patrickcaturday
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Defining the Holocaust
In 1979, the President's Commission on the Holocaust provided the following definition to help guide the Council and its observances:
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators as a central act of state during the Second World War; as night descended, millions of other peoples were swept into this net of death. It was a crime unique in the annals of human history, different not only in the quantity of violence -- the sheer numbers killed -- but in its manner and purpose as a mass criminal enterprise organized by the state against defenseless civilian populations. The decision to kill every Jew everywhere in Europe: the definition of Jew as target for death transcended all boundaries.... The concept of the annihilation of an entire people, as distinguished from their subjugation, was unprecedented; never before in human history had genocide been an all-pervasive government policy unaffected by territorial or economic advantage and unchecked by moral or religious constraints.... The Holocaust was not simply a throwback to medieval torture or archaic barbarism, but a thoroughly modern expression of bureaucratic organization, industrial management, scientific achievement, and technological sophistication. The entire apparatus of the German bureaucracy was marshaled in the service of the extermination process.[5 ]
Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We must never forget, however, that for each person who was rescued and survived the Holocaust, countless more were killed. As we remember stories of rescue, therefore, we must first honor the memory of Holocaust victims by countering indifference with vigilance and apathy with action.
2012 Days of Remembrance
It is truly right and fitting that we remember all of the victims of the Holocaust;
A ) the 6,000,000 Jews that were killed
B ) the approximately 1,800,000 Polish Slavs that were killed
C ) the approximately ( estimates vary ) 7 to 12 million Russian Slavs ( including 3,200,000 POWs ) that were killed
D ) the approximately 1,500,000 Romani that were killed.
E ) also the physically and mentally disabled, the homosexuals, the Muslims, and others that were killed.
All of these were killed by the same means as the Jews were killed !!!
If we only remember the Jewish victims then we are being indifferent to the millions of others that suffered the same horrors ! If we do not tell the true history of the Holocaust and learn all of it's lessons, then we will not remain vigilant , and thus NOT be prepared to counter the conditions that will allow another Holocaust to occur ! So everyone here should take an oath that when the Holocaust is remembered they will do their best to tell the whole story
I SWEAR TO DO SO
Well, then, you've got your work cut out for you. The Jews have done their best to remember every Jew by name who was killed in the Holocaust, so you need to get busy remembering all 1,800,000 Poles, 7,000,000 to 12,000,000 Russians and 1,500,000 Romani by name. Be sure to check back in when your memorial list is complete.
It appears to me that your comment is a bit snide. I will attempt to however not treat it that way. The Jewish people are to be commended for their dilligent research in this area.
Vad Yashem was established in 1953 and given the task of recording all of the names of the Jews that were killed in the Holocaust, and even after almost 60 years they are still only able to document 2/3 of the 6,000,000 killed;
Yad Vashem, together with its partners, has collected and recorded here the names and biographical details of two thirds of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices. Two million more still remain unidentified: It is our collective duty to persist until all their names are recovered
http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en
Still concidering the difficulties that are involved this in itself is a remarkable feat ! The difficulties that other ethnicities have faced are in some respects even greater.
Take for example the difficulties that the Romani have faced. First of all they have never been a very literate people in that their lifestyle is nomadic and thus they are not able to acess oppertunities foe education very easily. Add to that the fact that almost all of their tradition keepers were killed in the Holocaust and their reluctance to talk to outsiders means that most of their stories have been lost. The descimination that the Romani faced before the war continued after the war. For example the Germans began paying reperations to the Jews for the Holocaust in 1953. When the Romani applied the Germans said they would not receive them because the reason they were in the concentration camps was because they were criminals, however the law that the Romani brike was simply the fact that they were simply Romani. It took untill 1985 before the Germans would begin to pay reperations and by that time many of the survivors were dead.
Jewish Responses : Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota
Please note that descrimination against the Romani is still practiced by law in such places as Italy, France, England and Germany.
My point is simply this just as I do not need all of the 6,000,000 name of the Jews to remember them, We should not need the names of all of the other victims to recognize them. It really is the only human thing to do !!!