Why single out Germany for its holocaust? I am writing an essay about this right now

Why single out Germany for its holocaust? Germany is the first nation you'd go to for mass murders. But the US had a holocaust -- forcing the Native Americans onto the 'concentration camps', more commenly known as reservations. Stalin killed millions of Russians, probably more than Hitler. China and Mao's 'reforms' cost the lives of millions of Chinese. Germany is singled out for killing the people, yet I can find many more examples of 'holocausts'.

-Dreadnought
"The many holocausts of the world."

I think Americans, at least, focus on the German Holocaust because of our involvement in World War II. There had to be an enemy evil enough to justify our involvement, and Hitler, with his Holocaust, provided that. Thus, we like to congratulate ourselves for having defeated that particular evil.

The German Holocaust wasn't well known until after WW2. While it was recognized that Germany had legalized anti-semitism, and had established labor camps for Jews, socialists, gypsies, and other undesirables, the institutionalized slaughter of untermenschen didn't become general knowledge until some of the camps were captured by the Western Allies.

The U.S. went to war with Germany because, on December 11, 1941, Hitler (and Mussolini) declared war on the United States. BTW, this was the only time that Hitler bothered to actually declare war, probably because he couldn't invade the U.S. first.

becauiise, callign what the US did tonative americans a "holocost" is merelyl modern day political correctness to try to "balence out" evil to all the worlds powers, and make every history seem equal to all others

however, never it the US wildest dreams did we ever enivison killing off every single Native American; sure, what was doen to them was atrocious- but it was hardley the saystematic genocide that the Nazi government undertook durign the holocost; and thats the main reason tensions run so high over it; all of the other examples are people, and nations being bloody and careless- but it was only out of that bunch that Germany under went the systematic, and deliberate execution, and attempted genocide of all member of a particuler religious group; by contrast, the other examples have deaths as a result of the goals of what those nations were trying to do; unliek Germany the goal was not to kill as many people as possible

here's something posted by two people on another message board about the holocaust that I like to use. Please note the original topic of the thread was "Why isn't aborition worse than the Holocaust?"


From: Mayhem King | Posted: 3/14/2005 11:20:34 AM | Message Detail
Sadly, there will be people who will think that abortion is worse than the Holocaust simply because they don't understand the Holocaust. It isn't about the sheer number of people killed. This is a common error in their historical thinking. In schools and in popular culture, the emphasis is on the number of people killed. Sadly, this lends itself to people believing that the Holocaust was not that big of a big deal. Sadly, history is failing future generations. We are failing students by not exposing them to the real horrors of the Holocaust. We as Jews are taught this in religious school. Public schools spare most students and focus on just the numbers.

Round up your friend's family, make them sleep in a barn 2'x3' barn. Tattoo their skin with a serial number. Don't give them toilet facilities. Refuse them medical attention except to conduct medical experiments on them. Beat them. Verbally berate them. Don't feed them more than a piece of bread a day. Don't give them an explanation as to why this is happening to them. And when you kill one, make sure you do it in front of the others. Take the hair of the dead and weave it into stuffing for pillows. Take their gold fillings and fashion it into jewelry. Use their skin for lampshades. If anyone raises their voice to you, torture them in front of the others before killing them. Make them sleep next to their own dead. Make them live in their own feces. Force the living into ovens. Repeat x 13 million.
---
{Jew World Order} Minister of Zionist Propaganda

-------------------------------------

From: kirbytime | Posted: 3/18/2005 9:24:31 PM | Message Detail
mk, you forgot the whole


having whole families (infants included) stand in a line completely naked while German soldiers practice their accuracy by aiming at breasts/genitals

part.


and the whole

thrown into bush and raped by 10 men then thrown in a pit full of dead people then beaten

part.


and we also cannot forget the whole

German kids were taught that Jews were poisonous mushrooms in their textbooks

part.


And last but not least the

forcing of Rabbis to piss on Torahs then burn them

part.



I CANNOT STAND IT WHEN PEOPLE MAKE STUPID COMPARISONS TO THE HOLOCAUST ESPECIALLY THIS CRAP ABOUT ABORTION BEING JUST AS BAD. YOU THINK ITS JUST AS BAD? GO ****ING LIVE IN AUSWITZ THEN AND PRAY TO GOD I NEVER MEET YOU IN REAL LIFE...
---
extremely heteronormatic
Nolo Contendere

You apparetly never found out what happened to people in Russia who were targeted by communists. My friend had a grandpa who was there. Just as bad.

they were sent to Gulags where they were given little food or water. Forced to work 24/7 and almost everyone died of starvation, exaustion or being shot.

tell me when I get something wrong.

Let me rephrase this for you. The Shoah was the systematic mass murder of an entire people based on nothing more than religious beliefs, sexual preference or hereditary background.

The 'holocausts" that you mentioned are nothing even close to the Shoah. Native Americans were mostly killed off by disease, not because of European warfare or an attempt to kill them off. Sure some Europeans targeted Native Americans because they thought they were "inferior" but they never herded them like cattle to then starve and murder them. Spend a month in an Indian Reservation then spend a month in lets say Dachau and tell me which is worse.

The mass murders of Stalin was mostly the starvation of Ukrainians brought on by Stalin when he felt that they were against his agricultural plans. Millions of other Russians were also sent to Gulags. They may be just as bad as concentration Camps, but they are not meant for the systematic execution of a "race' but more for the destruction of anyone who goes against the communist state.

Mao's reforms were a complete blunder that caused massive starvation and led to the death of millions of Chinese. I do not think that was ever his intention. Therefore it is no where close to being considered a holocaust.

Horrible as the details of the Shoah/Holocaust is, example for example they can well be matched by the conquest of the New World, 19th c. colonialism etc.

What makes the Jewish holocaust special are the principles behind it and the way it was implemented.

1.) Jewishness was the sole and sufficient reason for extermination. There was no way to avert it. No 'good Jews' to the Nazi mind. Jews couldn't escape by 'making themselves useful'. That was new.

2.) The holocaust sits right smack in the middle of the this story of modernity and progress the West has been telling itself for the last 200 years or so. It has to be understood as an integrated feature of it. It wasn't and aberration (while not a necessary outcome of modernity either; Read Zygmunt Bauman, 'Modernity and the Holocaust').
Viewed like that, it becomes much more than a 'German problem', which I think it is considering the importance it has, especially in Europe. (The US I'll leave alone here.)

There has been plenty of genocides (and cultural 'democides' etc.), but they have normally allowed individuals in the singled out group some ways of escape. (Crappy ones: religious conversion, settled life, slavery, giving up land, whatever, and mostly applicable on an individual level alone, usually not for a whole group.)

They have also usually occured in situations of political or societal breakdown (or nonexistence), often in conjunction with warfare. The Jewish holocaust was facilitated by the fact that a war was going on, but there were no breakdowns of anything (except possibly humanity). Quite the opposite; a huge industrial and administrative structure was erected solely for the purpose of killing Jews. It didn't make economic sense either. There was no conflict of resources, land etc., just the Nazi conviction that all Jews must die.

If there is one thing about the way in which the Nazi holocaust is sometimes talked about that I find grating, it' is the occasional blurring of 'Nazi' and 'German'.

The Nazis were Germans, but all Germans weren't Nazis. Germany will have to live with the fact (and the Germans have really taken up the challenge of dealing with this), but there wasn't anything inherent in 'Germanness' that caused the Holocaust.

One point I'd make - I wouldn't call it a German holocaust. A Nazi holocaust.

Because some (very few) Germans did stand up to it. And it certainly wasn't confined to Germany.

Hitler's last orders to Doenitz were to "impose the racial laws with the strictest severity". You might want to look that up, at the very least.

To me the main thing when comparing the Holocaust to others you've mentioned is the deliberate way in which it was done.

Though my knowledge on all the situations you've mentioned isn't that good, it seems Stalin and Mao let people starve or die of disease. Whereas the Germans had a progrom in which the Jews were actually rounded up and sent somewhere to get murdered. The Nazis had several of their biggest companies helping them with their 'Jewish problem' and had government run departments that rounded up and transported jews.

Another reason is the fact that Jews are a bit more prominent in the world than your average Russian or Chinese peasant. All over the world there are Jewish people in high positions in publishing, entertainment, banks etc etc etc. That gives them the means and money to bring the wrongs done to them to everone's attention.

One point I'd make - I wouldn't call it a German holocaust. A Nazi holocaust.

Because some (very few) Germans did stand up to it. And it certainly wasn't confined to Germany.


What a joke! Its like telling your wife 'Yeah I did sleep with another woman but I was drunk at the time. Oh, and I felt a bit guilty in the morning. So that makes it all right doesn't it honey?'

You're right though, it wasn't confined to Germany. The Germans also set up death camps in Poland.

The Nazis were Germans, but all Germans weren't Nazis. Germany will have to live with the fact (and the Germans have really taken up the challenge of dealing with this), but there wasn't anything inherent in 'Germanness' that caused the Holocaust.

Except it was the German people who happily carried it out.

I also have another topic I could add as a horrible atrocity -- the Rape of Nanking. They Japanese killed a quarter of a million Chinese and raped 80,000 women in a week so, doing the math, saying hitler killed 6,000,000 jews, gypsies, etc. over a period of six years ( I know more, but more brutal in final six years ) so...

6,000,000/6 years = 6,000,000/2190 days = about 2739 people a day (wow in a bad way)

But 225,000/7 days = about 32124 people a day. Not counting the other villages/Shanghai in Japan's way.

But...

My friend's grandfather wrote down all he saw escaping from communism in Russia. He would see whole villages destroyed, muntilated body parts, tortured people...another village saw the men pulled off and tortured some more. Hey, gasing is a relativly quick death, but the Russians would torture, as in not quick death, throw the people out, come back tomarrow and torture them again.

The mass murders of Stalin was mostly the starvation of Ukrainians brought on by Stalin when he felt that they were against his agricultural plans.

They weren't against his plans, they were 'with the white army'. Although some were, others were just killed for no good reason, blamed for something they didn't do.

Others were sent to Siberia and killed there, freezing to death, working with almost no food.

Except it was the German people who happily carried it out.

Exactly! :goodjob:

Except it was the German people who happily carried it out.
Well duh.;)
Everybody knows that. Pointing it out is usually considered quite disingenious.:)

The one people are grappling with is "Why Germany?"

You get two schools:

1.) "They did it because they are German", which hinges on a cicular argument. (Goldhagen et al. "The Germans did it, because Germans are special somehow, which is proved by the fact that Germans did it.")
The cause of the Holocaust is essentialised into 'something German'.

2.) Nazi ideology put into practice some really nasty bits to be found everywhere in modern society. Bad luck for the Germans it happened in their country. (Why not France? Just as much traditoonal antisemitisme on their side of the Rhine.)
Problem with this one is that there is nothing that looks like a sufficient reason to explain why this had to happen at all.

The 2nd alternative is actually tacitly recognised by the fact that almost all Western nation make such a big deal out of the Holocaust. Had it just been a German show, then we could all have pointed finger, exterminated all Germans etc. But we don't.

Face it, the reason why especially the average American first thinks of Germany when 'Holocaust' is mentioned is this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077025/

Before that TV series, the term was rarely used at all.

Then, the holocaust was a European project. The Nazis had no problem to find willing helpers in almost any country they occupied (with the honorable exception of Denmark), even in Poland (Jedwabne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne). The reasons for this were not only age-old, ubiquitious anti-semitism, but often enough nothing but greed. Often enough the fact the Nazi occupators stripped the Jewish citizens off any rights meant their neighbors acted in a way the Nazis wanted...
This is not meant to take away anything of the German responisbility, just to show that they weren't alone at that time.

I do agree the extremely well-organized, efficient determination of an entire race is something unprecendented. This one time, it wasn't the brutal, brainless scum or the fanatical nationalists involved, it was run by administration experts, RR experts, mid-level medics etc. It was conducted in a way best discribed as 'curing a disease' (the pollution of Europe by the Jews) - without any mercy, with all technical expertise needed, as cost-efficient as possible. A 'crusade' or 'pogrom' like Nanjing, Ruanda works completely different. And the mass starvations in the USSR/PR China are something different again. Even the gulags, which indeed mostly were labor camps - getting rid of unwanted subjects was a (not unwanted...) side effect.

Still, while the Nazi Holocaust was unprecedented, it does have one successor of equal bestiality in my eyes:
Pol Phot's elimination of all city dwellers, intellectuals, people who happened to wear glasses etc.

But of course, the fact that Commie Vietnam of all nations finally decided to invade the former US ally Cambodjia and stop the horror doesn't make the topic eligable for a Hollywood opus ;).

Yes, I know 'Killing Fields', but that wasn't exactly a blockbuster...;)

I also have another topic I could add as a horrible atrocity -- the Rape of Nanking. They Japanese killed a quarter of a million Chinese and raped 80,000 women in a week so, doing the math, saying hitler killed 6,000,000 jews, gypsies, etc. over a period of six years ( I know more, but more brutal in final six years ) so...

6,000,000/6 years = 6,000,000/2190 days = about 2739 people a day (wow in a bad way)

But 225,000/7 days = about 32124 people a day. Not counting the other villages/Shanghai in Japan's way.

But...

My friend's grandfather wrote down all he saw escaping from communism in Russia. He would see whole villages destroyed, muntilated body parts, tortured people...another village saw the men pulled off and tortured some more. Hey, gasing is a relativly quick death, but the Russians would torture, as in not quick death, throw the people out, come back tomarrow and torture them again.



They weren't against his plans, they were 'with the white army'. Although some were, others were just killed for no good reason, blamed for something they didn't do.

Others were sent to Siberia and killed there, freezing to death, working with almost no food.

It was actually 11 million people over the course of 3 years(1942-1945 the final solution). It was 6 million Jews along with 5 million Gentiles including homosexuals, gypsies, Jehova Witnesses, political opponents and Russian POWs.


This would make it 10,045 people per day. Gasing is not a relativly quick death, in fact most people were killed by starvation and disease, not gasings or being burned alive or being shot. You think the Nazi's wouldn't tourtre people. They would cut limbs off just to see the physical reactions to such an act. They would blast people with ice cold air to see how long it would take them to freeze. All in the name of science and to help German soldiers. (Medical care for soldiers who just lost limbs and poilots who had to bail in the north sea for my two examples)

Anyone who esacped from the Nazi warmachine would have seen the eact same images that your grandfather saw from the communist army during the Russain Civil War.

The try to kill a whole race and the perfection and industrialized way it was carried out is a shocking thing indeed.

But not sheer numbers or the malicious intent are something inherently new to history. Not even the planned genocide.

But why is it still remembered? Because jewish people of course remember this event, as it is the most vile thing ever done to them, and they suffered quite a lot of prosecution starting even before the middle ages.

WW2 is also a quite "new" historical event, it is closer and more horrible to us than former wars that were for sure very cruel, too.

It is also remembered because it serves well to give the Nazis the extra-vile touch some people seem to like. We have a lot of non-germans that seem to be madly fond of the Nazi era and often I see them quite defending Nazi ideology here, be it some strange sort of humor or whatever.

A lot of the same kind of Rhetoric, the dehumanising of your enemy had been used before, so had there been great amounts of Anti-Semetism. Combine that with industrialised methods of murder, the sheer illogic of the crime (not that I'm saying genocide is ever justified, but some did at least have other motivations than wiping out an entire people) and so on and you have a recipe for something not seen before on earth. With luck it will never be seen in it's entirety again.

Its also well docmented. The gulags in Siberia at the time may as well have been the moon for the rest of the world. You couldn't really go to the USSR and have a look around for example.

What a joke! Its like telling your wife 'Yeah I did sleep with another woman but I was drunk at the time. Oh, and I felt a bit guilty in the morning. So that makes it all right doesn't it honey?'
More like saying, "Yes, honey, I did sleep with another woman. I'm very sorry. I was drunk." Then having both the your wife and your mother beat you and watch you for years. Then it's okay. But enough with the similies.

You're right though, it wasn't confined to Germany. The Germans also set up death camps in Poland.
Except that the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Occupied France, and the Soviet Union (among others) assisted by choice the Nazis' attempt at genocide. Moreover, Vichy France requested that the Nazi's take their Jews off their hands. Not exactly a German-only party now was it?

EDIT: I realize my last statement may be mis-read. I don't intend to say that "Oh, the Vichy knew of the genocide." They knew of labor-camps and internment camps, not of slaughterhouses. However, they still thought it a good idea to get rid of as many Jews as they could while they could.

And, if you read my sig, you'll see that I think that the only thing worse than the Holocaust is the genocides that occurred/are occuring that are ignore by the rest of the world.

"...but there is another kind of fear, that we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men."

I know, but still, many other nations had atrocities, and everyone overlooks these

such as Spain and Cuba, they'd send the Cubans to concentration camps too! :sad:

I know, but still, many other nations had atrocities, and everyone overlooks these

such as Spain and Cuba, they'd send the Cubans to concentration camps too! :sad:
If the question is:

'Is there a tendency to concentrate on the Nazi Holocaust in a manner that almost lets other nations get off the hook, considering some of the things they have historically been up to?'

Then I think the answer to that one must be 'Yes'.

If the question is:

'Is there a tendency to concentrate on the Nazi Holocaust in a manner that almost lets other nations get off the hook, considering some of the things they have historically been up to?'

Then I think the answer to that one must be 'Yes'.

Thank you! :goodjob:

Except it was the German people who happily carried it out.

Actually, the majority of the German people didn't know it was happening, just like the rest of the world. When you see old pictures of German Millitary devisions, and the such watching the films of what was found in the death camps, the majority of them are crying at the horror of what their leaders had carried out behind their backs.

Furthermore, if the Holocaust wasn't carried out in Nazi Germany, then it could easily have been carried out in any other country, as most were anti-semetic then, as, some still unfortunatley are. The Holocaust was just a way of pointing fingers at the 'bad guy' and saying that genral direction of the political scale is 'wrong', even though to my knowlege, the Nazi government was the only right-wing extreemist government to ever actually carry out this kind of gennoside.


And finally, seeing as everyone likes to give examples of equilly as bad, nearly as bad or worse killing/ working to death of innocent people, then I think that the slavery of millions of Black people taken from their homes in Africa in the middle of the night, accross violent oceans in desiese-ridden, cramped boats, to be sold off to someone who's going to split you up from your family, and work you and your family for generations to come so they can make a tiny profit is a pretty good contender.

And finally, seeing as everyone likes to give examples of equilly as bad, nearly as bad or worse killing/ working to death of innocent people, then I think that the slavery of millions of Black people taken from their homes in Africa in the middle of the night, accross violent oceans in desiese-ridden, cramped boats, to be sold off to someone who's going to split you up from your family, and work you and your family for generations to come so they can make a tiny profit is a pretty good contender.

I find this one of the saddest points of history, and yet its overlooked by the Holocaust

I find this one of the saddest points of history, and yet its overlooked by the Holocaust
Maybe because these are two different and unconected events?:crazyeye:

People may overlook the history of slavery, while paying great attention to WWII. But the Holocaust is in no position to 'overlook' anything. And it doesn't mean that the attention that is given the Holocaust is unwarranted.

Are you blaming the Holocaust, or the ignorance and limited imagination of some people here?:confused:

Not here, in the world. I find it in my class, most friends, etc.

what about the British Empire, it's attrocities completely dwarf that of The Third Reich

The British empire lasted over 2 centuries*, the Third Reich lasted 12 years. A bit of perspective would be useful. I don't recall a specific attempt to wipe out an entire native people to the last man in the British empire either.

*Clearly depending on when you define it's start and end...

what about the British Empire, it's attrocities completely dwarf that of The Third Reich

The British Empire did not cause millions of death in conceration camps meant to kill, target specific groups for killing, illegally invade several countries and start a world war.

I'd say you'd probably have an interesting time defending the "didn't illegally invade several countries" ;)

Dunno the whole idea of neturaliity protected by treaties wasn't around and most of the type what the Brits invaded werent really countries in the sense of the countries Hitler invaded.

But the rest is still correct :p

And tge Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were not in effect when the British invaded several countries ;)

You know I'm getting the idea that someone is pushing the "they didn't have a flag so it was alright" argument here :lol:

And yes, I already stated my support of the rest before your post.

The German Holocaust wasn't well known until after WW2. While it was recognized that Germany had legalized anti-semitism, and had established labor camps for Jews, socialists, gypsies, and other undesirables, the institutionalized slaughter of untermenschen didn't become general knowledge until some of the camps were captured by the Western Allies.


Polish gouverment informed the Allies and American Jews about the holocaust.
But they've shown little interest or did not believe

And just what were they meant to do? :hmm:

Polish gouverment informed the Allies and American Jews about the holocaust.
But they've shown little interest or did not believe

I remember hearing that the new york times put a 1 paragraph report on "Nazi Death Camps" on page 37 for one day during the war. Something like that.

The thing is, when someone says massacre they usally think of people running wild and killing and raping as they please, like the Japanese in WWII, or the Balkan and Rwanda situtions in the 90s. But the German's way massacre, was systamtic..It was literally a killing factory. People weren't caught up in the moment like in wars and riots, but it was planned, they would work out math formulas to figure out how long and how much work a Jew could do with how much food, and how many jews you could fit in a room and kill with how much gas. The only thing that comes close is Stalin's gulag in my opinon, because it was the only other place you were expected to work and die like you did. Even that wasn't planned out to the extent of Nazi concentration camps.

I am well aware Americans, British, Romanians, Spaniards, Japanese, Chinese, Rwandans, Serbs, Croats, Turks, Arabs, and Jews themselves, have all done similar things, but none had the attitude like the Nazis.

Why single out Germany for its holocaust?
Because the ones Hitler killed were jews.

Because the ones Hitler killed were jews.

Well, there have been other areas of history where people singled out certain peoples like the Native Americans... :p

I think the closest analogy to the Holocaust might be the Turkish attempt to eliminate their Armenian population during World War I, except that the Holocaust was an order of magnitude larger and much further out of our view. The photographs of the death camps, the radio broadcasts and the newsreels had an incredible impact and people weren't as numbed to it at the time. When you open up Life magazine and see the emaciated survivors staring at you, it has one hell of an impact.

Because the term holocuast is predominantly used in the contemporary English lexicon in reference to the pogrom enacted by the Nazi regime against Jews. Yes, history is replete with numerous holocausts, but, for whatever reason, they're not commonly referred to as such (however correct it may be to do so).

It's like talking about the "Civil War". In America it means one thing, everywhere else it's something entirely different.

-V

I think the closest analogy to the Holocaust might be the Turkish attempt to eliminate their Armenian population during World War I, except that the Holocaust was an order of magnitude larger and much further out of our view.
I feel that Turkish one was far more like genocides of the past. Greater force puts down rebel groups by killing them all. I'd say Pol-Pot and his mass murdering was probably the closest thing to the Holocaust.

I feel that Turkish one was far more like genocides of the past. Greater force puts down rebel groups by killing them all. I'd say Pol-Pot and his mass murdering was probably the closest thing to the Holocaust.

Pol Pot did kill many people, just like Hitler, although not as many.

People are not bringing up one simple fact. Many to most of the Jews in the holocaust were simple country types, but there was also a huge fraction of well educated, middle to upper class knowledge workers. When these people died, people were more horrified than they would be if they were Native American or Hereros or Congolese. And when these people got out of the camps, they wrote about and publicized their experiences. And when many of them came to America, they enjoyed unprecedented and disproportionate influence in politics, entertainment and social science fields, which lead their experiences and told stories to influence others as well as themselves.

That, and that it is convienent to have one scapegoat for world sins like genocide. Germany.

It's not about the number killed so much as how it was enacted. The brutal industrialized method of mass murder utilized by the Nazis was far worse then say a leader simply starving his population to death which has been used countless times in the past to put down opposition to the government.

Why? Mass slaughter is mass slaughter. I don't see how it particularly matters how it is done.

I think it is cultural as well, the German stereotype is to many scarier than most stereotypes, and much more entertaining. I think the cultural legacy of the early war movies, cartoons and so on made this imagery happen.

Pol Pot did kill many people, just like Hitler, although not as many.
I'm talking more about the method and manner.

Why? Mass slaughter is mass slaughter. I don't see how it particularly matters how it is done.

It matters in the way it is done because of the pain and suffering the people who are being killed and their families feel. For instance families in the Holocaust were torn apart, like during Selection time at the concentration camps. Half a family could be taken to die and the other half would stay. also, when they were being gased, sometimes the men (sons and fathers) would go one way and women (mothers and daughters) would go the other. one side is gased, the other takes a normal shower. So even though mass slaughter is mass slaughter, the way it is inflicted to matter.

So even though mass slaughter is mass slaughter, the way it is inflicted to matter.

I very much doubt the people being slaughtered would agree with you. The how only matters to historians. The victims are still dead.

One of the reason it's singled out is because the Nazis went out of their way to provide documentations. Check out www.isthatlegal.org, the article "Yom Hashoah 2005."

It was actually 11 million people over the course of 3 years(1942-1945 the final solution). It was 6 million Jews along with 5 million Gentiles including homosexuals, gypsies, Jehova Witnesses, political opponents and Russian POWs.

I don't think anyone knows a reliable estimate let alone an exact number. Estimates about how many died during the Inquisitions vary by around a factor of 10 or more ... something like that anyway. And I believe there were better records kept with the Inquisitions.

It is interesting that rarely anyone mentions the fact as you did that non-Jews were killed. It's like they don't matter. The gypsies (I believe they like to be called Roma)were as much a victim of attempted genocide as the Jews were -- a fact that goes completely unnoticed even when mentioning that they were victims.

Not necessarily. In Germany, they are indeed mentioned, and did recieve substantial payments after the war. Of course, they do by no means have the influence of the jews in the foreign media; but that doesn't mean the survivors were ignored.
A good example for this is that Leni Riefenstahl is mostly blamed for using Roma from nearby KZs in her movies, when it's about her involvement with 3rd Reich crimes.
Political KZ victims are as well considered; Curt von Osietzky, Ernst Thälmann etc, as well as the survivors like Kurt Schumacher.
Those two groups that never saw any - even symbolical - compensations were the homosexuals, and the deserters.

Of course, without playing down the Holocaust by any means, the fact the jewish victims seem to be almost exclusively mentioned in the US is caused by the influence of this group, and by Hollywood. But in any European country for example, the respective resistance fighters are considered as well. That national bias is completely understandable IMHO; still, it tells a lot about our current situation that certain groups are seens as "they partially deserved it".

The thing Ive always wondered yet Ive never looked it up is the accuracy of the oft repeated 6 million jews killed figure. How is this a reliable number? Im sure in war many records were destroyed, and if you base it on the ID tattoo records, did those tattoos differentiate a foreigner, homosexual or jew? If you base it on total jewish population before and after, that is another questionable number, as some people changed names, fled, etc. I might actually look this up...

EDIT: Hmm seems this was a quote at Nuremberg but not substantiated by anyone or any facts. Could be more could be less. Im seeing some sites (Holocaust denial) say 500,000 to 1 million, others 2-3 mil, others 5.29 and above. This would be an interesting History PhD thesis/research idea I think.