Neo Nazis and the Holocaust

[babek-]

Originally posted by Angus
Actually, I think nobody ever even got close the the Nazis.  

I dont agree with this.
True - the Nazis organised their perversity very well and built installations where the people were killed systematicly.

But they dont differ in they way of doing from others who have done similiar things in history.
They only used more advanced technology.

And by using this technology they killed millions of people.

But just an example how "effective" other races in history have been.

In the Iran of today there was in ancient time a high-culture - the Empire of Elam with their great capital city of Susa.
They had a civilisation which lasted centuries.

But they also had one mighty enemy: The Assyrians.

This (also advanced) culture under leadership of their great warrior-king Assurbanipal finally won the last battle against the Elamites. They nearly killed all Elamites, destroyed systamaticly their infrastructure, poisended their land and left back to Assur and Ninive - leaving a small percentage of shattered elamite survivors in their ruins.

And when the iranian people came from north they had not to take the territory by force.
The Elamites - once the mighty Empire in this region - just vanished.
The few survivors were integrated in the following iranian empires of the Medes and later of the Persians.

The Assyrians were succesful to eliminate a whole race.

And this is only one example how one human group/nation/race was succesful to destroy completely another one.

They used sword, spears, bows instead of concentration camps and gas but their pervert goal was the same - to exterminate another race, just because they were members of the other race.

And the sad fact is that they were not the only one in history who has been succesful in doing so.

The Nazis failed - although they had all their armies, their power, their systematicly organisation of building this killing installations.

A small - but nevertheless good aspect - of this part of history.

[Oldman731]

Originally posted by babek-
True - the Nazis organised their perversity very well and built installations where the people were killed systematicly.

But they dont differ in they way of doing from others who have done similiar things in history.

So far as I know, no one else in history has ever done this.

Ever.

- oldman

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Oldman731


So far as I know, no one else in history has ever done this.

Ever.

- oldman

Aztecs did it systematically, they just didn't have the ovens.

[babek-]

OK - I try to describe it in a simplier way:

The plan of the perverts was and is the elimination of another group (other race, other religion or whatever idiotic reason ).

There have been and are different methods - like killing them all with blade weapons in ancient times or (after technical developments and inventions have been done through "civilisation") with special installations - like the concentration camps of the National Socialists.

But I cant see any difference, when (like I described in another mail in this thread) the Assyrians tried to exterminate the Elamites or the Turks tried to eliminate the Armenians or the German Reich tried to eliminate the homosexuals, gipsies, jews and slaws.

After WW2 similiar extermination plans were done by other nations - the example of the Red Khmer is only one of so many.

I understand that the historical relics are impressive and shocking. But for me the german wallet made of human skin is as disgusting like photographs of US-headhunters presenting skalps of killed indians or old assyrian stone monuments, presenting the massacres of the civilians of their enemies.

These all are for me sad proofs of human perversities and I see no difference between them.

[Nashwan]

The British camps in South Africa had very high death rtes from disease.

After that was brought to the attention of the government, more medical help was sent and rations improved. By 1902, the deth rate was lower than in Glasgow.

In May 1902, the Boer congress wrote to Kitchener, complaining about his new policy of not taking women and children into the camps.

The British were using a scorched earth policy against the Boers, burning their villages and farms that gave them shelter. The original policy was to take the families displaced by this into camps because with their crops destroyed they wouldn't be able to feed themselves.

THe camps were detention centres. There was no attempt to kill inmates. Conditions were bad, but they were improved as soon as it became clear how bad.

The complaints about the camps were set forth in a letter from Boer leaders Burger and Reitz. They included:

"On account of the stingy supplies of fuel allowed, women of the most noble families of South Africa have been oblidged to gather with their own hands, fuel, consisting of dry cow dung, in order to prepare food for themselves and their children.
At the same time they are oblidged to personally wash their clothes and other linen because, as has already been stated, they have been deprived of the help of their servants"

[Montezuma]

Originally posted by babek-

These all are for me sad proofs of human perversities and I see no difference between them.

Several things make the holocaust different.

-The Nazis did not just starve and shoot the 'undesirables', they applied modern industrial methods to mass murder.  The world had never seen murder factories like Treblinka before.

-Not content with killing all of the 'undesirables' in their own
country, the Nazis imported people from other countries to kill them in specialized murder centers.  Does someone have other examples of millions of people being moved hundreds of miles by trains just so they could be killed?

-The Nazis did not just stealing all of the possessions of the murder victims, they systematically harvested commodities from the dead bodies of those they murdered.  The hair, fat, gold teeth... were not taken for trophy value but for pure economic value.

[babek-]

Thats your point of view.

I cant see any difference in the killing of the National Socialists and - for example - the ancient Assyrians.

They had the same goals: Exterminate another race.

The ancients used their technologies and the National Socialists theirs.

Both acts were criminal and pervert.

I cant see a difference in the quality of the crime and perversity only because the ones used gas and transported their victims in trains to camps and the otheres used blades and killed their victims right in the place where they found them.

The only difference I can see is the really sad fact that the Assyrians were successful in their extermination-plan and the great Elamite culture was destroyed and lost.

But both are historical facts and should be valued and remembered equally.

[SageFIN]

Montezuma, what you said applies to Aztecs too. As Ripsnort pointed out, they systematically slaughtered thousands and again thousands in a perfect "killing factory" style. The fact that they had the extra motivation in the form of religious beliefs is no better an excuse than calling the people to be purged inferior and subsequently stuffing them in an oven.

No act such as these should be forgotten or denied. None of them should be belittled and said that "oh it was so long ago" or "but they were just some natives killing each other".

[Angus]

I see a few items to add here, further distinguishing the holocaust from other ancient time slaughters.

 - The jews were not directly a nation, but a line of people integrated into many other societies.

 - They were used as a target group politically way before the holocaust.  Reasons: They were fairly "unpopular" and not too many to offer a proper resistance, such as politically. They were relatively wealthy for their share of the population. And they always said they wanted to get to their "promised" land, or at least make their own new state.

 - Modern society features were applied to the full to perfect the crime. Examples: Modern propaganda to make them unpopular. More propaganda to hide what was going on to the rest of the world. Modern technology for transport (yes, it has been mentioned in thid thread), extermination (that too), and book-keeping of the whole business.

 - The whole affair was largely unknown to the state carrying it out. Most civilians and even soldiers had no idea about the magnitude of the affair. Modern days misunderstanding is that it was the Germans who did it. To be precise, it were the NAZIS who did it...Germany just happened to have the soil, seed and tools for it.

 - The whole affair was to remain hidden without a certain circle of people, - not so many were supposed to know about it.

 - The whole thing happened quite recently and was carried out within the borders of one of the worlds most advanced countries.
I am talking about literacy, science etc.

And to end this, here is something.
There is a wave of racial extremities swinging through Europe now. The Nazi banner is flying again, carried largely by "innocent" and "ignorant" youngsters. I think it is the duty of educated and enlightened people to give them a very recent and relevant message about the truth and history of the business rather than complicating it with the "relatively similar Assyrian (etc.) massacres"
There is no excuse for things like that!

[babek-]

Now thats the problem:

For you the crimes done by the national Socialist german Reich is an outstanding event.

For me its only one of many historical perversity in a long row of crimes which have been done by humans before and which have been done after WW2.
I condemn them all and I value them all in the same level.

Its not important which group has been condemned to be eliminated - the fact that some people are condemned to death only because they are of another race, behavior, skin-color or religion is the true crime.

For example: The National Socialist killed the homosexuals because they were defined by them as perverts.
So - like the jews - it was not necessary to be member of a nation to become a victim.
These victims - jews like homosexuals - were surely equally integrated in their societiers - but they become targets.

This happened in history before - like the Hugenot-killings in France where they were wiped out and the survivors forced to flee throughout Europe.

Ans also the propaganda was used before and after the WW2 to justify the killing of other people.

Lets again go to the past:
During the crusades the non-christians were defined in 1095 by Pope Urban II as subhumans - so there was a legitimation to kill them.
In the next centuries throughout Europe a great propaganda machine was started to raise the feelings of the people in order to mobilize them.
There were paintings - shown in churches how the muslims were butchering christians in the holy land, replacing the christian sacred symbols with theirs in the churches and how they relieved nature (I have this from the dictonary and hope its right) within churches.
And even other nations long before the Middle Age had their very effective propaganda-machines.

Its undeniable that the Propaganda of Mr. Goebbels had a totally new "quality". He used all the techniques and possibilities his "civilisation" offered him. But there is no difference between the Middle Age painter who wants to raise the feeling of people and the speaches and false documentations of the National Socialist Germany.
They used their possibilities - thats all.

Also the argument that only few elite people know the truth is not an outstanding or new thing. It has always been in history that few were hiding the truth from the rest of their people and manipulated them to do incredible crimes.
Again - this was not a new thing invented by the National Socialists of the Reich.

So the German-Reich criminals and their crimes against the homosexuals, the jews, the slaw-people, the gyppsies, the communists and whoever was their target are only one fragment in a great and ugly picture of criminal actions done by regimes during human history.

To make more of them would means to honor them - and that would be a great mistake.
They were just criminals - like so many before and after in history - who used their abilities to kill others.

The fact that they were very capable in organising their killings and the numbers of their victims is - from the historical point of view - irrelevant.

So - we should try to remember all these criminal and inhuman acts of history - not only the deeds of National Socialist Germany.

And we should also not forget that not only jews were killed by them - but also other ethnical groups and people who had a different behavior like the homosexuals.

The sentence that those who forget history are condemned to
repeat it, is damned right.

We see the results of this ignorance right now:
Today there are new regimes acting like the inhuman-regimes of history.
And I fear that there will be all the time such inhumans, who make their crimes.

[SageFIN]

Angus, my point is that I'm not exactly convinced that it is a good idea to separate the holocaust from all the other systematic mass murders. If one looks hard enough, they all look different, or perhaps they look just alike.

I just think that when one does separate one from the others, the all the other killings somehow go unnoticed and unspoken of. And yet the history of mankind is irritably full of similar incidents, a thing that might go unnoticed by many. This is my point of view, feel free to prove otherwise.

[streakeagle]

Our country is too quick to point the finger at Hitler and Stalin on ethnic cleansing issues as if it was beyond our capacity to even coceive of such crimes much less commit them. Sadly, Hitler may have been inspired on how to handle the Jews by the way the US handled its Indian populations (native Americans for those PC types out there).

[Romeoman]

I think Babek and Angus are talking from different points of view: Babek is holding every historic act to his own moral standards, while Angus takes a less absolute approach.

It is really not fair to take events that occured for more than 150-200 years ago and judge them with our moral standards. These standards have changed a lot over the centuries (the exact reasons for that are extremely complex and not worth debating here anyway).

What to us may seem a repugnant, devious practice that only "evil" people could engage in might at one time have been the unquestioned right of the conqueror, something to write home and brag about. I say might, as there is EXTREMELY little we know about these (200+ years ago) people's mindsets: we know a lot about their material culture (from archaeological evidence), some of their political history and very little about the way they were thinking.

No one can say for sure how Romans felt about gladiators. There is evidence that suggests that large parts of the population regularly attended the games (like the practice of emperors of organizing such gladiator evends for the purpose of appeasing the plaebeii (commoners)). However, what we cannot conclude is that all Romans going to the circus and watching slaves fight for their lives were "evil", just because engaging in such activities in our timeframe would be outrageous. They were men and women of their time and society and they acted accordingly.

In the same fashion, judging the Assyrians for their actions (which are far from well known historical facts, mostly established by way of archaeological "evidence", which is circumstantial to say the least) against the Elamites is somewhat unjust. They were children of their time, and who are we to assume we know enough about the society they were living in to condemn them?

However, when it comes to recent attrocities, the point of view is drastically changed. We can and do relate to the people involved in the events discussed. Some of them are still alive (like my grandmother, at one point "guest" in a work camp), and they don't differ much from us in the department of moral standards. So we can, with some degree of accuracy, try and understand what it was like, on both sides. Thus, we can hold them accountable to our own moral values. This is not true of older events, as you cannot possibly hope to imagine what it was like being either a Mongol soldier slaughtering the inhabitants of Bukhara or his victim, for instance. They are too far removed from our cultural and moral context.

You could establish a fixed set of moral "rules" and judging every event in the history based upon that, but it would be utterly irrelevant , as these "rules" would inevitably have to be based on one timeframe only, thus being unjust to every one not living during that period.

Returning to the topic at hand, the Holocaust was considered to be something morally repugnant even by the ones committing it. Otherwise, they would not have tried to cover it up. Goebbels propaganda might have diminished understanding and simpathy for jews, but it could never justify such an attrocity. There is no doubt in my mind that a wide majority of the Germans would have opposed the mass-killings had they been publicly aknowledged (in news reels for example, the normal way of announcing an achievement the government was actually proud of) instead of being merely an underground rumour.

Well, I did not really intend to write this much, but it just got me thinking. My .2 denars anyway.

[babek-]

Originally posted by Romeoman
In the same fashion, judging the Assyrians for their actions (which are far from well known historical facts, mostly established by way of archaeological "evidence", which is circumstantial to say the least) against the Elamites is somewhat unjust. They were children of their time, and who are we to assume we know enough about the society they were living in to condemn them?
 

I agree with many parts of your mail, but the above part is dangerous.

Would it be acceptable if in the year 4000 people say "They were children of their time, and who are we to assume we know enough about the society they were living in to condemn them?" when they speak about the crimes of the National Socialists against the homosexuals, jews and other minorities they butchered?

With the historical links I wanted to show that since the beginning of human civilisation nearly every single culture and nation had phases where they made incredible crimes to minorities or social defined outcasts of their society.

The problem is that often people want to value these crimes.
But they are ALL pervert.

I consider it equally pervert that black people were transported over decades in well organized shipments from Africa to the slave plantages of America  with all the pain and losses during the transports and the slavery for the rest of their life as I consider the barbarism of Nation Socialist Germany.

The real problem is that there is no end of these crimes.
The downfall of the German Reich has not ended these perversities - even today they happen.

And this is a fact which troubles me: That humans could be so pervert to other humans and havent changed in their intentions during 1000nds of years...

[Angus]

Babek:
"The real problem is that there is no end of these crimes.
The downfall of the German Reich has not ended these perversities - even today they happen. "

Yup, you are right. But less of it will happen if we keep up the work. We should not let these things happen, and especially in our enligtened and educated modern societies where it gets continuously harder to hide things like that.
So, what I am saying is that we should not let neo nazis have their way to "brainwash" our young ones with roadkill like "the Holocaust was a fake" or even "the Holocaust was nothing new"!!