Is it appropriate for non Jews to use the holocaust...and OUR suffering...to further their political agenda?

Question

The person who just asked about Xtians dieing in the holocaust was a prime example...but every time there is any problem between two groups...I hear the word holocaust used to demonize tactics of one side.

Is this appropriate? What Castro did in Cuba was NOT genocide even close to scale with the holocaust. What is happening in the refugee camps is not similar in scale, or in kind, to the holocaust.

Misuse of a charged word like this serves to cheapen the word's impact...and the suffering of so many.

Geeeee...I'm shocked...someone with the name hasse wants to deny the holocaust. I love Islamic moderates who only want peace.

I'm sorry that I forgot to thank the Russians who were the ones who actually did beat and stop Hitler. You'll have to forgive my lack of gratitude since they killed us as well.

I also to forgot the others because they were fighting for their own political lives and reasons. It had nothing to do with helping us.

I forgot to thank the numerous Xtians who also turned us over...refused refugees...etc.

I really am ungrateful.

I will absolutely thank those in nations like Denmark who did corageously protect us. The number should have been greater though.

Joecool....that is an excellent point. Many...if not most....of the genocides in modern history are totally under the radar.

The Christians were NOT killed for being Christians. They were killed for being slavs. They were killed for being homosexuals. Communists. Liberals. Etc.

Don't make this about your religion....it isn't.

NO ONE was killed in a concentration camp for being a Christian.

Midge....with all due respect....there were Catholics who protected us...and you picked out two who died for it...but shouldn't there have been a lot more then that?

Your last pope was a corageous opponent to the holocaust. Your current one is, in my opinion, a coward who rationalizes his behavior...and your Pope at the time that it happened protected war criminals a lot more then he tried to protect us. He also supported Hitler on many occasions as a stop against communism. He refused to condemn Hitler several times...because he wanted to remain neutral.

He was frankly disgusting.

What I am saying...point blank...is that the Cuban issue is political infighting. It is not genocide. The people who Castro deposed...the ones who initially made up the exile community....were no better then Castro.

I lived in Miami when Cubans tried to compare the shooting down of one of their planes with the holocaust. You flew a plane over foreign air space....TWICE (you were warned the first time) and the plane was shot down.....and this was supposed to be genocide.

You tried to take a child away from its father...and called the US forces who returned a baby to a parent storm troopers.

Yeah...your community is extreme and out of line.

The difference is that for Jews...and the slaughters that happened before the holocaust....it WAS about our religion.

The difference is that we were oppressed. Christians were not.

No Christian was killed in the holocaust for BEING a Christian.

If you were gay...or when you admit to being gay....you can include homosexuals. They were discriminated against.

Answer 1

The Holocaust was historically specific to the slaughter of the Jewish people by the Germans. It is a terrible, terrible period in history and certainly has caused great suffering. However, have you met many refugees or asylum seekers? Do you know how many millions of people have been killed because of genocide, war and the like. Ever heard of a little place called Darfur? I think the slaughter of any innocent person is hideous and each has a place for reflection in all of our hearts.

Answer 2

My dictionary (Oxford Canadian Dictionary of Current English) defines holocaust as, "1: a case of large-scale destruction, especially by nuclear war. 2: (the Holocaust) [big H] the mass murder especially of Jews under the Nazi regime 1941-5 3: a sacrifice consumed by fire. "

so I guess...unless there is fire/nuclear attacks or the massive killing like the big H Holocaust...the answer would be no. Genocide is usually (at least in my mind) reserved for any really big slaughter of people (Rwanda 1994, for example). The same is true for "ethnic cleansing", but for some reason that term sounds better, like less severe than genocide (even though it's every bit as bad.)

Unfortunately, I don't think the cheapening will stop simply because people will continue to want to villanize each other. People are, after all, only human...And....not to be insulting or anything, but I'd just like to mention the non-Jews that also suffered in the Holocaust (Homosexuals, the mentally ill, Communists, etc, etc, etc.)

Answer 3

Is this appropriate? What Castro did in Cuba was NOT genocide even close to scale with the holocaust. What is happening in the refugee camps is not similar in scale, or in kind, to the holocaust.

Misuse of a charged word like this serves to cheapen the word's impact...and the suffering of so many

So are you saying that because of what happened in Cuba isn't the same that happened to the Jewish so long ago then the people in Cuba aren't suffering the same way??

Who are to say that their suffering isn't the same as how someone else felt? Suffering is suffering regardless of how it is brought about.

Yeah it's wrong for anyone to use anything that has happened in the PAST for any type of political gain, or any type of gain, but it's going to keep happening because you're going to have people on both sides of it that continue to use what happened for their own reasons.

Answer 4

The holocaust of the Jews was neither the first, or sadly the last, genocide of the 20th century. Does it really matter what the scale or form of genocide is? Yes, the Germans pretty much have the monopoly on the industrialization and organization of genocide, but is that any worse that villages raped and then hacked to bits with machetes?

I do agree that it is wrong to use such imagery to describe political situations in our country, but you seem to be upset about more than that. The Jews had it very bad, but at least people almost universally recognize and learn about your plight, which is more than I can say about most other genocides.

Answer 5

What makes you think that only the Jews died in the Holocaust? Obviously you have a political agenda of some sort if you are claiming this tragedy as your own, and your own alone.

Frankly, I think that it is a little sick for someone to use a historic event involving genocide for political purposes, anyway.

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"Poland's Holocaust : 6 Million Citizens Dead (3 Million Christians + 3 Million Jews)
But Don't the 3 Million Christians Count?"

by Edward Lucaire


The best-kept secret in the U.S. about the Holocaust is that Poland lost six million citizens or about one-fifth of its population: three million of the dead were Polish Christians, predominantly Catholic, and the other three million were Polish Jews. The second best-kept secret of the Holocaust is the greatest number of Gentile rescuers of Jews were Poles, despite the fact that only in Poland were people (and their loved ones) immediately executed if caught trying to save Jews. The Yad Vashem museum in Israel honors "the Righteous Among the Nations" and Poland ranks first among 40 nations with 5,503 men and women, almost one-third of the total, honored for their "compassion, courage and morality" and who "risked their lives to save the lives of Jews." ...

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"Don't make this about your religion.."; pardon me, but isn't that exactally what you are doing by saying that the Holocaust was ONLY a Jewis thing? Does the suffering of 3 Million Slavs NOT count because they were non-Jewish? Your last remark suggests that is how you feel. Oh well, I'll just drop the whole thing.

Answer 6

That question incensed me, Aaron.
I have a great love for the jewish people and a tremendous sadness for what happened in Ha Shoah. I do not think her question was appropriate, and I believe it was designed to incite more than anything.
I agree that there hasn't been a genocide on that level before nor since.
Edit: Denmark was amazing.. when looking at how the entire country tried to protect their jewish people, and save others, it really touches the heart. Yes, there should have been more. The U.S. should've gotten involved when they first received reports that this was happening.. the world should have done something sooner.

Answer 7

Words get cheapened over time and that's just the way it is. But there are always new words coming along.

As for your implication that Jews somehow have sole claim to the meaning of the Holocaust, I must disagree. The Nazis were tried at Nuremberg for "crimes against humanity." Would you prefer that they had been tried for "crimes against the Jews?"

Answer 8

Edith Stein. Maximilian Kolby. Both Saints. Both Catholics. Many people besides Jewish people were exterminated. St. Maximilian Kolby gave his life so that a Jewish man could go free. He was truly Christ like. I feel very sad that humanity did those kinds of atrocities to humanity. It is especially sad that the Jewish people suffered so much with this and yes they did carry the brunt of the horror.

Answer 9

I see your point and the whole thing can be cheapened by wrong intentions but are no groups other than the jews allowed to suffer until 6 million + are killed?

Answer 10

You might try reading some accurate historical accounts, which contradict the myth. It has struck me as odd for some time that every "Jew" of childbearing age must have had a child every year for the census figures to work out//////// with 6 million being killed............... and the average age of "Jews" in 1945 must have been about 10 years old.