Facebook allows Holocaust denial — Holocaust survivors protest

Despite protests from Holocaust survivors, Facebook has refused to remove Holocaust denial pages, releasing this statement: “We think it’s important to maintain consistency in our policies, which don’t generally prohibit people from making statements about historical events. No matter how ignorant the statement or how awful the event.”

This quote is from a newspaper article which you can read here:

A few weeks ago, 21 survivors of the death camps who witnessed the murder of their families by the Nazis wrote to Facebook asking the organisation (sic) to take down pages that promote Holocaust denial.

These survivors witnessed the murder of their families? Did the Nazis really allow witnesses when they murdered the Jews?  Did they have peepholes in the doors of the gas chambers for one member of each family to watch as the victims died?  How did the Nazis ensure that the witnesses would survive?  Did they march them out of the death camps in the East and take them to Germany where the witnesses were kept alive and in good health so that there would be witnesses 65 years later?

One of the required beliefs of the Holocaust is that Hitler, or one of his henchmen, ordered the genocide of the Jews.  This order has never been found, but it must have included instructions to leave behind witnesses.  This suggests that the order was not for genocide, which means to kill EVERYONE in a specific group of people.  Otherwise, how do you explain the survival of the witnesses?  Unfortunately, the 21 survivors who are protesting are deniers themselves because they are denying the genocidal aspect of the Holocaust.

The names of the protesters are not given, so we don’t know their individual stories of how they survived.  They should each have a Facebook page in which they tell their story.  Was the gas chamber too full on the day that they were selected for death?  Did they lie about their age, telling Dr. Mengele that they were 17 years old when they were really eleven?  Did they turn cartwheels to distract the men who were herding them to the gas chamber?  Or did they escape certain death, like Elie Wiesel, by being ordered to turn away from a burning ditch in the nick of time?

Holy Toledo! students learn about Holocaust horrors (Updated)

I was planning to write today about the ship St. Louis, which was carrying Jewish passengers to Cuba. When the passengers were turned away, the St. Louis then docked in an American port but the Jews were not allowed to enter the United States.  Then I read a comment made on this post that I wrote a year ago, and decided to update it.

Here is a quote from the original news article that this post was based on:

MONROE — For several weeks, ninth graders at Monroe High School had been assigned to read Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night.

The book Mr. Wiesel penned more than 50 years ago was used to introduce the approximately 300 students to the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Last week, they learned about multiple facets of one of history’s darkest chapters, with some of them getting a firsthand account from a woman who lived through it.

Over a one-hour period, students were jammed standing up into a space that simulated a railroad car. They tasted cabbage and bread, the typical meal given to Jews in concentration camps. In one class, they learned of the staggering number of people killed.

Mr. Wiesel’s book, required reading for the ninth graders’ English class, and the classroom sessions were for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 1.

Deborah Mau, an English teacher who helped organize the program, said the main focus was to have students delve deeply into the Holocaust and World War II. “This gives them a lesson on tolerance and recognizing that not everyone has to look like you and to accept people for their differences and uniqueness,” she said.

Nine segments ranging from stories about Holocaust survivors to slides on Dachau to poetry and Jewish holidays were available. Students could attend three sessions.

I am sorry that my criticism of the Monroe High School program offended anyone, but I truly feel that students in the 9th grade should not be taught about the Holocaust in this way.  First of all, Elie Wiesel’s book Night should be taught as literature, not as a way to “introduce students to the atrocities of the Holocaust.”  The atrocities in the book Night are fiction, and the book should be taught as fiction.  Babies were not thrown, alive, into a burning ditch at Auschwitz, and students should be told that this atrocity did not happen.

Mark Scoles, left, conducts a "Remembrance Walk" through the hallway in which a march to the death camps is reenacted during an afternoon of Holocaust Remembrance activities.

The students who were on the pretend “march to the death camps” should have been told that prisoners were marched OUT of the death camps, not TO the death camps. They were marched out to get them out of a war zone and into a safer camp.  The purpose of these marches was to save the lives of the prisoners, not march them to their death. Elie Wiesel volunteered to join the march out of Auschwitz and was then taken to the Buchenwald camp where he survived.

The students, who were fed cabbage and bread, should have been told that Heinrich Himmler, who was in charge of all the concentration camps, had a degree in Agriculture and he was growing cabbage, using the method of organic gardening, which was pioneered by the Germans.  The bread given to the prisoners was whole grain bread, not the fluffy white bread that Americans were eating during World War II. The students should have been told that food was rationed in all countries during World War II, including America.

The students, who had to stand for an hour in a crowded space, should have been told that, during World War II, there was a scarcity of trains and even upper class German citizens were riding in cattle cars.

These students were taught “a lesson on tolerance and recognizing that not everyone has to look like you and to accept people for their differences and uniqueness.”  Teaching tolerance is fine, but it is wrong to tell high school students that the Jews were deported to camps because of “intolerance or differences or uniqueness.”  This is a touchy subject that might be too offensive to teach in the 9th grade, but the students should at least have been told that one of the main reasons that the Jews were kicked out was because Hitler, and many of the German people, thought that the Jews were responsible for causing Germany to lose World War One.

The students should have been taught that the “staggering number of people” who were killed is unknown.  The numbers keep changing and there are no records to prove the “staggering number.”  The “staggering number” of people killed in the Holocaust should be taught in context with the number of non-Jews killed during World War II, who were not in concentration camps.

The students should have been taught that the reasons for genocide vary from one country to another, but there is always a reason that a group of people are targeted. Genocide is not caused by intolerance or racism or differences between people.  Jews have been targeted for thousands of years, in many different countries, and it is not because of their religion.

The students should have been told that there were “internment camps” in America where Japanese-Americans, citizens of Germany, and German-Americans were imprisoned in violation of the American constitution.  German-Americans, who had not committed any crime, were kept in these camps for two years AFTER the war.  German citizens were kidnapped in South America and brought to America to be put into the internment camps.

There was a war going on when the Holocaust happened.  The students should have been told about the war crimes committed by BOTH sides during World War II. Along with the lessons on the “death camps” for Jews, the students should also learn about Eisenhower’s “death camps.”

Continue reading my original post:

According to a news article on the Toledo Blade website, 9th graders in Monroe, Ohio are spending several weeks learning about the horrors of the Holocaust in preparation for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 1st.  How many Holocaust Remembrance Days are there?  Enough, already.

The Toledo students saw a slide show on the cremation ovens at Dachau; they ate cabbage and bread just like the concentration camp prisoners and even stood for an hour in a cramped space to feel what it was like to be jammed into a railroad car on the way to a death camp.  Prior to this, they had spent several weeks reading Elie Wiesel’s book “Night.”  

Genocide — Episode 20 of “The World at War”

The World at War is a British television documentary consisting of 26 hour-long episodes. I don’t remember seeing the documentary when it was first shown on TV in 1973.  I had lived through World War II and in 1973, I was watching shows like the Brady Bunch and the Mary Tyler Moore show with my family.

The World at War is currently being shown on the Military channel, and last night I watched Episode #20 which is entitled Genocide.  It starts off with a young Heinrich Himmler who is concerned with turning the German youth into a strong, healthy “superior race.”  Himmler is shown as the founder of the SS, which is described as a superior fighting force.  The documentary is narrated by  actor Sir Lawrence Olivier who has a cultured, upper class British accent.

More self-flagellation by the Germans

In the news today is an article with the headline Study: Dresden Bombing Exaggerated.

The city of Dresden after it was bombed in World War II

Here is a quote from the article:

(March 19) — On Feb. 13-15, 1945, British and U.S. bombers pounded the eastern German city of Dresden with 3,900 tons of high explosives and incendiaries. How many people lost their lives in the devastating firestorms that followed has long been a subject of contention — the Nazis claimed the dead numbered close to 500,000; modern historians have estimated up to 40,000.

Now a five-year study by a panel of German historians has concluded that about 25,000 people died in the attack, far fewer than most experts thought. Researchers pored over records from the city’s archives, cemeteries, official registries and courts. They discovered that the death toll among refugees from the Eastern Front was lower than previously reported. They also dismissed the idea that hundreds of thousands of bodies could have lain undiscovered in the smoldering ruins.

The German people love to beat themselves up and atone for their past sins; they consider it wrong to have any pride in being German or to have any loyalty to their country.  Can you imagine Americans doing a five-year study to prove that a war crime committed against America was not so bad?

Genocide — What is it and what causes it?

I get all my news from Google News on the Internet and Fox News on TV.  I rarely watch CNN, except when Chrisiane Amanpour is on. Last night, I saw a show which she did about genocide.  I was struck by the fact that she did not give any reason for any of the well known genocides, such as the genocide in Rwanda. To hear her tell it, genocide is something that happens because the perpetrators are evil, not because the victims did anything to piss them off.

During the show on CNN, I turned to a family member in the younger generation and said: “Refresh my memory on the Rwanda genocide.  Who killed whom and why?”  To which the family member replied, “The Hutus killed the Watusis because the Watusis are tall and strong while the Hutus are short and fat, so the Hutus were jealous of the Watusis, and that’s why they killed them.”

Up to this point, I had not realized that the Tutsis were members of the Watusi tribe. Amanpour was pronouncing Tutsi like “Tootsie” as in Tootsie roll, a type of candy. Now it all made sense: the inferior people  in Rwanda killed the superior people, who were completely innocent because, after all, the superior people can’t help it that they are superior and this pisses the inferior people off.

During a commercial, my family member told me the “back story” on the Watusis.  During the colonial period in Africa, the British put the Watusi tribe in charge and the Watsuis made slaves out of the Hutus.  On the CNN show, Amanpour neglected to mention this.

This morning, I looked up genocide on google and found this quote from the writings of M. Hassan Kakar on Wikipedia:

For genocide to happen, there must be certain preconditions. Foremost among them is a national culture that does not place a high value on human life. A totalitarian society, with its assumed superior ideology, is also a precondition for genocidal acts.  In addition, members of the dominant society must perceive their potential victims as less than fully human: as “pagans,” “savages,” “uncouth barbarians,” “unbelievers,” “effete degenerates,” “ritual outlaws,” “racial inferiors,” “class antagonists,” “counterrevolutionaries,” and so on.  In themselves, these conditions are not enough for the perpetrators to commit genocide. To do that—that is, to commit genocide—the perpetrators need a strong, centralized authority and bureaucratic organization as well as pathological individuals and criminals. Also required is a campaign of vilification and dehumanization of the victims by the perpetrators, who are usually new states or new regimes attempting to impose conformity to a new ideology and its model of society.
– M. Hassan Kakar

It is obvious that Kakar is describing the Nazis and the Holocaust.  But are all genocides the same? According to Wikipedia, YES!

Here is another quote from Wikipedia about how genocide always starts:

People are divided into “us and them”.

“One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases.”

“Genocide is always organized… Special army units or militias  are often trained and armed…”

“Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda…”

“Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity…”

“It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human.”

“The perpetrators… deny that they committed any crimes…”

So, according to Wikipedia, Christiane Amanpour is right: the victims of a genocide are always innocent.  Their actions do not cause a genocide.  This means that genocide can never be prevented because there is nothing the victims can do to prevent it.  In fact, Amanpour mentioned the steps leading up to genocide, and her explanation was much like the Wikipedia quote.  She specifically mentioned that the Nazis called the Jews “vermin” and she used the word “extermination” in describing the Holocaust.

I am old enough to remember what Louis Farrakhan said many years ago, when he spoke at Brooklyn Public School 258:

“Nobody wants to talk about what the Jews did. They are always talking about what Hitler did to the Jews. But what did the Jews do to Hitler?”

Maybe the Tutsis did something that made the Hutus so mad that they just couldn’t take it any more, so they hacked the Tutsis to death and threw their bodies into a river.  I don’t know what the Tutsis did to provoke the Hutus because Amanpour didn’t tell us. Nor did she tell us what the Jews did to piss Hitler off.

Yesterday, I read the news on my computer, as usual, while I had my breakfast.  At the top of the page on Google News was this headline: Obama against Armenian ‘genocide’ bill.

Here is a quote from the news article:

Obama against Armenian ‘genocide’ bill
Saturday, 6 March 2010 08:25

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has said the Obama administration will do what it can do block further progress of a controversial bill describing as genocide the killing by Turks of Armenians during WWI.

A US congressional committee narrowly approved the resolution on Thursday, paving the way for a possible vote on Capitol Hill.

But Mrs Clinton said the administration would ‘work very hard’ to prevent this.

Turkey voiced strong protests after the vote and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations.

The same congressional committee passed a similar resolution in 2007 but it failed to go anywhere after then-President George W Bush weighed in strongly against it.

Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but denies that up to 1.5m died and that it amounted to genocide.

The committee’s resolution urges President Obama to use the term genocide when he delivers his annual message on the Armenian massacres in April.

He avoided using the term last year although as a presidential candidate he said the killings were genocide.

So America gets to vote on what is genocide and what isn’t? Now that we are allies with Germany, can we vote to call the ethnic cleansing of Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland, after World War II, a genocide? I wrote about the German expellees on a previous post.

When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was first proposed in Washington, DC, the Armenians wanted to be included.  The decision was finally made that an Armenian exhibit could be included, but it had to be limited to atrocities against the Armenians during World War II and could not include the alleged genocide by the Turks during World War I.  This was done to appease the Turks who insist that the Armenians were not genocided.

In California, the Armenians are called the “Fresno Indians,” because many of them settled in the Central Valley and particularly in the city of Fresno, and they were discriminated against, much like the Native Americans were.

About fifteen years ago, there was a proposal to put up a Holocaust Museum in Sacramento, CA but the project never got off the ground because the “Fresno Indians” insisted on being included.  Whether you call them “Fresno Indians” or Armenians, these people will never be allowed to equate their alleged genocide with the Holocaust.