[Menydh]

Originally Posted by prometheus

Holocaust most certainly did not happen. But persecutions of the Jews in the second world war (including mass killings), at hands of Nazis, did happen.

Of course that you are right if you mean that the capitalized use of the word holocaust is intended purposedly to give it a magnified effect.

Holocaust was before WWII a word derived from Greek through Latin to mean a sacrifice by fire. It does create its intended purpose of a terror effect.

If the events were not those alleged (e.g. the number of Jews killed is not 6 million, or they were not cremated, etc.), then one cannot/should not call it holocaust. It is important because, due to the magnitude of the general accusation implied in the holocaust, if all the elements are not present then it would mean that the holocaust did not exist. It would be something else, but not holocaust.

Holocaust does not denote mere persecution of Jews.

A number of holocaust historians use it only for the Jews, not including other groups.

It designs a special, mythological event, a unique and the most terrible crime in the history of mankind (as they claim). The unicity of "holocaust" (shoah) is its main point.

Shoah is the Hebrew word for.. catastrophe?

It goes something like this (as I interpret it): Jews have endured a kind of "collective" sacrifice for the "bright" future of mankind. It is a perversion of Christianity. According to Christian dogma Jesus Christ died in order to atone our sins, so that we can have an afterlife with God. Jews underwent a collective sacrifice, for the future of mankind, for a heaven on earth to be established. All modern ideologies are about "heaven on earth" (communism, liberal capitalism etc.) So this "sanctity of shoah" is not just about some Jewish lobby imposing it to the rest of humanity, but there are Western power structures which perpetuate it because it is a their founding myth!

Interesting..

Originally Posted by A Fist Full of Snow

Yes that's quite right. It is not even clear to me what the official version of the Holocaust is. It seems a person could commit the crime of denying the Holocaust by saying something mainstream historians have already agreed upon. I believe an Austrian army officer was charged with saying there were no gas chambers in Austria or Germany when this is the consensus of historians. It is all very Soviet in character.

It would be interesting to read what the laws against holocaust denial say, and how subject to interpretation by jurists these laws are.

I wonder if casting doubts on the holocaust or any part of it is also considered holocaust denial, or how much must one deny to be guilty of holocaut denial.

Originally Posted by Panonski

The Germans did it and only they should pay the price.

That's not fair to say. Even if we accepted that it did happen, Germans did not vote for a party which included a statement on the elimination of peoples as part of its political or electoral programme. And they have paid a price more than high for it. In fact, we all have. Not just the Germans.

The NSDAP in Germany came into power in a moment of a chaotic and critical situation. I don't know if it would have come into power under a different situation, but I doubt it. In fact, you can be even sure that any party tainted with nazism in one way or another in Germany, will never get into power by electoral means.