeconomic status.)
    1. Also, if you forget that there is institutionalized discrimination, then you end up returning to dangerous opinions of those who don't have as much as others.
      • Specifically, you think those who are poor and sick made decisions that made them poor and sick when it was their situation caused by ways of thinking from other people who have power over them.

Question is: why would you bring this event up in this site?
  • General: "Main board. Hot internets, fun finds, fresh news, questions -- anything besides meme research"

It's fine. My question is: Why would you bump a thread that you didn't want to see there?


Anyway, I can't really speak to all of the aspects of the Holocaust. I think it's important to remember acts of systematic hatred but only as they relate to today and conversation to help people understand how it affects us now. Otherwise, you get stuck in the past.

Do you want to go into that, JJ? I'm not Jewish, so I can't say.

On a slightly sensitive subject, just be warned that someone will probably make an inappropriate post on this thread about the holocaust.

Jolly Jew wrote:

you have'nt read any of haven't you?

i did a pretty constructive explanation why it's NOT similar to other genocides.

@DR,meme
because this site has intelligent people that can discuss this matter in a civilized way.

@coolface.

i never had any jolly to begin with…

I don't wish to have it seem like I mean any disrespect, but I have to disagree with you on your belief that the Jews matter more then the other victims.
The Jews, as you put it, were for the most part not "loyal to their killer". >50% of Jews killing the holocaust were not German.
Yes, they were systematically slaughtered. However, the Death Camps also executed the Handicapped, approximately a million of the Roma, and religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses. Let us not forget also that the long-term goal of the Nazis was to clear Poland and the Ukraine of Slavs, and that the German army deliberately killed as many civilians that weren't useful to then as collaborators as possible there.
I feel that ignoring the loss of these people, or dismissing their deaths as less genocidal then that of the Jews, is an insult to everyone killed or anyone who survived the Holocaust.

In case anyone's interested, this is how Israel commemorates Yom Ha'Shoah.

As you can see, the entire country stops what they're doing, no matter what it is, for a two minute moment of silence. For a country built upon the ashes of the Holocaust, it is quite fitting.

Well, I see this forum is nicely capable of a decent, civil and serious discussion regarding sensitive historical periods.

I went to an exhibition years ago to do with this, and it really did shock me, and it still does: The effectiveness of the propaganda displayed by the Nazis, either they were really effective and manipulating a country, or the people were idiots.

Then again, who'd refuse such a terrible government like that?

Well, I do believe that the events in WW2 should be remembered, but for different reasons than most. It's not to honor the dead(although that's not a bad thing to do), it's so that we can learn and move on from our past. If we don't learn, history will repeat, and I'm sure you don't want a holocaust 2 or a WW3.

I went to the Holocaust museum in Houston about two years ago… It quite was a sobering experience. The thing that stuck with me the whole time I was there (and even to this day) was a single, simple thought.

If I were a German citizen back then, would I have been one of the ones to turn a blind eye to the atrocities that were occurring around me? Or would I have been one of the ones who fought back?

In spite of how bad I want the answer to be the latter, I fear that the answer could just as easily be the former…

I'm not saying that I'm torn 50/50 between complacency to an oppressive regime and revolutionary volition against the Fuhrer… What I mean is that there's a strong possibility that I, like the thousands, no millions of people near the camps would have simply ignored the mass genocide happening on my doorstep.

Whilst standing, huddled in a boxcar that was used for mass transit of Jews to Auschwitz, I realized that there was no way people near the camps couldn't have known that a genocide was occurring. The barbed wire, the slivers of glass they passed off as 'windows'… The guards with machine pistols, automatic rifles… People being hurdled into traincars like so many cattle- beaten with the butts of rifles at the first sign of resistance. I could just see a small child; scared, alone, cold… Unsure of where the rest of his family was, unsure of where he was going…

I stepped out, tears welling.

For a second, looking at the car, I was there- late 1930s Germany, a teen out on the streets, watching people I knew being shoved into each other to be sent out to God-knows-where. I wasn't scared for them. I was angry at the soldiers, just 'doing their duty'. (We know now, after the My Lai Massacre, that this is no excuse… But… Don't get me wrong. I actually have some sympathy for the minor Nazi soldiers… These lower ranking soldiers were put in a difficult place, considering not following orders meant a Gestapo shooting you in the back in a dark alleyway, or being discharged and hanged for sedition.) The thing about this little vision I had was that I kept thinking that if I just picked up a rock and hit a high ranking officer, maybe I could stir up a fracas large enough to allow for some of them to escape… It was a terribly vivid daydream, something I'm not quite used to.

But, I digress.

As Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." I believe this to be the truth. That's why I don't like how Jolly said that we should focus more on the Holocaust because it was the only extermination, a planned one at that, and that those exterminated were loyal to those who were exterminating. This is actually a bit incorrect. There are, depressingly, several instances of this happening… The Al-Anfal Campaign, for instance. I'm definitely not proclaiming that the Holocaust isn't a special case, I'm just saying that we should really learn from all genocidal actions, so that, maybe, it will truly only be a thing of the past.

I hope that we continue telling the story of the Holocaust, of the Holodomor, the Armenian Holocaust, everything… It scares me that most of my peers don't know much about any of these. Truly, the magnitude of these events has waned, if not completely dissipated.

I'm both interested and terrified of what may come of their importance in the public's eye depleting. Only time will tell…

A difference in remembering the Holocaust is probably also related to where you live. Europeans were in the war from the beginning. The jews that got killed in the Holocaust all lived in Europe. So of course the impact here is bigger than in the US.

Likewise 9/11 doesn't do much here, but it probably left a much larger scar at you guys.

Even better example would probably be the nukes that hit Japan, I doubt many mourn those. Yet the casualties there were a lot more than 9/11. Now you can go act all patriotic, but that doesn't change the facts.


@Jolly Jew

If you want a serious discussion for something outside of the site or memes, General is your best shot yes. But the topic has to appeal to people and make them willing to contribute. If they don't like the subject, they won't post. Leaving the thread open for derails.

Last edited Apr 19, 2012 at 09:01PM EDT

Patrick wrote:

I went to the Holocaust museum in Houston about two years ago… It quite was a sobering experience. The thing that stuck with me the whole time I was there (and even to this day) was a single, simple thought.

If I were a German citizen back then, would I have been one of the ones to turn a blind eye to the atrocities that were occurring around me? Or would I have been one of the ones who fought back?

In spite of how bad I want the answer to be the latter, I fear that the answer could just as easily be the former…

I'm not saying that I'm torn 50/50 between complacency to an oppressive regime and revolutionary volition against the Fuhrer… What I mean is that there's a strong possibility that I, like the thousands, no millions of people near the camps would have simply ignored the mass genocide happening on my doorstep.

Whilst standing, huddled in a boxcar that was used for mass transit of Jews to Auschwitz, I realized that there was no way people near the camps couldn't have known that a genocide was occurring. The barbed wire, the slivers of glass they passed off as 'windows'… The guards with machine pistols, automatic rifles… People being hurdled into traincars like so many cattle- beaten with the butts of rifles at the first sign of resistance. I could just see a small child; scared, alone, cold… Unsure of where the rest of his family was, unsure of where he was going…

I stepped out, tears welling.

For a second, looking at the car, I was there- late 1930s Germany, a teen out on the streets, watching people I knew being shoved into each other to be sent out to God-knows-where. I wasn't scared for them. I was angry at the soldiers, just 'doing their duty'. (We know now, after the My Lai Massacre, that this is no excuse… But… Don't get me wrong. I actually have some sympathy for the minor Nazi soldiers… These lower ranking soldiers were put in a difficult place, considering not following orders meant a Gestapo shooting you in the back in a dark alleyway, or being discharged and hanged for sedition.) The thing about this little vision I had was that I kept thinking that if I just picked up a rock and hit a high ranking officer, maybe I could stir up a fracas large enough to allow for some of them to escape… It was a terribly vivid daydream, something I'm not quite used to.

But, I digress.

As Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." I believe this to be the truth. That's why I don't like how Jolly said that we should focus more on the Holocaust because it was the only extermination, a planned one at that, and that those exterminated were loyal to those who were exterminating. This is actually a bit incorrect. There are, depressingly, several instances of this happening… The Al-Anfal Campaign, for instance. I'm definitely not proclaiming that the Holocaust isn't a special case, I'm just saying that we should really learn from all genocidal actions, so that, maybe, it will truly only be a thing of the past.

I hope that we continue telling the story of the Holocaust, of the Holodomor, the Armenian Holocaust, everything… It scares me that most of my peers don't know much about any of these. Truly, the magnitude of these events has waned, if not completely dissipated.

I'm both interested and terrified of what may come of their importance in the public's eye depleting. Only time will tell…

I can tell you that I don't blame the German people for what happened. Most Germans weren't Nazis. Perhaps they would have helped the Jews, even supported them, if they didn't have to fear for their lives that they would be persecuted or worse by the Reich. If we blame an entire people for the crimes of their forefathers, are we no better than the Nazis themselves, who found a scapegoat for every issue in Germany in the perennial scapegoat, the Jews?

I don't blame anyone for the Holocaust. Doing so would be downright foolish. I merely question how they could allow a cadre of psychopaths and sadist to overrun the upper echelons of their government, only to live in fear and terror for the next twelve years. That's all.

You know Jolly Jew, i have nothing against you or something but is a thread like this really necessary? If someone cares about, for my option i don't, he would remember it. It's cool that you care about your culture, not like me, but threads like this give me the feeling you WANT us to remember. Seeking for attention? I don't know. Everyone has his options.

And for me i seriously don't care about dead people. Why should I? All day long people die and i can't do anything about. Yes i know, this is something different and huge but still:

I don't give a fuck. I don't drag about the balkan war or remember about this, even if it was a horrifying event for my parents and my brothers.

Last edited Apr 20, 2012 at 02:45AM EDT

OmniXVII wrote:

On a slightly sensitive subject, just be warned that someone will probably make an inappropriate post on this thread about the holocaust.

Oh don't you worry, I will take every opportunity possible to make a joke.

Anne Frankly, I don't care if Führur offended.

MisterMustache wrote:

You know Jolly Jew, i have nothing against you or something but is a thread like this really necessary? If someone cares about, for my option i don't, he would remember it. It's cool that you care about your culture, not like me, but threads like this give me the feeling you WANT us to remember. Seeking for attention? I don't know. Everyone has his options.

And for me i seriously don't care about dead people. Why should I? All day long people die and i can't do anything about. Yes i know, this is something different and huge but still:

I don't give a fuck. I don't drag about the balkan war or remember about this, even if it was a horrifying event for my parents and my brothers.

Ok, fine. I'll tl;dr my post.

It's important to remember events such as this, because a lot of the same thinking exists today. The circumstances are currently different, but should the circumstance begin to mimic those seen prior to the Holocaust, then the same event or similar ones could potentially occur again.

It's not practical to think about it all of the time, especially if it isn't crucial to your own culture. However, it is important to learn from those experiences and think about them from time-to-time. I think the anniversary of these events is a good time for that.
 
 
The disrespect of the importance of historical events as history, like I've told my friends, makes me fear being around some people as a black person IRL. I think sympathies for past events (which affect current situations) won't stand in the face of a tough situation for some people here if they aren't holding up now when nothing is going on.

Yeah, but i still don't care.

Only because people remember it it doesn't mean because of this it won't happen again. And what should we learn? The humanity is still dumb. If we (and with we i mean the humanity) REALLY would learn something, we would do everything that it is impossible that it happens again. But lol, jk, we still have nuklear Weapons.
India tested yesterday a Long Distance Nuklear weapon with a distance OF 6000 KM or ~3700 Miles.
For fucks sake, why should a intelligent race need something? Oh yeah.

WW3 will start once, and it's going to be a disaster, a nuclear Holocaust. At least the WW4 is going to be with sticks and stones.

You see the problem? We didn't learned anything, the remembering of the holocaust doesn't change anything.

Last edited Apr 20, 2012 at 03:59AM EDT

MisterMustache wrote:

Yeah, but i still don't care.

Only because people remember it it doesn't mean because of this it won't happen again. And what should we learn? The humanity is still dumb. If we (and with we i mean the humanity) REALLY would learn something, we would do everything that it is impossible that it happens again. But lol, jk, we still have nuklear Weapons.
India tested yesterday a Long Distance Nuklear weapon with a distance OF 6000 KM or ~3700 Miles.
For fucks sake, why should a intelligent race need something? Oh yeah.

WW3 will start once, and it's going to be a disaster, a nuclear Holocaust. At least the WW4 is going to be with sticks and stones.

You see the problem? We didn't learned anything, the remembering of the holocaust doesn't change anything.

The Holocaust spurred the defining of genocide. By learning about the holocaust, we learn about the ongoing phenomenon. The Holocaust is really the example of "typical" genocide to those who study them. (I disagree with this, because other types are more common if less extensive- I think it was an atypical genocide) Someday, we will use this knowledge to prevent them.

I'll still lurk from time to time but feel very little motivation to post because the Emperor's been overloading me with quests.

But it's HoHlocaust time now.

Cale wrote:

Hitler was so small-time. He burned their bodies, but he forgot to rend their souls.

I'm sure he was trying to find a way to do that, you know how occult that guy was.

If my people had a hell, I'd probably be going to it now.

Jolly Jew wrote:

because this site has intelligent people that can discuss this matter in a civilized way.

YouMustBeNewHere.jpg

Kidding aside, because of course this is a serious subject, while I think what you say fact-wise is true, opinion-wise I think I'll have to disagree. As others have said, while it may be true that the attempted genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazis is unparalleled in many ways, denying any possibility of comparison to other horrors of history cheapens something in my view.

Not only have there been many other examples of attempted genocide in history, but just within the realm of what happened in WWII, one should never forget that the Jews were not the Nazis' only targets, nor were the Nazis the only group of people that were steeped in antisemitism and perpetrated great acts of violence against European Jewry.

The reason that it is important to recognize the lack of complete uniqueness in this case is that I believe people get into a mindset of thinking of the Nazis as being a special class of monstrous fiends and Jews being a special class of downtrodden victims. The danger of such a mindset is to allow one to become blind to the intolerance that builds up to victimization on a larger scale. My Jewish father was surprisingly racist, and I say "surprisingly" because my sister and I found it hard to believe that Jews of all people could find the ability within themselves to harbor distaste toward an entire race of people when it was just such an attitude that led to at worst active participation in the Holocaust, and at best passive compliance.

The Holocaust was one of the worst (if not the very worst) events in human history, but the lesson that I wish people could learn from history is not primarily, "Oh, poor Jews!" but rather, "There but for the grace of God go I…" When we find ourselves hating or scapegoating people within our society solely because of their membership in a group, ethnic or otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for acceptance of injustice towards them.

Skeletor-sm

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