Why do people still deny the Holocaust ever happened

[Felt 35]

23 hours ago, Rimmer said:

Why do people still deny the Holocaust ever happened despite overwhelming documented evidence to support it?

 

"None is so blind as the one who does not want to see"

[VBF]

5 hours ago, Rimmer said:

 

You are going off topic here KhunLA and Native Americans  and Transatlantic Slave Trade are even further off topic

 

The term "Holocaust" is widely recognized as referring to the Nazi genocide of Jews, but it can theoretically apply to other events involving mass slaughter or destruction. However, to respect the specificity and historical context, it is more common to reserve the term for the Nazi genocide and use other descriptors for the atrocities listed below.

 

When I started researching the Holocaust 12 years ago the number of deaths were substantially higher and seem have been reduced over the years.

 

I would respectfully class your list of mass killings as genocide and therefore outside of this topic

 

Holocaust (Jews)            6,000,000                          100%

Darfur                             300,000–500,0005            8%

Rwanda                           800,000–1,000,00013      17%

Bosnia                             100,000                              1.7%

Cambodia                       1,700,000–2,200,00028   36%

Cultural Revolution        500,000–2,000,0008        33%

Nanking                           200,000–300,0003            5%

Holodomor                     3,500,000–7,000,00058   117%

Armenian Genocide      1,000,000–1,500,00017    25%

Herero and Namaqua  75,000–120,0001               2%

When you say "The term "Holocaust" is widely recognized as referring to the Nazi genocide of Jews........"  you are correct of course, BUT I contend that it's wrong to use it that way, despite the fact that it's become accepted.

 

When people mention The Holocaust, I'm always tempted to ask "Which one?"

I submit that Pol Pot's atrocities in Cambodia are no less horrific and deserving of the epithet  - if one visits the Killing Fields and looks at the piles of skulls displayed, it's very similar to what is displayed at Dachau. I visited the Killing Fields, and also Toul Sleng (the torture prison) and as much as I thought this to be fanciful, I did feel a chill as I walked around - similar to what a Jewish friend experienced on visiting Belson.

 

IMO, the race preyed upon is irrelevant - it's the actions of the aggressors that are so critically important.

 

By the way, the BBC have been broadcasting interviews with some of the very few survivors, "lest we forget"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/collection/m0027dxz

 

To return to the OP, Holocaust deniers are ignorant, unthinking MORONS.

[Wrwest]

7 hours ago, Merrill said:

Was there not also a holocaust  in Russia after the revolution and in the 1920 I think there were several. Having said that some millions of soldiers were starved to death in the south of France after the War. Sometimes it seems the World is run by psychopaths 

The term we use in history is Pogrom. For reference, "An American Tail". Sorry, could not help throwing an animated historical fiction movie.

[Walker88]

In my "gap year" during university time, I did the world tour thing, ending up living on a kibbutz in Israel, though I'm not Jewish. On the Sabbath, each 'volunteer' was invited to a home of one of the residents. My regular host was an elderly gentleman who had survived one of the camps. He had the number tattooed on his arm. He was a delightful fellow. We never spoke of his experience, but other folks on the kibbutz told me he had been neutered as part of an "experiment" while a prisoner in the camp, his manliness removed. That he could be the kind and welcoming host he was, inviting a stupid young American, full of advantages he had never had, was a tribute to his personal strength and goodness.

 

Obviously I knew of the Holocaust long before traveling to Israel, but I had a front row education as to its gruesome reality. My US girlfriend at that time had a grandad who was among the first troops into Dachau, and he could barely speak of what he saw.

 

Many things make the Holocaust terrible, the scale being one, but the brutality and evil that came from what was perhaps the most technologically advanced society at that time is what led Hannah Arendt to coin the phrase 'the banality of evil'. Maybe one can rationalize or understand (tough to come up with the proper term) such terror taking place in a relatively primitive society---maybe---but for it to come from 1930-40s Germany is incomprehensible. Are we all so susceptible to madness and savagery, needing only a particular set of circumstances (hyperinflation of 1921) and a character whose charisma I can never understand? Sadly, I see that incomprehensible "charisma" again today, and an ease where folks drift into irrational hatred of "others".

 

Some complain we are too often reminded of what happened, with a string of movies and "Remembrance Days". Well, a people who lost half of their ethnic group are understandably and righteously driven to remind us of what happened, and what can happen again. The Holocaust is the most egregious example of the blackness of the human heart, and we should be continually reminded of what's possible, even in a "civilized" society.

[VBF]

36 minutes ago, Walker88 said:

In my "gap year" during university time, I did the world tour thing, ending up living on a kibbutz in Israel, though I'm not Jewish. On the Sabbath, each 'volunteer' was invited to a home of one of the residents. My regular host was an elderly gentleman who had survived one of the camps. He had the number tattooed on his arm. He was a delightful fellow. We never spoke of his experience, but other folks on the kibbutz told me he had been neutered as part of an "experiment" while a prisoner in the camp, his manliness removed. That he could be the kind and welcoming host he was, inviting a stupid young American, full of advantages he had never had, was a tribute to his personal strength and goodness.

 

Obviously I knew of the Holocaust long before traveling to Israel, but I had a front row education as to its gruesome reality. My US girlfriend at that time had a grandad who was among the first troops into Dachau, and he could barely speak of what he saw.

 

Many things make the Holocaust terrible, the scale being one, but the brutality and evil that came from what was perhaps the most technologically advanced society at that time is what led Hannah Arendt to coin the phrase 'the banality of evil'. Maybe one can rationalize or understand (tough to come up with the proper term) such terror taking place in a relatively primitive society---maybe---but for it to come from 1930-40s Germany is incomprehensible. Are we all so susceptible to madness and savagery, needing only a particular set of circumstances (hyperinflation of 1921) and a character whose charisma I can never understand? Sadly, I see that incomprehensible "charisma" again today, and an ease where folks drift into irrational hatred of "others".

 

Some complain we are too often reminded of what happened, with a string of movies and "Remembrance Days". Well, a people who lost half of their ethnic group are understandably and righteously driven to remind us of what happened, and what can happen again. The Holocaust is the most egregious example of the blackness of the human heart, and we should be continually reminded of what's possible, even in a "civilized" society.

Excellent post - totally agree 👍

And I think we should remember that a society is only as "civilized" as its members allow it to be

[cme]

On 1/27/2025 at 6:10 AM, Bkk Brian said:

One of the scum who still does deny it:

 

The best known Holocaust denier in the UK is David Irving.

Despite not being trained as a historian, he has written numerous books about the history of the Second World War in which he expresses his pro-Nazi sympathies. He denies that the nazi Germans murdered Jews in gas chambers, maintains close ties with the IHR, and testified in Zundel’s defense. He has been fined in Germany for publicly denying the Holocaust and sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment in Austria.

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/holocaust-denial/deniers-in-different-countries/

There are always lunatics looking for their chance of fame!

For any doubters, watch the French documentary 'Shoah'. It's in 2 parts, each about 4 hours. Horrific.