> Even leaving the Holocaust and its 12 million victims
> (including the Red Army POWs, Communists, homosexuals,
> Roma, _and_ Jews), who on earth would say that WWII
> with its remaining, say 40 million dead, was "all for
> the best"? Also conisdering that "increasing the rate
> of technology advance" led to the creation and use of
> atomic weapons? This is bizarre. It would be cruel and
> insensitive to say to a Jew, "the destruction of
> European Jewry is an insignificant footnote;" worse to
> say "it was justified by its unintended consequences"
> -- just as it would be insulting to say to a native
> American similar things. Or to assert them inother
> contexts. Because, after all, the destruction of the
> Native Americans (far more certainly that WWII) did
> lead to the unification and modernizing of the US and
> increase in the rate of technological progress. Do you
> think that makes, e.g., Wounded Knee or the Trail of
> Tears justified? I don't think so.
Which was exactly my point. It would be considered extremely bizarre to claim "it was all for the best" and only a raving lunatic would make such a claim and direct that statement to someone jewish. No one would do such a thing. Notice that you state that it would be just as insulting to say something similar to a NA but the fact is such things are said everyday in history classes all over the US. NA's are repeatedly told to their face that "they really do have to admit it was all for the best." Go to a local high school and middle school and ask to see a copy of their history textbooks. "Regretable", "unavoidable", "accidental", "in spite of good intentions", and "it all worked out for the best in the end" is exactly what you'll find. Dig through the archives and you'll find some of these same claims made on this list.
> The Nazi atrocities were really
> > only unique
> > in their technological application.
>
> I'm not an advocate of the theory that the Holocaust
> of the Jews was uniquely evil, not comparable to any
> other evil act, etc. But first, please note that a
> great lot of the killing -- maybe half of it -- was
> not done in the killing factories with any specially
> advanced or unique technology but by old fashioned
> methods of mass shooting by the Einsatzgruppen in the
> invasion of Russia. The Red Army POWs (3 million of
> them) were simply left to starve or worked to death as
> slave labor. (Stalin had most the survivors shipped
> offto the gulag, btw.) It is really the scale of the
> Holocaust (including all the victims, Jews and others)
> that in part makes it unique as well as the
> application of mass production -- destruction? --
> techniques to many millions of deaths, also the wierd
> irrationality of the thing -- the killing machine was
> kept running while Germany was on the ropes, essential
> war resources like trains were devoted to its ends
> taht could have been used to, for example, attain the
> end of the saner Nazis of a seperate peace with the
> West by holding off the Russians; valuable slave labor
> simnply wasted.
But the scale was not unique and the fatigue comes from hearing this over and over again. I imagine you are familiar with the Taino people. From 1493 to 1507 somewhere between 4 to 7 million Taino people (Bartolome de Las Casas estimated 3 to 4 million at the time) were deliberately exterminated by the Spanish. How, other than the technology used, is this different than the 5 to 8 millions Jews exterminated in The Holocaust? The Taino people are extinct. It was successful as genocides go. They were replaced by slaves from Africa because they were, in that situation, easier to control. How many cultures were actually exterminated by the Nazi's? Dozens of cultures were deliberately erased in the invasion of the America's and the attempted extermination of its indigenous people.
"Holocaust envy" has nothing to do with how people feel about this but fatigue certainly does. The shoah is not unique unless you feel European victims of atrocities are somehow more worthy victims than Native peoples. I imagine you don't consciously believe that. What in the scale of the shoah is so different from what happened to the Taino? How was the shoah more irrational than unleashing packs of dogs on groups of people and betting on the outcome? Using live NA's to "test" the sharpness of knives? Riding on them like pack animals for sport? Roasting them alive on a spit or hacking children into pieces and feeding them to their dogs? Slave labor simply wasted? Read Bartolome de Las Casas writings from the period and tell me how this slaughter is somehow of a lesser scale. It was not an occasional soldier or band of soldiers misbehaving but rather the wholesale and systematic torture and extermination of an entire people.
While the overall history of the post-Columbian attempted extermination of NA's took ~300 years it also took the lives of some 18+ million people. I know of no other extermination attempt that was as continuous or nearly successful since the NA population in 1900 was ~240,000. Each holocaust was necessarily different since the duration, timeframe, and rational were different but to claim one over the other as greater in scale or more abhorent is both pointless and counterproductive. Doing so is to assess the worthiness of the victims whether this ones intention or not. I find the idea that Muslims, Native Americans, Arabs or any group are suffering from "holocaust envy' an offensive idea. I don't expect you to change your mind and stop thinking of the shoah as you expressed here;
" It is really the scale of the Holocaust (including all the victims, Jews and others) that in part makes it unique as well as the application of mass production -- destruction? -- techniques to many millions of deaths, also the weird irrationality of the thing"
It is my experience that people seldom change their opinions of such things. Why I am writing such a lengthy reply is not at all clear to me. Perhaps it is the only way I can deal with the weariness generated by statements such as the above. This is probably written for my benefit more than anyone elses.
John Thornton