To be annoyed at some views on The Holocaust

[M0naLisa]

I've just seen that one of the last surviving Holocaust survivors has died aged 110! It came up on ITV news page on Facebook. Some of the comments are vile and very nasty!!

Why don't people believe what happened in WWII actually did happen?! Makes me so angry

I was educated on this at school in History, and when my children do WWII at school we will speak to them about what happened etc. do these people who don't believe pass their views on to their children?!

I find it incredibly distressing. My husband is Jewish, I'm not. He's encountered quite a bit of anti-semitism over the years, some of it casual racism, and some of it overtly discriminatory.

Half of his family moved to America in the 1920s. I remember, at his great uncle's 100th birthday party, they had a slideshow of generations past. It broke my heart when a slide appeared showing the family members who remained in Poland, all of whom perished in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Telling lies about Hitler by Richard Evans is a good book about the whole David Irving debacle

Utter disbelief at holocaust deniers. In quite a few countries holocaust denial is illegal.

Splasheeny, from what I know (limited) it's to do with the term used for animal sacrifice and it being burnt?

So is Shoah a better term? Is that the correct spelling?

This is an unfortunate phenomenon. Even some assimilating Jews in America deny the numbers of jews that have died. There was a Jewish American author (forgotten his name, read him in the Guardian Books section of the Saturday Guardian) , I think pre year 2000 who wrote a book as to his scepticism. He came up,with the charming missive that his mother (I presume a holocaust survivor) said:
"If so many jews died in the holocaust, how come so many reached America?", or words to that effect.
It reminds of blacks who want to "placate" the West and, I guess their white neighbours when the subject of reparations for slavery comes up.
"Well some Africans sold us" or the lie "It wasn't seen as wrong then."
At least Jewry (generally) will NOt let this go. Or maybe they saw the way that the TransAtlantic Slave trade narrative was going "They sold themselves!!!" and thought "Not fucking likely".
Good for them!

I've never heard of the word holocaust being offensive to Jews. It's the established word in English and used by the Jewish community. Shoah is simply the Hebrew word for holocaust and can be used beyond the context of the Jewish holocaust (although usually isn't).

I fear that as the holocaust survivors die, more and more people will say it was fictitious or not as bad as all that. I worked for a few months transcribing holocaust testimonials for the Spielberg foundation. The stories were horrific.

45 million Europeans died in WW2. It was the death of Europe and the beginnings of serious demographic decline (despite the baby boom) for many other Western countries who spent so much blood and treasure fighting. Memories are long and the reasons are complex. The author a PP referred to is Norman Finkelstein.

Mimishi
While the holocaust took place with a backdrop of much killing, it wasn't simply a consequence of war. No other people in Europe (other than the Roma) were hunted down and systematically exterminated. Indeed, the Nazis were losing the war but still put huge resources into exterminating Jews such as in Hungary in 1944.

Your point about demographic decline makes no sense by the way. The war had nothing to do with the later decline in fertility. And what's it got to do with the holocaust anyhow?

Slavs, Jehovah's witnesses, gays, the disabled, labour unionists. Many many others were targeted. Whether or not they were a specific religion or race doesn't make much difference vis-a-vis their experiences of the war and the stories they hand down to their descendants. I'm not sure about claiming there is no link with demography - I have some very good friends from Eastern Europe who link their societal problems to exactly that. People who lose everything don't exactly want to go forth and multiply for it to happen all over again.

Answering specifically your question of why some people don't believe or question whether it happened - human nature tells us our fellow humans sometimes exacerbate evidence to suit their own ends. A typical human will believe nothing this evil, surely, could have happened. Of course there is too much evidence and too many witnesses for denial to be reasonable.

Also in every group of people there are people who take their message too far - Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists etc. unfortunately there have been some extreme Jewish people who don't speak for the general Jewish population of the earth that have used the Holocaust in an inappropriate way as an excuse for their own ends.

Of course it happened, I, as a fairly typical person (I think) cannot understand how it happened. How did normal everyday family people work in these camps killing innocent people? It is a lot to take in, could it happen again? I'd like to think not but we have atrocities happening every day. What made the Holocaust different was the scale of systematic killing.

On a separate note there is some scientific evidence that needs to be done to finally shut those denying up. There is still the question of why there isn't larger amounts of Zyklon B present in the concrete walls of the gas chambers of Auchwitz and other camps. When this is explained, as I'm sure it will be, it will go a long way to stamping on these nasty, disrespectful people.

Interesting posts!

every country except for a couple of small ones, like Dominique and the Netherlands, refused.

That would be Dominican Republic I presume?

(You also have the island of Dominica in the Caribbean, haven't a clue if they also invited Jewish people to settle there).

A close friend comes from there (D.R.) and I have been to visit. One of his friends (now deceased) was the daughter of one of the original Jewish people that settled there. The town where he lives has a tiny synagogue and the community actually set up the dairy industry there.

I myself live in Amsterdam and every time I cycle past the Anne Frank House my heart warms and I can't help smiling seeing the queues of people right round the corner waiting to get in.

Good to know it's the most visited museum after the Rijks (Rembrandt) and Van Gogh museums.

Personally I can't get my head around anyone denying what happened during WWII....

As Wilson points out, Europe was so incredibly anti-semitic at that time that it's hard for our modern minds to grasp (and there's still a huge problem with it, even in the UK)

Believe me, there's still a nasty but all-too-regular lot of anti-Semitism still going on, even today here in Britain. Members of my family are subjected to it regularly -- try being shouted at in the street. Yes, today in modern Britain.

Anti-Semitism is one of the nastiest & most persistent forms of racism around today.

And OP, there are still many Holocaust survivors alive (I'm related to one of them). The woman who just died was the oldest known survivor. Pretty amazing.

But then all Holocaust survivors are pretty amazing.

A good film to watch is Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard in the original French). It's a documentary by Alain Resnais, focusing on how what happened in the camps was so horrific that words become redundant. It emphasises instead the physical traces of what happened and it's very sobering.

The atrocities that happened in the second war are not isolated incidents -other countries are carrying out atrocities right now, but we don't get to hear about it. Our news coverage is very selective.

The atrocities that happened in the second war are not isolated incidents

I think the thing about the Shoah was that it's rare that a government policy is so fixated on the complete wiping out of a racial/ethnic group as a fundamental tenet of its domestic & foreign policy.

And a policy that builds on centuries of hatred of that racial/ethnic group. We had pogroms in the UK in the 11th century. It goes back that far & further.

Mimishimi - go and read/look at some of the books/films etc recommended on this site before claiming that the Holocaust was in some way connected to just generally falling demographics. Mass murder is very different to people choosing not to have kids and to confuse the two appears to be more than just stupidity in my opinion.

Agree with the pp who said that holocaust deniers these days generally have ulterior motives eg extreme right wing nutjobs or Muslim nationalists who need to deny the Holocaust to justify policies calling for the destruction of Israel. Certainly, an unpalatable truth is that much of the worst Holocaust denial and anti-semitic caricatures these days emanate from Muslim countries and indeed is official policy there. Very sad.

I too know many Holocaust survivors, and there are many still happily alive. And yes, all those in affected countries at the time knew what was going on; to suggest they didn't is simply false. But people turned their backs on it; because they were scared, or just because it was not their problem, or worse, because they hoped to benefit from it personally.

There's not only the outright holocaust deniers, there's also the people who go round saying, 'oh it happens all the time'.

Funny that.

I had no idea so many people denied this. I just assumed everyone knew it was true. Horrendous and must never be repeated.

I watched a series on netflix all about the nazis 'problem' and the nazis even called it 'the final solution'! It was fucking grim from start to finish, there was film footage of pow who had been there for god knows how long with no clothes on and they were literally Skeletons! It made me cry. That wasnt even the worst bit of it. They talked about deniers at the end of the last part, anyone who denies it is are just utter fuckwits.

Everyone should have to visit a concentration camp. I have visited 2 different ones, 1 being Auschwitz. They are truly horrifying places but until you experience them you can not fully appreciate the horrific scale of the destruction that took place.

1 room in particular that haunted me was one in which behind a perspex wall there was pile upon pile of human hair. Just awful.

Towards the end of the visit you are walked through the gas chambers. It is truly terrifying.

I dare anyone to visit and then deny that anything ever happened.

Ananda, I meant DR, yes. I was a bit tired when I wrote the original comment!

Wispa, it's well-known that it was called The Final Solution.

There's not only the outright holocaust deniers, there's also the people who go round saying, 'oh it happens all the time'.

This seems different from

The atrocities that happened in the second war are not isolated incidents

Crowler -

There is a fine but pretty clear line between learning from the experience of the Holocaust to ensure that we are eternally vigilant against genocide occuring to other groups of people and saying "Oh, the Holocaust was no different to a few thousand Slavs/Russians/whatevers being killed in a war."

Certainly, other groups in history have also been victims of attempted or actual genocide. It does not make the rigorous thoroughness of the Holocaust any less horrifying or unique.