Originally posted by G-Man
1) What do you know about the holocaust?
2) Have you ever been educated about it in school?
Well, I could give you a fairly long essay, but I'm not sure that's what you want. But this is a summary of what I know:
- Germany, under National Socialism, made it a state policy to ban various activities by Jews, expropriate them when possible, and otherwise harass with economic and social sanctions to drive them from Germany, in large part because existing bigotry made Jews a convenient scapegoat.
- Several countries - France, Britain, Canada and the U.S. among them - made it difficult both before and during the war for Jewish refugees to flee these laws. Meanwhile, Jews were increasingly sent to concentration camps like Dachau where the legalistic Nazis could find a reason to do so. After the war began, German units were created to shoot large numbers of Jews wherever possible (e.g. in pockets of Russia and Poland where isolation and local prejudice would allow such efforts to be easily contained).
- A review of existing policies in 1941 concluded that they were not effective enough to achieve Nazi aims, and so the "Wansee Protocol" - did I get that right? - charted a larger policy of mass-murder with extermination camps, over and above the concentration camps already in use.
- Germany went ahead in doing so, and was aided and abetted by the Italian government, the French Vichy government, and large, anti-semetic parts of the populations in states like Poland, the Ukraine, etc. in rounding up Jews whereever possible.
- Well there is some argument about this, most evidence suggests that the Nazis had the tacit, and sometimes active support of large segments of the German population for particular policies. Approx. 6,000,000 jews and roughly 1,000,000 gypsies, homosexuals and others deemed "undesirable" by the Nazi state were thus killed, most in gas chambers using a poison called Zyclon B, and roughly 1,000,000 of them in the last several months of the war. Any personal effects from the dead were usually taken and re-used; for example, gold teeth were cannibalized for the gold, stuffed animals repaired and given to German children, etc.
I could support this with considerable detail, but won't because I wouldn't know where to stop: kristallnacht, the laws limiting Jewish trade, the "paradise ghetto" in Theresiendstadt designed to create the appearance of harmony, the Warsaw Ghetto, Mengele's experiments, etc. etc.
BUT MORE TO THE POINT:
I'm sure you're more interested in #2, which is yes, there was a day or two in my high school cirriculum, and some of my university courses touched on it. But most of what I wrote above I discovered from personal interest.
I have to admit, as far as school was concerned, I am disturbed not by the education we did get on it, but what that education was. Most of what I saw in talks about what happened, but says precious little about how and why, so that you can walk away treating it as an aberration, something that crazy people did. And I have seen enough in life to conclude that the Holocaust is not as much of an aberration as many would like to think.
I've always been troubled, for example, by a brilliant and famous work of historiography in my library called "Hitler's Social Revolution," which credibly argues that National Socialism was for the most part a movement of disenfranchised middle class tradesmen and professionals, not the koo koo thugs that they are often conveniently described as.
Hope that answers your question.
R.III
