concordtom said:
SFCityBear said:
oski003 said:
concordtom said:
I was extremely puzzled growing up, learning about what happened in Europe during WW2. I asked myself, how could such a thing happen??
I wonder if you might be able to explain to me your thoughts on how the German society turned into one which rounded up millions of women and children, businessmen and the elderly, in their homes, put them on trains, and mass murdered them.
How does such a thing happen in the course of human civilization? Or, perhaps I should say, uncivilization.
You're a thoughtful person, and I look forward to your reply.
Do you consider SF an expert on the matter? Have you instead considered reading a book on the rise of Adolf Hitler?
How do you get from the words "thoughtful person" to the word, "expert"? And here I thought I was on your team, for the most part.
I do try to be thoughtful, caring about others, but I can always do better at that, and I try.
For the record, I am not an expert on anything at all, and especially not expert in the Holocaust. I spent my entire life trying to learn about everything that interested me, and that assured me of never becoming an expert in any one thing. I was equally proficient in most subjects. I had several careers in life, both related and unrelated to my college degree. I am a "Jack of all trades, master in none".
To become a true expert in the Holocaust would require a very special person, IMO, a Simon Wiesenthal, for example. He was a driven man, having lost so many members of his family, driven to bring the men responsible and still alive, to justice, and to expose the Holocaust and what it was to the whole world, when news and facts of it had been suppressed by governments and media everywhere so many years.
Yes, you are not an expert.
But you ARE thoughtful.
And so, I am still looking forward to your reply:
Quote:
I wonder if you might be able to explain to me your thoughts on how the German society turned into one which rounded up millions of women and children, businessmen and the elderly, in their homes, put them on trains, and mass murdered them.
How does such a thing happen in the course of human civilization?
What are the societal ingredients that gives rise to such an outcome? And mind you, the Holocaust is not alone in many aspects. Borrow from any of examples of history.
As a guide, I asked my assistant to provide other possible similar instances where one group of people turned on another for slaughter or destruction. Without my own review, I include these examples of human behavior for consideration:
Quote:
the German society turned into one which rounded up millions of women and children, businessmen and the elderly, in their homes, put them on trains, and mass murdered them.
the Holocaust is not alone in many aspects
What are some other historical atrocities where one group turned on another and slaughtered them.
A:
Many historical atrocities involve one group targeting another for persecution or extermination. Some examples include:
1. **Armenian Genocide (1915-1923)**: The Ottoman Empire systematically killed 1.5 million Armenians through deportations, massacres, and death marches.
2. **Rwandan Genocide (1994)**: The Hutu majority slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 100 days.
3. **Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979)**: The Khmer Rouge killed approximately 1.7 million people, targeting intellectuals, ethnic minorities, and perceived political enemies.
4. **Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995)**: Bosnian Serb forces targeted Bosniaks and Croats, culminating in the Srebrenica massacre.
5. **Trail of Tears (1830s)**: Native American tribes were forcibly relocated, leading to thousands of deaths.
These events reflect the recurring tragedy of human violence driven by ideology, prejudice, or power struggles.
More please
Here are more examples of historical atrocities where one group turned on another:
6. **Holodomor (1932-1933)**: A man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine, where millions of Ukrainians died, largely due to Stalin's policies.
7. **Nanking Massacre (1937-1938)**: Japanese forces killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and soldiers, committing widespread atrocities.
8. **Atlantic Slave Trade (16th-19th century)**: Millions of Africans were forcibly enslaved, leading to immense suffering and death.
9. **Darfur Genocide (2003-present)**: Sudanese government-backed forces targeted ethnic groups, killing hundreds of thousands.
10. **Partition of India (1947)**: Communal violence during India's partition led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and mass displacement.
These events underscore the recurring human capacity for violence driven by racial, ethnic, or political divisions.
more please
Here are additional examples of historical atrocities:
11. **The Irish Famine (1845-1852)**: Although largely a natural disaster, British policies exacerbated the suffering, leading to over a million deaths and mass emigration.
12. **The Congo Free State (1885-1908)**: Under King Leopold II, millions of Congolese were enslaved, mutilated, and killed during rubber and ivory exploitation.
13. **The Great Purge (1936-1938)**: Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union resulted in over a million executions and countless imprisonments.
14. **Indigenous Genocides in the Americas**: Widespread displacement, massacres, and disease killed millions of Native Americans after European colonization.
15. **The Yazidi Genocide (2014)**: ISIS targeted the Yazidi minority in Iraq, killing thousands and enslaving women and children.
These events highlight ongoing challenges in confronting violence and oppression across history.
I've been struggling with how to answer your question about how the Holocaust happened. Now you send us your long list of atrocities, genocides, so your question brings up a lot of new questions, because all these other genocides were likely different from the Holocaust and likely occurred for different reasons. You are going all over the lot with this, so it no longer is anything I would be interested in replying to.
As to the Holocaust itself, you do it and all Jews everywhere a great disservice by describing the Holocaust as "the Nazis rounded up Jews, put them on trains and mass murdered them". I looked up some of your previous posts and found that you already seem to have plenty of knowledge of German history, so how you could make such a statement saddens me, almost makes me angry. How could you leave out, almost whitewash, all the years, centuries even, of fear and torture which millions of Jews endured long before and then during the Holocaust?
Find a copy of the film, "Night and Fog", by Alain Resnais, a black and white film, and watch it. It will show hundreds or thousands of Jewish bodies being bulldozed into trenches in the fog. Look at the fear in all those faces, showing how they looked when they died. I have never seen a greater display of the results of human depravity and terror than those faces.
My very first friends as a tiny child were two Jewish boys, twin brothers. They lived just around the corner, so we visited often. They are lifelong friends of mine, though one passed away a few years ago. My father and their father were basketball teammates at Lowell High School.
I would eventually attend Lowell, where I met and befriended many Jews. I studied with them, played ball with them, partied with them, and dated Jewish girls. Our families became friends. Ethnically, Lowell's studentbody was about 60% Caucasian, 20% Asian, 10% Black, and 10% Hispanic. Of the Caucasians, 60% were Jewish. It was there that I made most of my Jewish lifetime friends, many of whom I see or talk with often. One of those very good friends, Jim Bennett, emigrated to Israel, where he eventually married a girl he knew from Lowell. Their son, Naftali Bennett, became Prime Minister of Israel. I never met Naftali, but his father and I corresponded often.
In my second job after graduating from Cal, I returned to Cal to do research in desalination. This is a field of interest for many Jewish and Muslim students, as the process promises to help those who live in arid countries like those in the Middle East. There I befriended several Jewish professors and engineers.
Today, I still have a few hundred Jewish friends, many of whom are very close friends from my youth. For many years, my family's doctors were Jews, and we became patients at Mount Zion hospital, the first American hospital to accept Jews as resident doctors. The doctors were close friends, and often made house calls to see my parents. Several of those doctors had served in the Military in WWII. Our family doctor volunteered for the RAF before the US entered the war, and flew many missions against Rommel in North Africa for the RAF, before he joined the US forces. He would never talk about the war, let alone talk about the Holocaust. My mother's gynecologist was formerly a bomber pilot who flew missions over Europe against Hitler. He was uncomfortable when I mentioned his service.
None of the several hundreds of Jewish friends I and my family have and had ever mentioned the Holocaust to me. We never discussed it. I found out only recently that some of them had relatives who perished in the Holocaust. One, a professor living in Israel, told me his wife (who is from Lithuania), lost several members of her family in the Holocaust. Not only that, but another of her relatives, a bright young PhD candidate in Israel, was riding a bus, and was killed by a terrorist suicide bomber, who blew up the bus, killing all the passengers. A young boy in the prime of youth, killed for the offense of being born a Jew.
So Tom, out of consideration for all my Jewish friends, I won't talk about the Holocaust or its causes with you on this forum. If they mostly won't talk about it, then neither will I.
