Holocausts
By D.A. Davis
The number of holocausts that have occurred in the past 100 years is incredible and the body count is astronomical. What is especially troubling is that many Catholic laymen and clergy are uninformed about the suffering, persecutions, massacres, and martyrdom that Catholics and other Christians have endured in recent history.
When I ask fellow Catholics if they are aware that an estimated five million Christian noncombatants were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, I usually receive a blank stare. Many Catholics are also unaware that saints such as Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe were canonized after being killed in Nazi death camps. Additionally, most Christians don’t stop to consider that tens of millions of Christian soldiers died fighting to crush Nazism.
IF this does not belong here, please move to the correct forum
Christians, especially Catholics, were also targeted by Hitler during WWII because he also perceived them as a threat.Hi Wander__,
I have read your reference.
The fact that Christians are killed does not necessarily mean that they are killed because of their Christian identity. You are right in saying that millions of Ukrainians and other Soviet citizens were killed, starved in fact, because they resisted collectivization. Christian soldiers going to war were not killed by the Nazis because they were Christians.
This is not to say that we should not be aware of those who have been, or are being, persecuted for their faith, notably in China and in some Muslim areas. But we lose credibility when we claim that every Christian who dies violently is suffering for his/her faith.
On the other hand, Jews were specifically singled out for annihilation by the Nazis. Not, however, for religious reasons, but for racist reasons.
Verbum
The distinctiveness of the Nazi holocaust can be found in the extensive use of science and technology (in the most technologically advanced nation in the world; and, some would say, one of the most “Christian” nations in the world) for the purposes of an ethnically based extermination imbued with deicidic and supersessionist overtones.Christians, especially Catholics, were also targeted by Hitler during WWII because he also perceived them as a threat.
Stalin, Mao, and the Communists targeted all people of faith (especially Catholics) because they also saw them as a threat to their atheistic utopia. The was especially true in Mexico where the purge there actually happened before Russia. It was the first Marxist purge.
The Turkish Armenian Holocaust was also a specifically targeted holocaust.
I tend to think that the Jewish nation as a whole has been invited by Christ himself to participate in his suffering whether they want to participate in this suffering or not.The word “holocaust” comes from Greek words meaning “whole burnt offering in sacrifice.”
Question: To whom was the sacrifice offered?
To God? The very idea is blasphemous.
To the devil? Not much better.
In Hitler’s perverted worldview, race determined everything – including ideology. He hated Jewish religion and blamed it on the supposed inferiority of their race. By extension, Catholicism was also hated because its of its close relationship to Judaism. Many Polish Catholic priests and religious were murdered because of the danger they posed to Nazi ideology. In Poland, the Catholic intelligencia was virtually wiped out. Gain some insight here:The fact that Christians are killed does not necessarily mean that they are killed because of their Christian identity. … But we lose credibility when we claim that every Christian who dies violently is suffering for his/her faith.
On the other hand, Jews were specifically singled out for annihilation by the Nazis. Not, however, for religious reasons, but for racist reasons.