Good gravy. I have set my page view to 100 posts per page, and in the one day since I last read here, it has gone up two pages…
No, the Holocaust did not affect ONLY Jews. I don’t think anyone would say that. Maximilian Kolbe certainly wouldn’t.
The difference is: as far as I know – and has been mentioned earlier – any other group may have been able to “escape” persecution by giving up whatever it was that drew the persecution. Catholic clergy were persecuted – but generally only those that opposed the Reich (high-ranking clergy were given honorary ranks in the SS to get them on board in the early days – when the Nazis seemed to be only right-wing anti-communist nationalists). Obviously one could be Catholic and a member of the Party.
Jehovah’s Witnesses were opposed because the were pacifists. Gays were targeted because they were “anti-social”. The leftists – from moderate trade unionists and social democrats through to dyed-in-the-wool Marxists – were persecuted for political reasons. Most, if not all, could be “rehabilitated” if they eschewed that which made them objectionable. In the case of gays, I seem to recall psychological experiments in Germany to “cure” homosexuality: the fact that this was tried at all indicates a Nazi mentality towards possible assimilation.
In the case of people who were “racially inferior” – e.g. Slavs – one could hope to assimilate or survive, if nothing else as a slave labourer – altho’ I believe the Nazis would target them for eventual elimination.
The difference was that there was no “out” – no way, no where, no how – for Jews. While Slavs may have been seen as little better (or possibly worse) than livestock, the Jews were seen as vermin, suitable only for extermination.
The only “undesirable trait” that could not be expunged, by conversion, or rehabilitation, or “curing”, was Jewishness. The only group that had to wear an identifying badge outside of the camps were the Jews. The only Question for which the Nazis decided a Final Solution was needed was for the Jews.
Even when the war went against the Nazis, and they knew the war was lost, they continued to exterminate Jews – almost with a desperate fervour, as if the end of the war might interrupt their genocide, as if the genocide itself were more important than the Reich itself.
The single-mindedness with which the Nazis carried out their attempt to wipe the Jews – and specifically the Jews – from the face of the earth cannot be disputed. In comparison, the other targets were almost of the level of afterthough. I would wager – and I think it would be a safe one – that if you gathered 100 of any “undesirables” (gays, Slavs, JWs, whatever) on one side and 1 lone Jew on the other, the Nazis would have expended their efforts to destroy the Jew if they only had the one choice.
The Holocaust is not a “Jewish thing” because the Jews made it so – the Nazis made it so. If you were a Jew, there was no escape. Maximilian Kolbe might have been spared if he had kept his head down and not opposed the regime: but conversion couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t save Edith Stein.
I accept the 6,000,000 figure. It has enough attestation & citation to satisfy me. That some experts believe the number may be a
little smaller – I could buy it if I could read the lit. That the number may have been higher, I would not be surprised – it wouldn’t shock me that the Nazis didn’t go on the odd killing spree without keeping notes. But in the tens or hundreds of thousands only? And no gas chambers? I can’t stomach that notion, let alone seriously entertain it.
And my personal opinion is that anyone else who holds to that notion is, to be as charitable as I can be, seriously deluded. And that any sin accrued by adhering to that lie may be mitigated by mental state.
And the numbers of the Jews who died in the Shoah HAS NOTHING TO DO with the Gospel of John, or liars on Oprah, or Israel’s actions in Gaza, or the fact that so many people in the media are named Katzenberg or Cohen.
It ONLY has to do with the fact that they died because they were Jews.
