Holocaust Revisited

Hungarian Jews at death camp -- Picture courtesy Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
When I think about the Holocaust of World War II, I'm amazed that it happened at all, and that it happened so recently. Something as savage as racial genocide seems archaic -- like something from the Dark Ages. Over 6 million Jews were murdered; a large number of gypsies, Jehovah's Witness, gays, communists and Russian POW's were also gassed. The scale and extent of this operation was enormous; there had to be tacit buy-in and cooperation from millions of German citizens. That any civilized European nation would allow this is absolutely mind-boggling.

This week's TIME magazine has a review of historian Saul Friedlander's new book, The Years of Extermination. In his book, Friedlander illuminates some of the truly sick rationalizations that Nazi officers and leaders employed. In public statements, Hitler suggested that he only wanted Jews to leave -- death would only come to those that didn't comply. Compliance was made impossible when escape routes were closed in 1942 and Jews were rounded up for death camps. SS Commander Himmler felt that the stress of war could be soothed with classical music and thoughts of German spirituality in the evening. Himmler said, with no irony intended, that Jews would create world war and death camps if they ever got their hands on sophisticated weapons. His greatest concern with the death camp operations was that they maintained poor statistics on the inmates' ages and names.

Friedlander's book points out that the death camp operation became a logistical monster all by itself, especially difficult to maintain during world war. Resources that could have served defense purposes (German railroads e.g.) became tied up in the purely evil purpose of genocide. Germany was undone to a very great extent by its anti-Semitic, racist blood-lust. Slightly more German citizens (7 million) lost their lives in the war than the number (6 million) killed in death camps. My own feeling, truth be known is that Germany should not have even been allowed to come back as an autonomous state. That they were torn asunder into 3 occupied territories is the misfortune of a citizenry who hands its country over to a madman and helps him in his mad devastations.

I shudder to say that it could happen again with ease -- Osama Bin Laden is a hero to many Arabs now. He is genocidal in the extreme. The extreme arrogance of various states and religions gives them the false notion that they can do anything to other people. The problem is, you can't and they can't. And as Germany found, the crushing weight of their folly was too much to bear for even a few years.

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