Jews don’t lie about the holocaust.

[brinny]

I am not much of a one for sweeping generalisations of any kind. No doubt most Jewish people are decent, honest people, and do not lie about anything. No doubt others, for whatever reason, would not know the truth if they tripped over it. The Jews are no different in this from any other race.

As for the holocaust, there is a huge difference between telling a lie and telling the truth. I doubt there is one single person on earth who could tell the truth about the holocaust, because it is known only to God.

So most of us, whatever our faith, whatever our race, fall somewhere between the lie and the truth, and struggle with whatever bit of reality we have managed to grasp.

But there has certainly been genocide worse than the holocaust since the second world war. Russia for one, China for another. The difference was, they mostly killed their own, and the world mostly has no alternative but to tolerate that.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

Have you heard of Corrie Ten Boom or Oskar Schindler or Anne Frank? Have you heard of Hitler? Have you heard of the death camps, the gas chambers. the Holocaust Memorial, or the survivors of the holocaust, still living today?

 

[GryffinSong]

Denial of the holocaust is one of the most peculiar phenomenons I've ever heard of. In addition to the mass killing of jews, there were Romani (gypsies), gays, blacks, and more destroyed in Nazi Germany. There are plenty of people who survived to tell the tale, plenty of photographs from that time, and plenty of writings from that time, that to deny it is to deny reality itself. It boggles my mind.

And the scariest thing, to me, is that history does tend to repeat itself when its ignored. I don't trust that it couldn't happen again. I HOPE it couldn't.

 

[Beanieboy]

Is this post intended to be set to music?

I was thinking more like rap.

I had my students do presentations about Conspiracy Theories, trying to convince the class that man didn't land on the moon in 69, that 9/11 was an inside job, etc. One brave student asked if she could talk about the Conspiracy of the Holocaust. She was afraid that it would offend people. I told her that it would most assuredly push buttons, but that I have never seen a presentation on Holocaust denial, so I would be interested to see what the evidence was. It wasn't full out denial. It was claiming that the Holocaust was exaggerated, and then explained that Auschwitz is used as a tourist attraction, calculated the amount of people that could fit in a concentration camp, etc. She also suggested that in a time of anti-Semitism (remember, the US turned away fleeing Jews), it was used to gain sympathy.

It was compelling.
However, having walked through the Holocaust Musuem, with film footage of charred children, people in ice, conveyer belts of limbs, and men standing on piles of dead Jews, I left 4 hours later with my boyfriend. We didn't speak for about 3 hours afterward.

Like when you see the pictures of Abu Ghraib, it's hard to tell yourself that we are the good guys. Going to the gym, and seeing Muslim men shower in their swimsuit (because they are not to be naked around anyone other than their wife), I had to wonder - what happens to you to think that was good? That was ok? To give a thumbs up? And if that is one that somehow leaked, how much of it goes on? How much killing of civilians happen if this is the humility and disregard they have for prisoners, who they no longer see as people, but objects of ridicule and torture, without remorse?

It's hard to accept that we humans are capable of such heinous things. It's disturbing to think of the man who kidnaps, rapes, and kills a child, or the guy who kept his children in his basement for 25 years. One's soul has to really harden to be able to go to such a dark place, and it's frightening to know that while man is capable of doing wonderful, beautiful things, he is also capable of the most destructive and disturbing as well. It scares us to know that we are capable of that.

 

[Catherineanne]

Have you heard of Corrie Ten Boom or Oskar Schindler or Anne Frank? Have you heard of Hitler? Have you heard of the death camps, the gas chambers. the Holocaust Memorial, or the survivors of the holocaust, still living today?

I am not sure what exactly your point is. I have denied none of these. My point was not to slight what happened, but to point out that genocide has continued, and is continuing, and that the holocaust, appalling as it was, is not an isolated evil, beyond anything else anywhere.

Mao is responsible for up to 72 million dead, mostly Chinese, so he got away with it. Stalin for anything up to 250 million, mostly Soviets, so he too got away with it. And, as with Hitler, the dead include people of many different faiths; men, women and children.

In such circumstances, evil is not a relative, but an absolute. We cannot say that Hitler is less evil than Mao, or Mao than Stalin. All such episodes are equally to be mourned, and equally to be remembered. But we cannot say never again because genocide has not ever stopped.

What we find evidenced in history is that oppressed people are more likely to oppress others in their turn than turn the other cheek. And neither the former Soviets, the Chinese nor the Jewish people/Israel, nor any other people who have suffered oppression, now have the right to oppress anyone else because of what happened to them. To do so is, imo, to dishonour those who died. China's current oppression of Tibet, inter alia, dishonours those who died in the Cultural Revolution. And there are other examples.

 

[Catherineanne]

Only God knows the truth about the holocaust? It wasn't that long ago... quite a few can and do provide truthful information about the holocaust. Do you have some different truth in mind?

Not at all. Why is this thread so aggressive?

If you can honestly get your mind around 6 million lives taken away in such a brutal fashion, then you are doing better than I am. This is why any film, any book, any representation has to show a select few from those millions, to give us any idea at all. But any idea at all is nothing like the full reality, because we cannot hold the reality.

This is why only God can know the full truth; he is the only one who knows every story, heard every prayer, and saw every single tear. The rest of us, in comparison, know nothing.

 

[Catherineanne]

Some people are just ignorant, I suppose, or plain hateful and nothing more productive to do with their time. Don't worry about it. Most everybody knows the truth and the ones who don't haven't got any power to do anything about it anyway.

You have heard, but you have not understood.

But even you, who in your misunderstanding can nonetheless blithely judge who is ignorant and who is not, do not know the truth, as God knows it.

 

[wanderingone]

Not at all. Why is this thread so aggressive?

If you can honestly get your mind around 6 million lives taken away in such a brutal fashion, then you are doing better than I am. This is why any film, any book, any representation has to show a select few from those millions, to give us any idea at all. But any idea at all is nothing like the full reality, because we cannot hold the reality.

This is why only God can know the full truth; he is the only one who knows every story, heard every prayer, and saw every single tear. The rest of us, in comparison, know nothing.

I'm sorry if you viewed it as aggressive,- your language was not clear hence my question, the suggestion that we don't know the truth lets everyone off the hook for the fact that we keep repeating (before and after) such events.

One does not need to know each individual situation to know what atrocities occurred and to see how such things occur. Of course I can get my mind around it. It's why I know the small difficulties I've encountered in my life are like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk- the world moves on and my small problems - embarrassing in the face of such things. When I worked with refugees from Rwanda I found it much more amazing that people get up and move on after they have been the victim of gang rape, mutilation and psychological horror watching their children and spouses killed and tortured in front of them. That the atrocities happened, no real shock.. I wish it was shocking.

 

[wanderingone]

Some people are just ignorant, I suppose, or plain hateful and nothing more productive to do with their time. Don't worry about it. Most everybody knows the truth and the ones who don't haven't got any power to do anything about it anyway.

While I wouldn't suggest one spend all their productive time worrying over people who deny the holocaust it is important to pay some attention to their tales - they do have an impact, particular on vulnerable young minds the logic of deniers is not different than the logic of those who follow along with those who draft genocidal plans.

 

[feral]

You have heard, but you have not understood.

But even you, who in your misunderstanding can nonetheless blithely judge who is ignorant and who is not, do not know the truth, as God knows it.

Care to explain yourself?

Yes, I can judge ignorance when it stares me in the face. Someone who, in spite of the overwhelming physical and testimonial evidence, denies the holocaust, is ignorant. Maybe naively so, unaware of the evidence, maybe defiantly so, out of personal hatreds and prejudices -- but it does not take an exceptional amount of debating to determine that people who deny facts are ignorant. I would never claim to know everything there is to know about the world, and certainly not about the holocaust. I will, however, state unapologetically that people who deny that it occurred are in the same boat as the flat earthers and people who wear tinfoil hats to keep out alien transmissions. If you think differently you're entitled to you opinion; there's mine.

While I wouldn't suggest one spend all their productive time worrying over people who deny the holocaust it is important to pay some attention to their tales - they do have an impact, particular on vulnerable young minds the logic of deniers is not different than the logic of those who follow along with those who draft genocidal plans.

That's a really excellent point and I'm glad you mentioned it to me. I wasn't thinking about that aspect when I wrote my post; mostly I was just thinking about the basement conspiracy theorists who everyone already knows are off their rockers. But you're right.

 

[brinny]

Originally Posted by brinny
Have you heard of Corrie Ten Boom or Oskar Schindler or Anne Frank? Have you heard of Hitler? Have you heard of the death camps, the gas chambers. the Holocaust Memorial, or the survivors of the holocaust, still living today?

I am not sure what exactly your point is. I have denied none of these. My point was not to slight what happened, but to point out that genocide has continued, and is continuing, and that the holocaust, appalling as it was, is not an isolated evil, beyond anything else anywhere.

Mao is responsible for up to 72 million dead, mostly Chinese, so he got away with it. Stalin for anything up to 250 million, mostly Soviets, so he too got away with it. And, as with Hitler, the dead include people of many different faiths; men, women and children.

In such circumstances, evil is not a relative, but an absolute. We cannot say that Hitler is less evil than Mao, or Mao than Stalin. All such episodes are equally to be mourned, and equally to be remembered. But we cannot say never again because genocide has not ever stopped.

What we find evidenced in history is that oppressed people are more likely to oppress others in their turn than turn the other cheek. And neither the former Soviets, the Chinese nor the Jewish people/Israel, nor any other people who have suffered oppression, now have the right to oppress anyone else because of what happened to them. To do so is, imo, to dishonour those who died. China's current oppression of Tibet, inter alia, dishonours those who died in the Cultural Revolution. And there are other examples.

This thread is about the holocaust.

 

[Catherineanne]

This thread is about the holocaust.

Not so. This thread is about lying, denial and half truth.

Of which there is much in evidence.

 

[Bombila]

Not at all. Why is this thread so aggressive?

If you can honestly get your mind around 6 million lives taken away in such a brutal fashion, then you are doing better than I am. This is why any film, any book, any representation has to show a select few from those millions, to give us any idea at all. But any idea at all is nothing like the full reality, because we cannot hold the reality.

This is why only God can know the full truth; he is the only one who knows every story, heard every prayer, and saw every single tear. The rest of us, in comparison, know nothing.

It's aggressive because it is a horrifying subject, and although I think I understand what you are trying to convey, your method of explaining has several times almost sounded like the rhetoric of those who deny the Holocaust happened, or that it was exaggerated. Even with this post, you have finished by veiling your meaning with this phrase: "only God can know the full truth", which some might rightly misconstrue.

There is a difference, in fact, between the mass homicides caused by Mao and Stalin and those committed by Hitler's Nazi regime. In China and Russia, the causes of Communism's successes and excesses can be related to rebellion and later ideology, and those crimes were mostly committed without regard to the ethnic or racial ancestry of the people killed. The Nazis, however, meant to commit total genocide upon several distinct groups of people, including the Jews and the Romany, which even if fewer or the same number of human deaths are involved, is almost universally considered the greater crime, as it is intended deliberately to make an entire people extinct. Rwanda is perhaps the most horrifying example of our time. I would hope you can understand this difference.

 

[Catherineanne]

I'm sorry if you viewed it as aggressive,- your language was not clear hence my question, the suggestion that we don't know the truth lets everyone off the hook for the fact that we keep repeating (before and after) such events.

I did not say anything about letting anyone off any hook. You assumed that for yourself, along with much of your spurious interpretation of what I said. There was nothing in my words to say any of that nonsense.

I would advise any of those who blithely cast accusations of holocaust denier to check their facts rather more carefully before making such serious charges.

If the language is unclear, ask a question. Don't just condemn out of hand. Such condemnation says nothing about the accused, and everything about the intolerance of the accuser.

 

[Catherineanne]

It's aggressive because it is a horrifying subject, and although I think I understand what you are trying to convey, your method of explaining has several times almost sounded like the rhetoric of those who deny the Holocaust happened, or that it was exaggerated. Even with this post, you have finished by veiling your meaning with this phrase: "only God can know the full truth", which some might rightly misconstrue.

Nonsense. You would have to misunderstand me to read what I have said, in full, and take that point of view.

Either that or someone deliberately trying to stir up discord.

There is a difference, in fact, between the mass homicides caused by Mao and Stalin and those committed by Hitler's Nazi regime.

Understand, yes. Agree, no.

You are attempting to grade evil. I have already said that evil in relation to genocide is an absolute, not a comparative.

Therefore I reject your attempt to make Hitler worse than Mao or Stalin. Their murderous activities are equally, and absolutely, evil.

 

[Bombila]

Nonsense. You would have to misunderstand me to read what I have said, in full, and take that point of view.

Either that or someone deliberately trying to stir up discord.




Understand, yes. Agree, no.

You are attempting to grade evil. I have already said that evil in relation to genocide is an absolute, not a comparative.

Therefore I reject your attempt to make Hitler worse than Mao or Stalin. Their murderous activities are equally, and absolutely, evil.

I'm fully sanguine about your disagreeing with me, even though I really was attempting to let you know how easily you could be misjudged.

And you apparently still do not grasp the meaning of genocide.

 

[brinny]

Originally Posted by brinny
This thread is about the holocaust.

Not so. This thread is about lying, denial and half truth.

Of which there is much in evidence.

Evidence of what? Are you saying that there is much evidence that Lying, denial, and half-truths are what is generating from holocaust survivors and what they are saying about their experiences?

 

[Catherineanne]

Evidence of what? Are you saying that there is much evidence that Lying, denial, and half-truths are what is generating from holocaust survivors and what they are saying about their experiences?

Is that what you read from my posts?

Lord, have mercy.

 

[EvangelicalChristian]

I have to admit Catherineanne I was confused by your posts as well.

 

[EvangelicalChristian]

Friends why the need for animosity?

Catherineanne can you explain perhaps in a different manner your position? I'm not looking for fault I'm just confused by your comments.

 

[Catherineanne]

Friends why the need for animosity?

Catherineanne can you explain perhaps in a different manner your position? I'm not looking for fault I'm just confused by your comments.

I think if I say anything else it will only get worse. I have said nothing to deserve such animosity, and yet on all sides I seem to have become a target, and regarded as denying the holocaust. I have never done such a thing, nor even implied such a thing.

If anything in particular is confusing, tell me and I can explain further. But I am at a loss to know how I can have been misunderstood, if anyone reads what I have actually said, and not what they think, assume or imagine I have said.

Personally, I think the best thing is for me to go away from this thread for a while and let the dust settle. It is far too heated and emotional at present, and some of the comments and assumptions made have not been a good witness to our faith.