Grand Moff Tarkin wrote: » The Russian people had a higher death count than the Jewish people and there is not nearly half the drama made out of it.
Clandestine wrote: » You can go to prison for questioning the holocaust in several countries. The fact that a person can go to prison for expressing an opinion is disturbing to say the least.
old hippy wrote: » Who's making "a drama" out of it?
Augmerson wrote: » I don't think it's frowned upon to question the Holocaust but to deny it altogether is just shockingly bad form. I will say this though, and maybe risk getting banned or something, but in the history books and documentary and newspaper articles I've read throughout the years, there seems to be a sort of monopoly of tragedy growing towards the Jews. What I mean by this is, there were over 6 million Jews, political dissidents, Homosexuals, Gypsies and others who were murdered systematically at the hands of the Third Reich. Over the years though, I've noticed that some people or newspapers or tv shows just say 6 million Jews. I honestly do not want to let it seem that it isn't a tragedy - that is a staggering loss of life in the cruelest way - be it 1 million or 100 people - but that the Jews weren't alone, and maybe we should try and remember the others who were lost too.
old hippy wrote: » Nail on the head. And I'm pretty sure some of the posters on those sort of threads aren't joking. They talk about "scumbags" ironically believing that advocating sterilising an entire swathe of people is somehow progress and elightenment
Australia's figures are astounding because there have been over one thousand cases since 1992 (Yamaguchi, 1997).
hatrickpatrick wrote: » In my view it's perfectly healthy to question history and absolutely should not be regarded as evidence of racism or any other such bullsh!t. History is there to be investigated and questioned. Personally I don't doubt that the Nazis did in fact have concentration camps in which they killed millions of people. But I have some doubts specifically about the gas chambers, simply because all of them were apparently blown up as the Allies were advancing - when people go to Auschwitz, they're actually looking at a reconstruction of what a gas chamber might have looked like. So in terms of hard evidence specifically for gas chambers, I'd question that. Testimony from people at the Nuremberg Trials could very easily have been coerced given how appallingly we know both armies behaved when it came to POWs. I'm not even suggesting that gas chambers weren't used as a method of execution, I'm simply saying that there's actually no first hand evidence for their existence - it's all based on witness testimony rather than on the hard fact of actually finding an intact gas chamber. I personally reckon it's more likely that people in concentration camps were used as slave labour until they died from overwork, malnutrition, disease, etc. I mean if you think about it, why kill six million people directly when you could be using them to augment your military-industrial complex instead? Six million people could build an absolute f*ckload of artillery which would otherwise probably bankrupt the country, so for me the idea of directly executing all those people instead of exploiting them has always seemed a bit bizarre. Of course, this makes me an anti semite who thinks all Jews should die, all disabled people should be sterilized and Germany should reign supreme over the entire planet. Because, y'know, "zomg questioning history". :rolleyes:
Wibbs wrote: » ... He told me he knew it was so wrong, just like hating any group is, but he had to focus on that, because what he realised was that we are all but a cold hungry week away from commiting "evil" and it doesn't even require a cold hungry week to get there and it was easier to reconcile that by saying "oh those X bastards would do that, but I/we wouldn't". That made him sleep easier, but he was also cursed with knowing why..... .
Rascasse wrote: » It's also worth clarifying the distinction between 'concentration camps' that existed in South Africa and elsewhere and the extermination camps that were created to murder Jews and gypsies, etc during the war. While many died in the concentration camps in SA it was a product of maladministration and disease and not due to policy or design. Whereas, the Nazi's extermination camps were created to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Completely different things even though most people refer to all of them as simply 'concentration camps'.
Rascasse wrote: » Regarding the numbers, I'm all for having a debate about things but at this point I don't think the total can really be challenged. Various people have tried to work it out and there seems to be a consensus around the 5 to 6 millions figure. Most people who argue a number substantially lower are either pushing a rather unpleasant agenda or are complete nutters (often both).
jank wrote: » That is an excellant post and an excellant line. It is within us all given the right environment and circumstances to be the SS gaurd at the gates or the prisoner behind the barbed wire. People too easily forget this I feel.
sunflower27 wrote: » We didn't have photoshop back then, that is all you need to know.
theSHU wrote: » http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=85918310&postcount=11
humanji wrote: » Just to point out, they weren't banned for questioning the holocaust, they were banned for continually trolling the forum.
HansHolzel wrote: » You are not allowed to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre either.
Wibbs wrote: » It's all about perspective and how "local" things are too. Few enough would know of the horrors the Japanese perpetrated on the Chinese in the same world war, where up to 20 million Chinese people were killed.
wes wrote: » 6 millions Jews died during the Holocaust The other groups are not included in that figure. The next largest groups to be murdered were the Roma, with estimates of deaths up to 1.5 million:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos
"Every 4th Belarusian died in the war: 2.2 million people, including the 380,000 deported to Germany as slave labourers, never to return. A staggering 209 cities and townships and 9,200 villages were destroyed. So catastrophic was the impact on the population that it wouldn't recover to its pre-war total until 1971.
Wibbs wrote: » An example I mentioned earlier would fall into the latter category. One million German men never came home after the war was won and hostilities had officially ended. Many of those died of exposure, starvation and by more direct means, often in camps previously used by the old regime. The "good guys" oversaw this. ... It's all about perspective and how "local" things are too. Few enough would know of the horrors the Japanese perpetrated on the Chinese in the same world war, where up to 20 million Chinese people were killed. Humans are a funny old lot.
Seaneh wrote: » The Holocaust happened, and 5-6 million Jews, 1-2 million Roma and a few million "others" were killed, it's a near unfathomable reality and something we should never forget. But in the last 30 or 40 years, certain groups and individuals have made it into a sacred cow, something you can't even talk about and something they use to their own profit. People like Norman Finkelstein, in his books "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" and "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History" along with the likes of Baruch Kimmerling (professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Benny Morris (professor at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva), Avi Shlaim (Iraqi Born Jewish Israeli citizen, professor at Oxford) have been trying to stop the misuse of Jewish suffering in Europe in the first half of the last century as justification for the actions of Israel since 1948 and fight against the idea that scholarly research of the events around, during and after the Holocaust is somehow to be discouraged. From Wikipedia: "Finkelstein states that his consciousness of "the Nazi holocaust" is rooted in his parents' experiences in the Warsaw ghetto; with the exception of his parents themselves, "every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis". Nonetheless, during his childhood, no one ever asked any questions about what his mother and father had suffered. He suggests, "This was not a respectful silence. It was indifference." It was only after the establishment of "the Holocaust industry", he suggests, that outpourings of anguish over the plight of the Jews in World War II began. This ideology in turn served to endow Israel with a status as "'victim' state" despite its "horrendous" human rights record." The idea being, that AIPAC et al use the suffering of Jews in Europe 80 years ago as some sort of basis for Israel to justify their disgusting actions in the present and anyone who questions Israel is a anti-Semitic Nazi lover and anyone who questions their use of the holocaust as justification for their bigotry is a "denier".
Capt'n Midnight wrote: » Of the 300,000 Germans surounded at Stalingrad , 90,000 lived to surrender and only about 5,000 ever made it home to Germany, some were held into the 1950's. Most who survived were Officers. Low ranks just didn't have a chance. The French tried to use German POW's for slave labour after the war but couldn't because they hadn't been feeding them enough. In terms of deaths WWII was three wars Japan vs. China 1937-45 ( > 22m , US casualties in Pacific 0.384m ) Germany vs. Russia (over 80% of German Army deaths were on the Eastern front ) When it comes to carnage all the other stuff you've heard of was just a sideshow.
jank wrote: » Em, most people don't like Israels actions in the Middle East but you will find many professional 'activists' solely concentrating their efforts on Israel and Israel alone, some go as far as comparing the treatment they dish to the Palestinians as equal to the Nazi's treatment to the Jews which you will agree is absurd. On top of that many are strangely quiet on the treatment of Arab and Persian leaders towards their fellow country men and foreigners. Syria, Iran, Libya and Iraq of old. I have NEVER seen a protest on an Irish street condemning these regimes but a free Palestine protest is all but gauranteed. Left wing hypocrisy at its best.
kingtiger wrote: » why is the Jewish Holocaust always mentioned as the most heinous barbaric act of the 20th century? when the number of victims pales into insignificance to Stalin's "collectivizing" of farms and the engineering of a famine in the Ukraine in the 30ies, which in all fairness was by far the worst atrocity of the 20th Century
Nodin wrote: » ...because a lot of those deaths were incidental, whereas with the holocaust the entire purpose was to kill.
Capt'n Midnight wrote: » In Belarus they did that to 618 villages.https://secure.flickr.com/photos/97924400@N00/4288930110/
kingtiger wrote: » hahaha so the millions of deaths in Stalin's Gulag's where also incidental
kingtiger wrote: » so Nodin "incidental" means Stalin did not intend for 7-10 million (conservative estimate) people to die from extermination by hunger
kingtiger wrote: » oh how about sending his troops into villages to take all the food available and then rounding up all the men and sending them to his Sibrian holiday camps, ah whoops he didn't mean for those lads to die either
