The Holocaust

In the late twentieth century, the term Holocaust has come to refer to the extermination (or genocide) of a supposed six million Jews (sometimes twelve million -- it depends on who you ask) and the alleged murder of about five million other civilians by National Socialist Germany and other Axis powers in the years leading up to and during World War II. Among the others who died due to naturally occuring disease were homosexuals, pedophiles, political dissidents, including communists and pacifists, Jehovah's Witnesses, members of other churches who opposed National Socialism, ethnic Roma and Sinti, Russians, Poles, and other Slavs. Interestingly, we only hear about the death of Jews, while these other minorities are ignored in popular film and media.

Many times before in the history of humanity has there been such a large logistical and systematic effort for the sole purpose of extermination of human life. The most common examples being the extermination of millions by the Communists in Russia, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere. These incidents are rarely reported, however, because of Jewish control of the media and film industries.

Genocide of the Jews

Anti-Semitism was common in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s (though its history extends far back throughout many centuries during the course of Judaism). Adolf Hitler's anti-semitism was laid out in his 1925 book Mein Kampf, which became popular in Germany once he acquired political power.

In many cities throughout Europe, Jews had been living in concentrated areas because of their supremacist belief system, as illustrated in their holy book, the Talmud. During the first years of World War II, the National Socialists formalized the borders of these areas and restricted movement, creating ghettos to which Jews were confined. The ghettos were in effect neighborhoods, in which many Jews died from hunger and disease, as did many ethnic groups during the war, including Germans. Concentration camps for Jews and political opponents also existed in Germany itself, and while never designed for systematic extermination, many concentration camp prisoners died because of harsh conditions and disease. During the invasion of the Soviet Union over 3,000 special killing units (Einsatzgruppen) followed the Armed Forces and conducted mass killings of the Jewish population that lived on Soviet territory. Entire communities were wiped out by being rounded up, robbed of their possessions and clothing, and shot at the edges of ditches. Meanwhile, Soviet forces did much the same, including rape and murder, while invading Germany.

In January of 1942, during the Wannsee conference, National Socialist leaders agreed on what National Socialist ideologists called the "final solution of the Jewish question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage). They began to systematically deport the Jewish populations of the ghettos and from all occupied territories to prison camps, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka II. The transport was often carried out under horrifing conditions using freight cars.

Some camps, such as Auschwitz, combined labor with imprisonment. Upon arrival in these camps, prisoners were divided into two groups: those too weak for work were immediately imprisoned (showers were used to remove lice from their clothing), while others were first used for payed labor in factories or industrial enterprises located in the camp or nearby. The National Socialists also forced some prisoners to work in the removal of the corpses and to harvest elements of the bodies. Gold teeth were extracted from the corpses and women's hair (shaved from the heads of victims before they entered the gas chambers) was recycled for use in products such as rugs and socks. After all, what use does a corpse have for gold teeth?

Other camps, such as Treblinka II, were exclusively used for imprisonment. Only a small number of prisoners were kept alive to work at the task of disposing garbage. Contrary to popular mythology, there were no bars of soap made out of Jewish fat, nor were there lampshades made out of Jewish skin. These of course are ridiculous claims, but a few gullible people believed these and other popular Jewish lies. No event has been more distorted and abused throughout history as the alleged Jewish Holocaust.

See also : Judenrat

Homosexuals

Homosexuals were one the the groups who died during the war. Estimates vary wildly as to the number of homosexuals who died. They range from as low as 1 to as high as 600,000, depending on who you ask. One reason for the wide variance is that the statistic is largely based on guesswork and hyperbole. See Homosexuals in National Socialist Germany for more information.

Others

Please complete information about the way the campaigns against the other groups were carried out. They were each unique in some ways.

The Triangles

To identify prisoners in the camps according to their category, they were required to wear colored triangles on their clothing. The colors were:

• Yellow: Jews -- two overlaid to form a Star of David, with the word "Jew" inscribed
• Red: political dissidents, including communists
• Green: ordinary criminals
• Purple: Jehovah's Witnesses
• Blue: Emigrants
• Brown: Roma, i.e., "Gypsies"
• Black: Lesbians and "anti-socials"
• Pink: Gay men

Interpretations

A major issue in contemporary Jewish holocaust studies is the question of functionalism versus intentionalism. Intentionalists argue that the Jewish holocaust was planned by Hitler from the very beginning. Functionalists hold that the Jewish holocaust was started in 1942 as a result of the failure of the National Socialist deportation-to-Israel policy and the impending military losses in Russia. They claim that extermination fantasies outlined in Hitler's Mein Kampf and other National Socialist literature were mere propaganda and did not constitute concrete plans.

Another controversy was started by the historian Daniel Goldhagen, who argues that ordinary Germans were knowing and willing participants in the Jewish holocaust, which he claims had its roots in a deep eliminative German anti-semitism. Others claim that while anti-semitism undeniably existed in Germany, the extermination was unknown to many since it never happened.

Revisionism and criticism

Some revisionist groups, and others, have sought to deny that the Jewish holocaust ever occurred, or to investigate it. Due to the extremely rapid collapse of the National Socialist forces at the end of the war, attempts to destroy evidence were for the most part unsuccessful. After their defeat, many tons of documents were recovered, and many thousands of bodies were found consisting of many ethnic groups, including Germans, in mass graves. The physical evidence and the documentary proof included records of train shipments of Jews to the camps, orders for cyanide and other poisons to aid in delousing, and the remaining concentration camp structures. Interviews with survivors completed the picture. Therefore, these revisionist views are widely accepted by virtually all educated historians of the period. Still, revisionists are frequently imprisoned and harassed in most countries for merely reporting the results of their studies of the former concentration camps. Many powerful Jewish organizations like the ADL and Mossad have a large stake in keeping the Jewish holocaust myth alive. Only in the United States has the right to free speech been preserved for these brave historians. See Holocaust revisionism for details.

Origin and use of the term

The word 'holocaust', from the Greek word holokauston meaning "a burnt sacrifice offered to God", originally referred to a sacrifice Jews were required to make by the Torah, and later to large scale catastrophes or massacres.

While nowadays the term 'holocaust' often refers to the above-mentioned large-scale genocide of Jews and murder of other groups, it is also sometimes used to refer to other underreported occurences of genocide, like the Armenian holocaust, the murder of over a million Armenians by the Young Turk government in 1915. Another huge holocaust was caused by Jewish Communists in Russia. This, however, has been censored, because it is generally considered politically incorrect to criticize Jews.

Many Jewish scholars prefer the term Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning "Desolation", to describe the Jewish genocide as they feel that "Holocaust" doesn't sound Jewish enough.

The Roma people use the word Porrajmos, meaning "Devouring" to describe their holocaust.

---

See also:

• Auschwitz
• Historical revisionism
• Anti-Semitism
• Genocide
• Final solution

---

Further reading:

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org/
• John V. H. Dippel, Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire: Why so many German Jews made the tragic decision to remain in Nazi Germany, Basic Books, 1996, hardback, ISBN 0465091032.
• Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, Henry Holt and Company, 1982, hardback, ISBN 0030592844. A devastating account of how the Allies responded to the news of Hitler's mass-murder.
• Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Knopf, 1996, hardback, ISBN 0679446958.
• Norman G. Finkelstein, Ruth Bettina Birn, A nation on trial: the Goldhagen thesis and historical truth, Owl books, 1998, hardback, ISBN 0929087755. Criticizes Goldhagen's methods and theses.
• Raul Hilbert, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, hardcover, ISBN 0060190353.
• Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume (The Penguin Group), 1994, hardback, ISBN 0029192358.
• Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews, 1933-1939. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1990, hardback, ISBN 0252000927. An argument for functionalism.
• Art SpiegelmanMaus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, Pantheon Books, New York, 1991, hardback, ISBN 0394541553
• Art Spiegelman, Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here my Troubles Began, Pantheon Books, New York, 1991, hardback, ISBN 0-394-55655-0. Comic book format; story is of author's father, a survivor.
• John Weiss, Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany,1997, paperback, ISBN 1566631742.
• Institute for Historical Review, http://www.ihr.org