Talk:The Holocaust: Difference between revisions

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Article protected

I've had the article protected to stop the edit warring over the disputed content being added by User:HanzoHattori. Hanzo, I suggest that you stop trying to revert to the massive changes involved in that single diff, and to present any changes you would like to see made in the article. That diff is not acceptable. I advise going slowly and adding material in a manner that other editors can easily see and view your changes. Your edit summaries continue to be uninformative. This style of editing has been objected to several times and it must cease. There is no consensus for your changes, SlimVirgin and I have both objected to your changes. – Dreadstar † 19:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You? I discussed with you, you stopped objecting and asked for "next step" (no one else joined). You revert to the version which claims Jasenovac was an extermination camp (it wasn't), and Chełmno extermination camp is linked as Chelmno (click them!). And so on. It's just a badly made article. The only thing I thought was above average was the quotes (well done, unlike awkard ones in the Arkan and Iwo Jima articles I removed), and I was impressed by the section about the overall responsibility of Germany, not just the folks in SS and police (een if there's mentioned "government transport offices arranged the trains for deportation to the camps", but not the Deutsche Reichsbahn itself - needs a cleanup and interlinking, too). --HanzoHattori 19:39, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You need to re-read what I wrote, I did not 'stop objecting' and give consensus. Since no consensus was reached, I asked you what you thought the next step should be. I was hoping you would opt for my suggestion to make small edits, slowly implemented, with clear edit summaries; instead you chose to continue your edit war. I don't think reverting back to the version containing your massive and disputed changes is appropriate and I oppose it completely. I suggest you find another way, perhaps taking it up the chain. – Dreadstar † 19:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

What is disputed? Okay, you guy may have all the homosexuals you want in the intro. Yay. I'd go and insert this NOW, but no, protected. So no yay. Anything else? --HanzoHattori 20:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You will need to propose any changes you want to make to the article. Merely re-citing the disputed diff or any other diffs is not appropriate. The article is too long and the diffs are too massive to easily review. I also think comments such as the above stretch WP:CIV, and make it more difficult to gain the cooperation of other editors. – Dreadstar † 20:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Dreadstar, for slowing this thing down. This is the second time I had to wade my way through a huge number of small edits, done seconds apart. It is not conducive to a reflective response. --Joel Mc 20:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Estimates of Holocaust deaths

This starts out as a question for User:Stephan Schulz about a comment that he made on Talk:Holocaust denial but I am placing it here as being more appropriate to this Talk Page than to that one.

On Talk:Holocaust denial, User:Stephan Schulz commented that estimates of Holocaust deaths range from 5.1 million to "somewhat beyond 6 million". In my very cursory review of Google results, I've only seen estimates ranging from 5.1 million to 5.9 million. I'm curious what estimates there that are beyond 6 million.

And, yes, I realize that this a hugely inexact science. Nonetheless, I think it is worthwhile to understand what the differences are between estimates. So far, I have only seen two kinds of estimates: one that goes country by country based on a "estimated percentage killed" and another which provides total deaths in concentration camps.

I'm sure the people who have conducted these estimates have been very thorough and have methodologies which have been both defended and criticized. Any links to online resources in this regard would be much appreciated.

I would like to see a more in-depth treatment of these studies and their methodologies. (The underlying agenda being to lay out the numerical case against Holocaust deniers such as Igor the Otter.)

--Richard 17:27, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

No one will ever know the correct number of victims. Eichmann himself, who supervised the Final Solution, and presumably received the best available reports, claimed the number was 6 million, and this appears to be the most commonly used 'ballpark' number.[1] Our job is to state the views of the most reputable scholarly sources on this topic, which we already do in the article. There is no point in having prolonged discussions about this issue – if someone has a better source, that can add additional insight into this topic, then go ahead and supply it. Otherwise, idle speculations and original research don't belong here. Crum375 18:01, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

...in particular, since there are many different definitions of "Jew", and for many victims it will be hard to retroactively decide if they fulfilled each or any of those. But for Richard: The Holocaust article has estimates up to 6.2 million. But, if I may: Don't lay out "the numerical case against Holocaust deniers". At best they will ignore you, at worst they will try to pick minor discrepancies and generate a lot of hot air from them. The evidence for the Holocaust is overwhelming. There is no need to elevate the deniers position by arguing on their turf. --Stephan Schulz 22:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Sources

The "Climax" section (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words as well--please think these things through) contains no citations sourcing its content even though it purports to provide a quotation (that is, in an actual "quotation box") of Himmler's which comes "closer than ever before to stating explicitly that he was intent on exterminating the Jews of Europe". It seems to me that the assertions made in the section are significant and need to be cited or else this constitutes OR. Further anything in quotation marks, especially anything that has been translated from a foreign language and so is not a strict quotation, warrants special attribution. The footnote numeration jumps from 138 to 141 on either end of this section, so I'm not sure if there was some kind of editing error here. I'd like to throw in a "citation needed" flag but, alas, the administrators in their wisdom have locked the article. Perhaps one of them, SlimVirgin for example, could flag the section on my behalf.

The article is locked, but in the meanwhile, here are some sources for Himmler's Posen speech:

• holocaust-history.org
• historyplace.com
• nizkor.org
• nationalsozialismus.de (German)
• Yad Vashem
• ess.uwe.ac.uk

Crum375 23:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Archived

I archived a big chunk to Talk:The_Holocaust/Archive 16, feel free to move any still 'live' conversations back or add more of the above to it. I basically left the 'protection' conversation on down, and archived the most recent soapy, troll-y stuff..;0 Dreadstar † 07:24, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Number of dead at Auschwitz

This page cites 1.4 million dead, but if you click on the link to the Auschwitz page they cite 1.1 million dead in the comprehensive introduction. Now I am well aware that these numbers are individual historian's estimates, but I feel that in the interests of coherence (i.e. it's a bit messy to have different numbers cited in different articles in wikipedia), that there are two possible remedies: 1. use the same numbers in all articles (but which ones?) 2. present the numbers as a range, e.g. 1.1-1.4 million. This would again create the problem of which sources to range, but given that one is using a larger sample this would seem to give improved veracity. Additionally, this would impress upon readers that these numbers have been arrived at in different ways. As a provisional suggestion, I would think that the range should be from the low conservative estimates (which are often based on what can be ascertained through direct records), and the slightly larger estimates, but which are equally valid, that employ for example pre and post war population statistics and eyewitness accounts/admissions e.g. Eichmann's. If this seems sensible it would seem that it could be taken as a convention for numbers cited in Holocaust articles, although in some parts this is already the case. Comments? Tsop 07:44, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Presenting the numbers as a range seems like a good option to me, but it's not a matter I'm terribly knowledgeable about. I generally just watch this page for vandalism and racist POV pushing. ornis (t) 08:10, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

probable inaccuracy

towards the bottom (in ('Climax') the claim is made (unreferenced) that "At Auschwitz, up to 20,000 people were killed and incinerated every day". Is this true? 20,000 a day is 140,000 a week. That means in ten weeks you have 1.4 million -perhaps the total number over two years. This single claim is not required in the context and probably should just be deleted (unless someone can source it). Can any user make the change or what is the deal? Tsop 09:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This protection level of this article has been reduced to 'semi' so that editors may now make any necessary changes.- Gilliam 09:17, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the claim is inaccurate - surely it needs to be sourced. But "up to" does not mean "on average." Toward the end of the war I believe rates of murder went up drastically; there is no reason to think that the maximum number of people killed in a week is anywhere's close to the average. I think the problem in the sentence is "every day." No sentence that has this syntax "Up to ... every day" make sense. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:59, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I found the number unlikely based on the other figures quoted in the article. "According to Rudolf Höß, commandant of Auschwitz, bunker 1 held 800 people, and bunker 2 held 1,200." A few sentences on: "The gas was then pumped out, the bodies were removed (which would take up to four hours), gold fillings in their teeth were extracted with pliers by dentist prisoners, and women's hair was cut". So in twenty-four hours it might be possible to kill six loads of two thousand people, which is 12,000 people. It doesn't say how many gassings a day were performed, but it seems like an unlikely high number. Have deleted the sentence.

Tsop 02:20, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as capacity, you may wish to note that Yad Vashem says: "Four chambers were in use at Birkenau, each with the potential to kill 6,000 people daily." [2]. Crum375 03:13, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Racist definition of Holocaust

The definition of Holocaust should include all people, not just Jews. It is largely Jewish scholars that omit everyone else. It appears this is solely because the rest don't really matter to them. --Salom Khalitun 20:13, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The article does mention the diverse victims of the Holocaust. Political prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals were sent to concentration camps as punishment. Members of these three groups were not targeted, as were Jews and Gypsies, for systematic murder. Nevertheless, many died in the camps from starvation, disease, exhaustion, and brutal treatment.- Gilliam 20:24, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I do wonder if Mr. Khalitun read as far as the second paragraph of the article. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 20:37, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I see the second paragraph and the list of other peoples, yet the definition of Holocaust in this article refers to Jews, largely because Jewish writers are only concerned about the Jewish victims. That is as racist as the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust. If the massacre of Jews is called the Holocaust, what is the massacre of non-Jews called ? Is there really no name for the murder of so many people. --Salom Khalitun 01:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Nobody has provided any opposing reasoning. According to Wikipedia guidelines there is therefore consensus. Anyone who wants to restrict the Holocaust to only Jews, when so millions of others suffered the same fate, is being racist and heartless anyway. --Salom Khalitun 14:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The "last man standing theory" of discussion does not work. Consensus about what? If you read the article, we do not define Holocaust - in fact, I would claim that it is not the task of an encyclopedia to define anything. We describe how the term is used, and have two very reliable sources for the current lead sentence. We also immediately mention the non-Jewish victims in the next sentence. Your edit has a number of problem. It drops the references from the first sentence, it omits some other information, and it contains the (mis-)leading and unsourced phrase "Jewish scholars do not ..." when what they allegedly do is neither universal among Jewish scholars, nor restricted to Jewish scholars. --Stephan Schulz 15:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Garbage ! The article very clearly defines the Holocaust as being only "the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II". That is a racist definition. It should be "...up to 11 million people including Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's winesses, ......" It doesn't matter if they merely "mention" others. They are wrongly not included in the definition. You can not have a "reliable source" for this definition. It's not physics or astronomy, it's purely opinion. I can get you references that include all victims. It wouldn't make any difference. The "last man standing theory" is defined in the guidelines as consensus. --Salom Khalitun 18:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC) Are you Jewish ? Is that why you are putting forward such poor reasoning yet clinging on to a racist definition.

• It is you who are a racist anti-Semite. This is clear in the ad homenim and slanderous remark, "It appears this is solely because the rest don't really matter to them." All major Jewish organizations make it plain that the Nazis killed many other people, and had genocidal policies toward the Roma. The word "Holocaust" is not a generic word referring to any slaughter. It historically refers to the Nazi's genocidal campaign against the Jews - that is how the word was first applied to genocide (prior to the nazi campaign against the Jews, the word holocaust did not refer to genocide and was used in other, often innoccuous, ways). Now, to claim that the Nazis hated Jews does not mean that the Nazi's hated only Jews; to claim that the Nazis conducted a genocidal campaign against Jews does not mean that the Nazis conducted a genocidal campaign against only Jews. You do not understand simple basic logic: to say that "X occured" is not the same thing as saying "Y did not occur." But as you are a racist you are probably incapable of logical thought. At this point I see no reason to continue responding to a blatant anti-semite. The discussion is over. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Apparently you have trouble with comprehending the English language. No, the article does not define the term. It describes it. This is something completely different. And of course we can have reliable sources about history, and of course history is not "just opinion". If you have reliable sources that show a more inclusive use of the word, by all means bring them on, and we can incorporate them. I don't know what my religion or ethnicity has to do with my reasoning. Anyways, if you are interested, information about one is easily available, and information about the other should be deducable from other comments I have made. --Stephan Schulz 18:46, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

More irrelevant and falsely abusive garbage ! Most of my friends are Jewish so forget trying to distract attention from the facts with the anti-semitic crap. Most jews do not include anyone but Jews in the definition of Holocaust, despite the millions that were murdered. They know about them, sure, but they don't include them in any definition of the Holocaust. The United Nations does : "There can be no reversing the unique tragedy of the Holocaust. It must be remembered, with shame and horror, for as long as human memory continues. Only by remembering can we pay fitting tribute to the victims. Millions of innocent Jews and members of other minorities were murdered in the most barbarous ways imaginable. We must never forget those men, women and children, or their agony." —— United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, January 27, 2006." Wikipedia's definition and those that support it are racists. --Salom Khalitun 18:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Your "fiends" are Jewish? Good freudian slip there. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 18:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia itself includes the United Nations definition as including all victims - not just Jewish. As representitives of all governments that is far higher authority than some of the petty references provided. That reference has already been inserted. You can not have inconistency by one article defining it as Jewish only and another including all victims. Nobody with any sense, reason or compassion would want to exclude all the other groups that were massacred anyway. --Salom Khalitun 18:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

• Um, you can't use Wikipedia as a source. Even if your change gains consensus -- which it hasn't, as you're the only one promoting it -- we can't use [3] as a source in the article. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not ? --Salom Khalitun 19:22, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

• Because Wikipedia is an unreliable source! Seriously! Same thing my brother the professor tells his students -- if you want to use Wikipedia reliably, you have to go to the reliable sources that Wikipedia cites, since anyone whosoever can edit Wikipedia. So, for example, instead of quoting Wikipedia there, you'd need to cite Annan directly. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

• The original source from the United Nations News Centre has been inserted. The United Nations consistently describe the Holocaust as including non-Jews : “The Holocaust was a unique and undeniable tragedy,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a video message played to a special memorial ceremony in the General Assembly Hall on the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews, 500,000 Roma and Sinti and other minorities, disabled and homosexuals were killed." --Salom Khalitun 20:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course, this is not a scholary publication, but rather a excerpt from a remembrance speech. It does not deal with the problem of definition. It may, however, be used as one piece of evidence for Salom's POV. Assuming for the sake of the argument that we accept this speech as a WP:RS, it would still not justify Salom's edit. In that case, we have conflicting reliable sources, and WP:NPOV would require us to "fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and [to] do so in proportion to the prominence of each". In my opinion, the first step towards this would be a review of a representative sample of reliable sources to enable us to gauge the current state of the discussuion.--Stephan Schulz 20:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

You can get hundreds of references for this in favour and hundreds of references against. It doesn't prove anything. The fact that mainly Jewish authors consider the Holocaust as Jewish only is already in the article. This already accounts for the the two definitions. Why anyone would want to exclude non-Jews anyway is pure and callous bigotry. --Salom Khalitun 20:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Let me try again. We do not decide which version we want or which we think would be more fair, or improve the world. We only report how the term is actually used. I'm still missing any evidence that "mainly Jewish authors consider the Holocaust as Jewish only". And to be clear: No-one (except for some fringe assholes) denies that the Nazis killed millions of Jews and millions of members of various minorities, including Roma, homosexuals, Jehovas witnesses, and others. The question is wether the term "Holocaust" applies all of the killing, or only to part of it. --Stephan Schulz 20:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The United Nations any many others include all victims. Most Jews and some others do not. There are different opinions. Including all victims and then pointing out that the Jewish definition does not include non-Jews accounts for both viewpoints. The problem here is that there are some Jews who are trying to impose only the largely Jewish viewpoint. --Salom Khalitun 20:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The complete lack of supporting sources is noted. --Stephan Schulz 20:49, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Salom. While the article does state other groups besides the Jews were killed, it breezes over the other half of the victims, and deals almost exclusively with the Jewish death toll. Indeed, one of the first people to respond to the original post said "it mentions them". The article shouldn't merely "mention" the deaths of one half of the victims and spend the rest of the time talking about the other half. R.westermeyer 20:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Murder | Executed

I see the word "murdered" all over this article. when a state kills someone, it is typically called an execution, not a murder. When a supposedly neutral article calls an execution a murder, it is condemning the killing. Condemnation has no place in wiki, so I think that all references to the word murder (unless it was one individual killing another) should be removed and replaced with a more neutral word. R.westermeyer 20:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Sources defining the Holocaust

Below are some reliable sources on the topic. Please feel free to add more. --Stephan Schulz 20:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

• Encyclopedia Britannica: "Holocaust: the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II."
• Merriam Webster: "the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II "
• Compact OED: "the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime in World War II."
• Dictionary.com, based on Random House: "the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II" (they have a number of references to other sources, some including the phrase "Jews and other ...", some referring to Jews exclusively).

I can provide hundreds or even thousands of articles that include all victims. Are we in a competition of who can provide the most references ? When do we start ? Who's going to keep score !!! Are you Jewish ? Is that why you want to ignore all the millions of other victims. --Salom Khalitun 21:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Even one of your own examples (the Merriam Webster dictionary) includes non-Jews. Judging from the knowledge of the author of the Britannica article, he was obviously Jewish. The Dictionary.com article you referred to also has definitions that include non-Jews. --Salom Khalitun 21:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Salom, there is valid question of definition here, and sources do vary in their definitions, but asking questions like "are you Jewish?" does not help. You do your cause no favours by making remarks to the effect that Jewish writers don't care about anyone else or claiming that an author of Britanicca is "obviously Jewish". Paul B 21:10, 9 September 2007 (UTC)