You are assuming the Germans did try to kill them all. Can you show me evidence that this is true?
Well, the result speaks volumes.
Is there one historical shred of evidence of Hitler ever saying or ordering all the Jews to be killed?
Sure. Read "Mein Kampf" or transcripts of his early speeches in which he states the extermination of the Jews as his goal.
I think Hitler wanted the Jews out of German society so he tried to deport them to other countries then to camps. Keeping Jews in camps was a big drain on resources so I don't think Hitler really wanted to do that except for cheap labor for war industries. Keep in mind when wars go bad food becomes scarce, at times like that you feed your soldiers and don't care so much about your prisoners. Thats just the way it is, which is probably why so many Jews and other prisoners starved.
We are not talking about those who starved, in the first place, but about those who fell victim to organized mass killings in the gas ovens. Your wording "don´t care so much" is a euphemism if there ever was one. This was a huge enterprise and required quite some logistics and effort.
It is true that the camps didn´t turn into camps dedicated to organized mass extermination until probably 1941. So? This isn´t new information for me and has already been part of my perspective. It´s not a secret, and it isn´t kept from our history books.
You make it sound like incarcarating and deporting people for nothing but ethnical reasons was just a minor issue. For me it´s already bad enough.
The war that´s gone bad as you brought up in an attempt to add a new perspective was a war that - according to Hitler himself - had the eradication of the "Weltjudentum" for a goal.
I find it disturbing that you feel that the failing of an aggressive war Hitler had started puts the Holocaust in perspective. For me those two things add up rather than take away from each other.
Sure, he declared a lot of people, groups and nations his enemies and attacked them aggressively. That´s a bad thing in itself, and in my value system the failure of one wrongdoing doesn´t justify (or put in perspective) the wrongdoing (or the climax) of another wrongdoing, especially when the two pursue partly the same purposes.
It might even be why a million or so German soldiers starved in fields after WWII. Did you read about that holocost?
Abusing words doesn´t help your position.
The fact that the Nazis didn´t even care for their own soldiers and in the end even sent young boys and old men as cannonfodder into an already lost war is another terrible fact about the Nazi-regime.
I don´t know how you manage to interprete that as putting "the Holocaust in perspective" - to me all these things add up to a picture of a regime that doesn´t care for anybody, but only for its terrible doctrine.
Bottom line: Nothing of what you say here is new. Everything you say here does appear in history as taught in our schools. Everything you bring up has already been part of my perspective.
I don´t see anything in your post that is designed to put the opinion "the Holocaust was a terrible crime against humankind" in perspective.
After the war Jews got a handle on telling the story since they own publishing houses and news media, try to find a network news story critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians today. Predictably they used it as a shield against criticisms of them. I know several Jewish crooks who took a vacation to Israel and myseriously 'died' while there. In such cases the body never seems to get shipped back to the states. I think the holocost has been blown out of proportion and used as a hammer to beat people over the head with who criticize Israel and, or Jewish people.
Yet, you apparently can´t provide any information that is not taught in our history books and taught in our school.
The proportion of the Holocaust: about six million people have died (left to starvation or - in the majority of the cases - intentionally led into a gigantic extermination machinery) in the camps. I fail to see how that is a proportion that needs to be blown out of in order to realize how horrible this part of history was. This proportion is beyond imagination already as it is.
Add to that the millions of victims of the war, and the perspective is stabilized rather than changed.
I agree fully that using the Holocaust as a means to silence down the criticism of Israel or the strategies of Jewish organizations (whenever they need to be criticized) is a disingenious strategy.
I happen to have plenty of first hand experiences with that - I happen to be German, after all. I do criticize Israel, and I know that this earns you the "antisemitism" reproach, on a regular basis, particularly if you are German. In my opinion Semitism is racism just as the idea of Arian supremacy is.
But that´s a different topic altogether. It doesn´t put the Holocaust in any new perspective, and it doesn´t change anything about the proportions or dimensions of the Holocaust. I´d also like to remind us of that which I have emphasized earlier in this thread: Jews were not the only target group of the Holocaust.
And with that I bid you farewell. I have said what I think needs to be said. Unless you come up with some really new and relevant information I´ll leave it to somebody else who has more patience than me to deal with your absurd idea that there´s something that will put the Holocaust in perspective. Your ethical ideas and standards are not compatibel with mine.
