I was just reading that they have recovered a diary of a Jewish girl killed in the holocaust. They are calling her the Polish Anne Frank. NPR has an article about it here.
There are a lot of people that don't believe the Holocaust actually happened, or, if it did, it wasn't nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. There are various reasons for this:
First, let's face it, the Germans during the Third Reich weren't really very much different from Americans during the same time period. We survived the Great Depression without committing genocide, why couldn't they? For starters, we didn't have a madman in charge (Adolf Hitler was very charismatic, and he was able to bring about a number of changes in the German economy that made life better for a lot of people. Some have said that 'he was a good man--at first,' others have said that he was just building his power base. In any case, by the time he started publicly doing things that normal people would recognize as insane, a lot of Germans were already fiercely loyal to him--and the rest were very much afraid of the Nazis). For another thing, who would we have exterminated? The blacks? Granted, Americans of African ancestry weren't very popular, but most of them didn't have any money. To be fair, a lot of European Jews didn't have any money either, but there was a lot of Third Reich propoganda about how they were all rich, and they had gotten their money by cheating good Aryans. There was also a lot of propoganda pushing the idea that just the presence of the Jews weakened the power of Germany. That would have been a much harder idea to sell in a country that had long taught that our strength comes from our diversity--even though so many were willing to overlook the contributions of darker-complected Americans. Keep in mind also, that Germany suffered through the Great depression while making 'reparations' for World War I. Many of their largest industries were either shut down or severely limited as part of the peace treaty--we didn't want them building up their military again. You may have heard horror stories about how the Great Depression affected the US ecomony--Germany was much worse off.
Second, some people are bad at math--or, just haven't looked at the big picture. There were over 6 milion Jews in Poland before World War II, less than 200,000 after. There were about 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Obviously, not all 6 million of the Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust--some of them escaped to England, or the United States, or even to Palestine. That's true. And, I have to admit, it does seem like an odd coincidence that the number of Polish Jews that escaped matches up almost exactly to the number of Jews from other countries that died in the Holocaust. Remember, the Holocaust started in Germany.
Third, some people don't believe in the Holocaust simply because they are anti-semitic. I know that sounds strange, but the philosophy works something like this: Because of the Holocaust, Great Britain and the United States decided that the Jews needed their own homeland--a nation that would fight for them if any nation ever tried to oppress Jews like that again. Obviously, then, the Jews faked the Holocaust in order to gain sympathy with the world powers and orchestrate the creation of the nation of Israel. Some of them hid, and then paid the German SS to lie at the Nuremberg trials... Interesting theory, but, what if Germany had won the war? Then what? For that matter, going into the Nuremberg trials, the Germans that testified really didn't know what was going to happen to them. Many of them were executed. How much money do you pay someone to confess to crime that was never committed and accept the death penalty? Not to mention, the Jew's assets were seized by the Third Reich to support the war effort. Are we to believe that they managed to hide enough money away to bribe men to die for their cause? Further, even though, we've established a motive for faking the Holocaust, did the Jews really have the means to fake something that huge? I think not. There were an awful lot of poeple that witnessed how badly the Jews were treated by the Germans under Adolf Hitler. Most of these witnesses were not aware of the death camps, but, in order to fake the Holocaust, there would have had to have been people high up in the German government working on the conspiracy. There were no Jews in such positions.
There are a lot of people that don't believe the Holocaust actually happened, or, if it did, it wasn't nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. There are various reasons for this:
First, let's face it, the Germans during the Third Reich weren't really very much different from Americans during the same time period. We survived the Great Depression without committing genocide, why couldn't they? For starters, we didn't have a madman in charge (Adolf Hitler was very charismatic, and he was able to bring about a number of changes in the German economy that made life better for a lot of people. Some have said that 'he was a good man--at first,' others have said that he was just building his power base. In any case, by the time he started publicly doing things that normal people would recognize as insane, a lot of Germans were already fiercely loyal to him--and the rest were very much afraid of the Nazis). For another thing, who would we have exterminated? The blacks? Granted, Americans of African ancestry weren't very popular, but most of them didn't have any money. To be fair, a lot of European Jews didn't have any money either, but there was a lot of Third Reich propoganda about how they were all rich, and they had gotten their money by cheating good Aryans. There was also a lot of propoganda pushing the idea that just the presence of the Jews weakened the power of Germany. That would have been a much harder idea to sell in a country that had long taught that our strength comes from our diversity--even though so many were willing to overlook the contributions of darker-complected Americans. Keep in mind also, that Germany suffered through the Great depression while making 'reparations' for World War I. Many of their largest industries were either shut down or severely limited as part of the peace treaty--we didn't want them building up their military again. You may have heard horror stories about how the Great Depression affected the US ecomony--Germany was much worse off.
Second, some people are bad at math--or, just haven't looked at the big picture. There were over 6 milion Jews in Poland before World War II, less than 200,000 after. There were about 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Obviously, not all 6 million of the Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust--some of them escaped to England, or the United States, or even to Palestine. That's true. And, I have to admit, it does seem like an odd coincidence that the number of Polish Jews that escaped matches up almost exactly to the number of Jews from other countries that died in the Holocaust. Remember, the Holocaust started in Germany.
Third, some people don't believe in the Holocaust simply because they are anti-semitic. I know that sounds strange, but the philosophy works something like this: Because of the Holocaust, Great Britain and the United States decided that the Jews needed their own homeland--a nation that would fight for them if any nation ever tried to oppress Jews like that again. Obviously, then, the Jews faked the Holocaust in order to gain sympathy with the world powers and orchestrate the creation of the nation of Israel. Some of them hid, and then paid the German SS to lie at the Nuremberg trials... Interesting theory, but, what if Germany had won the war? Then what? For that matter, going into the Nuremberg trials, the Germans that testified really didn't know what was going to happen to them. Many of them were executed. How much money do you pay someone to confess to crime that was never committed and accept the death penalty? Not to mention, the Jew's assets were seized by the Third Reich to support the war effort. Are we to believe that they managed to hide enough money away to bribe men to die for their cause? Further, even though, we've established a motive for faking the Holocaust, did the Jews really have the means to fake something that huge? I think not. There were an awful lot of poeple that witnessed how badly the Jews were treated by the Germans under Adolf Hitler. Most of these witnesses were not aware of the death camps, but, in order to fake the Holocaust, there would have had to have been people high up in the German government working on the conspiracy. There were no Jews in such positions.
Fourth, the revisionists claim not so much that the Holocaust didn't happen, but that it has been exaggerated, and that too much emphasis has been placed upon it. Most of these don't believe that the Nazis had gas chambers (in spite of the fact that three of them were still standing when the Russian troops arrived). They claim that the number dead was much less than 6 million, and that most of the ones that died were simply victims of disease or malnutrition. They also point out that there were a lot more than 6 million killed in battle during the war, so why the emphasis on the Jews? (Most of them don't point out that Stalin actually killed more Jews than Hitler did.) Personally, I think most of these really fall under the first heading, they can believe that the Jews were badly mistreated, but a campaign to eradicate them? Surely not. You might convince me that the Holocaust history should be revised. Maybe the numbers are exaggerated. Maybe it was only 5.5 million (I don't really know how the numbers were arrived at, but I suspect that the 6 million number is non-negotiable because if we start saying, well, maybe it was only 5.5 million, then somebody will say, oh, but it was only 5 million, and before you know it, the Holocaust didn't happen at all, which would be absurd). Maybe, most of the dead really did die simply because the Nazis didn't feed the Jews or provide them medical care in the camps. It certainly would have been less expensive to let them die through neglect than to spend money on diesel fuel to create carbon monoxide to gas them.
I think that bottom line is, it was a terrible thing, and we don't like to believe that we, as human beings, are capable of such things, but we are, and we need to be reminded occasionally of just what we can do. The Holocaust should not be remembered as an example of what bad poeple the Germans were, or even of how terrible the Nazis were, but just how terrible we human beings are. We can be real monsters. We are also capable of great good, but sometimes that seems to be the exception.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment