Why Is Holocaust Important?

[Solomon2]

Primarily due to historical reasons the Western world generally likes to over emphasise the Holocaust. The horrible Holocaust after all took place on European soil during WW.

The Holocaust was uniquely evil because its planned goal was the extermination of an entire people. The Nazis even planned museums so they could show off their achievement to their descendants. To that end, they preserved hundreds of Torah scrolls in an archive in Czechoslovakia. Long after the war, many of these scrolls were retrieved and sent to Jewish communities worldwide; I had the honor of helping knit a new Torah cover for one such scroll.

On a different note, this may sound a little harsh, but Israel hasn't learnt anything from the Holocaust...Palestinians are humiliated and deprived from their rights. The Israelis have no regard for human rights. This is no less than another genocide. By the way, I've a neutral stance in the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

I have rarely read any account as ignorant and cynical as this!

 

[Solomon2]

Why did it happen in the first place? A very legitimate though tough question. One that shall remain unanswered I'm afraid.

Do not be afraid; I shall answer it. In every society there is a portion of the population that is dissatisfied with their current lot. The more "civilized" a society, the more outcast and extreme such folk may be. It's quite normal.

In a democracy those who are dissastisfied may range from terrible criminals to members of the loyal opposition. While everyone but the felons participates in the political process usually the whack-jobs are kept out of power.

Yet the shame of losing a war, runaway inflation that destroyed savings of a lifetime, street attacks and invasions by Communists, and a worldwide economic depression all combined to rob the "civilizing" forces of so much credibility that the German electorate sought alternatives. They voted in the Nazis, and at the funeral for the old Chancellor Hitler (following an old German custom) had the military swear an oath to him personally, rather than Germany. From there everything else followed.

 

[TaimiKhan]

I have rarely read any account as ignorant and cynical as this!

And we have the pleasure to listen to such ignorant and cynical account, comments from you and some others on nearly every other day. Telling us how much they love seeing Palestinians killed and exterminated and being out through a Holocaust of their own.

So don't be surprised.

 

[Solomon2]

Telling us how much they love seeing Palestinians killed -

We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.

- Golda Meir

...Palestinians killed and exterminated and being out through a Holocaust of their own.

That isn't happening now, nor did it happen in the past. My question to you is, why do I have to post this stuff, rather than you do so yourself?

 

[TaimiKhan]

- Golda Meir


That isn't happening now, nor did it happen in the past. My question to you is, why do I have to post this stuff, rather than you do so yourself?

Would be better you do some reading and seeing some pictures on Google and see what rest of the world has to say about your NOT HAPPENING / NOT HAPPENED IN PAST then ask me what you want to ask.

Rather don't bother to reply, i know your answer as usual.

 

[TruthSeeker]

The European Holocaust against the Jews is important to remember as a cautionary tale. But, at least in the USA, it is far too often over-emphasized for the political purpose of Israel. The member, above, who commented on being taught about the Holocaust in his US school illustrates this point. With Hollywood films and museums constantly pushing the Holocaust story, American children are taught to only honor the suffering of European Jews, to the detriment of the Palestinians who are now suffering from displacement and occupation. The Holocaust story is used shamelessly as a blunt political weapon by pro-Israeli interests in the US and in Europe.

 

[fhassan]

^^

That made my moment.

 

[Martian2]

About twenty years ago I attended a lecture by a CIA man at my synagogue. Yes indeed, from both human intelligence and the aerial photographs he showed us the U.S. and Britain had learned about the death camps during the war.

Plans were made to bomb the camps and the railways leading to them to disrupt their deadly activities. These plans were never carried out. The most favorable interpretation of Allied leaders' reasoning seems to have been that they felt the bombs and lives of the Allies could best be spent by defeating Nazi Germany; that way, liberation of the camps would be all the speedier. Otherwise, disrupting the process of killing hundreds of thousands of Jews wasn't worth a single bomb or the life of a single Allied airman.

Yet as a bomb-free zone it was natural for the dying Nazi regime to concentrate its activities on the camps (just as Saddam's retreating troopers burned Kuwait's oil wells) and in the last few months of the war the slaughter was greatly increased. That's when my grandparents were killed.

I didn't know that the Allied leaders chose to concentrate their firepower on Nazi Germany to more quickly liberate the camps. I had thought that they were trying to avoid a higher Allied soldier body count. If they were indeed trying to more quickly liberate the camps then I would have to revise my opinion of their rationale for not bombing the camps and railways.

Please accept my condolences for the deaths of your grandparents at the hands of the Nazis.

 

[Martian2]

The European Holocaust against the Jews is important to remember as a cautionary tale. But, at least in the USA, it is far too often over-emphasized for the political purpose of Israel. The member, above, who commented on being taught about the Holocaust in his US school illustrates this point. With Hollywood films and museums constantly pushing the Holocaust story, American children are taught to only honor the suffering of European Jews, to the detriment of the Palestinians who are now suffering from displacement and occupation. The Holocaust story is used shamelessly as a blunt political weapon by pro-Israeli interests in the US and in Europe.

It is too late for me. At an instinctive level, I will always probably feel some sympathy for Jews. Anne Frank's diary is very depressing.

The Diary of a Young Girl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"In the spring of 1946 it came to the attention of Dr. Jan Romein, a Dutch historian, who was so moved by it that he immediately wrote an article for the newspaper Het Parool:

This apparently inconsequential diary by a child, this "de profundis" stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence of Nuremberg put together.

—Jan Romein"

Also, from high school social studies, the black-and-white picture of a pile of dead emaciated bodies and the haunting eyes of one of the victims are unforgettable.

I'm a little on the squeamish side. I try to avoid any newscasts or pictures of more human suffering. I don't think it's healthy for my sanity.

 

[Locked]

There has never been such a thing like tht in Germany

 

[Martian2]

There has never been such a thing like tht in Germany

I wanted to avoid this, but you give me no choice.

 

[arslan_treen]

Holocaust is important to remember because it is the proof of what extreme Logic can do under the hand of irrational Humans ,when too much pursuit of excellence to turn around social and economic systems can lead to human treating each other as object rather then fellow beings it also shows that some time one has to act a bit non-logical a bit human a bit compassionate then just acting on calculated logical decision by the ''superior mind'' as was the case at that time for Nazi Germany . a lot can be said on the subject and had been said on the subject but i always think any part of what any nation did at that time does not justify the ignorance which the population of the knowledgeable world at that time showed .
same goes for us as we shamelessly sat on our cosy sofas and saw holocaust being performed in Rwanda , Bosnia, Chechnya,Kashmir,Uganda and the list goes on so as some might have learned from the Nazi holocaust but i am afraid to say the 99% of world population remains as selfish and as heartless as it was in the nazi era .

 

[arslan_treen]

The policy of Gov of israel and nothing to do with jewish people jewish faith ,holocaust victims, and its remembrance ,it is true that in USA its is highly used to justify Gov of israel actions but any Gov of country will use the same opportunity in the same way if given the chance , shame full act as it might be .
Israel is a normal country which like many today is divided by left hand reformists and hardcore right wing fanatics ,many of its decision which are blatantly pasted on Jews are usually nothing more then Politics ,money and power ...just like any other country , where politician need conflict to divert attentions ,where religious fanatics add religion for there own mean , where military industry needs to justify its might where construction companies and big industries need new resources to operate on .
Many young literate Israeli today feel that there American Jewish cousins are doing them more harm then good as most in America fallow a strict code where they see Israel as not just a country but as some thing very holy and sacred to which they have to protect and serve at any cost prompting to do many act which there elders once faced from Nazi propaganda machines .

 

[Solomon2]

Would be better you do some reading and seeing some pictures on Google...don't bother to reply, i know your answer as usual.

All right, then, let's do something unusual. Have you heard of The Paper Clips Project? In an effort to get students to grasp the magnitude of the Holocaust - to surpass the "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic" barrier - some Tennessee middle school students hit on the idea of representing each death in the Holocaust with a paper clip and sought people who would donate supplies. The idea caught the imagination of many Americans, as ordinary folks, movie stars, and presidents all sent in paper clips to add to the collection. Hollywood even made a movie of it. link

One hundred paper clips fit into a box 0.5x2x3" - call it three cubic inches. There are 12x12x12=1728 cubic inches in a foot. That's 57,600 clips in a cubic foot. Six million paper clips takes up about 104 cubic feet - enough to fill over four bookcases in my home. (The Tennessee students store these paper clips, plus five million more representing other death camp victims, in a cattle car that had been used to transport Jews to the extermination camps.)

The number of Arab civilians killed in the Arab-Israeli struggle isn't known with such precision. Back in 2005 Bruce Thornton calculated 8000, but that number included hundreds if not thousands of Jewish civilians. Israel has fought two wars since then (Lebanon and Gaza). So I'll extend Thornton's estimate of total Arab civilian KIAs over the past sixty-plus years to 10,000, which in paper clip equivalents would occupy 300 cubic inches, or the volume of the two boxes of facial tissues that I keep next to my desk.

During that period the Palestinian population has grown from several hundred thousand to perhaps four million. So much for allegations of "slow genocide".

And pictures do lie, taimikhan. The Israeli civilian casualties are caused by the deliberate Arab policy of conquest and extermination. The Arab civilian casualties are a result of Arab leaders hiding weapons and fighters behind civilians, thus compelling Israelis to save themselves only if they are willing to kill women and children. It's not too far to say that essentially the Arab leaders put women and children out in the open, painted a giant "X" on them, and said to the Israelis, "You must bomb here first if you want us to stop bombing you."

The Arabs of Gaza don't seem to like this policy very much. While Hamas mustered hundreds of thousands of people at an anniversary celebration earlier this month, last week they gathered only 3,000 people to celebrate their "victory" in January. Do Arabs need Pakistanis to endorse the tragic pictures of their dead as Israeli war crimes, or do they believe that Gazans would be better served if Pakistanis put such pictures in context and thus robbed the leaders of Hamas of their war-making legitimacy?

 

[Solomon2]

The European Holocaust against the Jews is important to remember as a cautionary tale. But, at least in the USA, it is far too often over-emphasized -

Consider this webpage of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Why teach about the Holocaust?

The Holocaust provides one of the most effective subjects for an examination of basic moral issues. Through a study of these topics, students come to realize that:

* The Holocaust was a watershed event, not only in the twentieth century but also in the entire course of human history.

* Study of the Holocaust assists students in developing an understanding of the roots and ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping in any society.

* The Holocaust provides a context for exploring the dangers of remaining silent, apathetic, and indifferent in the face of the oppression of others.

* Democratic institutions and values are not automatically sustained, but need to be appreciated, nurtured, and protected; democracy is fragile.

* Silence and indifference to the suffering of others, or to the infringement of civil rights in any society can-however unintentionally- perpetuate the problems.

* A study of these topics helps students to think about the use and abuse of power, and the roles and responsibilities of individuals, organizations, and nations when confronted with civil rights violations and/or policies of genocide.

* The Holocaust was not an accident in history-it occurred because individuals, organizations, and governments made choices that not only legalized discrimination but also allowed prejudice, hatred, and ultimately, mass murder, to occur.

* Thinking about these events can help students to develop an awareness of the value of pluralism and encourages acceptance of diversity in a pluralistic society.

* Holocaust history demonstrates how a modern nation can utilize its technological expertise and bureaucratic infrastructure to implement destructive policies ranging from social engineering to genocide.

* As students gain insight into the many historical, social, religious, political, and economic factors that cumulatively resulted in the Holocaust, they gain awareness of the complexity of the subject and a perspective on how a convergence of factors can contribute to the disintegration of democratic values. Students come to understand that it is the responsibility of citizens in any society to learn to identify danger signals, and to know when to react to prevent genocide and the steps that may lead to it.

If you don't think the highlighted items are of any relevance to Pakistan, Iran, Palestine, Sudan, etc. then I guess study of the Holocaust isn't a matter of urgency at all.