Why has the Holocaust drawn so much attention, while others are ignored?

[DerekG]

(I'm sure to catch hell from at least one poster for this thread)

Over the past twenty five years, there have been a plethora of films, television movies and documentaries--all major productions--that have dealt with the Holocaust. Many of these have been masterpieces: Holocaust, Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List, Shoah, The Pianist, The Grey Zone.

Now, the justification for making these films over and over is certainly valid. Indeed, when I read an interview of a particular film's director, or hear the audio commentaries to some of these films on DVD, I usually hear the same words: "SO WE NEVER FORGET."

The thing of it is, though...I'm not sure how we COULD forget. The subject, after all, is taught at most grade levels: with reservation at grade school; with some degree of penetration in high school. The literature that deals with this subject is legion. And of course, we have a Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

The deaths of six to ten million human beings will always cast a shadow over our hearts. And yet, the infamous "Never Again" proclamation has been ignored. There have been numerous genocides and campaigns of mass murder all over the world since 1945.

A few questions...

Why aren't there Hollywood productions dealing with the fallout from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings; why can't we get a glimpse of what Churchill's firebombing of cities such as Dresden and Hamburg did to over 150,000 men, women and children?

Why not tell the story of Lenin and Stalin's assault on religion in the Soviet Union; or Mao's war against the Buddhists in Tibet?

Why aren't there Hollywood productions dealing with the events in Rwanda, or perhaps South Africa under apartheid?

Why not depict religious conflicts as they occur in countries like India?

Why aren't there a glut of films on the Vietnam War that take the perspective of a peasant, or a small child?

Or better yet...why does America have an expansive museum devoted to the Holocaust (a crime that never even occured on our soil) when we don't have a museum devoted to the rape of Africa or the genocidal war against the Native Americans?


I fear there are many people who look at the Holocaust as an ISOLATED event, thus dwarfing all other crimes that have been committed against humanity.

Why does one subject get so much attention?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. Why not depict religious conflicts as they occur in countries like India?

umm 6 million did not die in an organized fashion/...thats why

[sadiesworld]

2. B/c it was the worst atrocity of the 20th century.

[mmm]

3. You are correct

Why do you think this?

[DerekG]

13. Well...

I suspect that our government uses the Holocaust as the "ultimate evil" so that its own crimes look miniscule in comparison.

But I don't know why Hollywood is so unwilling to release a historical tragedy piece that isn't focused on said topic.

[meegbear]

4. True ...

Hitler supposedly said that people wouldn't care about killing the Jews because no one cared when the Turks killed the Armenians at the end of WWI.

There was also the slaughter of the Huggenauts(sic), the Protestants, by the French in the 1600s.

[enki23]

5. when i went to the holocaust museum in DC...

one of the first exhibits i came across showed several other recent and potential genocides around the world. we don't pretend they aren't real. the holocaust isn't unique in that so many died. what was unique was the methodical, planned, cold-blooded nature of the crimes. it's what it says about us, that it wasn't committed by raving lunatics. it was the methodical, rational, well ordered and almost unchallenged implementation of a utterly irrational ideal. it proves, beyond a doubt, that almost every otherwise sane person in the world is capable of accepting the most despicable cruelty. and we don't even need much of a reason for it.

humans are fucking bastards. we have to watch ourselves closely.

[JohnLocke]

58. "Humans are fucking bastards."

Well said.

[question everything]

113. Also, that it happened in Central Europe, a most civilized place

Traditionally, the people of the United States have had closed ties with Europe. And many of the classics - music, literature, art - came from Central Europe. Thus, to have such atrocities perpetuated in the lands of our ancestors is like putting a mirror in front of our faces.

I think that this was so shocking about Kosovo. To have such genocides happen, again, in Central Europe among, supposedly civilized people, people "like us."

While atrocities that happen in "third world" countries can be looked at as "oh, they are different people."

And yet, with all the teaching and the movie making, you have a Mr. Gibson Sr. who goes around media outlets spouting his nonsense.

[enki23]

116. i'd have to respectfully disagree with part of that one

europe was anything but "civilized" until very recently. it was one of the most violent places in the world for most of recorded history.

[mmm]

6. Stalin: 40,000,000 dead

[thingfish]

26. Really? Why not a hundred million? Two hundred?

A billion, even? Why the hell not, as long as we're spewing fascist propaganda as though it were gospel truth?

[Character Assassin]

111. That is not, in the least, 'fascist propaganda'.

[durutti]

50. That's very arguable.

There's a great deal of debate over how many Stalin actually killed. 20 million seems to be what most historians think, but some think as few as 8 million and others as many as 50 million.

[number6]

107. so, where's the Russian holocaust museum ?

? 8 or 50 M either way still a big number ..

[RichM]

84. What a crock. Typical brainwashed American - echoes all the hype

about official state enemies, unquestioningly.

Listen, child: the things they tell you about official state enemies have been exaggerated. The things they don't much tell you about the US itself have been suppressed and underplayed. See how it works?

[Vladimir]

90. complete bullshit

[forgethell]

7. What about the

killing fields of Cambodia?? How about the horrors of North Korea? What about Saddam's Iraq?? A film on the 're-education' camps of Vietnam would tell us a lot. What about the rape of Africa? The ones that are going on right now. The slavery where Christian Africans are captured by Muslims and sold or rarnsomed?

There is so much evil in the world, and not all of it, or even most of it, America's, or *'s, fault. People will do incredibly horrible things to each other. So I guess that people study the horrors that affect them emotionally, or personally, the most.

[Kaysera]

8. There have been productions based on these other events, ...

... as well, ... just not popular productions.

[theHandpuppet]

48. There are many films....

Not popular? I'd say Gandhi and The Killing Fields were immensely successful, award-winning films.

The award-winning "The Killing Fields", (1984) Review at : http://ficus-www.cs.ucla.edu/ficus-members/reiher/reviews/killing.html
(excerpt) The Killing Fields is an extraordinarily powerful film, the best new film I've seen this year. It's a strong indictment of modern war in general and the American conduct of the war in Cambodia in particular, but its great strength derives from its secondary themes of the power of friendship and the importance of a will to survive, as well as general comments on accepting responsibility for one's actions. This rich combination of themes is what lifts The Killing Fields above most other films...

Some films regarding apartheid:
The Peter Davis collection: http://www.indiana.edu/~bfca/collection/special/peterd.html
Amandla! http://www.filmforum.com/archivedfilms/amandla/amandla.html
Facing the Truth with Bill Moyers: Subject -- Apartheid, Race Relations, War and Race; http://www.viewingrace.org/browse_sub.php?subject_id=8&film_id=389
Other films of note: A Dry White Season and Cry Freedom!

Just a couple of the more notable English Language films of the British colonial occupation of India: A Passage to India, Gandhi (AA)

Discovered: Rare footage of Hiroshima devastation: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9608/10/japan.hiroshima.film/
Other films about Hiroshima: The Children of Hiroshima (Japan)
An illuminating perspective, at http://www.worldpress.org/europe/0102arts_liberation.htm
Breaking the Hiroshima Taboo

Richard Werly, Libération (left-wing), Paris, France, Oct. 17, 2001

Even as Nobuhiro Suwa’s H Story appears on French movie screens, a new Japanese movie is being shot in the martyred city of Hiroshima. Directed by Yoshida and financed by the French National Film Center to the tune of 20 million francs , the film tells the story of three generations of women from the fateful day of Aug. 6, 1945, to the present.

This production is a rare occurrence because Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to paralyze Japanese filmmakers. The unspeakable pain of the first atomic bomb, about which Japanese schoolchildren are taught from an early age, seems to stun everyone who tries to get to know Hiroshima. Even the director of H Story, a native of the city, hasn’t escaped the phenomenon. “It all started with my friend, the American filmmaker Robert Kramer (Kramer died in November 1999),” Suwa recounts. “He had a clear idea of Hiroshima, of the memory the city carries, and of what he wanted to say. With me it was different—I had nothing to say at first. Japanese people can’t see or talk about this city. It’s both too intimate and too immense....”

More...


Many of the films I've listed above are available at any video rental store. I've barely scratched the subject in this post. Perhaps it's just the more people need to see these films.

[DuctapeFatwa]

9. The most depressing and horrifying web page on the internet

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocidetable.htm

[bemildred]

14. Reality check is always a good thing. nt

[lapislzi]

22. Egads...that is a chilling site

...makes me wonder what stage the U.S. would be classified at.

:scared:

[LeahMira]

10. Good questions...

There are films made and books written about some of the other events you listed, although with smaller audiences that those that Spielberg pulls, for sure. There have been foreign films made on those topics also. I think that we are separated by oceans from these events, and that fact combined with our egocentricity makes us generally disinterested in learning about others' stories.


Or better yet...why does America have an expansive museum devoted to the Holocaust (a crime that never even occured on our soil) when we don't have a museum devoted to the rape of Africa or the genocidal war against the Native Americans?

Because it lets us all shake our heads in sadness while at the same time distancing ourselves from the same level of atrocity... and we have been every bit as atrocious.

You are not the only person who has asked these sorts of questions. You might enjoy reading Selling the Holocaust : From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold by Tim Cole.

[EV1Ltimm]

11. Re: Mao's war against the Buddhists in Tibet

7 years in tibet goes over this for a good portion of the film. granted, it's not the focal point of the film, but it is a big piece of the plot.

edit: But i think for the most part, the holocaust sells, whereas religious persecution in russia etc wouldn't bring flocks of people to the theaters.

[regnaD kciN]

120. So does "Kundun"...

...both films, unfortunately, were released within a few months of each other, and hence "diluted the market" and weren't financial successes.

[mmm]

12. Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili: 30,000,000 dead

Stalin by any other name

[thingfish]

23. I wish the Right would get their Stalin "murder" numbers striaght...

...so their dupes on the left can know which bogus number to list as "fact."

Re: Stalin's "victims" in Ukraine and elsewhere... guess who's side they were on in the lead up to WWII?

[Vladimir]

91. I have seen anything up to 80 million from some people

there is only one explanation for some of these numbers - they attribute all deaths on the Eastern Front to Stalin. The perversity is spectacular.

On a sidenote, before the breakup of the USSR, human rights groups talked of some 4 million in gulags (in the late 1980s). Funnily enough, despite the fact that releasing these prisoners would have been an enormous propaganda coup, you never heard a word about this when Yeltsin came to power. I wonder why...

V

[madrchsod]

15. it seems to me to be a

western european bias in our perception of the world. the machine like way the Germans killed millions in a very short period of time and the deliberate killing of a religious/ethnic group grabs our attention. yet Stalin killed as many or even more. Stalin starved to death whole regions of people,sent millions to work/death camps,a million plus died just in one gold mining operation alone. how many Stalin killed will never be known. Mao certainly had blood on his hands and the emperor of japan sent millions of Chinese and south Asians to their deaths. these will never be box office blockbusters but these souls still need to be remembered....

[bloom]

16. ...

"Or better yet...why does America have an expansive museum devoted to the Holocaust...etc."

Who paid for the Museum? There is your answer.

If you think there should be museums for other atrocities - you would be welcome to organize fundraisers and create them.

[LeahMira]

52. So, are you saying...

Who paid for the Museum? There is your answer.

If you think there should be museums for other atrocities - you would be welcome to organize fundraisers and create them.

Are you saying that the Jewish people should be faulted for mourning their dead and remembering their history? Or are you saying that other groups might learn from them that the past is important, and that our ancestors should not be so easily forgotten?

[LibInternationalist]

89. I think the latter, clearly

the instant assumption of anti-semitism is astounding

[mmm]

17. 200,000 West and Central African CHILDREN are STILL sold into slavery

200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold into slavery each year. EVERY YEAR. And the whole world watches. Why don't we use
one one-thousandth of the energy spent remembering the holocaust
to FIX this modern day horror.

[NewJeffCT]

18. The Rape of Nanjing...

Or, Nanking as it used to be called... Millions of Chinese got killed by the Japanese in the 30s and 40s, women were gang-raped, etc.

But, I think since the Holocaust was perpetrated by Hitler, a white person, against other white people in Jews is has taken on a greater significance in our still mostly white society. Sort of how the killer of a white person (Laci Peterson) gets more attention than the killing of a person of darker skin color (wasn't there a similar murder in California at the time, only the woman was Hispanic?)

Also, there are a heck of a lot of Jewish people in positions of power in Hollywood.

However, things like the Rape of Nanjing are certainly not forgotten in China - they recently opened a memorial in Nanjing that I plan on seeing later this year, and I know a lot of Chinese here that still refuse to buy Japanese cars because of it. (Though, being as bottom-line oriented as they are, Chinese are generally concerned with money first...)

[thingfish]

25. It was the calm, methodical, factory-like efficiency of the Nazi Holocaust

that makes it stand out among Holocausts.

[LeahMira]

35. Also...

... the fact that it wiped out such a large percentage of the total Jewish population of the world.

And yes, I realize that the Romani population was even more significantly decimated.

[Bushknew]

19. Why does one subject get so much attention?

Well, because Jews have the power to tell their story.

Clearly, American Indians donÕt have the power to tell their Holocaust story.

How biological weapons were used against them, how every treaty was broken or
their contribution to the US constitution in the "The Great Law of Peace".


Instead, they have been portrayed as savages.

Meanwhile, we are told to believe America was built on Christian values.

Slavery and genocide are not Christian values.

[texastoast]

24. Yes, a movie about . . .

Andrew Jackson. A little Hitler hailed as one of the best presidents ever.

[ieoeja]

34. I rank Jackson behind *.

It bothers me when people claim * is the worst president in US history. I would have to place Andrew Jackson there. The US Congress was prepared to accept Cherokee statehood. The US Supreme Court ruled favorably on the Cherokee application for statehood. Yet Jackson, in open defiance of both branches moved the United States in a totally different direction. And he did this by letting the Supremes and Congress know that the army was loyal to HIM and that he would destroy the United States of America as opposed to accepting Cherokee statehood.

Instead of the United States holding up the Cherokee as a shining example for Native American nations to the west, Jackson made them the strongest argument in favor of Native American opposition to assimilation into the United States.

[ieoeja]

30. Biological Warfare?

Against the Native Americans? Never happened. An Indian Agent responsible for supplying a group of Native Americans obtained some blankets for a cut rate price and pocketed the difference. The blankets were so cheap because they had been used in a small pox ward and would have otherwise been burned. The primary motivation of this incident appears to have been profit rather than hostility towards Native Americans.

The US Government was the victim of fraud in this case rather than the perpetrator of a crime against humanity. Since the legal concept of "crime against humanity" had not yet been established, the Indian Agent was only charged and convicted for the fraud. But he WAS charged and convicted because this was NOT an act condoned by the United States.

[Bushknew]

38. Got a link?

<<An Indian Agent responsible for supplying a group of Native Americans obtained some blankets for a cut rate price and pocketed the difference. The blankets were so cheap because they had been used in a small pox ward and would have otherwise been burned. The primary motivation of this incident appears to have been profit rather than hostility towards Native Americans.>>

<<the Indian Agent was only charged and convicted for the fraud. But he WAS charged and convicted because this was NOT an act condoned by the United States.>>

There must be evidence of this Indian Agent if he was convicted, got a link?

As I recall, the blankets covered in small pox came from England, I think, and were
intentionally given to the Indians knowing they had no cure for small pox.

[ieoeja]

43. No

Don't recall where I read that, but a quick search seems to suggest that even that much never happened. Everything points to postscripts in an exchange of letters between two BRITISH officers prior to the American Revolutionary War. As this predates the discovery of germs as the cause of disease by almost a full century, these two postscripts, the only known historical evidence supporting this allegation, are of questionable veracity.

Apparently these only exist on microfilm today making verification impossible.

[LeahMira]

61. Not quite...

The primary motivation of this incident appears to have been profit rather than hostility towards Native Americans.

Perhaps you are talking about a different incident, but there are photos on the web of the actual correspondence from Jeffrey Amherst directing that smallpox-infested blankets be sent to the Indian tribes, along with a bunch of Lord Jeffrey's personal opinions about Indians. I don't have the link at hand, but I don't think it's too hard to find.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

72. Happened way b4 the Western rumours....

On the plan to use smallpox as a weapon against the Indians; Parkman, in _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (Vol 2, pgs 39-40, in the new Bison edition) discussed this proposal. The idea, apparently, came from Lord Amherst, in a letter of orders to Col Bouquet, saying "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occassion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them". Bocquet replied that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have on his own men. Bouquet then proposes using- in "the Spanish method"- a combination of hunting dogs, rangers and light horsemen, in an effort to "effectually extirpate or remove that vermin" at little risk to his own men. Amherst readily agreed, hoping that the use of smallpox infested blankets, as well as any other method be used that "can serve to extirpate this execrable race", although he did not think that the hunting dog idea was practical. Parkman states that there is no evidence that Bouquet ever used the smallpox plan, although an epedemic raged among the Ohio Indians "a few months after" the July 1763 correspondence.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bushknew]

46. Savage does mean primitive as well as É

Cruel.

<<In a clash of civilizations, that inferiority doomed them. So, while savages is a harsh word, it is not incorrect.>>

The moral of the story for every country is, get a nuclear weapon.

The US doesnÕt F with you if you have it.

[Muddleoftheroad]

47. Again by Western standards

Some Native American behavior was indeed cruel. So?

And if everybody gets a nuke, we'll have WWIII in no time.

[Bushknew]

55. By your own might makes right logic É

You canÕt blame other countries for trying to get their hands on
a nuclear weapon.

Can you?

That way, they will no longer be viewed as inferior savages.

[Muddleoftheroad]

63. I don't think Iran is viewed as savages now

I think it is viewed as it should be -- an enemy nation.

[DrWeird]

59. Yeah, and some black people chucked spears.

But you don't go around using the word 'spearchucker' now do you?

[Muddleoftheroad]

69. Pop culture kind of dulled the damage of that one

If you recall Spearchucker Jones from the movie M*A*S*H.

[LeahMira]

66. By which "Western standards"

Take a look at the "Western standards" prevalent at about the same time as these pious Western folk were clucking their tongues at Indians.

http://www.torturamuseum.com/

(Apparently there are several of these museums throughout Europe. I was looking for the website of the one in Amsterdam, but found this in Italy and saw links to something in Germany also.)

Come to think of it, don't we keep the Enola Gay in the Smithsonian? And that is because...

[Muddleoftheroad]

68. Let's see

Scalping of not just men, but women and children was certainly viewed as cruel by the whites who then copied it and did it to the Native Americans.

[minkyboodle]

71. I think that is backwards

THe widespread practice of scalping stems mainly from the British and American use of scalps as proof towards the payment of bounty for the killing of Native Americans.
Scott

[Muddleoftheroad]

74. I'll be glad to admit I'm wrong

If you can show a good citation that says colonists began the practice, not Native Americans.

Although, in any case, clearly the tribes did use it against settlers -- including women and children.

[LeahMira]

83. The Native Americans are still here... ask them about their own history!

If you can show a good citation that says colonists began the practice, not Native Americans.

For that, you'll probably need to do some reading of books. The origin of that gruesome practice on this continent is not really known, but often debated nonetheless. Think about why that might be, eh?

Anthropologists have found human remains that are marked in such a way as to indicate that the humans were scalped, and at a time before Europeans had arrived on this continent in any significant numbers. However, given the advanced civilizations that existed on the continent prior to the European arrival, others speculate that America's ancient peoples had performed complicated surgery, including brain surgery, and that this explains the markings that were found. (Recall that the Spanish conquistadores found Aztec and Maya cities in what is now Central America that were more beautiful than anything existing in Europe at the time, and they wrote about the cities... before they destroyed them.) Some internet pieces you might find interesting, however, are listed here:
http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=scalping&sp-a=00050793-sp00000000


Still, no matter "who started it," it's clear that the European-American settlers refined the practice to a low art. During the mid-1800s, settlers in California were actually paid a bounty by the U.S. government for each Indian they killed. The proof of the killing? The scalp of the deceased.

Apparently the practice has continued up to the present, at least among European-Americans. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17192
The American Indians have long since abandoned such gruesome practices, if indeed they ever really embraced them.

There are about two million American Indians living in the U.S. Since they know their own history better than any of us do, you really should ask them.

Here are some good articles to start you on your quest:
http://www.powhatan.org/inaccurate.cfm
http://www.powhatan.org/sacrifices.html

[Muddleoftheroad]

85. Thanks for the reading

But that's a nice long post saying I wasn't necessarily wrong either.

[Cassandra]

75. Absolutely right

Counting coups didn't require killing the enemy. It was considered braver to go by and hit him, as then he was still dangerous. Americans in the Southwest paid for scalps and didn't inquire too closely if they were Indian or Mexican.

[Name removed]

51. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Muddleoftheroad]

64. You hope to rewrite history

But history stays pretty much the same.

My people were seen as "niggers" and about a gazillion other words. We were less than human to the slavers who took us from Africa and the slavers who used us here. THAT is how they saw us. Native Americans were seen in a similar light and different words were used, but those words are still accurate to describe how people viewed them THEN.

[noiretextatique]

101. that's NOT what you wrote...you are rewriting DU history

:shrug: if i were you, i would probably do the same.

[Muddleoftheroad]

117. Not at all

You read what you thought you saw.

[_Jumper_]

53. How can you have a MLK avatar...

...and call Native Americans "savages"????

[Muddleoftheroad]

65. I didn't

I said that is how they were SEEN by the Western culture -- be it English, French or Spanish.

[StopThief]

20. Were any of your other examples. . . .

an attempt to wipe a race of people off of the face of the Earth?

[texastoast]

28. Yes.

There is a saying among our own indigenous people. "The white man has kept but one promise to us: 'We're going to take your land.'"

And those fierce Comanches--we descendents are here because there weren't more of them. Took 20 white men to kill a Comanche. We managed. There are a number of other tribes which have no blood Indians left as well.

Welcome to history.

[ieoeja]

36. I am unaware of any systematic attempt in the West.

I know the Puritans made some attempts along these lines in the east, but know of none such in the west. I am not denying that entire nations were not wiped out over a century of warfare in the west. But I have never heard that this was the intent.

[texastoast]

41. The result is the manifestation of the intent . . .

IMHO. Turning a blind eye is the same as picking up the gun.

Wiping out the Comanches is not something that we get to read in our state-approved Texas history books. The accounts are in little-published research papers by history majors, some of the text of which end up in published pamphlets.

As Texas was settled, American calvary, Texas Rangers, and Mexican vacqueros took them out to protect the white settlers. That and the demise of the buffalo herds decimated their population.

"The formidable Comanche warriors were virtually unchallenged in the west until the white settlers found a weapon that negated the Comanche edge. The weapon was the Colt six-shooter and when it became available to Texas Rangers and frontier settlers the reign of the Comanche as undisputed master of the Plains was over. The superior weapon and the superior numbers of white settlers combined to finally displace the Comanches and send them in shambles to near extinction in the late 1800s."

We won! (Didn't we?)

[LeahMira]

54. You should read...

... some of the California history. I understand what you are saying about intent (although I disagree), but what happened to the Indians in California cannot be called anything other than deliberate genocide.

Here's a start: http://www.notfrisco.com/calmem/genocide.html

"The Gold Rush marked the initiation of one of the most shameful campaigns of genocide
ever carried out by one people against another. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of California Indians
were slaughtered between 1849 and 1853 as settlers sought to grab land and mining claims for themselves."

And this doesn't even get in to a discussion of what the earlier mission system did in California.

Get thee busy and google.

[Cassandra]

73. The Puritans were pikers compared with...

what later went on in the West, as those in power learned how to divide and conquer the Native people. General Custer had more intent than was good for him.
I disagree, though, with comments above about biological warfare. I don't think the understanding about germs and disease was well enough understood then to be as deliberate a strategy as it might seem.

[LeahMira]

88. They knew.

I don't think the understanding about germs and disease was well enough understood then to be as deliberate a strategy as it might seem.

Go to: http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html and scroll down to the section titled "The documents." The links there show photos of a number of documents indicating that while they may not have known specifically about little invisible things called germs or exactly how those germs worked, they knew that somehow blankets could be infested with disease and that the disease could be spread from one person to another by using the same blankets.

[Cassandra]

92. Given that this was more than 100 years before germs were discovered..

I think it was deliberate but based more on superstition and anecdotal observation than anything else. It goes a bit over the line to term it germ warfare as we know it today.

[pollock]

95. The Armenian Genocide.

An attempt to wipe a people off the face of the earth.

[smcmike]

123. Sure

Take for example the Armenian genocide... or, if we can believe the histories, the practices of the Romans towards the Carthaginians after the Punic wars. They not only slaughtered their army, the Romans then took their city apart stone by stone, and sowed their fields with salt so no crop could ever grow there again. Pretty systematic elimination of a people if you ask me. The Holocaust is, in my mind, not categorically different from many of the other great brutalities of history. It was, however, probably the worst in the sense of the sheer horror of it. Although, I have to say Stalin's killings are underrepresented in the mainstream dialogue, in comparison. If you don't feel like sleeping that night, go ahead and find "Harvest of Sorrow" an excellent documentary on this collectivization of the Ukraine.

[seemslikeadream]

21. The Lost World War

The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers’ seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods has been fuelling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). By Erik Vilwar.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is possibly the most mineral rich place on earth – though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource – used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and micro-capacitors.

What is Coltan?
Coltan looks like black mud, but is three times heavier than iron and only slightly lighter than gold. It is found in abundance in eastern Congo and can be mined with minimal equipment. Coltan is vital to the high tech economy. Wireless electronic communication would not exist without it. The ‘mud’ is refined into tantalum – a metallic element that is both a superb conductor of electricity and extremely heat-resistant. Tantalum powder is a vital component in capacitors, for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Capacitors made of tantalum are found inside every laptop, pager, personal digital assistant, and mobile phone.1 Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries. A very small group of companies in the world process coltan. These include H.C.Starck (Germany, a subsidiary ot Bayer), Cabott Inc. (US), Ningxia (China), and Ulba (Kazakhstan). The world’s biggest coltan mines are in Australia and they account for about 60% of world production. It is generally believed, however, that 80% of the world’s reserves are in Africa, with DRC accounting for 80% of the African reserves.2

At the end of 2000, there was an unprecedented ‘gold rush for coltan’. Over a few months the price rose tenfold. In January 2000, an international trader would have paid between US$30 and US$40 for a pound (lb) of unprocessed coltan. By December 2000 the price has risen to US$380/lb. This dramatic price increase was driven by a sudden and steep rise in the demand for tantalum powder, caused by an overvaluation of the technology market triggered by a new generation of mobile phones and the consumer rush following the launch of the Sony Playstation 2.

At the height of the demand for coltan, it is known that Rwandan soldiers and other affiliated criminal groups were making roughly US$20 million a month solely from the trade in coltan.3 However, the coltan boom was short-lived and prices rapidly fell as more and more coltan came on to the market. By October 2001, coltan prices were back to where they started. In the meantime, thousands of destitute Congolese people had gone digging for the precious ore, a few international traders had made a fortune and millions of dollars had flowed to the parties waging war. Prices have fallen from the late 2000 peak, but the trade in coltan is still fuelling the war.

The human costs of this conflict have been horrific. According to the UN, up until last September, in the five Eastern provinces of DRC alone, between 3 and 3.5 million people had died directly because of the war.

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/issue13_part3.htm

[seemslikeadream]

31. Africa and African Oil

U.S. Military Shows Interest in Africa
By: Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press Date: 02/24/2004

DAKAR, Senegal - Top U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, U.S. European Command confirmed Tuesday, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil.
Trips by two top European Command generals follow last week's similarly low-profile Africa visit by the U.S. commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James L. Jones.

The generals are leaders in U.S. military proposals to shift from Cold War-era troop buildups in western Europe to smaller concentrations closer to the world's trouble spots.

Jones' trip included stops in Morocco and Cameroon and talks with leaders of the sub-Sahara's military giants, Nigeria and South Africa, European Command spokesmen in Stuttgart, Germany said.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/8028821.htm


Oil found off the coast of Gambia
By: Jeevan Vasagar
Guardian, The Date: 02/18/2004

The president of Gambia has announced the discovery of "large quantities" of oil in his tiny West African country, the latest revelation of petrochemical riches in sub-Saharan Africa. In a national broadcast Yahya Jammeh, who seized control of the former British colony in a military coup 10 years ago, said the offshore discovery by a western company would result in "a harvest of prosperity".
West Africa already supplies the US with 15% of its oil imports, and the share is expected to grow as the Bush administration seeks to reduce dependence on the Gulf.

The Gambian find follows the discovery of viable deposits of crude oil off São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea, where billions of barrels are believed to lie offshore.

Mr Jammeh did not name the company responsible for the study, but an Australian company, Fusion Oil and Gas, holds a licence to carry out deep-water exploration off the Gambian coast.

The Perth-based firm, which was unavailable for comment last night, describes itself as "a holding company for a group of companies whose business is oil and gas exploration in Africa".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1150369,00.html

U.S. Considers Building Port at Sao Tome to Protect Oil
By: Staff
Associated Press Date: 02/18/2004

DAKAR, Senegal - The United States is studying whether to build a deep-water port and new airport at Sao Tome, an island nation touted as a possible Navy base to protect growing Western oil interests in West Africa.

Ambassador Kenneth Moorefield and Sao Tome ministers signed the $800,000 study agreement at Sao Tome's current international airport, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency said in a statement.

Sao Tome, off oil-rich Nigeria, is one of the lead nations in an oil boom in West Africa as the United States, Asia and Europe look for alternatives to Mideast oil.

West Africa's Gulf of Guinea supplies the United States with 15 percent of its oil, a figure projected to grow to 25 percent by 2015.

The study on expanding Sao Tome's port and airport is in line with a U.S. agreement to "evaluate opportunities for technical assistance" to Sao Tome, the U.S. statement said.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=5769&fcategory_desc...

US opens new front in war on terror beefing up border in Sahara
By: Rory Carroll
Guardian, The Date: 01/14/2004

The US is sending troops and defence contractors to the Sahara desert of west Africa to open what it calls a new front in the war on terror. A small vanguard force arrived this week in Mauritania to pave the way for a $100m (£54m) plan to bolster the security forces and border controls of Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The US Pan-Sahel Initiative, as it is named, will provide 60 days of training to military units, including tips on desert navigation and infantry tactics, and furnish equipment such as Toyota Land Cruisers, radios and uniforms.

The reinforcement of America's defences in a remote, poorly patrolled region came on a day when US police forces gained important powers in the homeland to conduct searches.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1122704,00.html

Repost: African Black Gold
By: Simon Robinson
Time Magazine Date: 10/28/2002


The sleepy tropical island city of Malabo had hardly changed in years. The capital of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation of fewer than 500,000 people, consisted of little more than some moldering Spanish colonial buildings, a few palm-lined plazas and the tightly packed shanty towns which encircle most African settlements. Its one claim to fame was that novelist Frederick Forsyth lived there while he wrote his military thriller The Dogs of War. But over the past three years, Malabo has been transformed. Office buildings have shot up, hotels and banks have opened, and foreigners — once a novelty in Malabo — now cram the town's fancy new restaurants. There's so much construction, joke the locals, that if you open your mouth and stick out your tongue someone is likely to build on it.
The source of this economic boom can be found buried beneath the nearby ocean floor. Over the past decade, foreign oil companies have found at least 500 million barrels of high-grade crude oil in the country's waters. Production has jumped from just 17,000 barrels per day in 1996 to more than 220,000 and could grow another 50% within three years. The oil boom has fueled fantastic economic growth — 65% last year, down to an estimated 25% this year — and pushed annual per capita GDP from $800 seven years ago to more than $2,000 today. The bonanza in Equatorial Guinea is being repeated across the region. Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, will soon start pumping more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day through a $3.7 billion, 1,070-km pipeline — Africa's biggest-ever infrastructure project — that transverses Cameroon.

The island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, which sits on perhaps 4 billion barrels of crude, is also attracting foreign oilmen. These upstart countries join such established giants as Nigeria, which plans to increase its output from its current 1.9 million barrels per day to more than 3 million; Angola, which wants to double its almost 1 million daily output; and Gabon, which is encouraging more deepwater exploration to prop up declining production. All the action makes the waters off West Africa one of the hottest places for oil exploration in the world. On a global scale, the numbers may seem modest; total proven reserves in the Gulf of Guinea sit at 40 billion barrels, less than one-sixth of Saudi Arabia's 261 billion. But Africa is just getting started. Says Al Stanton, an Edinburgh-based oil analyst with Deutsche Bank: "The opportunities for expansion are tremendous."

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901021028-366...

Hunt for 'new' oil
By: Timothy Burn
Washington Times Date: 09/28/2003

U.S. oil companies have been drilling off the west coast of Africa for years, but as major players like ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil continue to strike massive oil deposits in these deep waters, the Bush administration has taken notice.
The United States has been scouring the planet for new sources of oil beyond the Middle East. The September 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq convinced the administration that the United States must move quickly to find new foreign oil partners.

What better place to look than an oil-rich region that lies just 4,500 miles from the East Coast, with an unobstructed sea route to U.S. ports, a region that could supply as much as a quarter of U.S. oil imports?

West Africa is rapidly emerging as a key strategic outpost for President Bush's twin policy goals of taking the war on terror far away from U.S. borders and breaking the Arab stranglehold on world oil prices.

http://washingtontimes.com/specialreport/20030928-123431-1449r.htm

Sept. 2003: U.S. donates ships to protect Nigeria oil
By: Dulue Mbachu
Associated Press Date: 09/05/2003

LAGOS, Nigeria -- The United States is donating several ships to Nigeria to help the West African nation protect its massive oil assets from gangs who steal an estimated 10 percent of oil profits daily, authorities said Friday.
The third of seven former U.S. Coast Guard ships to be delivered by year's end arrived at the port in Lagos on Thursday, a U.S. Embassy official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The first ship arrived in March.

Nigerian authorities plan to deploy the vessels in the troubled southern Niger Delta region, which produces almost all of Nigeria's oil output.

"Our national assets in the sea are worth billions of dollars and the arrival (of the ships) would help safeguard them," a Nigerian navy statement quoted Vice Adm. Samuel Afolayan as saying.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=2376&fcategory_desc...

Aug 2002: US naval base to protect Sao Tome oil
By: Staff
BBC Date: 08/22/2002

The tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the West African coast, has agreed to host a US naval base to protect its oil interests. The country holds a strategic position in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea from which the US could monitor the movement of oil tankers and guard oil platforms.
"Last week I received a call from the Pentagon to tell me that the issue is being studied," President Fradique De Menezes told Portugal's RTP Internacional TV.

"This will be good for Sao Tome as it will ensure the future of the country in relation to those that are ambitious and are looking to come to the country when oil is extracted from our waters," he said.

The former Portuguese colony has a very small army on which it spends only $1m a year.

The president was responding to rumours that the US planned to build a air force and naval base after a visit in July by a US General Carlton Fulford, deputy commander-in-chief, US European Command.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2210571.stm

Americans muscle in as 'big whities' flock to new El Dorado

Rory Carroll, Africa correspondent
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Step inside the air-conditioned lounge of the Viking Club and Luanda's squalor could be another universe. Here the oil executives and engineers sip beer and discuss geological reports, deals and money.
Beyond the shattered skyline of Angola's capital, buried beneath the Atlantic, is a vast store of oil, and their job is to extract it. The accents are British, Australian, French and, increasingly, American.

The "big whities", as the taxi drivers call them, have been coming for years but now the flights are fuller than ever: new offshore discoveries are expected to double output to 2 million barrels per day, prompting talk of a drilling El Dorado.

Angola's government, adept at playing off rival oil companies to maximise its revenue, expects an investment boom of $50bn (£30bn) in the next decade.

A US contractor will help build an oil refinery in Lobito harbour, 250 miles south of Luanda, to process the light crude suitable for American cars. Now that Washington wants west African oil to cut US dependency on the Gulf, its envoys are beating a path to the capital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979101,00.html

Scramble for Africa

Fear of corruption and chaos in oil rush

Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

Washington's determination to find an alternative energy source to the Middle East is leading to a new oil rush in sub-Saharan Africa which threatens to launch a fresh cycle of conflict, corruption and environmental degradation in the region, campaigners warn today.
The new scramble for Africa risks bringing more misery to the continent's impoverished citizens as western oil companies pour billions of dollars in secret payments into government coffers throughout the continent. Much of the money ends up in the hands of ruling elites or is squandered on grandiose projects and the military.

Tony Blair will today urge the oil industry to be more transparent in its dealings with Africa. Openness and accountability are essentials for stability and prosperity in the developing world, he will tell oil company executives and oil exporting countries at a meeting in Lancaster House in central London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,979053,00.html


Oil shocked

A desire to loosen Opec's stranglehold on petroleum prices lies behind Bush's interest in Africa and his plans for Iraq, writes Randeep Ramesh

Friday July 11, 2003

America's new world order appears founded on a declaration of independence. George Bush, an oil man from an oil state, wants America to wean itself off a dangerous addiction to faraway hydrocarbons.
As the president's national energy plan puts it, this is "a condition of increased dependency on foreign powers that do not always have American interests at heart".

Although admirably blunt, this statement has haunted the Bush administration since it was made in May 2001 - months before the attacks of September 11. America's war on terrorism is often viewed as a scramble for black gold.

There is a logic to this. Getting gas out of the Caspian is a lot easier if you are faced with a pliant Afghanistan. If Iraq is not run by a dictator determined to use oil as a weapon of war - as Dick Cheney said " seek domination of the entire Middle East" - then Americans could sleep easier.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,996305,00.html

Oil and terrorism drive the presidential tour

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday July 7, 2003
The Guardian

President Bush's trip to Africa this week signals a recent strategic decision to increase America's military presence to bolster what Washington now sees as two important national interests on the continent - the supply of oil and the struggle against terrorism.
On the eve of departure, General James Jones, the commander of the US European command with responsibility for African operations, said the US was trying to negotiate the long-term use of a "family" of military bases across the continent.

This would include big installations for up to 5,000-strong brigades "that could be robustly used for a significant military presence," Gen Jones told the New York Times. It would also involve smaller, lightly equipped bases available in times of crisis to special forces or marines.

The bases would not only be established in north African states such as Algeria, where Islamic extremism is already a potent force, but also in sub-Saharan African nations such as Mali.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,993022,00.html

US military wants to increase its presence in Africa
By Eric Schmitt in Washington
July 7 2003

The United States military is seeking to expand its presence in Africa through new basing agreements and training exercises aimed at combating a growing terrorist threat.

Even as military planners prepare options for US troops to join an international peacekeeping force to oversee a ceasefire in Liberia, the Pentagon wants to enhance military ties with allies such as Morocco and Tunisia.

It is also seeking to gain long-term access to bases in countries such as Mali and Algeria, which US forces could use for periodic training or to strike terrorists. And it aims to build on aircraft refuelling agreements in Senegal and Uganda, two countries that President George Bush is to visit on the five-nation swing through Africa that he begins tomorrow.

There were no plans to build permanent US bases in Africa, Pentagon officials said. Instead, the US European Command, which oversees military operations in most of Africa, wants troops now in Europe to rotate more often into bare-bones camps or airfields in Africa. Marines may spend more time sailing off West Africa.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/06/1057430078697.html

[DrWeird]

27. The question shouldn't be why is the holocaust getting more atten.

It should be why aren't the other genocides getting more.

Personally, I think we should have some kind of national day of mourning for the atrocities we've caused.

[historian]

29. as an ex jew

i can only say that i think its becuase the jews are the basis for the judeo christian world, are associated with the death of Christ and, more recently, associated with the return to Israel which has prophetic connotations. And, though i will undoubtedly catch flak for this, holocaust stories, though necessary in order to avoid repetitions of that horrendous time, are box office draws. And america is after all the bottom line today.

[Cat Atomic]

32. The same reason we have movies about Irish immigrants

instead of Russian immigrants. There are alot of people of Irish descent here. The Irish immigrants' experience, the Jews, Germans, Italians... they're part of our society's awareness.

I do agree with you that people here have a distorted view of the Holocaust. Alot of people seem to think it was the biggest loss of life in humanity's history, and it probably is largely due to the attention it's had in film. I think it's sort of natural though. The Holocaust is more closely tied to the American psyche than anything in Tibet.

[On the Road]

33. A Few Reasons:

(1) The holocaust achieved a unique status after WWII, and justifiably so. And once a meme starts, it tends to continue.

(2) There is an organized, influential effort to keep the holocaust alive in the public mind. There is no equivalent group or effort for the Armenian holocaust, for example, or many others.

(3) Most importantly, the lesson of the holocaust is in line with the story American wants to tell about itself. Other countries are bad; American was the rescuer by going to war.

The American Indian holocaust was certainly on the same scale as the Jewish holocaust, although it occurred over a longer period of time. However, Americans and before them English colonists, including our founding fathers, were heavliy involved with Indian wars. Pubic histories are written to tell certain approved story lines.

[maveric]

37. 2,000,000 Armenians slaughtered by the Turks, 1915-1923

And the Cossacks slaughtered a few hundred thousand also. This rarely talked about genocide parralelled the European holocaust. Ask any Armenian about the Turks and you'll hear the history of those years.

[pollock]

97. Armenians still trying to get United States to officially recognize

the Armenian Genocide. Always something current in congress under consideration, just have to get it passed.

[kispoko]

39. yep

so much more is concentrated on the european holocaust, because it is our government's opportunity to appear as a the good guy.

it is why you'll never see a museum dedicated to the atrocities of the holocausts of the western hemisphere in our nationa's capital, paid for with federal dollars....


but it is a good idea, for when i hit the powerball, and make some shrewd investments on top of it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

40. To answer your question directly

1) America's Jewish population includes a lot of people who lost relatives in the Holocaust or who would have been killed if they hadn't left Europe soon enough. There's an emotional tie.

2) American soldiers liberated some of the concentration camps. I'm sure that made an impression.

3) Other Hollywood treatments:

a) Firebombing of Dresden: film of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five made in the early 1970s.

b) Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Even the Japanese haven't done much with this theme. I know only of the film Black Rain, which is not the same as the Michael Douglas movie of the same name.

c) South Africa under apartheid: A World Apart, Cry the Beloved Country, Cry Freedom

d) Film taking the peasant's perspective on the Vietnam War: Heaven and Earth--not to be confused with the samurai film of the same name.

e) The West from the Native American's point of view: Cheyenne Autumn, and, even though the main character is white, Little Big Man.

f) Religious wars in India: Gandhi devotes a certain amount of time to the slaughters that took place after India and Pakistan were partitioned.

g) Cambodia: The Killing Fields

Sad to say, Rwanda probably hasn't gotten much attention because middle America doesn't care about black people killing one another.

[0rganism]

79. A few other films in this vein

Firebombing of Tokyo: Grave of the Fireflies (anime)
Vietnam war from NVA/VC perspective: The Iron Triangle
El Salvador: Salvador (another Stone film)
Chile under Pinochet: Missing
Soviet Union during Stalin's purges: Burnt by the Sun

All I can think of off the top...

[BigMcLargehuge]

81. and a couple more

Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (about the Rape of Nanking)
Black Sun: 731 (about Japanese Army Biological Weapons Unit 731 in Harbin China)

[Muddleoftheroad]

44. Catching hell

Well, you expected. Hey, why disappoint.

First of all, you need to put WWII and the Holocaust in the proper context. We just went through the 50th anniversary of the war in the 1990s. Now, several years later, we enter the phase where many WWII survivors are dying out. The Holocaust didn't leave many Jews untouched in Europe. Those that did survive have largely died off by now. This rush to do movies is to do them in time to tell the stories while there are people around who still remember.

Of course people can forget -- especially the horror. Even now, with survivors still alive, there are hundreds of thousands of Holocaust deniers. Probably even millions. History books aren't very good at showing the horror of those times.

Thank God we do have a Holocaust Museum in D.C. It is profoundly moving.

Yes, there have been many genocides but Americans were involved in fighting the Nazis and so this genocide is close to home. While Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murdered millions as well, none of those nations or cultures is especially close to America.

Now, that you equate Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the Holocaust is where you lose me. Japan was still fighting the damn war and had literally THOUSANDS of planes set aside to defend the main island. The bombs prevented a disastrous attack that would have cost countless American and Japanese lives. The two situations are as different as night and day and the comparison is downright offensive.

As for the other examples, you need to remember that we are a Western audience and things that happen in Europe relate more to us than things that happen in China or Cambodia or Africa.

The Holocaust gets the attention because it was the ultimate example of a normal state gone crazy. It stands as a reminder to us all.

[Solomon]

114. 50 to 100 million africans were killed just getting over here during the

american slavery years. Not counting what happened to them once here.

[Muddleoftheroad]

118. Tthe Middle Passage

Your numbers are ridiculously high. It was still a tragedy, but not that bad.

[tjwash]

45. The ironic thing is...

...the groups of holocaust revisionists, who do more to keep the holocaust being disussed and reviewed than concerted efforts by jewish groups.

[w4rma]

49. Imho, the reason is Hitler, the man at the center of World War II, did it.

World War II was all encompassing and affected practically everyone in the world. Other "holocausts" happened in regional wars.

[arewethereyet]

56. marketing

to be crass but true.

The Jews have made it a priority to make it so and have been wildly successful at it.

[Name removed]

60. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[arewethereyet]

70. so do you dispute this or are you just in a banal mood ?

[cantwealljustgetalong]

80. what is truer still is that...

nothing creates wild green eyed envy better than success...

[arewethereyet]

108. amen to that

[bhunt70]

57. just as an aside

September 2004 The Native American Museum is opening up next to the Air & Space Museum downtown.

[troublemaker]

62. I am troubled by Holocaust exceptionalism

It makes other genocides more likely because no matter how bad they are they will be by definition, not the Holocaust.

Worse, though, is that the Holocaust takes the entirety of Nazism off the table. I think Bush behaves a little like a Nazi but that doesn't mean I expect him to attempt genocide. Our cultural notions of Nazi behavior were formed years before the Holocaust and they're valuable political notions.

Now if anyone compares anything to Hitler, even Hitler in 1933, they are "trivializing the Holocaust."

[troublemaker]

67. PS

I don't mean this flippantly at all--Homo Sapiens probably played a key role in the extinction of Neanderthal man. We are remarkably dangerous creatures.

[Ladyhawk]

76. Nitpicking... :)

You mean Homo sapiens sapiens probably played a key role in the extinction of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. :) Cro Magnons and Neanderthals were merely different subspecies of human beings. That doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong. It's quite possible--even probable--that Cro Magnons had a hand in the extinction.

Feel free to slap me for nitpicking. I'm a bit anal.

And you're right. We are dangerous. I'm not particularly proud to be a human. All we can do is fight our own violent tendencies.

[iverglas]

93. me too

Worse, though, is that the Holocaust takes the entirety of Nazism off the table. I think Bush behaves a little like a Nazi but that doesn't mean I expect him to attempt genocide. Our cultural notions of Nazi behavior were formed years before the Holocaust and they're valuable political notions. Now if anyone compares anything to Hitler, even Hitler in 1933, they are "trivializing the Holocaust."

I'm old enough to remember when one could call someone (say, a dictatorial schoolteacher plainly abusing his/her authority) a "little Hitler" and not be accused of calling him/her anti-semitic. ;) Or, yes, "trivializing the Holocaust". Hitler did quite a lot of things common to fascists that need to be remembered just as clearly.

On Holocaust exceptionalism, I found this article a while back, and found it enormously informative and enlightening, even if one doesn't agree with absolutely all of its thesis:

http://www.zmag.org/Zmag/articles/cot96church.htm
"Assaults on Truth and Memory: Holocaust Denial in Context"

The concluding paragraph of a long piece well worth reading:

In every instance, the particularities of these prior genocides-each of them unique unto themselves-serves to inform our understanding of the Holocaust. Reciprocally, the actualities of the Holocaust serve to illuminate the nature of these earlier holocausts. No less does the procedure apply to the manner in which we approach genocides occurring since 1945, those in Katanga, Biafra, Bangladesh, Indochina, Paraguay, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, Bosnia and on and on.112 Our task is-must be-to fit all the various pieces together in such a way as to obtain at last a comprehension of the whole. There is no other means available to us. We must truly "think of the unthinkable," seriously and without proprietary interest, if ever we are to put an end to the "human cancer" which has spread increasingly throughout our collective organism over the past five centuries.191 To this end, denial in any form is anathema.

.

[nomatrix]

77. The U.S. started Ethnic cleansing in CT

Ethnic Cleansing in Connecticut
Our state's role in the Nazi eugenics movement

http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:32556

"Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race." But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race was not Hitler's. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in Connecticut, two to three decades before Hitler came to power, the product of the American eugenics movement. Hartford and indeed the state of Connecticut played an important albeit unknown role in this country's campaign of ethnic cleansing. What's more, Connecticut was an important player in America's eugenic nexus with Nazi Germany."

-snip-

"The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found and fund the German eugenics program and even funded the program that ultimately sent Josef Mengele into Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American movement came from the American Eugenics Society of New Haven, and the Eugenics Research Association of Long Island, which coordinated much of its activity with the AES. These organizations -- which functioned as part of a closely-knit network, published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals such as Eugenical News and Eugenics , and propagandized for the Nazis."

[nomatrix]

78. I went to the Holocaust Museum

I don't remember any references to this or Operation Paperclip.

A great WWII movie "Shining Through" with Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffin.

[bloom]

102. Very interesting artlcle, that...

Not what would be taught in schools, etc.

[veganwitch]

82. and the armenian holocaust...

actually the first of the 20th century.

[pollock]

96. Which Hitler was very knowledeable about.

"Who after all remembers the Armenians?" --Adolph Hitler.

[veganwitch]

98. yep i remember reading about that

...sadly not many considering the struggle to get the armenian holocaust to recognised as such.

[pollock]

99. And you would be shocked to know some of the groups

who have fought against recognition of the Armenian Genocide. And not talking about the obivious one of Turkey.

[iverglas]

103. indeed

Allow me again to recommend this article:
http://www.zmag.org/Zmag/articles/cot96church.htm

The article is largely a critique of the writing of one author's work: "Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Chair in Modem Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University".

It is long and complex, and so it is difficult to excerpt bits and have them retain their meaning (and it seems to be formatted rather badly, making it difficult to distinguish text from quoted text), but here's a bit:

This is accomplished via an uninterrupted transition from Lipstadt's solid denunciations of Diwald's, Hillgruber's and Sturmer’s spurious attempts to equate German suffering under the Soviets with that of the Jews under nazism, to her purported rebuttal of Nolte's much broader sets of comparisons, all four of which are thereby lumped together as a unified whole. As the first three men's comparisons are not only inaccurate but immoral, so too are Nolte's and, by extension, comparison by anyone of any phenomenon to the Holocaust. All efforts to contextualize the latter - "relativizing" it - are by definition at least as reprehensible as denial itself in Lipstadt's scheme of things.

... What has happened is that, in her project's final pages, the author has subtly - one might say deceptively - substituted one agenda for another. Without pause or notification, she shifts from the entirely worthy objective of systematically exposing, confronting and repudiating those who deny the existence of the Holocaust as an historical reality to a far more dubious attempt to confirm the nazi genocide of European Jewry as something absolutely singular, a process without parallel in all of human history.69 There is a tremendous difference between the two propositions, yet Lipstadt bends every effort to make them appear synonymous. In effect, any and all "failures" to concede the intrinsic "phenomenological uniqueness" of the Holocaust is to be guilty of denying it altogether.

... Whatever Nolte's shortcomings, and they are many, it is Lipstadt, not him, who is ignoring facts here, forming a methodological symmetry with the deniers. The same may be said with respect to her cavalier dismissals of any possibility for legitimate comparison between the Jewish experience under the nazis and that of other peoples slaughtered as a matter of state policy during the twentieth century. Take "the brutal Armenian tragedy" of 1918, in which well upwards of a million people were killed and millions more subjected to a "ruthless Turkish policy of expulsion and resettlement." This was "horrendous," Lipstadt informs us, "but it was not part of a process of total annihilation of an entire people," so it is not comparable to the Holocaust.

This "yes, but" conclusion is immediately followed by others. The "barbaric" Khmer Rouge extermination campaign in Cambodia? It was "conducted as part of a brutalizing war" in which "imagined collaborators" - a million of them? - were "subdued and eliminated. "What the Nazis did to the Jews, unlike what the Khmer Rouge did to the Cambodians, was "gratuitous." Besides, Cambodia is a backwards kind of place, not "a prosperous, advanced, industrial nation at the height of its power" like Germany, so the fate of its population apparently doesn't count as much as the fate of more advanced mortals." Hence, it is obviously "immoral" to compare the Khmer Rouge genocide to that perpetrated by nazism.



... Such historical misrepresentations of other peoples' suffering aside, the essential claim to uniqueness for the Holocaust put forth by Lipstadt and those sharing her view, is lodged in a double fallacy concerning the experience of their own. ...

I really do recommend reading the whole thing.

.

[RichM]

86. Answer: the Holocaust is useful US propaganda, because it demonizes

an official state enemy, and portrays in a sympathetic light a constituency that is white, & has a lot of family in high places in the US. Thus, it's a propaganda two-fer. It demonizes the right people, and praises the right people. It also implies good things about the US (that we fought against truly wicked enemies).

At the time of the actual Holocaust (the historical event, not the Hollywood version), there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the US itself, & in the UK. Few really gave a damn about the Jews, and the US government knew about the genocide, but didn't lift a finger to stop it or expose it publicly. It wasn't important in achieving the real goals of the war.

The post-war propaganda war is something else again. Focus on the Hollywoodized Holocaust makes Americans sit on their fat ignorant asses watching TV, & feel all sorts of good about themselves. You wouldn't get quite the same reaction from an honest film about the US insane murderous destruction of SE Asia, or Central America.

[4323Lopez]

87. good question

"we don't have a museum devoted to the rape of Africa or the genocidal war against the Native Americans?"

[Malva Zebrina]

94. I have a friend who is saddened that the holocaust in Yugoslavia

does not get one bit of attention. His father was from Yugoslavia.
I consider the slaughter of the American Indian an American holocaust. There are lots of holocausts. Not to mimimize the German camps and crematoriums.

http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/yugoslavia_catholic_church.htm

[Vladimir]

100. My great-grandmother

died at Jasenovac. In Yugoslavia it has always, to the best of my knowledge, been considered part of the holocaust proper. But of course its not popular to discuss it now... after all as one Croatian inteelectual once told me: 'The only ones still going on about Jasenovac are the Zionists who run the New York Times'. Pathetic.

V

[Chovexani]

104. Even certain aspects of the Holocaust go willfully ignored

For the Romani people the Porrajmos ("The Devouring") never ended. Yet these people, my people are continually mentioned as footnotes to the horror if they are mentioned at all.

Even worse, there is a concerted effort among a certain segment of the community of Holocaust scholars to exclude the Romani people from the Holocaust, and some even deny that Roma & Sinti populations were targeted for genocide. They say to admit the Nazis wanted to wipe out the Romani people would diminish what happened to the Jews. Unlike the people who deny the Holocaust entirely, this idea is *not* limited to the lunatic fringe--the ADL of all groups has expressed such sentiments in the past. The worst example of this is a book by Guenther Lewy called The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. Dr. Ian Hancock, perhaps the foremost Romani scholar today (and one of only two Romani people to ever serve on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council), dissected this book in an excellent article here:
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/lewy.htm

--------------------------------------------
The Forgotten Holocaust

by Alex Bandy [e-mail]



Zalahalap, HUNGARY.
Karoly Lendvai was part of the Holocaust, but doesn't know it. His is the forgotten Holocaust.

Lendvai, 65, is a Gypsy, living in a tiny hamlet 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Budapest, who barely missed the Auschwitz transport.

"Why did they do it," he kept asking. "Because I'm a Gypsy? That can't be, that's no reason," he answered his own question as he recalled what happened to him and his people, standing outside his house that is part brick, part mud, part bits of sheet metal, odds and ends of lumber.

More than fifty years ago in the summer of 1944 - he cannot remember the month - "Hungarian gendarmes descended on Szentgal," where he grew up, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of Budapest, "and drove us, about a dozen families, on foot to Komarom," Lendvai began, sighing deeply.

Komarom's notorious Csillag prison was a internment camp 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Budapest. It was run by Hungary's Arrow Cross goons, the local variant of the Gestapo.

No one has ever asked Lendvai what happened to him and he has not spoken about it outside his own family.

To him, this was part of the centuries-old persecution of Gypsies, and given his people's oral tradition, there was no one writing about it, or lecturing on it, to make the world aware.

Hungary is not alone in this neglect.

As French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld told The AP, "no French historian has really taken the time to go through the archives - French or German - to see what there is" about the Gypsy Holocaust.

"As we were marched through villages, others joined our group, more Gypsies and more gendarmes," Lendvai continued. "Some babies died along the way and some would-be escapees were shot, left by the roadside. No one knows who they were," he said.

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/forgotten.htm
--------------------------------------------

I think the sentiment is correct, that those who have the power to tell their stories are the ones who have their stories told. Roma themselves don't know a lot of this history due to cultural reasons. The sad thing is, the situation has not really improved much since then, particularly in Eastern Europe. Most European Roma live in abject poverty and the governments in the countries in which they live express anti-Romani sentiments that sound like anything the Nazis said. In this modern day and age there are people who refer to "the gypsy problem".

--------------------------------------------
Hiding gypsies behind a wall

"We're scared to live here," the gypsies say

By Janet Barrie in Usti nad Labem
Politicians in the Czech Republic are expressing concern at the rise in racism against the country's gypsy minority.

In the town of Usti nad Labem, the council is considering plans to build a wall down the side of one street to separate a gypsy apartments from the Czechs who live on the other.

Human rights groups have objected and the Czech Government has said the wall will not be built.

However, the local council says the government has no power to stop them.

'The whites hate us'

The gypsies of Usti nad Labem have never had a comfortable existence. Of the 150 who live in this housing estate, only four have jobs.

They say they are exposed to daily racism that sometimes spills over into violence. The police, they say, do not care.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/286704.stm
--------------------------------------------
Just a few weeks ago, violence erupted in Slovakia when the right-wing government cut social benefits to Roma. Angry and frustrated, the Roma took to the streets and rioted, looting grocery stores and clashing with police.

--------------------------------------------
Roma face starvation in the slums of Slovakia

Gypsies loot supermarkets as government slashes benefits and fails to offer jobs

Jane Burgermeister
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer

Dressed in thin pullovers and baggy trousers, half a dozen children gather outside on the trash-strewn street to watch hungrily as two older children spoon a semolina pudding out of plastic bowls.
A grandmother, wearing a red headscarf as protection against the chill wind that blows across the east Slovakian steppe, stands chatting to neighbours in the osady or settlement where the Roma community lives in abandoned houses and wooden shacks, without water, electricity or sewers.

Because almost none of the adults who live here can find a job, they have plenty of time to discuss the government's latest cuts in benefits and how to avoid starvation.

Last Saturday 200 Roma - gypsies - left this settlement in eastern Slovakia, reminiscent of a Third World slum, and walked across the muddy fields, past neat cottages, to the centre of the town of Trhoviste. Reaching the co-op supermarket, they broke the windows, forced their way into the shop and left with armloads of merchandise, yelling as if it was a slogan: 'We want to eat!'.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1158660,00.h...
--------------------------------------------

Roma women also face forced sterilization in many countries.

--------------------------------------------
Gypsies in Slovakia Complain of Sterilizations

Presov, Slovakia — The morning after Zita, a young Gypsy mother, gave birth to her second child at age 17, a nurse shoved a piece of paper in front of her. Zita, who is illiterate, says she marked three crosses on the paper, and thus unwittingly agreed to be sterilized.

'I don't know what was there,' Zita said. 'I can't read. I don't care what was on it, because I was in pain.'

That was on Feb. 6, 1998. Today Zita is a slim 22-year-old with a sad, shy smile and not much of a future. She and her husband, Krystian, live on the outskirts of this eastern Slovak city in what is commonly called a Gypsy settlement — actually a shantytown of shipping containers and wattle-and-daub huts with no running water.
<snip>

According to a team of foreign and Slovak investigators for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which published a report last month, doctors in eastern Slovakia have sterilized at least 110 young Gypsy women against their will since the fall of Communism in 1989.

The most recent case they documented in visiting only 40 of Slovakia's 600 Gypsy communities was last fall, and the investigators suggest that despite strenuous denials from doctors, the practice continues.
http://www.loper.org/~george/repchoice/2003/Feb/97.html
--------------------------------------------

When you're enjoying the upcoming Summer Olympics in Greece on tv, one thing you won't see on the glossy NBC coverage are the shanty towns in which thousands of Romani families live in squalor and despair. Greece has a shameful history of forced evictions and displacement when it comes to the Roma, and until 1975 Roma did not even recieve Greek citizenship.
--------------------------------------------
Expel first: housing policy for Roma in Greece
Christina Rougheri

On various occasions throughout its history, Greece has undertaken large- scale housing initiatives.
<snip>

Paragraph 4 of Article 21 of the Greek Constitution provides for the right to housing, stipulating the state’s obligation to secure accommodation for everybody. Greece’s Constitution guarantees an acceptable standard of living for all individuals and their families, and this guarantee includes housing. The Greek Constitution is therefore in accord with Article 11(1) of the United Nations, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).<2> In addition, the ICESCR obliges states to show improvement over time of individuals’ living conditions.

Even after 1996, the year of the announcement of the government’s Policy Framework for Greek Roma, tent-dwellers (approximately half of Greece’s Romani population, overall estimated at approximately 350,000) did not experience any significant changes in their desperate situation.<3>Implementation of most housing and infrastructure schemes has been left up to the municipal and prefect authorities. Since these are often hostile to Roma, governmental orders to integrate Roma are often effectively ignored.<4> Despite this, the government’s implementation procedure for the Policy Framework has to date not changed, and the government’s most recent initiative to provide 940 Romani families with favourable loans for the purchase of houses is administered by municipalities.<5>

Since 6 1996, all attempts made as part of the socialist government’s Policy Framework for Roma to improve the standards of living in destitute camps have been abandoned in progress. According to a lengthy “Review for the Years 1996-1999”,<6> provided in February 2000 by the Ministry of the Interior to a Progressive Left Coalition MP in answer to the latter’s parliamentary question, the only part of the project that was completed over the first three years of the Policy Framework was a survey of the housing needs of the Roma.
http://www.errc.org/rr_nr2_2000/noteb2.shtml
--------------------------------------------
One positive sign is that these Eastern European countries want to join the EU, and the EU is forcing them to improve conditions for their Romani populations as a condition of EU membership. The downsize of this has been the outbreak of xenophobic, racist hysteria in the right-wing British press, fearing mass migration of Roma to Britain to, in the words of one tabloid, "leech off us".

Never forget, indeed.

--C

[Astarho]

105. Unfortunately the Porrajmos

has almost always been reduced to a footnote. As a gajo, I would not have known anything about it if not for the Patrin.

[Chovexani]

106. That is a great site.

It helped me a lot when I was trying to do research into my own family background. There's an entire Roma branch of my family tree I had no idea existed until a few years ago when one of my cousins died. There is a lot of shame and denial in my family about it. Trying to get in touch with that aspect of my cultural roots has been hard and painful.

I try to bring attention to the situation nowadays whenever I can. I'm shocked by the people who don't even think Roma exist, let alone are an ethnic group that continue to be persecuted. One poll I saw a while back, that I can't find the link to, said more Americans believed in leprechauns than gypsies. I can't even wrap my brain around that.

[Astarho]

109. Unbelievable

I'm shocked by the people who don't even think Roma exist, let alone are an ethnic group that continue to be persecuted.

I know, a lot of people I know just think of Roma like the old "Gypsy fortune-teller" stereotype. Even the so-called "spiritial" and "lightworker" types here where I live still have these ideas about the Roma.

My sister and I have often though we have some Roma background, but it would be several generations back and not easy (more like impossible) to find, because like you said, a lot of shame and denial. We do however try to point out the situation whenver we can as well.

One poll I saw a while back, that I can't find the link to, said more Americans believed in leprechauns than gypsies. I can't even wrap my brain around that.

Unfortunately, I can wrap my brain around it more then I would like to be able to. :(

Just out of curiosity, is your DU name romany? I would like to hear more.

[Chovexani]

122. My DU name actually is Romani

chovexani is a Romani word meaning "witch". It comes from Armenian.

I picked it cause, well I am one (my avatar is a clue, hehe). And it was also the first Romani word I learned. Sadly I don't know too many more besides it, except for a word or two you shouldn't say in front of your mom. :silly:

[Vladimir]

110. A thousand times yes

the continued persecution of the Roma is a stain on the whole of Europe, and South Eastern Europe in particular. It is the single most acceptable form of racism these days, and is totally sickening.

V

[molly]

112. What is your point?

[Must_B_Free]

115. Because of WWII

This was the last biggest war in memory. The "police actions" since then have been less of an actual threat to the US.

The Holocaust is part and parcel of the greatest struggle in any of our collective lifetime.

Viet Nam, Korea, Faukland Islands, Iraq, Panama, Iraq - there was not real threat to the US in any of these. Not like the one from Italy, Japan and Germany.

[quaker bill]

119. It is simple really

It justifies the horrors we committed in prosecuting WWII. I am not arguing that any of it was unjustified, but the tremendous violence of that war, unprecedented in human history, cried out for justification, the death camps were the answer to the question "why?".

I would not argue that, when viewed as single events, many other holocausts are as evil. But in context, alot more people died in WWII, 10 million russians for instance, millions more europeans and on and on. The Holocaust against the Jews served as the final justification for why all the violence, death, and destruction was necessary.

Because of this, the event gained prominence. However, I would be happy for the other Holocausts to receive similar or equal treatment. Each is it's own crime against humanity.

[Muddleoftheroad]

121. No justification needed

The fascist Axis was trying to conquer the world and kill anybody who got in the way.

That's enough for me.