Dubious Holocaust "Lessons" 2009

Dear Susan:

The word "holocaust" has always had a "sacral" meaning in the Judeo-Christian world. Others may have discovered it more recently.

When the British Sovereign and head of the Church of England presided over the starvation of 1.5 million Irish-Catholic British citizens, Michael McDavitt termed it a "holocaust". That was the 19th century. But some authors and reporters fail to see the merit of addressing that genocide. Or the Armenian Genocide. Or the Rwandan genocide.

Yes, the horrors happened in the 20th century, the 19th century, and as far back as the Old Testament stories where soldiers killed every man, woman, and child. Violence of man against man has had a very long miserable history with all nationalities and faiths culpable.

The "many Catholics" you say are expressing outrage at the Holy Father are no doubt of the heretical persuasion who also want women priestesses, homosexual priests, and a pro-Abortion agenda. Yes, Virginia, they may be Bishops, too! You write that mankind has "mixed moral impulses"? - you nailed that one. That is why I am Catholic. And that is why I prefer Christianity to any other guide for modern man.

I agree with Arendt not Browning. Evil is perpetual, don't you think? Do you believe that a "Progressive'" political movement (or religion?) will deliver Heaven on Earth? Please do not believe Evil is special, or monstrous, or so far away from the breast of every man and women (and now pre-teens) on this Earth. It may be reassuring that Evil should be far away, but Evil is never far away.
It is common place, banal. Virtue is rare.

Hollywood's recent WW II Holocaust offerings seems to indicate you can't win for loosing. These films are commercial ventures!
We could all point to many movies that have left us politically or morally dissatisfied. Are you asking us to look to Hollywood for morality?

What are these "legal barriers" that must be maintained to prevent Evil, that do not exist already? Are you asking us to look to the courts for our morality?

The Catholic Church and the beliefs it has preached for 2,000 years have been the foundation of liberty and civilization in the Western World.

President Bush used the "unwillingness of Britain and France to stand up to Hitler at Munich" much the same way you, to your shame, use the strong emotions associated with the Holocaust of WW II as a stalking horse for your anti-Catholic feelings. You have a right to follow another faith or disagree with my faith. But, you ridicule, and you show much disrespect to ALL Catholics. Would you want me to second guess your motives? Call your entire article a blunder? Call you a Crackpot? That you have no right to lecture anyone? After all, this is just one of your articles.

But you now owe Catholics an apology. A short apology would remove all doubt that Susan Jacoby has a special animus toward the Vatican.

Onofrio,

YOU SAID: ""If you're so disgusted with racism, why not take a stand against some of the Shoah-deniers who've posted here"

This has been my argument to you in regards to your prejudice towards me. You call out every one of my posts for being rude and ignorant and arrogant and bargy, but leave worse offenders alone. You sit there and watch Farnaz tell everyone who disagrees with her to "crawl back under their rock" and call anyone criticizing Israel a hopeless bigot and an antisemite and call Susan Jacoby "owned" because she will not speak Farnaz's "truth to power" about a subject that has nothing to do with "On Faith". You sit there and watch Arminius the Christian say "suck it Timmy!" and "Shut the f*uck up Timmy" and you watch Pam call people "effing nuts" and you have nothing to say on their "classiness" but you are all over every post I make. At least I have a reason to make Farnaz my pet project. She has stooped to the slimiest of demagoguery and race card playing by daring to call me a bigot a racist and an antisemite in a public forum, when the truth is that she is the racist for seeing all Jews as "her people". Ironically her problem with me is that I am a bigot towards racists. All of them. including Jews who are ethnocentric in their marriage practices. That is not me being a bigot. That is me pointing out bigotry. Bigotry towards goys. I am here to point out the exceptional hypocrisy of Farnaz the Jew representer. And you are here to defend it. For some bizarre reason.

Why is it that I do not get offended by the term "white supremacist?
Because I am not one, nor do I consider white people to be "my people".

So why does Farnaz get offended by the term "Jew supremacy" in reference to the ethnocentric marriage practices of most Jews.
Is she an ethnocentric marriage practitioner?
Are Jews who practice ethnocentric marriage practices "her people"?

She should have no trouble agreeing that ethnocentric marriage practices are a form of racism and that creating a word for the non Jew (goy) is a kind of "Jew supremacy". She should be every bit as down on that as I am. But she is not because she sees all Jews as "her people" and don't mess with "her people" or you're going to have to deal with her God dammit!

I'll let Farnaz and you deal with the holocaust deniers. I'm here to point out the hypocrisy of calling others racists while in the same breath, referring to Jews as "my people". This is an awareness raising that most people need to hear. Especially Farnaz.

Onofrio continued,

YOU: I mean, you turn up here just to grasp tardily for the moral high ground with pious no-brainers like *racism is bad*.

No brainers? I don't think so sir. If what I was saying were a no brainer, the world would not be in such a mess and everyone here would automatically agree with me . My "new" idea that I am bringing to this forum is not that racism is bad. My new idea is that self racialization is as much to blame for racism as is racializing others. I do not identify myself as an aryan, or consider aryans to be my people. My great grand parents were killed in a Russian concentration camp by being worked and starved to death for the crime of being ethnic Germans living in east Poland. But I do not let this sucker me into calling ethnic Germans "my people". That would be compounding the problem. I have no more in common with ethnic Germans than I have in common with ethnic Italians or the ethnic Russians who killed my great grandparents.

YOU: "And then you bypass all the actual racists and save your broadside for one who represents the aggrieved party in this struggle"

LOL! This is the whole problem. You see Farnz as representing the Jews. That's racist. You think that Farnaz represents the people killed in the Shoah. She does not. Why do you think that Farnaz represents the Jews? More importantly why does Farnaz think that she represents the Jews? She's not even religious. Is her ethnicity a distinct group, bound together by something that the rest of us aren't? Or is seeing them that way the problem in the first place? Think about it.

YOU: On a thread specifically about the Shoah, you imply that antisemitism shouldn't exist as a term or concept because it helps perpetuate racist thinking. Classy!

Helpful awareness raising. Classy is irrelevant. Tough love is needed. Classy is for dinner parties. This is a blog for awareness raising.

Onofrio,

YOU: "If you're so disgusted with racism, why not take a stand against some of the Shoah-deniers who've posted here"

I have. Racism is awful. All of it. Racists are disgusting lowlifes. The people you are referring to are included in that group.

YOU: "Perhaps you might consider explaining your bold semantic reforms to a group whom they directly affect - the no-longer-antisemites-but-just-plain-racists who've posted on this thread"

I don't think I have much hope with Shoah deniers. They seem to far gone. Like trying to council Hitler. I'm out to show the root cause of racism that many people don't realize because they are too busy trying to achieve justice for "their people", which is itself the root cause. "my people" "our people" "their people". You seem to think that racism is only about saying "their people" not realizing that is is equally the fault of people saying "my people" and "our people". Farnaz thinks she shares a special common bond with all ethnic Jews. So did Hitler. They are both wrong. Get it?

YOU: "And when you've perused all of this intrepid reconstruction, and digested it, perhaps you could explain why - in view of its virulent, mendacious, racialist delusion - that you have opted instead for cheap shots against Farnaz"

They are not cheap shots. Farnaz needs her awareness raised. She has no more connection to the victims of the Shoah than I do. Those were people who were killed, not Jews. The notion that they are "a people" "jews" distinct in some way from other ethnicities, is the reason for such horror in the first place. Saying "their people" is racializing others. Saying "our people" is racializing yourselves. All racialization is bad and causes false divisions between humans.

Daniel in the Den,

YOU WROTE: But when people act this way and become red-faced with hysteria on the subject of "the Jews," I think there is something pretty weird going on. It is some sort of "hate-the-Jews" mania that apparently, alot of people have. It is sort of all wrapped up in a kind of fundamentalist relgious mania. Timmy, perhaps you are not aware of this.

Oh but I am Daniel. Racism is the most terrible thing in the world. I have seen the same kind of thing you are talking about towards Black people and Indian people and Arab people. It's all terrible. My statement was that there is no difference. Racism is racism. Are you disagreeing with this? Is Antisemitism different in some way?

Hello Onofrio,

First to finish up from the other thread,

YOU: "Look, in actual practice, I don't distinguish personality from essence, and like from love so definitely as you.

Fair enough. But I don't think it's me who is the odd one out here.

YOU: "And using the *love for animals* as an analogy for a general *love for humans* (exclusive of personality and liking) seems to me somewhat far-fetched"

To you maybe, but most people can distinguish the difference.
If someone says "I love music" or "I love art", it is only you would jump to the conclusion that they love every song and every painting. Most people would assume they did not mean that.


YOU: "Given that I hate a fair few things, and people (not just their *personalities*)

Can you give me an example of someone you hate for reasons other than their personality?

YOU: That's one reason why Jesus ain't for me. I reserve the right to loathe deeply.

You have that right. Hate away.

YOU: "I do have kids, school-age. And, though I value your altruism, such goodwill won't save the world for them. If only feelings could heal!

They can. You are just a negative nellie.

YOU: "Clearly, to you universal love and hope is the default setting of the human heart; and evil is the viral interloper, carried by memes of irrationality like religion. You, then, are at heart an optimist about human nature"

Guilty as charged.

YOU: "To me, evil is the default setting of the human heart; and goodness is a glimmer of otherness that shines unaccountably and irrepressibly through the wreck of human affairs. I am, admittedly, a misanthrope, though not entirely bereft of hope"

This explains a lot. This is why you get along so well with Arminius. Couple a misanthropic peas in a pod. So sad.

YOU: btw, I do not hate you - personality or essence.

Yes I know. You just hate the "human" in me. I get it.

I am not Jewish. I was raised in a place where there were no Jewish people. My family seldom made reference to Jews, and certainly were not anti-semitic. My last name is not reasonbaly anything like a Jewish name, although it has a syllable that often appears in a couple of well-known Jewish names. In fact, I am Celtic in appearance and complexion, although I have black hair.

I do not hate Jews, and I feel some empathy for what happened to Jews during World War II in Nazi Germany. And sometimes I speak up. And for speaking up, I have been called a Jew lover; and I have even been called a Jew, citing my Celtic last name, and my prominent nose as proof.

But I am not Jewish and I cannot really be insulted in this way. But when people act this way and become red-faced with hysteria on the subject of "the Jews," I think there is something pretty weird going on. It is some sort of "hate-the-Jews" mania that apparently, alot of people have. It is sort of all wrapped up in a kind of fundamentalist relgious mania.

Timmy, perhaps you are not aware of this.

Timmy,

I mean, you turn up here just to grasp tardily for the moral high ground with pious no-brainers like *racism is bad*. And then you bypass all the actual racists and save your broadside for one who represents the aggrieved party in this struggle. On a thread specifically about the Shoah, you imply that antisemitism shouldn't exist as a term or concept because it helps perpetuate racist thinking.

Classy!

For a good review of the reality of WW2, the bloody body counts and who was responsible( with supporting references ), see http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Second .

Timmy,

Reading you loud and clear, as you advocate the cessation of *ethnicity*, and the redundancy, indeed non-existence of *antisemitism* as a distinct genre of hatred. Perhaps you might consider explaining your bold semantic reforms to a group whom they directly affect - the no-longer-antisemites-but-just-plain-racists who've posted on this thread. Who knows, they might respond positively to a bit of your *tough love*.

As you do so, you might also like to review the efforts of these erstwhile antisemites at busting the perfidious Jewish myths that have so long passed for history.

You'll discover that Treblinka, Dachau, Auschwitz and the rest of the usual expletives were simply internment camps for enemy aliens, built for their own protection by a firm-but-fair Reich. The inmates received Red Cross parcels and were treated humanely, until those dreadful Allies (especially the Soviets) made it impossible for their decent Nazi captors to feed them all, and some thousands regrettably died of starvation, despite the best efforts of the SS to save them. As for the gas chambers, they were all concocted by the Soviets, and could never have been used for actual mass executions, as has been scientifically proven.

And when you've perused all of this intrepid reconstruction, and digested it, perhaps you could explain why - in view of its virulent, mendacious, racialist delusion - that you have opted instead for cheap shots against Farnaz.

Timmy,

You:
"All racism is equal. Equally bad. Not more so towards any one particular group of people. That thought is racist."

Scroll down.

If you're so disgusted with racism, why not take a stand against some of the Shoah-deniers who've posted here. Plenty of lies, damn lies, and damn racialist lies to get your teeth into, all couched in terms of intrepid revisionism. And btw, you'll encounter lots of fake concern for all the other slaughtered masses of history, brought up to put those *whiny* Jews and their overhyped Shoah in proper *perspective*.

Or have you just come here when the hurly burly's done, to crow over Farnaz and bang your usual drums?

Dan in the den,

YOU SAID: "Just who is THEY? There is no council, government, nor religious organization that I have ever heard of that speaks for Jews;"

Sure there is. The united council of Farnaz.

Note how often she speaks for Jews and Judaism as though they are all one group who believe the same thing. Listening to her you'd think that all Jews are now reconstructionists and don't really believe in God. Instead of preaching the values of reconstructionist Judaism here, she should fly over to the West bank Jewish settlements, and preach it there. Tell those Jews that God's covenant was really with all people not just Jews. Cause they have a different theory. And they have Israel by the nut sack.

All racism is bad. Antisemitism is not special. It is racism. No need for a separate word. In fact, that some would think that a special word for racism against this particular group of people is necessary, is indicative of the kind of thinking we need to get away from if we want to end all racism. All racism is equal. Equally bad. Not more so towards any one particular group of people. That thought is racist. So is ever referring to Jews and "my people" or "our people". There is no such thing as "our people". Ethnicity doesn't actually mean anything. Or rather it does, but it should not. We all need to stop saying "my people". Those words are so ugly to me.

Whereas you see representatives of most religions on the On Faith panel and commentators from most ethnic and religious/non-religious groups, you never see Chinese "world" representatives in either group.

Apparently, the Chinese government bans participation in discussion blogs. How very dangerous and disturbing to have almost 20 % of the world's citizens denied freedom of speech. Maybe the fact that five out of the six top human atrocities in the last 60,000 years has involved Chinese leaders has something to do with it.

Bios,

"I like it. I definitely think we do have to face the ugliness with the beauty, and often. As often as we can."
__________
Yes. It's very difficult to do, though, at least, for me. It seems to get harder and harder, as things, in some ways, get worse and worse.

I guess the question is how to keep a balance, how to remember that beauty and goodness are real.

Farnaz2, you said:"The world, Bios, is not pretty, in some ways. We have to face the ugliness with the beauty."

I like it. I definitely think we do have to face the ugliness with the beauty, and often. As often as we can.

Thanks, Bios, I caught it. I could tell you were a caveman, and I promise you, I'm not delicate. :)

Farnaz2, thank you. I really appreciate your reply.

But I apologize because I can't answer you appropriately. Secondly because of lack of time, and first because I'm a caveman. Very distant from your fine-tuned reflexes and intelligent pitch.

I do want to send you a virtual hug though. Here you go.

Re Traciethedolphin's posts,

Readers who are interested in some further exploration of Traciethedolphin's sources and their *milieu* should check out

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/

The Red Cross citation is from chapter nine of a book titled "Did Six Million Really Die?"

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2735

You'll find this page has links to articles that endorse 9/11 and Timothy McVeigh conspiracy theories, raise "secret teachings" of Jesus, and obsess over the grand manipulations of Bilderbergers and Illuminati.

And check out the defence of holocaust-minimising *scholar* turned martyr David Irving at

http://www.tellingfilms.co.uk/irving-oxford.html.

Interesting company you keep, Traciethedolphin.

"In the chaotic condition of Germany after the invasion during the final months of the war, the camps received no food supplies at all and starvation claimed an increasing number of victims."

That is lovely. Why yes... "The Holocaust" was clearly the fault of the, what were they called? ... Now I remember. That's it. The Allies. Yes. Yes. It was all the fault of the Allies. Our client among them, Stalin, was after all a master impresario in such matters in his own right. So it must have been him and his Red Army who framed up the whole thing. Very good. Not a Holocaust at all. Accidental starvation by advancing enemy armies. Nothing more. Nothing more.

YourAffectionateUncle,

Tio,

Yes, that "holocaust" business is an abomination. Most Jews prefer "Shoah," which means, roughly, "utter waste."

Your niece,
Farnaz

My Children,

Holocaust indeed! The very term is repugnant to Our Father Below with its connotation of an offering to The Enemy. Rest assured, we did consume The Enemy's people in their millions like savory breads. But really, to hear it called it a Holocaust is a painful travesty to us.

Still, Our Father Below must be much pleased at the outpouring of anger, frustration, righteous indignation, and acrimony He sees here. The unfinished work of His children a generation ago continues to resonate with you down to this very day. Christian against Jew against Mohammadin against Hindu against atheist! A joy to behold. My apprentices dance with delight at the prospects, but I must really teach them patience. For too often when We have so many at the very brink, some yet turn away and survive to begin anew with tolerance and... Oh what is it that The Enemy says? I can almost hear it... But no, it is just as well that I don't.

But surely you are right, that no lesson was learned, or indeed could be learned from our celebration that some would call The Holocaust. But take comfort knowing that we will always be with you, crouching at your door to teach you the ways of strength and power. For to be strong and dominate your neighbors is the only way to safety. For will they do likewise to you if you hesitate even an instant?

Arminius,

I'm fond of you. However, I will exercise that right to the best of my ability and do so without apology to anyone. Any person in the war against racism is more than welcome to join me. To each her own methods.

Farnaz

Arminius,

When in 1993, the Israeli doctors went, they were alone. I have footage from CNN, NBC, ABC to this affect. As for Doctors without Borders, there are Jews among them as well.

As for my awareness of you, I don't mean for you to be collateral damage. On the other hand, the damage to Jews from slime like those two posters and all the other antiJewish racist bloggers around here isn't collateral.

We have the right to defend ourselves, and, I, happily among others, will use it.

Traciethedolphine and jameschirico, Putzim:

Whilst we await your christian replies, consider this:

This Israeli Jewish doctors who went to help Kosovars went in the middle of war. They were civilians. They insisted that the Israeli government provide them with materials, medicine, etc. It was all over Israeli television. The sight of the refugees was too much for the country, and the government (the Israeli taxpayers) gave them the supplies. Meanwhile the Christians continued their genocidal battle against the Kosovo Muslims, who were for the most part unarmed and the doctors came under fire.

Eli Wiesel went to Kosovo at about the same time.
----------------------------------
The christian mass murderer Slovadon Malosovitch died in prison as that christian killer deserved, but most of the serbian christian mass murderers are still very much alive and walking among us.

Farnaz,

Doctors Without Borders were in Bosnia from 1993 on.

Yes, you are in the middle of polemics. Be aware that sometimes I feel like collateral damage. Not that you intend this, I realize.

Arminius, I'm going back significantly further. Obviously, I'm in the middle of polemics here, that are not intended for you, my friend.

Farnaz,

Doctors Without Borders had a presence in Kosovo during the 1999 crisis, but were ultimately forced out when all their supplies were looted and it became too dangerous.

Perhaps TracietheDolphin and JamesChirico could emerge from the primordial ooze long enough to read about American Nazi Catholic person, Fr. James Edward Coughlin, one of the earliest practitioners of Hate Radio. Much more to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
----------------------------
Next, the putzes might wish to tell us who Joe Slovo and Ruth Fuerst were, why among all the millions of Christian South Africans there was only one not Black--that would be one--who stood up against the Christian apartheid regime.

Now, moving along passed the Christian genocidal apartheid regime, said putzes are requested to explain to us why it was only Israeli Jewish doctors who went to help in Kosovo.

Were there no Christian doctors? Also, how come the Christian Serbs were genociding Kosovars?

Putzim, we await your replies.

Too short on time to read everyone's comments. I think I agree with Susan's premise. The only real lesson I take from the Holocaust is that ordinary people can be manipulated into tolerating, and participating in, unspeakable acts of evil.

TracietheDolphin

The silly season is over. Don't you think it would be best for you to put away your childish things, and grow up?

For those that want references.
Theodore N. Kaufman, the author of Germany Must Perish, was a Manhattan-born Jewish businessman who was also chairman of a group that called itself the "American Federation for Peace." The first edition of this slim volume was published in 1940 or early 1941. A second, 96-page edition, which sold for 25 cents, was published in 1941 by Argyle Press of Newark, New Jersey. Both editions were issued when the United States was still officially neutral, that is, before the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941, that brought the U.S. openly into World War II.
Kaufman's fervent proposal for the systematic sterilization of the entire German population was given respectful attention in the American press, including reviews in a number of newspapers. A review in the weekly Time magazine, March 24, 1941, called Kaufman's plan a "sensational idea."
Germany's propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, seized with delight on the book. "This Jew [Kaufman] has done a disservice to the enemy," Goebbels privately commented. "If he had composed the book at my behest he couldn't have done a better job."
Then there is the red cross report,
No Evidence Of Genocide

One of the most important aspects of the Red Cross Report is that it clarifies the true cause of those deaths that undoubtedly occurred in the camps toward the end of the war. Says the Report: "In the chaotic condition of Germany after the invasion during the final months of the war, the camps received no food supplies at all and starvation claimed an increasing number of victims. Itself alarmed by this situation, the German Government at last informed the ICRC on February 1st, 1945 ... In March 1945, discussions between the President of the ICRC and General of the S.S. Kaltenbrunner gave even more decisive results. Relief could henceforth be distributed by the ICRC, and one delegate was authorised to stay in each camp ..." (Vol. III, p. 83).

Fred A. Leuchter Jr has been totally discredited. See Wikipedia for a start. The article is well documented.

I forgot to add this.

Fred A. Leuchter Jr.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Background
FROM APPROXIMATELY 1979 through 1988, Fred Leuchter had worked with most of the states in the United States that carried out capital punishment. He specialized in the design and manufacture of execution equipment including electrocution systems, lethal injection equipment, gallows, and gas chamber hardware.

Called on as an expert witness in a trial in Canada, and after inspecting and testing the "gas chambers" in europe, he had this to say;

Leuchter has written, "Categorically, none of the facilities examined at Auschwitz, Birkenau or Lublin could have supported, or in fact did support, multiple executions utilizing hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide or any other allegedly or factually lethal gas." (LR:H&W p. 138). Leuchter writes in his famous report, "the author finds no evidence that any of the facilities normally alleged to be execution gas chambers were ever used as such and finds, further, that because of the design and fabrication of these facilities, they could not have been utilized for execution gas chambers." (The Leuchter Report: Focal Point Edition p.10)

The thing that bothers me about anti-semitic, anti-Jewish people is that they always refer to the Jews as "they." "They" did this, and "they" did that, and my problem with "them" is yada-yada-yada... they, They, THEY!!!

Just who is THEY? There is no council, government, nor religious organization that I have ever heard of that speaks for Jews; there is no "Jewish conspiracy" to exagerate the Holocaust, or to get sympathy for the Hollocaust. I think that Jews who experienced it make such a big deal about it, because IT WAS A BIG DEAL. If any individual does not care about Jewish suffering, then so what?

If people do not want to believe that the Holocaust happened, so what? That false belief will not stop Jewish people from remembering it, and retelling it. They have the right to remember is, and anti-Jewish people have the right to ignore it. In fact, the anti-Jewish campaign to belittle and marginalize the Jewish Holocaust is perfectly predictable, and not at all suprising, at least not to me.

I think the phrase, "never again" means that this should never happen to anyone again, including the Jews. That is a hope, which is probably in vain. However, alot of people post here, with an intial bow to Jewish suffering, but then trash the Jews for the fact that they are not the only ones who suffer and have suffered.

This strikes me as disingenuous, and passive-aggressive. If you have empathy for the suffering of innocent Palestineans, then your dismissal of the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust ruins and destoys your crediblity on these matters. And that is ok, if you do not take any of this seriously, but just want to vent your own personal, and disconnected greivances about the world and about life.

(When I say "you," I am not addressing any particular person, but people who seem to have a passive-aggressive grudge against Jewish people, in general.)

The thing that bothers me most about Judaism is we promote understanding of the holocaust to stop this from happening to people again. Nonsense, they promote it to stop it from happening to Jews again. Don't believe it, look at the arm sales to apartheid South Africa, where were the F15's and F16's when Kosovo was being purged. Of course another holocaust should not happen to Jews, but it also should not happen to anyone else.

It appears no ones' ancestors to include those of the Jews have clean hands. No poetry will wash these sins away.

To wit:

The Atrocities of the OT-

Exodus 32: 3,000 Israelites killed by Moses for worshipping the golden calf.

Numbers 31: After killing all men, boys and married women among the Midianites, 32,000 virgins remain as booty for the Israelites. (If unmarried girls are a quarter of the population, then 96,000 people were killed.)

Joshua:

Joshua 8: 12,000 men and women, all the people of Ai, killed.

Joshua 10: Joshua completely destroys Gibeon ("larger than Ai"), Makeddah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir. "He left no survivors."

Joshua 11: Hazor destroyed. [Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987), estimates the population of Hazor at ?> 50,000]
TOTAL: if Ai is average, 12,000 x 9 = 108,000 killed.

Judges 1: 10,000 Canaanites k. at Battle of Bezek. Jerusalem and Zephath destroyed.

Judges 3: ca. 10,000 Moabites k. at Jordan River.

Judges 8: 120,000 Midianite soldiers k. by Gideon

Judges 20: Benjamin attacked by other tribes. 25,000 killed.

1 Samuel 4: 4,000 Isrealites killed at 1st Battle of Ebenezer/Aphek. 30,000 Isr. k. at 2nd battle.
David:

2 Samuel 8: 22,000 Arameans of Damascus and 18,000 Edomites killed in 2 battles.

2 Samuel 10: 40,000 Aramean footsoldiers and 7,000 charioteers killed at Helam.

2 Samuel 18: 20,000 Israelites under Absalom killed at Ephraim.

1 Kings 20: 100,000 Arameans killed by Israelites at Battle of Aphek. Another 27,000 killed by collapsing wall.

2 Chron 13: Judah beat Israel and inflicted 500,000 casualties.

2 Chron 25: Amaziah, king of Judah, k. 10,000 from Seir in battle and executed 10,000 POWs. Discharged Judean soldiers pillaged and killed 3,000.

2 Chron 28: Pekah, king of Israel, slew 120,000 Judeans

TOTAL: That comes to about 1,283,000 mass killings specifically enumerated in the Bible

Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Translated by Ben Okopnik

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o'er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. *1*
The Philistines betrayed me - and now judge.
I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I'm persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok *2*
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I'm thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of "Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!"
My mother's being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The "Union of the Russian People!"

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I'm in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed - very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-"They come!"

-"No, fear not - those are sounds
Of spring itself. She's coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!"

-"They break the door!"

-"No, river ice is breaking..."

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I'm every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.
May "Internationale" thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that's blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that's corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/yevtushenko.htm

Bios,

See the "Times," "Wikepedia," etc., on Valerian Trifa and Charles Kremer. without whom that beast, Trifa, would have died here, protected by this government, your tax dollars and mine.

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=charles+kremer+trifa

For Bishop Hudal, Rome, coordinator of the Rat Line that helped the likes of Josef Mengele and Stengel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hudal

I could go on posting for months on the likes of these two Trifa and Hudal.

The world, Bios, is not pretty, in some ways. We have to face the ugliness with the beauty, I think.

Bios,

Sorry, the author of the poem is W.H. Auden. Here's something else.
__________________
The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
by James Thurber

Within the memory of the youngest child there was a family of rabbits who lived near a pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. (The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living, because it was the only way to live.) One night several wolves were killed in an earthquake and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night one of the other wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that lettuce-eaters cause lightning. The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn’t behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island. But the other animals, who lived at a great distance, shamed them saying, “You must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in all probability.” So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves and one day there was a terrible flood which drowned a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot-nibblers with long ears cause floods. The wolves descended on the rabbits, for their own good, and imprisoned them in a dark cave, for their own protection.

When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten and since they had been eaten the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. “They were trying to escape,” said the wolves, “and, as you know this is no world for escapists.”

Moral: Run, don’t walk, to the nearest desert island.

Bios, this is for you. As you know, it was on this date that Germany invaded Poland. Have you read "The Sunflower" by Simon Wiesenthal? If not, you should. It is harrowing, and includes information on Poland's focus on its all-important antiJewish racist obsessions (university days without Jews), while Nazi troops were massing at its border.

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Hi Bios,

You are making complete sense. However, ecological validity aside, Zimbardo's study has been called into question by a couple of his subjects. Nasty stuff, considering the capital he made out of Abu Grhaib.

Notwithstanding the criticism, Milgram's study is much more sound (IMHO), and has been replicated worldwide, with interesting findings. Part of the problem is its limited applications. Consider that in Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Hungary, France, ordinary citizens, in some cases, simply leaving there homes, places of business, often pre-occupation simply left to hunt and slaughter Jews--I have mentioned this below, and there is documentary evidence (photographs, testimony). These people were not "obeying an authority." The influences were many: brainwashing by clerics, history, governments in league with them, etc.

Consider Rwanda: Genocide brought about by radio broadcast.

Milgram is important, moreso than Zimbardo, IMHO. But the obedience business only goes so far. After that, other historical, contextual, and, yes, dispositional factors come into play. Solomon Asch on comformity and Kurt Goldstein may also interest you.

Just to say that instead of going you are this, I'm that, you bad-me good, forever etc..the answers might lie on a broader scale, outside religion, politics, etc., and closer to our human roots.

Am I making sense?

Concerning the question about the Holocaust and other historical crimes, I think Systems Thinking might help understand an important part of the puzzle.
Also along the line of the Milgram & Stanford Prison experiments and other situational case studies we may pick up some hints on human behaviour that suggest the power of context in relationships. This in turn provides some possible explanations on how good people feel helpless in certain situations, making them appear as accessory to whatever is being done, when the reality is more complex than that.

I, like others, always thought e e the standard enitials. I unwish me not hypermagical as he. Next door ahoy. My thanks to you is only exceeded by my desolees if my rants have in any way unthundered in your notbehalf.

It would seem, in a parallel universe not E.E.'s, that we are accused of colluding in excess of verse. A *capital* crime.

Onofrio,

You write, "There goes the neighbourhood." This is for you. (Did you know that he preferred his name be capitalized?)

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victum(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if-listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go

E.E. Cummings

Hey, scumbag got through after all. Sorry for the repeat.

A clutch of posters, comprising a furball, a scooter, a dolphin, and more, are suddenly cast into the warm slurry that spawned life.

Amoeba to Amino Acid:
"There goes the neighbourhood."

A clutch of posters, comprising a furball, a scooter, a dolphin, a scumbag, and more, are suddenly cast into the warm slurry that spawned life.

Amoeba to Amino Acid:
"There goes the neighbourhood."

roverst; KF79

Sorry, there, ah, Rover, for not responding sooner. I was waiting to see what else climbed out from the Primordial Ooze. And look, hier ist Kf79, aka, Krappy Furball.

Hard to tell you barkers apart. All dogs sound the same to us, but we do our best.

I was thinking how few of you skumbags seemed to notice when suicide bombing friends seem to notice the parallels between your skumbag selves and them. So, when they blow themselves up in cafeterias, killing Jews, Muslims, and Christians, or in schools killing Jews, your barking skumbag nazi selves have nothing to say.

Oh, and nazi dogs? Where were you when I was in Iran witnessing a family friend being murdered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? Where were you when three million of us were being exiled from our homes in the Middle East?

Busy being Sh*tface-Skumbag-nazi-barkers? Was that it?

Slink back into the primordial ooze now.

The part "the human species is not really good at heart but possesses decidedly mixed moral impulses -- and that many people who, in ordinary circumstances, might not even be willing to punch another human being in the nose can, given enough social pressure and group think, be induced to inflict every sort of savagery on one another." made me think of what happened to Gaza recently. And to think why so many stayed silent or even applauded. And to wonder how the world stayed paralyzed when peaceful means had not been fully exhausted and one power chose to kill, at will.

Onofrio,

Yes, the holocaust 'minimalists' are worse than the holocaust deniers. The later are simply idiots, the former are a badly-hidden cancer in society. Apparently, the minimalists think that the Jews are not important enough for six million, let alone systematic (and well documented) extermination by gas. This is the epitome of the not-too-well-hidden antisemitism in the world today.

Brings to mind Stalin's numerical maxim: "A death in the family is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

Arminius,

What's so outrageous to me is that these Shoah-pruners/trimmers/deniers believe there's a sort of minimal quorum of dead that will pass muster as *no-longer-a-bother*. Apparently a rough *million* destroyed in Auschwitz is not such a big deal in the ethics of Traciethedolphin. For some reason, murder is less problematic if not by *gas*.

Bishop Williamson, as we know, takes the tally of horror down to a few hundred thousand IN TOTO - a mere statistical smudge. Again, *gas* is somehow emblematic of *systematic*. So the *regrettable* deaths that occurred, among so many *regrettable* events in that war, were thus just isolated incidents - no system - no command control - no responsibility - no guilt.

Scooterlibre who posted below January 27, 2009 1:06 PM wants forensic reports on every last cell of that murdered *6 million*.
- What, the tally's a million out? Lies! Conspiracy! Genocide refuted!
- What, less by gas, more by bullet, torture, and starvation? Mendacity!

These truth-topiarists carp on about burdens of proof, then scoff at proof with a c'est la guerre shrug. And they opine with fake concern about all the non-Jewish war dead, or even the whole universe of slain humanity, in order to put those *whiny*, conspiratorial Jews in some *perspective*. All this completely ignoring the centuries of antisemitic *endeavour* to which the Nazi scourge was simply a systematic crescendo.

Those Jews - how dare they be aggrieved.

Very insightful article. One comparison that I thought you left out in your description of the civilian Jews defending themselves against an armed German force was that of the Israeli Jews against the Palestinians in Gaza. "This, of course, ignores the inherent inequality between civilians and an armed force bent on brutalizing them. The Jews of Europe, as an entire group, were no more capable of doing what the Bielskis or the Warsaw ghetto fighters did than women in Rwanda and the Congo are capable of resisting the force of solders bent on raping and mutilating them, or than Bosnians were when their Serb neighbors took up arms and starting killing them."

A fascist is someone who has a mystically unified belief in religion and nationalism, and who has a fascination with military might, and with guns, and who has a need to belong to a powerful group, identified as superior, and who also requires an inferior group or groups to scapegoat.

The actions of the Bush administration were the precursors of a fascism in America. We only have history to go on, and cannot know what were the true intentions of such people as the Bush/Cheney "crowd" who are by nature deceptive and disingenuous. Therefore, we do not really know where a continuation of Republican rule under McCain would have taken us. We can only go by history. And the history of fascistic people is not very good.

It is politically incorrect to "play the Nazi card" when summarizing Bush/Cheney and their Republican adminstration. It is considered too extreme when compared to the totality of Nazi atrocities.

But, Hitler did not just swoop down on Germany like a flying reptile, and grasp it up in his evil claws. He was elected to power. He did not start, the first day, to send people to extermination camps. But rather, he put down his evil roots, and wove his evil web gradually, little by little, day by day, until he killed six million Jews, and dragged down all of Germany into ruins and Europe with it, and then put a bullet in his brain.

So, why couln't that happen in America too? You would be foolish to assume it never would. We have fascistic people here, too. We have the Holocaust deniers, and others. Why not call them what they are, before it is too late? Why be tolerant of the intolerant? It is better to draw a line in the sand, and say, "this is how far you may go, and then, no further."

I am not an expert on the degree of Christian collusion in the Holocaust of WWII. However, Europe has been known also, for a very long time, as "Christendom." The Holocaust took place in the cradle of Christian culture, where every city, town, villiage, and hamlet had churches on every street corner. While the Holocaust was being planned an implemented, the people of Germany and Italy sang the same Christian hymns in their churches as that we sang in ours.

What was the reaction among the Christians of Europe after the war ended, and the atrocities of the Holocaust were made public? Christianity collapsed with breath-taking, and unexplained suddeness.

I think it was because the burden of hypocrisy became to heavy that people just laid their religion of "love" aside, for awhile, for few generations, if not forever.

Onofrio,

Like you, I await Traciethedolphin's support of the wild claims.

As I understand it, the toll of the death camps was as follows:
Auschwitz-Birkenau: 1.4 million
Treblinka: 870,000
Belzec: 600,000
Majdanek: 360,000
Chelmno: 320,000
Sobibór: 250,000
Maly Trostinets: 65,000
TOTAL: over 3.8 million; of these, 80–90% were estimated to be Jews. These seven camps alone thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.

It should be remembered that Hitler vowed to exterminate the Slavs as well, and they suffered greatly. The Soviet Union lost 27 million total dead. Poland lost about 3,500,000 dead, about 16% of its population. This would be like America losing almost 50 million today.

I second Onofrio on his praise of Farnaz for her testament. I also respect Karen for asking such a personal question in so polite a manner.

Again, the atrocities via body counts of WW2 and elsewhere are reviewed (to include references) extensively at:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Second

For a detailed analysis of the Nazi death camps, see www.ushmm.org

(also see the previous excerpts noted earlier today)

another excerpt:

Auschwitz, Poland (German death camp: Jan. 1942-Jan. 1945): 1 200 000

US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust and www.ushmm.org
Jews: 1,100,000
Poles: 75,000
Roma: 21,000
Soviet POWs: 15,000

Norman Davies: 1,200,000-1,500,000 victims, of which 800,000-1,100,000 Jews

Treblinka, Poland (German death camp: July 1942-Fall 1943): 800 000
PBS Nova: 700,000
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust and www.ushmm.org: 700,000-850,000
Wiesenthal Center: 870,000 Jews k.

Leningrad, USSR (urban siege: 8 Sept. 1941-27 Jan. 1944) 641 000
David Glantz, The Siege of Leningrad 1941-44: 900 Days of Terror: 641,000 Soviet civilians died in siege; one million dead in siege and evacuation.
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): a million civilians unaccounted for. Officially 632,253 died in siege.

Belzec, Poland (German death camp: March 1942-July 1943): 600 000
PBS Nova: 600,000
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust and www.ushmm.org: 600,000
Kolyma, USSR (Soviet GULAG: 1930-mid 1950s): 500 000
Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: asked four researchers. "One estimated [the death toll] at 250,000, one at 300,000, one at 800,000, one at more than 1,000,000."

Majdanek, Poland (German death camp: Oct. 1942-Nov. 1943): 360 000
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 360,000
Holocaust Ency.: 170-235,000
CNN: 200,000-360,000
Chelmno, Poland (German death camp: 8 Dec. 1941-April 1943): 320 000
PBS Nova: 360,000
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 320,000
Holocaust Ency.: 152,000

Changchun, China (urban siege: May-Sept. 1948) 330 000
Jung Chang, Mao: the unknown story: Civilian population dropped from 500,000 to 170,000. The official "watered-down" Communist figure is 120,000 deaths by starvation.

* Nanjing, China (massacre of civilians and POWs by Japanese: 13 Dec. 1937-Feb. 38): 260 000
see sources

Sobibor, Poland (German death camp: 1 March 1942-Oct. 1943): 250 000
PBS Nova: 250,000
Historical Atlas of the Holocaust and www.ushmm.org: 250,000
CNN: >200,000

Farnaz,

I would add my thanks to Karen's for sharing this aspect of your life. Brave and honest, as ever.

Traciethedolphin,

You:
"Even the official numbers of the dead at auschwitz have been revised down from near 4 million to 1 million, and there is testamony on record that the russians built the gas chambers after the war per Stalins orders."

Official numbers, eh? Could you cite your sources for that, Shoah-pruner?

Another player with the grayscales of evil, this time in dolphin form.

So, fasco-cetacean, are you incensed about this *official* million souls destroyed? Or relieved that the murderers are now only 25% as evil as they were thought to be?

You:
"Even a recently released red cross report said that most of the deaths in the camps occured because of starvation, not execution, and they never even mention a gas chamber."

Fancy that! Love to see a source reference for that, fasco-cetacean!

Let's see now, in your calculus of evil starving someone to death is less wicked than stark *execution*. Systematic starvation...now where have I heard of that? That's right, it was a favoured method of the Young Turk regime against the Armenians. So according to your *ethics*, that was a relatively humane genocide, far less culpable than that perfidy about the gas.

And according to your intrepid, mythbusting revisionism, Auschwitz does not signify *4 million gassed*, it was more like *1 million starved, with maybe a few executions thrown in*. That atrocity seems so much more reasonable, so *acceptable*, reduced to mere Armenian dimensions. And at that mini-size it's so much easier to conceal, wish away, and blame its whiny victims.

A million starved to death? Can't see what all the fuss is about!

You:
"and there is no denying the fact that the jews have benefitted greatly since the war, mostly because of the story of the holocaust, and have a vested interest in perpetuating their version of what happened."

No denying facts, eh? I can think of better ways of getting ahead than making up sh-t about mass extermination, can't you, merry little dolphin?

So, why don't you just come out and speak ALL of your truth. You think the whole Shoah-thing is some vast Jewish conspiracy, helped along by those evil fake-death-camp-building commies. Truth is out there, eh?

You're not asking questions, Dolphin. You've been hooked by some hackneyed perfidies that are getting very, VERY long-in-the-tooth.

Who's the mythmonger then?

Farnaz,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my question. It certainly speaks to the power of certain specific individuals to attract vs the power of organized religion to repel. I agree with you that the way the catholic church dealt with the priest abuse scandal was indefensible. Many of my catholic friends stopped going to church or changed religious affiliation because of this.

Though a commited christian myself, for many years, I did not go to church because of all the issues and distortion of the faith and of the teachings of Jesus that I saw emanating from organized religion. Add to that the disputes between local churches and the national offices, ethnic and racial divisions, etc... It's enough to make you think twice before joining a church.

But along the way in my spiritual journey, I finally recognized the need to be a part of a community of believers and resolved my dilemma by joining a locally governed, non denominational church, more like the early new testament church really. No bishops, no national/international hierarchy, etc. We know where all the money goes, any wrongdoing is immediately brought to light and swiftly dealt with. Yes as Christians we need to forgive, but God is also a God of Justice and here on earth, there ought to be consequences for criminal behavior. Jesus warned against the terrible judgement that would befall those who hurt little children. When preserving the institution becomes more important than preserving the faithful, the institution needs to do some serious soul searching.

Again, like you, I speak for myself. I try very much not to make my opinions the opinion of all, and also try not to lump all ... whatever together. There are also many wonderful catholics working within the church to reform it and who are responsible for much charity and care.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply to my question.

Karen2565:

I was interested in Catholicism for a number of reasons. At the time, I'd met a brilliant priest, who did not take the trinity literally, was well aware of unauthentic passages in the NT, opposed sainthood. What he believed and cherished was the mystery, some of the ritual, the comfort that Catholicism could bring.

I never actually converted, and he never pressured me too. I studied a great deal. I saw some things that, ethically, I could not countenance. What I mean to say is that I felt Catholicism involved an ethical system that all but guaranteed bloodshed. I'm not speaking now, primarily of supersessionism, replacement ideology, but the Catholics' endless pronouncement of themselves as "God's people" combined with a concern for the forgiveness, redemption, salvation of the perpetrators at the expense of justice, the healing of the victims brought a great deal of clarity to what I"d seen of history.

At the time, the Church, alone, was sending pedophiles off to be "healed," while paying off the families of victims. New York State, like all the rest cooperated in this scandal, largely because it had a charismatic Cardinal. When he died, District Attorney Morgenthau was on the Church like white on rice, and the church resisted and threatened (Cardinal Egan). That was the beginning of the worldwide scandal, and justice for the countless victims. Healing for many of them, thank God. It came together for me, and I stopped attending mass.

The priest is still our very good friend, a truly decent, ethical man like many other Catholics I know.

Karen, I can only tell you about my thinking, about my own conclusions. I'm only speaking about myself.

TRACIETHEDOLPHIN

It sounds to me like you are a closet Nazi. I do not believe the figure of "six million" Jews exterminated by the Nazis was derived from counting the bodiies. After all, their bodies were systematically cremated, in a highly organized industrial effort.

I believe the number of "six million" Jews exterminated by the Nazis was derived from census information taken before and after the period of the Holocaust, and correlated with the existence of the death camps discovered at the end of the war, sitll in the process of exterminating peoople even as the Nazia fled, and given the extensive Nazi documentation of their programs of Jewish exterminaiton.

In addition to this estimate of six million Jews, there were an additional several millions more extermnated, the number which could not be estimated by census counting. This inculdes, gay people, handi-capped people, old people, Gypsies, and dissidents and other political prisoners.

No one is trying to make Holocaust-denial a crime anymore than evolution-denial is a crime. There is a consensus of belief and opinion based on sound evidence; what you believe is your choice, but you cannot compel other people to be happy at your ignorance, and troublemaking, and you cannot expect your views to be acceptable by many, if not most, people.

I believe that people like you seek to justify Nazi techniques implemented in Germany because you see such techniques as being possibly necessary again in today's world, either, once again against the Jews, or other groups, such as gay people and others.

If that is not your motivation, then perhaps you are just ignorance. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant, but it is nothing to be proud of.

Farnaz
You have posted some interesting materials.

You have posted previously about your spiritual journey and that you became a catholic or attended catholic services at one point. I am curious about the choice you made at that time. Was that before you learned all these things you have posted about the catholic church, or did you decide to leave those facts in the past?

For the record, I am not catholic and there is no hidden agenda behind this question. I really am curious as to what led you to become catholic for a time, considering the many issues you have with the catholic church.

CORRECTED LIST OF GARBAGE THAT BLOGS

After reading this thread, I have come to the conclusion that, contrary to popular opinion, garbage can access the internet, providing that it is unabashedly, unselfconsciously racist. See below for examples.

Think, as well, about how Ratzinger has set up the Vatican to make community with this scum: TRACIETHEDOLPHIN;
shepherdmarilyn; MJR3

To those who have found comfort in the EuroCatholic and EuroProtestant genocide in the Americas:

Research, alas, is still not a matter of Wikipedia, alone, and clicking on this site and t'other.

Primary source data with generally accepted consensus is best. Tor a graphic description of Catholics roastin Indians alive, sending them to drown while diving for pearls, etc., Casas is a universally accepted source. See how the Catholics literally depopulated an island! But, wait! There's more! You get to see how they repopulated it with African captives!!

And when you're done, you get to go island by island, and then, Yes! You come to Bradford celebrating the burning alive of the Pequot Indians a few mile from Plymouth plantation!!!

Then we get to go south, and north. Europe anyone? Sewing cats into the bellies of life women? One hundred thousand and more killed by the Catholics? Of guess who? You got it!!! Jews!

First report on Casas, whose text is on the web. Then, we'll move on.

Bartolomeo de las Casas: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies [1542].

Apologies to tbarksdl, who should not be on the list of garbage blogging, presented in my previous post.

After reading this thread, I have come to the conclusion that, contrary to popular opinion, garbage can access the internet, providing that it is unabashedly, unselfconsciously racist. See below for examples.

Think, as well, about how Ratzinger has set up the Vatican to make community with this scum:

tbarksdl; shepherdmarilyn; MJR3

There goes Pope B once again rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic that is the Roman Church.

That will make no difference to him or to his vessel: their destination is certain, their fate sealed.

All it does is provide travelers on other vessels with different destinations
a frisson of amusement or horror, as the case may be.

The fact is Susan, you israeli troll, the bishop is right. There is significant historical evidence to suggest that the "holocaust" figures, and events have at best, been blown out of proportion. Even the official numbers of the dead at auschwitz have been revised down from near 4 million to 1 million, and there is testamony on record that the russians built the gas chambers after the war per Stalins orders. Add to that the fact that the plan to sterilize and exterminate a population was first conceived by a zionist for use against the people of germany. There is much to question about what actually happened to the jews in WWII germany. As we all know, history is written by the victors, and is often different than what actually happened. Even a recently released red cross report said that most of the deaths in the camps occured because of starvation, not execution, and they never even mention a gas chamber. Yes, history is not as etched in stone as you would try an have us believe Susan, and there is no denying the fact that the jews have benefitted greatly since the war, mostly because of the story of the holocaust, and have a vested interest in perpetuating their version of what happened. The fact that so many jews are pushing for criminalization of people who want to ask the questions should tell us that something isn't right. Since when should it be a crime to question anything.

"The Annihilation of the Native Americans (from the previous reference)

The number of Indians who died at the hands of the European invaders is highly debatable, and it basically centers on two questions:

How many people lived in America before the population plummeted?

How many of the deaths during the plummeting can be blamed on human cruelty?

Pre-Columbian Population:

Pick a number, any number.

Sometimes it seems that this is the way historians decide how many Indians lived in the Americas before the European Contact. As The New York Public Library American History Desk Reference puts it, "Estimates of the Native American population of the Americas, all completely unscientific, range from 15 to 60 million." And even this cynical assessment is wrong. The estimates range from 8 to 145 million.

If you want to study the question of pre-Columbian population and its subsequent decline in detail, two good books to start with are David Henige, Numbers From Nowhere (1998) and Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival (1987)."

Other references:

M. D. Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual (1897): 30,000,000 Mexicans and Peruvians were slaughtered.
David Barrett, World Christian Trends: Conquistadors killed 15M Amerindians
Coe, Snow and Benson, Atlas of Ancient America (1986)
Total pre-Columbian population: 40M
Mexico: Original population of 11M to 25M ("lower figure commands more support") fell to 1.25M (1625)
Peru: Pop. fell from 9M (1533) to >500,000 (early 17th C)
Brazil: Original population of 2.5M to 5.0M ("recent commentators favoring the higher") fell to 1M
Massimo Livi-Bacci, Concise History of World Population History 2d (1996)
Mexico: Population fell from 6.3M (1548) to 1.9M (1580) to 1M (1605)
Peru: Pop. fell from 1.3M (1572) to 600,000 (1620)
Canada: from 300,000 (ca. 1600) to USA: from 5M (1500) to 60,000 (ca. 1800) [sic. Probably means 600,000 because he cites Thornton]
R.J. Rummel estimates that 13,778,000 American Indians died of democide in the 16th through 19th Centuries:
Total dead among native Americans in colonial era: 49.5M out of pre-contact population of 55M
Democides in this: 5M
Democides among Indians, post-colonial era: 8,763,000
Democides in US: 15,000
Skidmore & Smith, Modern Latin America (1997)
Mexico: Population fell from 25M (1519) to 16.8M (1523) to 1.9M (1580) to 1M (1605)
Peru: from 1.3M (1570, forty years after Conquest) to Stannard, American Holocaust (1992): 100,000,000 deaths across the hemisphere across time
16th Century death toll: between 60M and 80M
Panama, 1514-1530: 2M Indians killed
Mexico
Central: Population fell from 25.0M (1519) to 1.3M (1595)
SE: fell from 1,700,000 to 240,000
North: fell from 2,500,000 to 320,000
Peru, 16th C.: between 8.5M and 13.5M people destroyed.
Fredric Wertham, A Sign For Cain : An Exploration of Human Violence (1966): South American death toll of 15,000,000

Are you even aware that while the US were piously conducting the bogus Nuremberg trials the US and allies were murdering 3 million German women and kids, people who had committed no crime, and displacing another 13 million in a massive ethnic cleansing exercise? This holocaust has been denied until Giles MacDonogh wrote "After the Reich" and no amount of re-enactments of the Nuremberg trials will make them anything but bogus.

None of the crimes committed by the nazis were crimes at the time as there was no crime of extermination.

They were hideous crimes carried out by monsters but why does the whole world have to be captive to them? Over 100 million other people died in all those wars and we don't hear their families continually whining on about it do we?

The murdered jews are no different to the 3 million Vietnamse murdered by the US and Australia, or the millions murdered by Pol Pot after the US carpet bombed Cambodia and brought that monster to power.

How about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven off their lands by zionists? The whole world tends to ignore that truth while cheering whenever Israel starts murdering them again.

I am over this whole jewish thing and the confected outrage whenever anyone questions or denies.

Israel denies that the Palestinians exist. Demand that they stop it.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that evil is part of God's plan. What it does say is that God does not tempt anyone. Human beings are tempted by greed etc and commit evil actions as a result.

Human evil did not begin and end with the Holocaust. Humans are capable of evil and they have proved it over and over again in history, in different parts of the world in different ways. Self righteous pointing of fingers at others should therefore be indulged in with great caution.

MarcEdward:

Writing American history as you'd like it to be is no help. Even if Wikipedia is not an authoritative source of information, and can even serve as a source of disinformation --

"Historian David Stannard is of the opinion that the indigenous peoples of America (including Hawaii)were the victims of a "Euro-American genocidal war." While conceding that the majority of the indigenous peoples fell victim to the ravages of European disease, he estimates that almost 100 million died in what he calls the American Holocaust. Stannard's perspective has been joined by Kirkpatrick Sale, Ben Kiernan, Lenore A. Stiffarm, and Phil Lane, Jr., among others; the perspective has been further refined by

Ward Churchill, who has said that "it was precisely malice, not nature, that did the deed."

"While no mainstream historian denies that death and suffering were unjustly inflicted by a number of Europeans upon a great many American natives, most historians argue that genocide, which is a crime of intent, was not the intent of European colonization while in America...

"Therefore, most mainstream scholars tend not to use the term "genocide" to describe the overall depopulation of American natives. However, a number of historians, rather than seeing the whole history of European colonization as one long act of genocide, do cite specific wars and campaigns which were arguably genocidal in intent and effect. Usually included among these are the Pequot War (1637) and campaigns waged against tribes in California starting in the 1850s..."

terpguy2009 - I find your definitions of 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide' to be nitpicking. One definition of genocide I found stated that it was trying to destroy a population totally or in part, and certainly that creates more than just 2 genocides in all human history. Certainly a reading of history suggests that most native Americans who died after the new world was discovered were killed by disease, not out of malice. But you can't just ignore the 'tribes' (the common term for ethnic groups) that were deliberately wiped out - land taken, people killed or sold into slavery far from the lands they were taken from. I don't see the difference between trying to wipe out the Jews in Europe and wiping out the Pequot in the new world - both are unique cultures with their own history, language, etc. I don't know why you're quibbling over definitions, unless you're elevating the Holocaust over every other genocide, and I don't see any reason to do that - they are all horrible, unexcusable, and in the future will continue to be tolorated.

After reding this article, I have come to the conclusion that among the people who have not learned the lessons from the Holocaust are the Israelis. Their treatment of the Palestinians demonstrate the same traits, even the language, used previously against Jews. Wasn't the shameful IUsraeli attack on Gaza just a replay of the German crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto ?

att F A R N A Z et al;

Please see how the Roman Catholic Church (Vatican & Co. & other competing Chrisaholics sects) promotes SYMBOLiC CANNBALiSM (by eating Rabbi Yashuas 'Flesh' in efigy) & SYMBOLIC VAMPIRiSM (by drinking Revvi Jehovas 'Blood' in efigy) to their kids. A never ending cycle!????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist

This PRE-APOCALYPTIC behavior, practice & Ritual? is a genuine ABOMiNATiON (if thats the right word) that makes us APOCALYPTARiANs 'Puke at risk'.

The Pope's actions toward Bishop Williamson are reprehensible and deserve the condemnation of all decent people. Not that the Catholic Church's putting its "unity" above simple morality and common human decency is any surprise. That is exactly the reason the Church for decades turned a deliberate blind eye to the sexual depravity and perversion being committed against innocent children by its priests. Even more telling about the true nature of the Catholic Church, of course, it was not just the pedophilia itself, but the tolerance and cover-up of the acts by the entire Church hierarchy--all in the name of protecting the Church's reputation, and the damage to generations of innocent children be damned. What a searing indictment of the leadership of Pope Benedict that he once more shows tolerance of despicable acts in the name of serving the selfish interests of the Church. Once more, the Pope throws Jesus under the bus in order to protect the Church's perceived institutional interests.

It's really not surprising, coming from the same Pope who has gone out of his way to remind the rest of us that our immortal souls are doomed because we don't believe like he does.

How pathetic to see this venerable institution being led into the 21st Century by an 80-year old, out-of-touch, modern-day Inquisitor, while its membership rapidly declines, new priests and nuns are hard to find, and here in America, parishioners are occupying churches 24 hours to prevent them being closed and sold to the highest bidder.

And what examples of massacres do we find in the ancient world?? The atrocities committed by the Jews and "recorded" in the OT??? Did these atrocities give credence to the atrocities committed in the modern world??

from: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

"Exodus 32: 3,000 Israelites killed by Moses for worshipping the golden calf.

Numbers 31: After killing all men, boys and married women among the Midianites, 32,000 virgins remain as booty for the Israelites. (If unmarried girls are a quarter of the population, then 96,000 people were killed.)

Joshua:

Joshua 8: 12,000 men and women, all the people of Ai, killed.

Joshua 10: Joshua completely destroys Gibeon ("larger than Ai"), Makeddah, Libnah, Lachish,

Eglon, Hebron, Debir. "He left no survivors."
Joshua 11: Hazor destroyed. [Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987), estimates the population of Hazor at ?> 50,000]

TOTAL: if Ai is average, 12,000 x 9 = 108,000 killed.

Judges 1: 10,000 Canaanites k. at Battle of Bezek. Jerusalem and Zephath destroyed.

Judges 3: ca. 10,000 Moabites k. at Jordan River.

Judges 8: 120,000 Midianite soldiers k. by Gideon

Judges 20: Benjamin attacked by other tribes. 25,000 killed.

1 Samuel 4: 4,000 Isrealites killed at 1st Battle of Ebenezer/Aphek. 30,000 Isr. k. at 2nd battle.
David:

2 Samuel 8: 22,000 Arameans of Damascus and 18,000 Edomites killed in 2 battles.

2 Samuel 10: 40,000 Aramean footsoldiers and 7,000 charioteers killed at Helam.

2 Samuel 18: 20,000 Israelites under Absalom killed at Ephraim.

1 Kings 20: 100,000 Arameans killed by Israelites at Battle of Aphek. Another 27,000 killed by collapsing wall.

2 Chron 13: Judah beat Israel and inflicted 500,000 casualties.

2 Chron 25: Amaziah, king of Judah, k. 10,000 from Seir in battle and executed 10,000 POWs. Discharged Judean soldiers pillaged and killed 3,000.

2 Chron 28: Pekah, king of Israel, slew 120,000 Judeans

TOTAL: That comes to about 1,283,000 mass killings specifically enumerated in the Bible."

Did the Jews simply follow the example of primitive man??

"Primitive War

Table 6.2 lists the Percentage of Deaths Due to Warfare. Of the 8 primitive societies that survived long enough to be analyzed by modern demographics, the median indicates that some 15.4% of all primitives, male and female alike, died by warfare.

Of the 14 prehistoric cultures excavated and analyzed by archaeologists, the median indicates that about 14.8% of all prehistorics, male and female alike, died by warfare.

Combining these into a sample group of 22 gives us a median of about 15.1%. The middle one-third of this combined sample runs from 12% to 16%. In practical terms, this means that for every 1,000,000 people who lived outside of a literate state, some 120,000 to 160,000 would eventually be killed in war.

[For comparison, my calculation is that for every million people who lived in the 20th Century, some 45,000 died by violence.] "

Failing which, a complete list of 1.3 BILLION Catholics should be sent to Ms Susan Jacoby for approval.

The Pope should send Bishop Williamson, and any other important Catholics who deny the Holocaust to Germany to speak to the Germans. It should be made mandatory for the Holocaust deniers to visit the Holocaust memorial in Berlin and other places associated with the Holocaust. A little pilgrimage to Germany and Poland is all it takes to bring such ignorance to an end. If it doesn't, the next step is to arrange for a little consultation with the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst to find out the real reasons behind such willful denial.

Since when did the Catholic Church state that belief in the Holocaust was an essential creed to becoming a Catholic?

The Turks deny the Armenian genocide. Turks are all Muslims the last time I checked.

Are Holocaust deniers allowed to be Muslims?

Why is there no hue and cry about ex-communicating all Muslims who deny the Holocaust? As far as we know some Muslims in Iran have even held official meetings trumpeting proudly their denial of the Holocaust.

The real issue pertaining to the Pope lifting the four excommunications is this: stupidity and ignorance are not heresies, while flatly denying the authority of Vatican II is. Bishop Williamson is guilty of a grave offense against the truth, and his fellow Catholics have the duty of converting his heart and mind. But the Catholic Church refuses to excommunicate people for being ignorant. Thank God!

Aprogressiveindependent:

Re: Your post

Been there done that. Scroll down. Evidently, you're not a frequent reader of this blog and haven't read this thread.

I will say this. The mass murders you mention are distinguishable from the Shoah for the reasons I mention in my post. Scroll down to the one just below yours. In no way was it unique, not even in modern times. In modern times it was preceded by the Russian Orthodox pogroms against Jews, the Polish Catholic pogroms against Jews, etc.

In Germany, Jews did not receive anything close to full civil liberties until after WWI. Even then, there were restrictions and antiJewish racism was rampant among German Catholic people and German Lutheran people.

The German Catholic and Lutheran people intended to wipe out Jews wherever they found them. This was not the case with the other genocides you mention. In addition, the Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Ukranian, Croatian, Romanian, French, Russian, Ukranian, Polish Catholic and Orthodox Christian people took the initiative of leaving their houses and places of business to go out and slaughter, torture, rape Jews. They had to be stopped by the German Catholic and Lutheran Nazi people because the methods of killing were too inefficient by German Christian standards.

I'm simply repeating myself. Scroll down.

One of the mythical "lessons" of the Holocaust was "never again." The world community, the great powers, would supposedly never allow genocide against people to happen again. However, none of the major countries, including the United States, did anything to stop millions of innocent persons from being killed in Cambodia and Rwanda.

While the evil nature of the Holocaust singling out Jews during World War II was unique, at least in modern history, the scale of Nazi atrocities against innocent persons, especially in Poland and the Soviet Union, was comparable to Japanese atrocities in China, Korea, the Philippines, as well as other countries in Asia, during the war. Yet most people in this country and probably Europe do not seem to realize the Japanese were essentially as responsible as the Nazis for the killings of millions of innocent human beings.

People should remember the Holocaust against Jewish persons, but they should also remember the victims among other people by the Nazis and Japanese. As to the pope, the author is right in criticizing him for being "morally obtuse." He has demonstrated in the comments alluded to above, as well as certain other comments, to appear to be a right winger.

Bios:

It's very, very ugly and boring to see so much hostility between users.

C'mon, most of you are same ones that make the most interesting and intelligent discussions. Go back to that.
______________

Some subjects are ugly. This one bring out ugliness because its never been adequately addressed. The genocide of the European Jews should be part of European history courses, but it isn't. It's touched on very briefly so that most people actually think that this horror was a German phenomenon, a historical abberation. Bios, they think this.

Many actually think we got into WWII to save Jews. I'm not joking. Eboo Patel, Rhodes Scholar, posted this. They do not know that ordinary church-going Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox simply walked out of their houses or places of business in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, France, etc., etc. and killed, even tortured Jews to death. They started pre-occupation. When the nazis arrived, they tried to stop them since their methods were too inefficient by German standards.

The grisly humor in some of this is unmistakable. The Hungarian Catholics, the Ukranian Catholics, above all, the Polish Catholics and the Russians (more on whom later) were next on Hitler's list, but there you have it.

Now, consider what most know about the Vatican's role. They know nothing of the Vatican's involvement.

Because the Christians have conveniently viewed the Shoah as Jewish history, the Christians know next to nothing. That is one of the reasons they are so well defended against it. It is one of the reasons, along with antisemitism, which, after two thousand years, we must say inheres in Christianity.

On a positive note, twelve Orthodox Christian clergy, numerous Catholic clergy and laypersons, numerous Lutherans and other Protestants have called for the "rehabilitation" of the NT (sic), a purging of antisemitic elements in services, etc.

In the meantime, it will be ugly. Better that it's ugly now rather than later, for the sake of our children, whether they're Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc.

No one, neither victim nor perpetrator nor bystander, benefits from racism.

PMaranci:

In the first line, "for" should read "fear." At all events ADL has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. Again, what is the Armenian view of the Shoah? Is there any Armenian antisemitism? And how has Armenia dealt with the slaughter of the Roma during the Shoah?

PMaranci:

I will say this. There was, for some time, considerable for on the part of ADL about labeling the Armenian Genocide as such. That fear was on behalf of the few remaining Jews in Turkey and that country's unfortunate position on the topic. Since we have never been able to depend on anyone to help us, since there was no way foreign Jews could protect those in Turkey, the issue was very problematic. Would the Armenians have protected us?

When I say we could never depend on anyone to help us, I speak from experience. I am one of three million Jews exiled from the Middle East, where my family lived since the Middle Ages. No one lifted a finger to help us. I saw a family friend murdered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard while being taken into custody. His blood got on my clothes. I was a child.

Where were the AmeriChristians in this period? The Armenians? These would be the Americans who supported the buffoon "Shah." Where were the French? Those would be the French oil wh*res who kept that other buffoon Khomeini safe.

I could go on. I could go on to the ORthodox in the former USSR in recent years, to the Polish Catholics.

There is no debate here. The four who were reinstated were followers of a man Lefebre, who was not only a reactionary priest (not my concern), but a fascist, a fascist, a lover of Pinochet. Do you understand? The psychopath Williamson is one part of the story. It's a long story. And the offenses committed against us by the RCC, and not only the RCC, began during the reign of Constantine and have continued to the present. Yes, to the present. Stay tuned.

That is the issue. And what, btw., does Armenia have to say about that? And the Roma?

PMaranci

My goodness. You're really completely out of touch with reality, aren't you? At this point it clearly doesn't matter what I say, because you'll read your own paranoid fantasies into anything I write - it all probably ends up as "Mein Kampf" to you. I'd recommend that you consider therapy, but since it comes from me all that could do would be to predispose you *against* therapy.

Although we're not having a discussion, debate, or argument - both participants must be rational for any of those to take place - I'll repeat my point again, just in case there's anyone out there masochistic enough to still be following this thread:

I observed that the government of Israel and the Anti-Defamation League have both supported the denial of genocide - specifically, the Armenian Genocide. That makes their current outrage over the reinstatement of a Holocaust-denying Catholic Bishop particularly ironic and hypocritical. To be more precise, their denial of the genocide is the hypocritical element in this little show.

As for the rest of your post, Farnaz2, again: I suggest you consider therapy. You don't seem at all happy, well-adjusted, or emotionally stable. No, I'm not a racist - quite the contrary - but I see no point in responding to your ravings on a point-by-point basis. It's clear that you occupy your own nightmarish fantasyland.

January 27, 2009 11:47 PM | Report Offensive Comments
__________________________
Oh, my, Dear, have you run out of your Thorazine?
So sorry, but if you simply stroll, stagger, or weave down to the local Emergency Room, no doubt they'll help you. If, on the other hand, the voices you're hearing are getting too loud, do call for an ambulance. You can do it, Dear, even if your caretaker is out.
________________
There is no debate, Hon. What I've posted are facts. Moreover, not only did the ADL and Israel not deny the Armenian Genocide, but they distribute material on it, Sweetness. Also, you can find information on it at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

When your done with Hospital, would you consider making a donation? Most of their funding comes from private citizens. Much of it is small donations from people like me who have very little. Btw., you'll find information there on Rwanda, Darfur, etc.

Do report back on what you discover on Armenia, Sugar.

http://www.ushmm.org/shared/search/searchresults.php?cx=008795841384874293445:jtbtbquu4k8&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A11&q=armenian%20genocide

It's very, very ugly and boring to see so much hostility between users.

C'mon, most of you are same ones that make the most interesting and intelligent discussions. Go back to that.

A Must Read:

Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before and During WWII (It appears that all of our relatives (and religions) have committed horrific atrocities)

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

Outline:

Worst Twenty

World Historical Population

Primitive War

Ancient World

Biblical Atrocities

Ancient Greece

The Roman and Byzantine Empires

European Wars and Massacres to 1700

Colonial Activities
Slavery
Christendom
Islam
Annihilation of the Native Americans

Outside Europe

Miscellaneous Oriental Atrocities
Slavery in the Mideast
Thuggee and Suttee
Eighteenth Century
Nineteenth Century

Miscellaneous Religious Activities
Biblical Atrocities
Religious Martyrs
Thuggee and Suttee

Total War Dead Throughout History

Farnaz2:

My goodness. You're really completely out of touch with reality, aren't you? At this point it clearly doesn't matter what I say, because you'll read your own paranoid fantasies into anything I write - it all probably ends up as "Mein Kampf" to you. I'd recommend that you consider therapy, but since it comes from me all that could do would be to predispose you *against* therapy.

Although we're not having a discussion, debate, or argument - both participants must be rational for any of those to take place - I'll repeat my point again, just in case there's anyone out there masochistic enough to still be following this thread:

I observed that the government of Israel and the Anti-Defamation League have both supported the denial of genocide - specifically, the Armenian Genocide. That makes their current outrage over the reinstatement of a Holocaust-denying Catholic Bishop particularly ironic and hypocritical. To be more precise, their denial of the genocide is the hypocritical element in this little show.

As for the rest of your post, Farnaz2, again: I suggest you consider therapy. You don't seem at all happy, well-adjusted, or emotionally stable. No, I'm not a racist - quite the contrary - but I see no point in responding to your ravings on a point-by-point basis. It's clear that you occupy your own nightmarish fantasyland.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

You:
"If the German government and Israeli government have made peace based on the steps taken by the Germans in the aftermath of Holocaust and WW II, it is time to honor that."

What are you implying by the last clause: "it is time to honor that" ? Let sleeping dogs lie, life goes on, moving right along, just get over it, enough already?

No one here of any sense is playing the anti-German card. No one here of any sense doubts that many other European peoples and institutions aided and abetted the Nazi regime in its crimes. And any arrangements Germany has with the modern state of Israel are not particularly germane to the topic under discussion. As has been pointed out before now, issues pertaining to Jews and Judaism do not automatically pertain to modern Israel, and vice versa.

Your anxious apologia for Germany suggests you too are partisan, in just the way you wish others weren't.

It seems that you just want the Shoah to go off and be history...neutralised...bygones be bygones...clean slate. I'm sure that very many Jews would like that to be the case too. But problem is, the sort of antisemitism that fuelled the Shoah is still alive and kicking. And kicking.

Bishop Williamson is an iceberg's tip. When that iceberg has melted away, perhaps then you can be free from unseemly Shoah assertions in threads about the Shoah. You can study it calmly among other atrocities at your Academy of Human Evil. Till then, the Shoah's awful litanies will, justly, be reiterated.

CLETUS:

It does seem that one has to be virulently anti-Catholic in order to be politically correct in the US. I'm sure you have earned your brownie points for the day with your ignorant anti-Catholic post.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

I don't have a Ph.D. in Holocaust Studies. The Shoah destroyed a civilization. It not only killed and maimed, but stopped generations upon generations from being born. And the sickness of antiJewish racism continues. And, yes, the Church is still involved in it, and, yes, I will post on it.
__________________
I'm curious as to why you don't send this message all over America, telling schools and colleges to simply visit the library if they want to know about slavery.
__________________
Also, I'm confused. You mention a number of atrocities on which I have already posted. These do not concern Jews. Btw., I have actually posted on the genocides of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean. But more should be posted.

When can we expect to see your posts on these peoples, especially the AmerIndians, whose plighte is DESPERATE.

Farnaz2: Since you have done a PhD on the Holocaust, why not just post the title of your thesis and post a PDF version for free download on your university website? Anyone around the world interested in the details of the Holocaust from your perspective would gladly download it. Since there are libraries full of information on the Holocaust, your perspective is one among many. You need to post the title of your thesis for it to be considered along with many other works on the subject.

Catholic clergy are generally good for collaborating with Nazis and sodomizing young boys. I don't think they have much expertise on the Holocaust; though Benedict may have some special knowledge from his days as a Hitler Youth.

I do wish liberals would stop their whining about the Palestinians and making specious comparisons. The Palestinians are just as, if not more, culpable than the Israelis. All of them fighting land so worthless you couldn't give it away if it was in the middle of Utah. In a sane world, no one would give a sh*t what happened there.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

Re: Your post

There is nothing stopping you from posting on the Catholic and Protestant genocides of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa.

I have already done so on this blog. I've also posted on the Japanese and the Phillipines, the Japanese and the Chinese (see especially Iris Chang), the Chinese and the Korean comfort women (the texts are endless).
----------------------------
The genocide of the American Indians is nearing completion. If you're going to post, you'd better do so quickly, In the meantime, the indigenous peoples of other countries are very much in need of your attention. All you need do is post. The information is there. I look forward to reading your findings.
-------------------
Right now, the subject is the Shoah, and more importantly, not only the appointment of this pshychopathic Williamson, follower of the fascist (and I mean fascist) priest Lefebre, but of the Church, in general and the Shoah. The issue is not the German Government. The issue is not the Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukranian, Rumanian,
Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, French atrocities by ordinary church going Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

The issue is not the preceding two thousand years of Christian atrocities against Jews. The issue is not the more recent events in the former Soviet Union, France, England, Germany, etc., etc., etc.

The issue will be, but not yer. current Church antisemitism.
________________________________
This gives you plenty of time to start researching. Surprised you haven't already done it. Surprised you never read my posts on all these other atrocities.

Holocaust denial is punishable by law in Germany. Isn't that enough? People anywhere in the world may say or believe what they want. Who can stop anyone from believing what they want despite evidence to the contrary. If the Germans or the German government denied the Holocaust, that would cause for serious concern. But as we know there is no such denial. In fact Berlin has a memorial to the Holocaust. All Holocaust deniers should be urged to visit it.

Onofrio:

It is not about diverting anyone from Holocaust. It is about studying the nature of evil human beings are capable of. That requires a study of ALL genocides.

No nation has shown a willingness to accept their wrongs as Germany has. No nation has put laws in place that seeks to prevent such atrocities from happening again as Germany has. No nation seeks to keep its citizens fully mindful of the horrors that happened in their country as Germany does.

If the German government and Israeli government have made peace based on the steps taken by the Germans in the aftermath of Holocaust and WW II, it is time to honor that. An honest look at the nature of human evil in general all over the world goes a long way in learning from the experiences, and moving beyond the past.

What I've posted thus far, the Concordat signed by Pacelli, the fragment on slave labor would be on the order of a single page in the Catholic Church's involvement with the Shoah, one page, that is, in a 100-volume work. I've posted bibliographies on this blog and will do so again. In the meantime, stay tuned for much, much more.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1

You:
"Of all the genocides in human history the Holocaust of Jews has been the most extensively and intensively studied. The same rigor and intensity should be applied in studying all genocides in human history, no matter in which part of the world it took place and what point in time."

Amen to that. But I trow your subtext is: *OK, we've heard enough sameold about the holocaust; let's divert ourselves with some other horrors*.

Fine, let's do that and be chastened, and admire you for reminding us.

And on the way to your Atrocity Studies Institute we could perhaps consider why that ol' overdone Shoah - despite all this wealth of intense scrutiny you refer to - is currently being denied by increasing numbers of people worldwide. Now why might that be?

MORE: CONTINUED FROM BELOW

The babies were only nursed for eight days and on the ninth their mothers were sent back to work. [10] Few were ever seen again.
In a so-called “Maternity Home for East[european] Workers” between 1943 and 1945 at least 365 infants, the children of Polish and Soviet forced labourers lost their lives. Most of them died shortly after the enforced separation from their mothers at the age of two or three weeks. The catastrophic hygenic conditions, neglect and insufficient food were methodically applied. The newborns had to die because the Nazis considered their existence to be racially inferior and economically worthless. […]
The dead Polish children were buried hastily without the presence of their mothers in the old Catholic graveyard on the main street, the children of Soviet mothers burnt in the crematorium. The Catholic priests conducting baptisms in the maternity barracks, who had seen the already rotting naked corpses in cardboard cartons in the graveyard chapel, kept silent and after the war exonerated those who had been jointly responsible; in Velpke, in the district of Helmstedt, where similarly gruesome things happened, the Protestant pastor declared it had not been his “responsibility”. [11]

CONTINUED FROM BELOW

According to an order from the summer of 1943 for the “Treatment of pregnant foreign workers and the children of foreign workers born in the Reich”, says Hohnsbein, for example in the district of Braunschweig/Wolfsburg/Gifhorn about 1000 infants of “East[european] workers” perished. Classified as “racially inferior”, they died in hut camps, separated from their mothers and systematically starved. […]
For his suspicion that the killing of the children was “sufficiently well known in the diocese” he can offer evidence. In Rühen, [a small village] in the rural district [Kreis] of Gifhorn, babies were "hastily buried in the churchyard in mass graves”. [9]
The babies were only nursed for eight days and on the ninth their mothers were sent back to work. [10] Few were ever seen again.
In a so-called “Maternity Home for East[european] Workers” between 1943 and 1945 at least 365 infants, the children of Polish and Soviet forced labourers lost their lives. Most of them died shortly after the enforced separation from their mothers at the age of two or three weeks. The catastrophic hygenic conditions, neglect and insufficient food were methodically applied. The newborns had to die because the Nazis considered their existence to be racially inferior and economically worthless. […]
The dead Polish children were buried hastily without the presence of their mothers in the old Catholic graveyard on the main street, the children of Soviet mothers burnt in the crematorium. The Catholic priests conducting baptisms in the maternity barracks, who had seen the already rotting naked corpses in cardboard cartons in the graveyard chapel, kept silent and after the war exonerated those who had been jointly responsible; in Velpke, in the district of Helmstedt, where similarly gruesome things happened, the Protestant pastor declared it had not been his “responsibility”. [11]

MORE ON THE CHURCH AND THE HOLOCAUST: HARD TO FIND AN APPROPRIATE ADJECTIVE
PART II

At the death camp for babies, baptisms but no church protests Labelled “foreign”, “racially inferior” and “impeding the use of labour” the children of Polish and Soviet female forced labourers died in barracks, sheds and stalls. For these “collection points” Himmler chose the nice offical name “Care Homes for Foreign Children”. Between 1943 and 1945 in the Braunscheig region alone at least 800 infants died, most of them only a few weeks old. [8]
Shocking picture: In the winter of 1943/44 the SS had photos taken in the babies’ death camp in Braunschweig, among them this photo of a wizened, dying infant.
The state churches apparently did more than profit from Hitler’s slaves. There are indications that they also kept quiet about the murder of their children. […]
Pastors such as Hartwig Hohnsbein from Göttingen, who has spent a long time closely examining the role of the official churches in the Nazi period, are convinced that they were deeply involved. Despite knowing of it, the churches kept silent about the killing of the babies of the female forced labourers.

THE CHURCH AND SLAVE LABOR: PART III

Broken and sent "away"
At the Jerusalem Graveyard in Berlin-Neukölln 26 Protestant and two Catholic dioceses together ran a camp in which were billetted about 100 “East[European] workers”, whose task was to bury bomb casualties. From a contemporary report on the church camp, comes this entry for 19 March 1945.
“The five East(ern European) workers listed below are, on account of their physical condition no longer suitable for the work to be done at graveyards”. They have broken bones, general weakness, congestive heart failure. “We therefore request the named persons to be assigned to an appropriate collection point, as they are just lying in the camp and taking up the places for men capable of work.” The camp director, Gustav Wenger, closes with the greeting “Heil Hitler”.
Those rejected as unfit in this way were usually sent to the death camp – [Nazi-speak for]“an appropriate collection point”. [6]
According to the Church report issued on 8 April 2008, the Catholic Church had employed at least 5904 slave labourers in 776 Catholic institutions. However, it has managed to minimise the consequences, in terms of both public opinion and financial compensation. Holding itself aloof from the common fund has allowed the Catholic Church to treat compensation of its victims as a purely internal matter, with no oversight and out of the public view. The report claims that by the end of 2004 it had paid each claimant 2556 Euros (at that time worth about $3776). However, after almost 60 years it was only able to find 587 of these aged survivors. The delay caused by the remarkable forgetfulness of the German churches has saved them much unnecessary bother and expense. at least 5904 forced labourers -- and they admit it could be more. Of course, by the time they were forced to begin assuming some responsibility for this, it was almost 60 years after the war's end and they were only able to find 587 survivors to compensate. [7]

THE CHURCH AND SLAVE LABOR: PART II
But not the Catholic Church. The head of the Bishops Conference, Karl Lehmann, (who was made a cardinal the next year), said that all this had nothing to do with his church because it had never used forced labour.
It was not going to contribute to the fund of the German companies. The Foundation had not the slightest relevance to the situation of the foreign workers in Catholic institutions according to Bishop Lehmann. In the proposal for the Foundation it was stated that "Slave labour and forced labour meant not only the denial of fair wages. They meant abduction, denial of rights, the brutal disregard of human dignity". Research in the Catholic area had shown, however, that forced labourers there were "in most cases paid according to the official wage scale" [i.e. the paper regulations of the Nazis], they received bed and board [which was deducted from their paper "wages", despite the fact that His Excellency implies otherwise] and they were even given pastoral care. "Cases of exploitation or forced performance of heavy labour or brutally hard work have so far not been proven." [3]
Actually, they most certainly had, as is made clear below, but this allowed the Bishop to keep it an internal matter. The Church would take care of everything quietly through its own social agencies in Eastern Europe: faith-based compensation for Church slave labourers.
Prominent German Catholics criticised the decision of their church not to join German industry and the Protestant (EKD) Church in the common compensation fund.
Otto Graf Lambsdorff [FDP] said that the Catholic Church must follow the example of the Protestant Church and also contribute to the compensation funds.
The vicepresident of the [Christian] Union fraction, Wolfgang Bosbach, (CDU) said: "Whoever employed forced labour in the Nazi period must today pay into the funds with no ifs and buts”.
Lambsdorff criticised [his church]: "In contrast to the Protestants the Catholic Church has always offered the excuse that it must first do research into where it had employed forced labour. In the beginning it [even] said there hadn’t been any.” [4]
However, the Church continued to maintain that the matter required deep archival study. Finally on 8 April 2008 Bishop Lehmann announced that the Church had completed its official investigation of itself.
The 703-page report claims that records only survive for 5904 of the mostly East Europeans who were forced to work as gardeners, hospital orderlies and grave diggers in Church institutions. At the news conference Bishop Lehmann repeated his assertion that there was no proof that any of them had to do “hard labour”. [5] This raises questions about his new report, for there’s well-publicised documentary evidence to the contrary.

German churches used slave labour during Nazi era
Both German state churches are now known to have used slave labour during World War II, but only the Catholic Church refused to join the national compensation fund. Documents imply that the churches' slave labourers were sent to death camps when they were no longer useful (Part I) and that they also knew about the death camps for the babies of the East European workers, yet said nothing (Part II).

By Muriel Fraser of the National Secular Society

Part I: The German Catholic Church “investigates” its own use of slave labour

For 55 years the Catholic and Protestant (EKD) churches in Germany “forgot” that they'd used slave labourers during World War II. However, in August 2000, after some survivors living in the US began suing German companies, a foundation was set up to grant payments to claimants if they’d renounce their right to any further legal action. The foundation was financed by equal contributions from the German Government and a group of German firms, for a total of 10 billion Deutschmarks. [1] That autumn the Protestant Church (EKD) joined with a contribution of 10 million Marks. [2]

Of all the genocides in human history the Holocaust of Jews has been the most extensively and intensively studied. The same rigor and intensity should be applied in studying all genocides in human history, no matter in which part of the world it took place and what point in time.

In order to study the real nature of evil human beings are capable of, one must make a complete list of ALL mass murders in history. It should include

Murder of American Natives in North and South America

Australian and New Zealand natives

Mass murders in the former Soviet Union

Mass murders in China

Atrocities of Japanese during WW II

All genocides in Africa and the Balkans

Along with the murder of gypsies, homosexuals and disabled Germans, and Germans who opposed Hitler, during the Holocaust, and all non-Jews in the countries Nazi Germany invaded during WW II.

If study of evil is the aim all facts should be taken into consideration. If a partisan portrayal with a particular agenda is the aim, it is a different matter.

But facts, the bishop fails to know,
pared so, like roses grow,
exceeding what was cut away
with all he would gainsay.

Pruning’s good for roses, it is said,
their blooms-to-be best fed
by paring, back to the vital stick,
that their petals grow more thick.

A bishop knows that pruning’s good
for facts that spoil the mood
of holy sacramental funk
that only devils would debunk.

Film on Nazi Germany:

"Valkyrie," directed by Bryan Singer,written by Christopher McQuarrie, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. The film is the Hollywood version of the historical incident of Stauffenberg's failed plot to assassinate Hitler.

The German version of the historical incident was made in 1971. The film is titled "Operation Walkuere." The film directed by Franz Peter Wirth was written by Helmut Pigge and Jacques Legris. The actors are: Joachim Hansen (as Col Claus von Stauffenberg), Alexander von Rosen, Götz von Langheim, Karl-Heinz von Hassel, Harry Kalenberg...

It is worth seeing both the original German version of 1971 starring Joachim Hansen(available as DVD with English subtitles) and the Hollywood version starring Tom Cruise.

What I've posted, the Vatican's Concordat with the Third Reich is a very small part of its total involvement.

Will follow with Church's use of slave labor, nazi priests, Pacelli, Bishop Houdal's Rat Line, etc.

Secret Supplement Continued

[5] “Nothing hinders [this]”. Also used with the name of the censor to determine which writings “may be given to the public with safety”.

[6] Seizure for non-performance of an obligation.

[7] Assistant bishops.

[8] The right of presentation to an ecclesiastical benefice.

[9] An heir-apparent bishop, an ingenious way of getting around Canon XXIII of the Synod at Antioch that “A dying bishop shall not appoint another bishop”.

[10] Prelate with a quasi-episcopal jurisdiction independent of a diocese, such as an abbey.

[11] Paul Saunders, "A Cautionary Tale - Academic freedom, 'Ex corde,' & the Curran case - Charles Curran" Commonweal, 21 April 2000. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_8_127/ai_61795233
"In 1931, the apostolic constitution Deus scientiarum Dominus required that in ecclesiastical faculties 'those who teach disciplines concerning faith or morals must receive, after making a profession of faith, acanonical mission from the chancellor or his delegate....' In order to comply with that requirement, The Catholic University adopted special bylaws that also required those who taught theology in any of its ecclesiastical faculties to have a "canonical mission" to teach theology."

Below is the so-callled "Secret Supplement" to the Vatican-Reich Concordat. Obviously, it is no longer quite so secret.

Secret Supplement

In case of a change in the present German armed forces in the sense of the introduction of universal conscription, the induction of priests and other members of the regular clergy and the orders into military service will, with the understanding of the Holy See, be arranged within the framework of approximately the following guiding ideas:

a) Students of philosophy and theology at Church institutions who are preparing themselves for the priesthood are to be freed from military service and the preparatory drills for it, except in the case of a general mobilisation.

b) In the case of a general mobilization clerics who are employed in the diocese administration or the military chaplaincy are freed from reporting for duty. This applies to ordinaries, members of the ordinariate, provosts of seminaries and Church residences for seminarians, professors at the seminaries, parish priests, curates, rectors, coadjucators and the clerics who provide a church with worship services on a continuing basis.

c) The remaining clerics, insofar as they are considered suitable, are to join the armed forces of the state in order to devote themselves to pastoral care for the troops under the Church jurisdiction of the military bishops, if they are not inducted into the medical unit.

d) The remaining clergy in sacris or members of orders, who are not yet priests are to be assigned to the medical unit. The same shall apply when possible to the candidates for the priesthood mentioned in a) who have not yet taken their final vows.

Translator’s Notes

[1] A translation of the German Constitution (“Basic Law”) approved by the German government and posted at http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/docs/german.htm renders Article 123.2 as follows:

Subject to all rights and objections of the interested parties, the State treaties concluded by the German Reich concerning matters for which, under this Basic Law, Land legislation is Competent remain in force[…]

In other words, in any area under the legal competence of the German states (Länder), the 1933 Concordat is still valid. And since the legal competence of the German states is very broad (see Art. 70-74), this means that most of this “treaty” remains in force. The German original can be found at: http://www.bundesregierung.de/pureHtml-,413.429858/Grundgesetz-fuer-die-Bundesrep.htm

[2] Cf., Christian Lorenz, "Des Grundgesetzes politische und rechtsstaatliche Kosten", 5 (a).
http://www.staatsbriefe.de/1994/1999/lorenz.htm

[3] Avro Manhattan, “Chapter 10: Germany, the Vatican and Hitler”, The Vatican in World Politics, London, 1949.

[4] Then, as now, there were sixteen German states. In this document, therefore, “state” (Staat) is ambiguous and often only the context shows whether the German Reich is meant, or a state / several states (Land / Länder).

Supplementary Protocol: Part II

Re Article 27, Par. 1
Catholic officers, officials and personnel, as well as their families, do not belong to local parishes, and do not support them.
Re Article 27, Par. 4
The publication of the Apostolic Brief will take place after consultation with the Reich Government.
Re Article 28
In urgent cases entry of the clergy is guaranteed at all times.
Re Article 29
Since the Reich Government has agreed to make an accommodation regarding non-German minorities, the Holy See declares – in accordance with the principles it has constantly maintained regarding the right to employ the vernacular in Church services [sermons], religious education and the conduct of Church societies – that it will consider admitting a similar clause to protect the rights of German minorities when establishing concordats with other countries.
Re Article 31, Par. 4
The principles laid down in Article 31, Sect. 4 [sic] hold good also for the Labour Service.
Re Article 32
It is understood that similar regulations regarding activity in party politics will be introduced by the Reich for members of non-Catholic denominations. The conduct, which has been made obligatory for the clergy and members of religious orders in Germany through the implementation of Article 32, does not involve any kind of limitation of the prescribed preaching and explanation of the dogmatic and moral teachings and principles of the Church.

(Signed) Eugenio, Cardinal Pacelli

(Signed) Franz von Papen
At the Vatican City, July 20th, 1933.

SUPPLEMENTARY PROTOCOL: Part I

Supplementary Protocol

At the signing of the concordat concluded today between the Holy See and the German Reich, the properly authorised undersigned have submitted the following agreed-upon explanations which form an integral part of the concordat itself.
Re Article 3
The Apostolic Nuncio to the German Reich, in accordance with the exchange of notes between the apostolic nunciature in Berlin and the Reich Foreign Office on the 11th and the 27th of March 1930, shall be the doyen of the diplomatic corps accredited there.
Re Article 13
It is understood that the Church retains the right to levy Church taxes.
Re Article 14, Par. 2, No. 2
It is understood that when objections of a general political nature exist, they shall be presented within the shortest possible time. If after twenty days such a declaration has not been made, the Holy See will be justified in assuming that no objections exist to the candidate. The names of those being considered will be kept confidential until the announcement of the appointment.
Re Article 17
In so far as public buildings or properties are devoted to ecclesiastical purposes, these are to be retained as before, subject to existing agreements.
Re Article 19, Sentence 2
This clause is based, at the time of signing this concordat, especially on the Apostolic Constitution, Deus Scientiarum Dominus of May 24th, 1931, [11] and the Instruction of July 7th, 1932.
Re Article 20
Hostels for seminarians which are administered by the Church at institutes of higher learning and academic secondary schools/junior colleges (Gymnasien) will be recognized for tax purposes as essentially Church institutions in the proper sense of the word, and as part of the diocesan organisation.
Re Article 24
In so far as private institutions are able to meet the requirements of the new educational code for with teacher training, all existing establishments of religious orders and congregations will be given due consideration in the accordance of recognition.
Re Article 26
A severe moral emergency is taken to exist when there are insuperable difficulties, or ones disproportionately costly to overcome, in obtaining the necessary marriage documents in time.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part Xii

NB: THE OFFICIAL CONCORDAT BETWEEN THE VATICAN AND THE REICH CONCLUDES HERE, WITH TWO SIGNATURES, ONE OF THEM PACELLI'S.

Article 33
All matters relating to clerical personnel or Church affairs, which have not been treated of in the foregoing Articles, will be regulated for the ecclesiastical sphere according to current Canon Law.
Should differences of opinion arise regarding the interpretation or execution of any of the Articles of this Concordat, the Holy See and the German Reich will reach a friendly solution by mutual agreement.
Article 34
This Concordat, whose German and Italian texts shall have equal binding force, shall be ratified, and the instruments of ratification shall be exchanged, as soon as possible. It will be in force from the day of such exchange.
In witness hereof, the plenipotentiaries have signed this Concordat. Signed in two original copies, in the Vatican City, July 20th, 1933.

(Signed) Eugenio, Cardinal Pacelli

(Signed) Franz von Papen

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part X

Article 28
In hospitals, prisons, and other public institutions the Church is permitted to make pastoral visits and conduct services of worship, subject to the general rules of the institutions concerned. If regular pastoral care is provided for such institutions, and if pastors must be appointed as state or other public officials, such appointments will be made with the agreement of Church authorities.
Article 29
Catholic members of a non-German ethnic minority living within the German Reich, as regards their mother tongue in Church services [sermons], religious education and Church societies, will be accorded no less favourable treatment than that accorded by law and in practice to members of German origin and speech living within the boundaries of the corresponding foreign states.
Article 30
On Sundays and official holy days, a prayer conforming to the liturgy will be will be offered at the end of the principal Mass in parish, auxiliary and conventual churches of the German Reich, for the welfare of the German Reich and (German) people.
Article 31
Those Catholic organisations and societies which have exclusively charitable, cultural or religious purposes, and, as such, are placed under the Church authorities, will be protected in terms of their institutions and activities.
Those Catholic organisations which, in addition to their religious, cultural and charitable purposes, have others, such as social or professional tasks – even though they may be brought into national organizations – are to enjoy the protection of Article 31, Paragraph 1, provided they guarantee to conduct their activities outside all political parties.
It is reserved to the Reich Government and the German episcopate, in a joint agreement, to determine which organisations and associations come within the scope of this Article. In so far as the Reich and the states (Länder) take charge of sport and other youth organisations, care will be taken that it shall be possible for the members regularly to attend church on Sundays and feast days, and that they shall not be induced to do anything inconsistent with their religious and moral convictions and obligations.
Article 32
Due to the special situation existing in Germany, and in view of the safeguards created by the clauses of this concordat of legislation preserving the rights and privileges of the Catholic Church in the Reich and its states (Länder), the Holy See will enact regulations to exclude the clergy and members of religious orders from membership in political parties and from working on their behalf.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part X

Article 27
For the German army pastoral care outside the realm of ordinary jurisdiction is conceded for its Catholic officers, officials and men, as well as for their families.
The administration of such pastoral care for the army is the duty of the army bishop. His Church appointment is to be made by the Holy See after contact has been made with the Reich Government in order, with its agreement, to select a suitable person.
The Church appointment of military chaplains and other military clergy will be made by the army bishop after prior consultation with the appropriate authorities of the Reich. He may appoint only such chaplains as receive permission from their diocesan bishop to undertake military pastoral work, together with a certificate of suitability. Military chaplains have the rights of parish priests with regard to the troops and other army personnel assigned to them.
Detailed regulations for the organisation of pastoral work by chaplains will be supplied by an Apostolic Brief. Regulations for the legal aspects in terms of officials will be drawn up by the Reich Government.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part IX

Article 21
Catholic religious education in elementary, vocational, secondary schools and institutions of higher learning is a regular school subject, and is to be taught in accordance with the principles of the Catholic Church. In religious education, special emphasis will be given to inculcating a patriotic, civic and social sense of duty in the spirit of the Christian faith and the moral code, just as happens in all other subjects. The curriculum and the selection of textbooks for religious education will be arranged in agreement with the Church authorities. The opportunity will be given to the Church authorities to check, with the agreement of the school authorities, whether the pupils receive religious education in accordance with the teachings and specifications of the Church.
Article 22
In the appointment of Catholic religious instructors, agreement is to be reached between the bishop and the state (Land) government. Teachers who, because of their doctrine or moral behaviour, are declared unfit to further impart religious education, are not permitted to be employed as religion teachers so long as this obstacle remains.
Article 23
The retention of Catholic denomination schools and the establishment of new ones is guaranteed. In all parishes where parents or guardians request it, Catholic elementary schools will be established, wherever the number of pupils, with due regard for the local conditions of school organization, appears to be sufficient for a school administered in accordance with the standards prescribed by the state.
Article 24
In all Catholic elementary schools only such teachers are to be employed as are members of the Catholic Church, and who guarantee to fulfill the special requirements of a Catholic school.
Within the framework of the general professional training of teachers, facilities will be created which will provide for the training of Catholic teachers, in accordance with the special requirements of Catholic denominational schools.
Article 25
Religious orders and congregations are entitled to establish and conduct private schools, within the framework of the general laws and ordinances. These private schools award the same qualifications as state schools, insofar as they adhere to the regulations governing curriculum prescribed for the latter.
Members of religious orders or congregations seeking admission to teacher training and employment in elementary, secondary or post-secondary schools are to meet the general requirements applicable to all
Article 26
Until a later comprehensive regulation of the marriage laws, it is understood that, apart from cases of critical illness of an engaged person which would not permit delay, and in cases of great moral emergency, whose presence must be confirmed by the proper episcopal authority, the Church marriage blessing should precede the civil ceremony. In such cases the priest is obliged to immediately notify the Registrar's office.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part VIII

Article 16
Before bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of loyalty either to the Reich governor of the state (Land) concerned or to the President of the Reich respectively, according to the following formula:
"Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the State (Land) of . . . I swear and promise to honour the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honour it. With dutiful concern for the welfare and the interests of the German state, in the performance of the ecclesiastical office entrusted to me, I will endeavor to prevent everything injurious which might threaten it."
Article 17
The property rights and other rights to assets of corporations under public law, of the institutions, foundations and associations of the Catholic Church are guaranteed according to requirements of the general law of the land.
No building dedicated to religious services may be destroyed for any reason whatsoever without the previous consent of the proper Church authorities.
Article 18
In the case of the abrogation of state obligations to the Church, whether based on law, agreement or special charter, before working out the principles according to which the abrogation is to be carried out, in a timely manner an amicable agreement is to be effected between the Holy See and the Reich.
Legitimate traditional rights are to be considered as titles in law. An abrogation must bestow upon those entitled to abrogation proper compensation for the loss of the customary state benefits.
Article 19
Catholic theological faculties in state universities are to be maintained. Their relation to Church authorities will be governed by the relevant concordats and by their supplementary protocols with stated regulations, having due regard for the relevant Church decrees. [11] The Reich Government will endeavor to secure for all of these Catholic faculties in Germany uniformity of treatment.
Article 20
Where other agreements do not exist, the Church has the right to establish theological and philosophical colleges for the training of its clergy, which are to be wholly dependent on the Church authorities if no state subsidies are sought.
The establishment, management and administration of theological seminaries and hostels for seminarians is, within the framework of the laws valid for all, the exclusive prerogative of the Church authorities.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part VII

Article 14
As a matter of principle the Church retains the right to appoint freely to all Church offices and benefices without the involvement of the state or of civil groups, in so far as other provisions have not been made in previous concordats mentioned in Article 2.
Concerning the appointment of bishops’ sees, the regulation made for appointment of the two suffragan [7] bishoprics of Rottenburg and Mainz, as well as for the bishopric of Meissen, is to be duly applied to the metropolitan see of the Upper Rhine Ecclesiastical Province of Freiburg. The same holds for the two first named suffragan bishops with regard to appointments to the cathedral chapter, and for the administration of the right of patronage [8].
Furthermore, there is agreement on the following points:
1. Catholic clerics who hold an ecclesiastical office in Germany or who exercise pastoral or educational functions must:
(a) be German citizens,
(b) have earned a secondary-school graduation certificate which permits study at an institution of higher learning,
(c) have studied philosophy and theology for at least three years at a German state university, a German ecclesiastical college, or a papal college in Rome.
2. The bull nominating archbishops, bishops, coadjutors cum jure successionis [9] or a praelatus nullius [10] will not be issued until the name of the appointee has been submitted to the Reich governor in the relevant state (Land), and until it has been ascertained that there are no objections of a general political nature. In the case of an agreement between Church and state, Paragraph 1, sections (a) (b) and (c) may be disregarded or set aside.
No right of the State to assert a veto is to be based on this Article.
Article 15
Religious orders and congregations are not subject to any special restrictions on the part of the state in relation to their foundation, establishment, number and – subject to Paragraph 2 of this Article – the selection of their members, their pastoral activities in care, education, care of the sick and charitable work, the management of their own affairs and the administration of their property. Superiors of religious orders whose headquarters are within Germany must be German citizens. Superiors of provincials and orders whose headquarters lie outside the territory of the German Reich, have the right to visit those of their establishments that lie within Germany.
The Holy See will take pains to ensure that for conventual establishments within the German Reich the provincial organization is set up so that, as far as possible, German establishments do not fall under the jurisdiction of foreign provincial superiors. Exceptions can be permitted with the agreement of the Reich Government, especially in cases where the small number of houses makes a German province impracticable, or where special grounds exist for the retention of an historic and firmly established provincial organisation.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part VI

Article 8
The official income of the clergy is immune from distraint [6] to the same extent as is the official salary of the Reich and state officials.
Article 9
The clergy cannot be required by judicial and other authorities to give information about matters which have been entrusted to them in the course of administering pastoral care, and which therefore fall under the obligation of pastoral secrecy.
Article 10
The wearing of clerical dress or of a religious habit by lay people, or by members of the clergy or religious orders by whom this use is forbidden by a definitive and legally valid directive of the competent ecclesiastical authority and officially communicated to the state authority, is liable to the same penalty by the state as the misuse of the military uniform.
Article 11
The present organisation and boundaries of dioceses of the Catholic Church in the German Reich remain in force. Any creation or rearrangement of a bishopric or ecclesiastical province, or other changes in the boundaries of dioceses that seem advisable in the future, so far as they involve changes within the boundaries of a German state (Land), remain subject to the agreement of the state (Land) governments concerned. Rearrangements and alterations which extend beyond the boundaries of a German state require the agreement of the Reich Government, which shall be left to secure the consent of the appropriate state (Land) government. The same applies to creations or rearrangements of Church provinces involving several German states (Länder). The foregoing conditions do not apply to changes in ecclesiastical boundaries made merely in the interests of local pastoral care.
In the case of any (territorial) re-organisation within the German Reich, the Reich Government will communicate with the Holy See with a view to rearrangement of the organisation and boundaries of dioceses.
Article 12
Without prejudice to the provisions of Article 11, ecclesiastical offices may be freely created and changed, unless state funds are drawn upon. The involvement of the state in the creation and alteration of parishes shall be carried out according to standard procedures that are agreed to by the diocesan bishops, and for which the Reich Government will endeavor to secure the most uniform treatment possible from the state (Länder) governments.
Article 13
Catholic parishes, parish and diocesan societies, episcopal sees, bishoprics and chapters, religious orders and congregations, as well as institutions, foundations and property which are under the administration of Church agencies, shall retain or acquire respectively, legal competence in the civil domain according to the general provisions of civil law. They shall remain corporations under public law to the extent that they have been so far; the others may be granted similar rights within the framework of the laws valid for all.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part V

Article 4
The Holy See enjoys full freedom in its relations and correspondence with the bishops, clergy and other members of the Catholic Church in Germany. The same applies to the bishops and other diocesan officials in their dealings with the faithful in all matters belonging to their pastoral office.
Instructions, ordinances, pastoral letters, official diocesan gazettes, and other decrees concerning the spiritual direction of the faithful issued by the Church authorities within the framework of their competence (Art. 1, Sect. 2) may be published without hindrance and brought to the notice of the faithful in the customary form.
Article 5
In the exercise of their clerical activities the clergy enjoy the protection of the state in the same way as state officials. The state will proceed, in accordance with the general provisions of civil law, against any insult to their person or to their clerical capacity, as well as against any interference with the duties of their office and, if necessary, will provide official protection.
Article 6
The clergy and members of religious orders are freed from any obligation to take public office and such obligations as, according to the dictates of Canon Law, are incompatible with the status of a member of the clergy or religious order respectively. This applies particularly to the office of a lay judge, juror, member of a tax committee or of a fiscal tribunal.
Article 7
For the acceptance of employment or appointment as state official, or to any public corporation dependent on the state, clergymen require, the nihil obstat [5] of their diocesan ordinary, as well as of the ordinary of the place where the public corporation is situated. The nihil obstat may be withdrawn at any time for important reasons of ecclesiastical interests.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part V

Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich

[with Supplementary Protocol and Secret Supplement]
July 20, 1933
[Concordat]
His Holiness Pope Pius XI and the President of the German Reich, moved by a common desire to consolidate and promote the friendly relations existing between the Holy See and the German Reich, wish to permanently regulate the relations between the Catholic Church and the state for the whole territory of the German Reich in a way acceptable to both parties. They have decided to conclude a solemn agreement, which will supplement the Concordats already concluded with individual German states (Länder) [4], and will ensure for the remaining states (Länder) fundamentally uniform treatment of their respective problems.
For this purpose His Holiness Pope Pius XI has appointed as his Plenipotentiary His Eminence the Most Reverend Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, his Secretary of State and the President of the German Reich has appointed as Plenipotentiary the Vice-Chancellor of the German Reich, Herr Franz von Papen, who, having exchanged their respective mandates and found them to be in good and proper form, have agreed to the following Articles:
Article 1
The German Reich guarantees freedom of profession and public practice of the Catholic religion.
It acknowledges the right of the Catholic Church, within the framework of the laws valid for all, to manage and regulate its own affairs independently, and, within the framework of its own competence, to issue binding laws and ordinances for its members.
Article 2
The concordats concluded with Bavaria (1924), Prussia (1929) and Baden (1932) remain in force, and the rights and privileges of the Catholic Church recognized in these are preserved unchanged within the territories of the states concerned. For the remaining states (Länder), the agreements reached in the present concordat come into force in their entirety. These last are also binding for the three states (Länder) named above, in so far as they affect matters not regulated by the states’ (Länder) concordats or in so far as they supplement the earlier settlements.
In the future concordats with the states (Länder) will be concluded only with the agreement of the government of the Reich.
Article 3
In order to foster good relations between the Holy See and the German Reich, an apostolic nuncio will reside in the capital of the German Reich and an ambassador of the German Reich at the Holy See.

ON the Vatican and the Shoah: Part IV

At the very end, just before the notes, this translation of the concordat includes the Secret Supplement. Naturally, this is omitted on Catholic sites. because it shows that by 1933 the Vatican knew that Hitler was going to re-arm in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, and wanted to help him keep it secret. (In fact, the Secret Supplement of the Austrian concordat indicates that already by 1931 the Vatican was planning for this eventuality. Perhaps even hoping for this eventuality, since Pius IX “supported any policy or any man who would oppose and fight Soviet Russia”.[3]

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part III

Reichskonkordat (with Hitler, 1933) : Full text
Concordat text, Supplementary Protocol and Secret Supplement. Article 27 of the Concordat provides for military chaplains in case the Germany rearmed in contravention of the Versailles Treaty, and the Secret Supplement exempted Catholic clergy from military service. Even today the Secret Supplement does not appear in most translations: the Church won't admit to knowing that Hitler was about to start a war.

________________________________________
Cardinal Faulhaber, who helped negotiate the concordat with Hitler (and who ordained the present pope), assessed its international impact in a 1937 sermon:

"At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government."
- Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
________________________________________

After the war some of the individual German states wanted to scrap the 1933 "Hitler Concordat", but they were overruled by the Vatican and the German Federal Government. The concordat was then embedded in Article 123.2 of the 1949 Constitution,[1] through a sentence about honouring "State treaties concluded by the German Reich", so long as these concern areas which fall under the competence of the individual German states.

This last proviso is not much of a limitation, since after WWII the Allied Powers made the powers of the federated states very broad.[2] In fact, Art. 72.1 of the postwar Constitution gave them all competencies not explicitly assigned to the national government. Thus Germany was redesigned with highly independent federated states which even shared jurisdiction with the national government in key areas like finance. And so it was to remain: Art. 79.3 of the Constitution explicitly forbade Germany to become more centralised.

The broad legal competencies given to the individual German states by the 1949 Constitution happen to encompass key areas of interest to the Church such as culture, education, social services and (some aspects of) finance. This allows the states to take over these parts of the Hitler concordat, thus preserving almost all of the last surviving concordat with a Fascist government. This has also made the concordat unassailable without a constitutional upheaval and has served to build it into the fabric of German law.

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part II

It was a marriage of convenience between Hitler and the Vatican, one which disenfanchised the Catholic laymen. As Hitler cynically put it:

"We should trap the priests by their notorious greed and self indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years' reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages. Matters will never come to a head. They will recognize a firm will, and we need only show them once or twice who is master. They will know which way the wind blows." [quoted in Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (2000), pp. 25-26]

This marriage of convenience between Hitler and the Church hierarchy was deeply confusing to Catholics who looked to their church for guidance. Jared Israel explains the signals they received when Hitler was granted a concordat:

"Put yourself in the position of a 1933 German Catholic as you read the text of the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican, the Reichskonkordat.

"The German Catholic Church has rescinded its ban on joining the Nazi Party. The Catholic Center party has dissolved itself. [And Articles 31 and 32 prevent any revival of this democratic Catholic party which had opposed the Nazis.] In the Reichskonkordat, the Vatican has promised that German Bishops and their subordinates will be obedient to and honor the Nazi state (Article 16). It has promised that German Catholic educators will teach children patriotic love for the Nazi state (Article 21). It has requested and received the Nazi dictatorship's promise to enforce internal Church decisions (Article 10). Cardinal Bertram of Breslau has called on Catholics to avoid all subversive or illegal (by Nazi definition) activities.

"How should you respond to the Nazi's new nightmare state? Doesn't the Catholic Church teach you to view Church officials as exemplary? Shouldn't they be emulated? Isn't the Pope's word law, and didn't the Pope sign the Reichskonkordat, an agreement with the Nazi dictatorship, that [in Article 16 contains this pledge for new bishops]:

'In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it.' "

This concordat with Nazi Germany was negotiated by Cardinal Pacelli, who in 1939 became Pius XII. Undaunted by his wartime record, the Vatican is now attempting to have him declared a saint. In his ongoing canonisation process he has reached the venerable stage, which is Church certification that he was "heroic in virtue". Could this be a smokescreen o

Actually, Jesus never gave a prohibition against referring to anyone as "father" - he didn't speak English!

However, more to the point, you incorrectly interpret Mat 23:9, since in 1 Cor 4:15 Paul states "for in Christ Jesus, I became your father in the Gospel."

On the Vatican and the Shoah: Part I

Hitler's concordat (1933) : Text and background

● Reichskonkordat (with Hitler, 1933)
● Hitler's concordat betrays Catholic democrats
● Just another neutral state: The Vatican in the Holocaust
● German churches used slave labour
● Von Papen, papal chamberlain and Nazi negotiator
● The German churches before and after 1945
● Vatican anti-Judaism and Nazi anti-Semitism
● The “Jewish sow" on mediaeval German churches
● "Mother's cross" and Maria cult
● Links to pictures of the Nazis and the churches

I very much agree with Susan Jacoby’s concern about abusing the memory of the Holocaust. There is, sadly, much truth in Jacob Heilbrunn’s statement that “the further the Holocaust recedes into the past, the more it’s being exploited to create a narrative of redemption.” And Rabbi David Dalin has complained that “angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today.” Perhaps the two come together here, like this: “I too detest Pius XII and the Catholic Church for their complicity on the Holocaust. Gee whiz, aren’t I good. I’m opposing the most monstrous evil.” But it’s a lie.

Jacoby says that “Pius XII did not use his moral authority to oppose Hitler and save Jews during World War II.” But of course he did, incessantly during the war, both directly in speeches and writings and indirectly through Vatican communications such as the Vatican Radio and newspaper. Contemporary sources praised Pius XII as being the only one who spoke out against the Nazis. On December 25, 1941 the New York Times editorial commented on his Christmas message in which he called for the protection of national minorities, which everyone understood to include Jews threatened by the Nazis. “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. The Pope reiterates what he has said before.” And again on Christmas, in 1942, Pius XII decried “the hundreds of thousands who through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race have been condemned to death or progressive extinction.” The New York Times editorial said, “This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is now more than ever the Rock on which the Church was founded….” So much for lack of moral leadership.

Just how effective Pius XII was in saving Jews is something we can never know, but it’s a child’s game to assume that had he acted or spoken any differently that the results would have been any better. Make up whatever answer you want – it will say more about you than Pius XII. But the indisputable facts of the matter are that he did speak out, he was clearly understood by all, he did so at great personal risk, with considerable courage and bravery, all the while surrounded by his enemies, he was an enemy of the Nazis, and he assisted the Jews both openly and clandestinely. The Jewish people lauded him with thanks after the war. We should too.

Onofrio,

You make an excellent point about the benighted bishop superciliously and piously lamenting about a few hundred thousand dead in an attempt to shove the rest of the millions under the expensive rug in his opulent office. We must remember that the most subtle lie is a half truth - the right wing talking heads are good at it, and so, apparently, is the bishop. Or in his case, a 5% truth.

Very few religious people realize that this self-proclaimed 'vicar of Christ', as well as all of his predecessors, are a great source of religious confusion down thru the ages until now. Scripture plainly states that no one except God the Father is to be referred to as 'Father'. The RC popes and priests really are quite presumptuous in their self-appointed statures. All of which is error. For the most part, people really do not understand the portrayl of these representatives of the RC church, and the church itself, in the book of Revelation and their role in events that are to come on the scene in Europe at a future date.

Djinna1 :

Contrary to your impression, the holocaust does not "dominate the Jewish dialogue, to the exclusion of almost all else". It dominates the dialogue of antisemites. Nor does it affect Israel's policies, except in the eyes of some Arabs and their useful dupes in he West.

You might also want to double-check your information about that "mass grave in Kiev". It is called Babi-Yar, and the victims buried there are not Slavs. They are Jews. All 80,000 of them.

Citing AROSSCPA, below, 27 Jan, 3.38 pm:
"Jewish groups denounced Benedict for embracing Williamson, who denied during an interview broadcast last week on Swedish state TV that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. He said only about 200,000 or 300,000 were killed."

This playing with evil’s grayscale is loathsome. Flat Shoah-denial has this in its favour – its bitter lunatic lie is transparently false. But the Shoah-pruner is a far more dangerous beast, swathing himself in the measured tones and concern-for-fact of sweet reasonableness, sowing suspicions and equivocations like blown spores.

Like this:

What’s 200 to 300 K in the vast wreckage of the second World War? We still sense the enormity of that wave’s wake. Continents bled; precision drowned. A million here or there is part of the statistical uncertainty.

(So what hope of special notice does a mere quartered million stand?)

A quartered million is too grand; let’s stick to mere thousands. The allies could have managed that in few nights’ fire bombing; Stalin coughed, and at least that number fell, unsung, in punishment battalions; it’s the population of just one modest city, with which Europe was littered – what’s one less? Just some provincial centre with a fine old spire. Next.

And execution by cyanide – come, come. The science is all wrong. Yes, some thousands died, but here and there, like everyone else. Just war deaths, no more. What do you expect from a war?

And so the pruner-bishop (like others of his topiarising ilk) hallows himself with reasons – not denying Jews were killed, not denying horror came, not excusing the slayings *such as they were* (paying due lip service with a slightly wrinkled brow), yet leaving behind the question, the suspicion:

*Was it really all that bad?*

And, at last, the exit clause (appealing to the young and bored):

*Must we dwell on this unpleasantness forever?*

Beware of the Shoah-pruner, who’s just bringing some *perspective*, a fire-douser, a martyr for measure...

I am an American who has traveled abroad and has actually visited Auschwitz - I can say with some certainty that the Holocaust did actually occur. While it was a horrific chapter in the history of modern Europe, I must take exception with one thing: in speaking of what happened in Nazi Germany, while there was a particularly vicious hatred toward the Jewish people (which I do not condone by ANY stretch of the imagination), I think we do a disservice to other people who also were victims of these terrible criminals. The Slavs were hated almost as much as the Jews; in fact, there are mass graves in Kiev and other places where the Nazis unleashed their wrath against these innocent people as well. Other groups, such as Gypsies, homosexuals, etc. were also targeted. We should also remember these individuals who suffered and died, as all of God's children have worth in His eyes. It is tragic, however, how this has affected the Jewish psyche; even as an African-American woman whose parents experienced segregation and discrimination in America, it appears that the Holocaust dominates the Jewish dialogue, to the exclusion of almost all else. It even affects the policies of the State of Israel, who unleashed a disproportionately severe attack recently against Gaza. One has to wonder if, without the spectre of the Holocaust and the resulting fear and anger, their reaction would have been the same... While one must never forget, we seem to be fated to repeat the same mistakes over and over again... Pain and suffering often begets pain and suffering, and so the cycle continues...

Pope Benedict is in the process of purifying the Church. Losing members to a more "ecumenical" body of faith, matters nothing at all to him. He is, and has been, what we would call politically a "right wing", "ultraconservative" theologian.
So it is with the some 2,000 year old Church at this time in history. The Church will live through this. The Vicar of Christ has lived through many centuries of all kinds of things: corruption, war, right wing, left wing, and on and on.
It is unlikely that Benedict will kill the Church. He will do what he has set out to do: purify the Church, eliminate all free-thinking, prevent women from participating equally, etc. etc.
This is but a moment in the history of the Universal Church.
Benedict will pass. His conservative notions will last as long as narcissistic males continue to believe that everyone but them should have all glory, honor, and money. And, this you will find in every single male dominated church of any faith in any country anywhere around this whole world.
They are all the same.

Brava, Ms. Jacoby, for a closely reasoned, challenging article, and even more for your willingness to address folks in this forum. Some folks' here are clearly incapable of engaging productively with your observations: I'm afraid there's no helping them see past their prejudices and dogmas, pro or con. We're not likely to engage many of them in this forum. As you aptly observe, "The truth is that people, and all sorts of groups of people, hold benighted, ignorant and hateful ideas about one another--but they do not always go on to murder one another. In civilization, there is a barrier between prejudice and persecution, composed of law, informal sanctions, and moral beliefs."

I would suggest your closing statement about punishing high officials (likely lack thereof) follows directly from this statement: if we allow the clear law to be eroded through sophistry (rightwing radio), comity (Pelosi, Reid and maybe even Obama not wanting to rock the boat and anger the GOP), or worst of all, benign neglect (the rest of us), we have removed one of the most important--more important than religion, I believe--impediments to future atrocity.

Thank you very much for this important, clear-sighted message. Agree or disagree, would that we all open our eyes and try to see from the perspective you courageously offer.

terpguy2009:

A hurried post, more later. Israel has nothing to do with this issue, nothing at all. An anaology: Should Muslims hate all Christians for the AmeriChristian invastion of Iraq, Afghanistan, ending in 200,000 dead, innocents dead?

Should Muslims and Hindus hate Christians for the Crusades, for colonialism, for cutting off the hands and thumbs of Indians and Muslims during colonialism?

Should Jews hate all Muslims for the three million, like me, who have been exiled from the Middle East? For the terrorist muders of Israeli Jews?

Btw., there is no comparison with the American south, none whatsoever, but Israel is a not the Issue. Williamson is the issue, or, one issue. There are others, yes, but they have nothing to do with Israel.

While everyone in the civilized world is free to express their opinion...some go so far as avowing the non-existance of Jesus Christ without being condemned for such beliefs others are villified for not accepting the much repeated occurence of the Holocaust.

There have been reported instances in history that factually never happened especailly ones that inpinged on religious doctrine or a people.

One's faith is not dependant on accepting or not accepting the beliefs of others. The best an individual can do humanly is to expect the respect from those that demand demand equality.

Here are two early "Holocaust" tales from the Talmud: Gittin 57b. Claims that four billion Jews were killed by the Romans in the city of Bethar. Gittin 58a claims that 16 million Jewish children were wrapped in scrolls and burned alive by the Romans.

(Ancient demography indicates that there were not 16 million Jews in the entire world at that time, much less 16 million Jewish children or four billion Jews).

Ms. Jacoby et al are applauded for expressing their views about any views about any issue they feel strongly about. The Pope or any other individual must be awarded the same curtesy and consideration for proferring opposing or different views.

At the BBC website there is a story about the physical decay of Auschwitz. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7842671.stm

Perhaps Bishop Robinson can be ordered to spend the rest of his life working on the repair and restoration of Auschwitz, particularly the gas chambers which are in need of repair.

marcedward1:

1. Ethnic Cleansing, if you had actually read it all instead of nitpicking to find your argument, is the intimidation of a people to do something, compared to genocide, which is when a group of people are intent on killing everyone of a certain race, ethnicity, religion, etc. The Indians (and all Indians did suffer the same fate essentially), in this definition, suffered from ethnic cleansing time and again, where they were murdered, pillaged, etc. not to kill them all per se, but to force them to move (hence sending them to reservations, trying to 'civilize' them, etc.) The same way the Mongols nearly destroyed Islamic civilization in Persia, that is what the US did to Native Americans (or, one can argue, what Israel has done to Palestinians). To re-emphasize, this is not to say that ethnic cleansing is not evil (it is extremely evil), but using the two words inter-changeably only dilutes their use. I was trying to make an academic statement (which does stand, even with a disagreement on Native Americans).

2. As to pre-1937 Germany, I am familiar with it, probably much more than you are. There was essentially racism encouraged by the government, then forced by the government (ghettoes, suspending of passports, people having to wear stars of david, gov't propoganda spreading the evil of Jews, etc.). What's most similar is the Jim Crow laws not allowing blacks into certain areas, eat at certain places, etc.

Israel does not compare to this example per se. While there is extreme racism, it is not condoned by the Israeli government. If it was, you would not see Arabs going to Israeli Universities (which some do), or Arabs in Israeli Parliament(which there are). Again, racism is VERY real in Israel, but it is more like post-Civil Rights Act Southern US, where the act of racism is done mostly by society.

3. Finally, and I can't believe I have to say this, but I am not trying to portray Jews as the worst off. For you to even assume that is, in your words, "silly and pathetic". As Ms. Jacoby said, trying to compare evils is just plain stupid, because all evils are just that, evil. Yes, some individual acts are more evil than others, but over time, there is more than enough evil to go around for everybody, including the Israelis.

Pope John Paul II excommunicated Richard Williamson together with 3 other bishops because the 4 in 1988 were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent. The Pope considered the act of Lefebvre and his bishops a schismatic act. There is no argument that Williamson's unbelief or disbelief of the occurrence of the Holocaust is obviously an erroneous political judgment but one's political misjudgment or error was and is never a ground for one's excommunication by the Vatican. The act of Lefebvre and his bishops were deemed by the Pope as a schism from the Catholic Church.

That Pope Benedict is now extending the "olive branch" to Williamson and the other 3 has earned the disagreement or displeasure of Susan Jacoby and others reflects a gross misunderstanding or error in the meaning or essence of Catholic excommunication.

Yes Md. Jacoby et al;

Today, When i sayth HITLER, WE mean Not Todays G'GOOD' Germans.

Fact: Even Though Money helps but can never bring bad the Prematured dead; that it was Germany's REPERATION MONEY that Allowed My Father; a ex-HAGANNAian [pbuh et al] to migrate to America so that we may Re-Populate. iRonically, Both of My Brothers served in Cambodia & Nam. One is Dead (Natural Causes).

LETTER TO THE-GERMAN PEOPLE: As a 2nd Generation Victim THAT

Wir, Opfer von Weltkrieg 2, Liebe Deutschland, aber Hass Hitler! (We, victims of World War 2, Love Germany, but hate hitler!).

---

Frieden, Shalom, Peace, Paz, Ahimsa, Salaam, Zhinghu...

Wasn't this Pope the one who was a member of the Hitler Youth? So why is it that anyone is surprised that he would take such an outrageous position now?

The irony of Susan Jacoby railing against people who make banal, plainly false statemets is staggering.

terpguy2009 writes

'Even something as bad as what happened to the Indians in North America is not "genocide", since the US at no time had a plan of annihilating every Indian on the continent (although they nearly did).'

Of course it was genocide. Entire ethnic groups were wiped out. Calling all the ethnic groups of the Americas 'native americans' might make them one ethnic group in your mind, but it doesn't make it true. They were distinctive cultures with their own languages, religion, etc.

'What happens more often is "ethnic cleansing"'

Which is killing of people of a certain type in an area of the world, which is your def of genocide.

'nor can the racism in Israel compare to pre-1937 Germany'

Of course it can, because its rather similar. What did Hitler do to the Jews pre-1937? Do you even know? Pretending that Jews have suffered more than any other people in all history is silly, self serving, and pathetic.

I cannot presume to know what the Pope Benedict said or did not say about the European Holocaust. But I do personally know that my God practices FORGIVENESS. However, FORGIVENESS does not mean FORGETFULNESS nor DENIAL. The ideal of FORGIVENESS is closely aligned with the ideal of LESSON LEARNED.

There is nifty film (available on Netflix) called PAPERCLIPS. It began as a lesson about prejudice... What happened next was a miracle
The Plot:As a part of their study of the Holocaust, the children of the Whitwell, TN Middle School try to collect 6 million paper clips representing the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

To me this movie is much better than Schindler's List because it honors the survivors of horrific German prison camps, and simultaneously shows that modern day American school children can learn a lesson drawn from history.

Another great film (also available on Netflix) is called Freedom Writers. It also honors a survivor of Nazi death camps, and simultaneously shows that modern day mistreated, ghetto children living in the United States can learn and contribute to society.

Need I mention the Diary of Anne Frank? Another compelling first-hand look at the horrific Nazi treatment of Jews in the Netherlands?

Finally, another perspective is offered by Albert Speer in his prison memoir, INSIDE THE THIRD REICH. Speer was convicted of war crimes and was the chief architect and confidant to none other than ADOLF HITLER.

I am not a Catholic, and know nothing about POPE BENEDICT's views. But I do know that the European Holcaust is a historical fact, and its history casts a shadow of guilt around the world. Man's inhumanity is shameful in this Nazi story, as well as many more. FORGIVENESS is a good thing, FORGETFULNESS is not.

Ok, I swore I would not comment on this an justify the retarded thoughts of some people, but I feel I must:

1. Debating over the number of Holocaust victims is pointless. The reason is that we know the approximate number from country records and Nazi records (the Nazis were METICULOUS about keeping records, even putting the Brits to shame).

2. Genocide, by definition, is the attempt to annihilate a people from a region of the world, and by annihilate, I mean kill (liquefy, murder, you choose the word). The number of genocides in world history is actually quite small (the only two I can think of are Rwanda and the Holocaust). Even something as bad as what happened to the Indians in North America is not "genocide", since the US at no time had a plan of annihilating every Indian on the continent (although they nearly did).

3. What happens more often is "ethnic cleansing", by which an entire race is harassed and physically harmed until they agree to certain propositions (most likely telling them to move). This is DISTINCTLY different from Genocide.

4. What is happening in Israel against the Palestinians is not genocide. Killing civilians is always bad, and I despise what the IDF has done at times, but it is nothing compared to the Holocaust. (nor can the racism in Israel compare to pre-1937 Germany. The racism is more like the racism in the post-MLK America. It is not legal and encouraged, but an ugly part of society that does and probably will always exist)

Thanks for this great article. It makes me think of the current situation happening in Egypt between Christians and Muslims. While many Egyptians may proclaim their tolerance for the Christian minority, actions of extremists and the rule of law show an increasingly intolerant trend.

The only way to protect religious minorities (including Baha'i) in Egypt would be to reverse official discriminatory policies. While most people I meet don't seem capable of even harassing someone because of their religion, all it takes is some pressure from those who are capable. Open violence has already spread from the relatively lawless countryside to major cities like Alexandria and Cairo.

A recent Egyptian movie surprisingly addresses these issues; even talking about the subject can be a death sentence. "Hassan wa Morqos" (Hassan and Mor'os) with Adel Emam and Omar Sharif teaches a lesson about tolerance between the two faiths, but how effective can the film be in the face of societal pressure and government-sanctioned intolerance?

Egypt officially exiled the Jewish population in 1956. The official government position shortly before that time was that Egyptians of all faiths are its "sons". The move was based more on politics than theology, but the government's "tolerance" was ineffective either way. I doubt things will be much better for today's religious minorities in Egypt.

Susan Jacoby

This post is specifically directed toward Anyone1, and anyone else who was outraged by my mentioning at the end of this piece that I am disturbed by the likelihood that no one at the top is going to be held responsible for the torture of prisoners captured in the Iraq war. Once again, I was not comparing this episode to the Holocaust (which I said explicitly in the piece, but apparently you missed that point). I was talking about the principle that responsibility must be assessed from the top down. This is true whether one person is murdered or millions are murdered. How convenient it is to escape the responsibility for crimes perpetrated in one's own time by alluding to greater crimes commited in another era, by someone else.

One of the worst, most false "lessons" of the Holocaust is that no other form of evil, on a less grandiose scale, counts.

I'd also like to add an extra wag of the finger (as Steven Colbert would say) for those who attribute Benedict's action to the fact that he is German. During the past 25 years, Germany has done much more as a nation to come to terms with its responsibility for the Holocaust than any other nation has done in response to large historical crimes. Russia, under the former KGB apparatchik who is now its de facto ruler, has done nothing to come to terms with the crimes of Stalinism. I am not suggesting, by the way, that Germans born after World War II bear a collective responsibility for the Holocaust. I also do not believe that 21st century Americans bear any responsibility for slavery. What I do believe is that we are all responsible for confronting the past, and working to see that the past is represented honestly for future generations.

HELLO me APOCALYPTARIAN thinking Nationals;

If Ye thinketh about it, it is the Self Serving finatic CATHOHOLICS via VATICAN & CO. , that are the bigest Trouble Makers on Space-Ship Earth (Past & Present) & not Only the self serving ISLAMICs via ISHMAEL (a HAMITE).

Amazing, NO-GRACE ().

ORDER:

It is now O R D E R E D, THAT

The VATiCAN (a Pre-Apocalyptic Jealous & copy cat thinking Theocracy SYSTEM trying to be or go Apocalyptic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican

AND

The WAHHABi (a Pre-Apocalyptic jealous & copy cat thinking SYSTEM trying to be or go Apocalyptic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

cease & Desist from any more Pogroms ELSE

YE-SHALL be "Wiped-Off The Face of this Holyi (Blessed, not Biblioly Cursed or Borneth in any man-made Sin stuff & Things) Cosmic, NEBULA-BUILT, Space-Ship Earth of Many blesseth Planets Like US, not like Theirs!

Please Pope Benedict XVI & VATICAN;

Crown Saudi Kings (Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab an-Najdi ) of MECCA:

Please Take YE Pre-Apocalyptic Systems to VENUS or MERCURY, not sister Moon, not Mom/Dad Earth, not Brother Mars?

---

WE ARE NOT ALONE!

If I do not have something nice to say than don't say anything at all.

What else can one expect from a German Pope who leads a Church that turns a blind eye to sexual abuse of children? For starters.

I do not know how any person can make such a stupid statement about the Holocaust. Why doesn't someone sit that ignoramous down and show him film footage taken by the Allies as they freed the concentration camps in 1945. Show them over and over and over again. Drag his butt to Auschwitz, show him the ovens, talk to the people who lived near the camp and let them tell him about the black smoke and smells coming from the camp's chimenys 24/7. I have watched the films, I have visited Auschwitz (and no, I am not a Jew, but that should not make any difference). It happened, and because we forget or rewrite the past, humanity is likely to repeat (and already has, in Cambodia/Kampuchea) such atrocities in the future.

Frankly, I would not want to belong to a church that would allow such a representative of that church "back into the fold," let alone to continue his ridiculous rants. Poor man, he is not well!

I learned a lesson from the Holocaust. This is it:

People blame it on the Nazis, whom they regard as a German phenonmenon; the Holocaust is often thought of as a German thing. But when Hitler took over Germany, and the Nazis began their program of mass extermination of segments of the population, Germany was regarded by many as the most advance country in the world.

Now, we in the United States are regarded by many to be the most advanced country in the world. So if the Nazis took over and ruled Germany, perhaps something like that could happen here, too.

The Nazis were not merely German; they were a movement composed of a personality type that is eveywhere in the world and in all culutres, even here in America. Even here, we must guard against these people coming to power.

Under the Bush administration, people WERE tortured to death. In many ways, there were the precursors of Nazi-like behaviors and attitudes stirring in the Bush administration.

Whenever anyone brings that up, it is called "playing the Nazi" card and it is politically incorrect to do so. But, why not? Surely, we do not want anything like that to be repeated in our own country.

Americans like to think of themselves as special and different. But, we are no different than all the other good and bad people who have walked on the Earth since before history.

The hololcaust deniers are making excuses for the Nazii-types, so they can possibly justify similar actions in the future. That is it, plain and simple. They can argue and fuss all they want about how people don't understand their good motivations, but they should, in fact, be cast out, and ostracized, and not tolerated.

They are a threat and they are dangerous.

hguildner: Don't you think its unfair to blame Paul the XII for everything and not blame Paul VII, VIII, IX, X, and XI for any of it. Of course, to be fair, they don't get much credit for doing food either. None of the lot has even been canonized!

What can one expect, Bennedict is German and Germans want to forget.

the real holocaust was rousting blacks from their own country and enlaving them around the world. jews have been paid for paintings etc that were taken by the nazis i am still waiting for my forty acres and a mule. The jews have systematically committed a holococaust against the palestinians and the world doesn't give a darn

Ms. Jacoby,

You had me the entire time - It looked like an excellent article. But then you had to stick a BDS item at the end... sad. So, in an article about Six million people being singled out for murder. You mention tough interrogations, where no mark is left on the "victim". Sad, very sad... I weep for your moral insanity.

To Vigor (or Visor-can't quite read your name under the icon thingie the site imposes, so I apologize if I chose the wrong name.)

Catholics do NOT believe that the Pope is infallible in all his statements. He is simply the authority when there are disputes in matters of faith. I as a Catholic can be every bit as furious as non-Catholics over this current act, and I can say so quite vocally to a priest without fear of excommunication.

By the same token, this appalling action does not obligate me to disagree with everything else he ever says. But it does make me look on those things with a bit more scrutiny.

I doubt you can expect anymore from this bishop. When he reaches for an unknown monarch's quote to insult another religion demonstrates he still believes the Aryan arogance he was a member of.

And Paul XII did not care about "Catholics". He was afraid taking a position against the slaughter by Germany and Italy would jeopardize the Statehood of the Vatican.

FARNAZ2,

You are forgetting the Islamic invasion of Europe that came both before and after the Crusades. This was the time when Spain, Austria, Hungary, Romania and many other areas were invaded and the inhabitants in many cases tortured and killed.

As has often been said, the Crusades were the only period of the Islamic invasion of Europe when the Christians were actually winning.

let me get this straight, I'm supposed to believe this man is infallible?

wake up and smell the coffee, people.

I no longer believe anything he says.

Ma'am-

You are greatly mistaken.

Exommunication from the Catholic Church is based on Dogma and sacred truths of the faith. The Holocaust is not a TRUTH of religion, revelation, scripture, etc. It is an historic event- tragic, deplorable, intrinsically evil- but still an event.

You may call it a blunder or a mistake or an outrage- and you are of course entitled to your opinion. But truth is not based on individual opinion or perspective.

Secondly, your comments about Pius XII are as WRONG as these bishops comments on the Holocaust. You perpetuate lies and myth and then speak of "european antisemitism" without mentioning "america anti-catholicism". No need to mention it- it is on display in your article.

Need I remind you of the Rabbi of Rome's ancient synagogue who, after the war, converted to Catholicism and chose Pius' birth name (Eugene) as his baptismal name? Oh, if that great man were still alive to tell his story of Pius XII heroism.... oh wait! He wrote a book about it! Why don't you read it?

On "who's Authority" are you condemning Pope Pius XII and Pope Benedict XVI. For all those who criticize, both of these popes, here and around the world, have no understanding of "Authentic Love". Both Popes Pius XII and Benedict XVI ,loved and loves the Jews and the Jewish population. After all, Jesus and the 12 Apostles were Jews. I also know that the parents of Pope Benedict XVI and the Pope as a young man opposed "Naziism". There was no such thing as a "voluntary" youth group. The Gestopo were terrorists nothing less. If anyone joined voluntarily, they would have not been aware of the "Evil Deeds" of Hitler and his comrades. It is likend to the "Evil Abortion Industry" many are unaware.
Pope Pius XII saved many Jews. There are still Jews that can give witness to this. Pope Pius XII knew there would have been many more Jews killed had he said certain things to provoke Hitler. You must remember "Naziism" stands for National Socialism, not a Free Republic. Example: After Holland fell to the Nazis, the Dutch Catholic Bishops issued an encyclical attacking the anti-Semitc atrocities of the Nazi regime. The Nazi Gestopo retaliated immediately by rounding-up all of the Roman Catholic Jews to be sent to the death camps.
One very famous Saint, "Saint Teresa Benedicta Of The Cross" (Edith Stein), was one of these Catholic Jews arrested, at the convent, on August 2, 1942 along with her sister Rose. The sisters were deported to Auschwitz and executed a week later. Pius XII was the Vicar of Christ during this Holocaust. Pope Benedict XVI is the present Vicar of Christ during, this time,the Holocaust of Abortion around the world. The weight of saddness and pain on the shoulders of Pius XII would have had to have been horrendous, just as the saddness and pain of the millions of "aborted babies" and all of the "social choas" around the world is on the shoulders of Benedict XVI.

Susan Jacoby,

A clarification of my earlier post. When I say most had not yet been subjected to hundreds of years of Christian racism, I mean, of course, to begin with the First Crusade. That would be the Crusade in which the Christians walked knee deep in Muslim and Jewish blood and bone, as various knights have testified. Still, the Middle East is large, and while, in between slaughtering Jews, Muslims, indiginous peoples of different lands, Christians did take the opportunity to spread antiJewish racism--Waste not, want not, the Catholics always say--they could only spread it but so far. The extent to which they did spread it came in handy when they stepped up publicity efforts in the twentieth century. More later.

BROWN4

There is no distinction between the Holocaust, euthanasia, and abortion . All are simply attempts to limit the definition of "a human person" in order to achieve a previously defined goal. What difference is there to say that a person of African decent is not "really human," or a Jewish person is "subhuman" or a disabled person "really isn't alive", or life begins at birth, or age 4 or whenever?

The idea that it is up to the individual to determine person-hood is patently absurd. Taken to its logical conclusion, one could easily argue that women are not human (a y chromosome is needed to be a human person), and therefore what society calls "rape" is simply an attempt by the government to control my own body and shove other's religious beliefs (the belief that women are human) down my throat.

(The same argument works if you switch man or woman, or any other combination.)

With regard to the other "intinsically evil" acts, an analogy can be made to global warming and the environment. How can what I do in the privacy of my home (use freon/aerosol cans/burn wood) have any effect on the rest of the world? If I want to bury toxic waste in my backyard it is my business and the government should not interfere.

(The problem with the above argument, and the "privacy of the home" argument is that it ignores the fact that that every action we take effects every other person in the world. It is interesting that all of the problems that Paul VI said would result form the use of contraception have in fact taken place - skyrocketing divorce, increasing spousal abuse, societal violence, etc.)

It is not necessarily the role of government to outlaw activities taking place between two consenting adults, but that does not imply that actions are morally correct, or damaging to society.

The atrocities of WWII by body count with references listed at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Second

Hitler

Extermination of the Jews:

Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution (1953):
between 4,194,200 and 4,851,200 (this number is accepted by Kinder, The Anchor Atlas of World History (1978))

Brzezinski: 5,000,000

Chirot: 5,100,000

3,000,000 in death camps.

1,300,000 massacred.

800,000 by dis./maln. in ghettos

Rummel: 5,291,000

Grenville: 5-6M

Davies, Europe A History (1998): avg. c. 5,571,300 (puts the minimum at 4,871,000 and the maximum at 6,271,500.)

MEDIAN: ca. 5.6M
Nuremberg indictment: 5,700,000 (accepted by Britannica)

Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990): 5,596,029 to 5,860,129

P. Johnson: 5,800,000

Wallechinsky: "nearly" 6,000,000

Urlanis: 6M

Country-by-country
Individual Camps, Massacres etc.
Auschwitz
Babi Yar
Belzec
Chelmno
Majdanek
Mauthausen
Odessa
Sobibor
Treblinka

Soviet Prisoners of War killed:
Urlanis: 3,912,000

12 March 1995 Times-Picayune: nearly 3.5M
Our Times: 3,300,000

Rummel: 3,100,000

MEDIAN: 3.0-3.1M

Mazower, Dark Continent: 3M

Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 3,000,000

Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960): 2,000,000 dead and 1,000,000 never accounted for, presumed dead.

Britannica: 2,600,000

Roma (Gypsies):

Hammond: 250,000.
Rummel: 258,000.
Mazower, Dark Continent: 200,000-500,000.
Porter: 500,000
Brzezinski: 800,000
Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Romani Holocaust" in Is the Holocaust Unique? (A. Rosenbaum, ed.) cites these:
US Holocaust Memorial Museum: 250,000
"several published estimates": >1,000,000
Pauwels and Bergier: 750,000
Financial Times (London): 500-750,000 in death camps and another million shot outside.

Homosexuals:
Chirot: 10-15,000
Rummel: 220,000

Euthanasia of Handicapped:

Hugh G. Gallagher: 275,000, citing Breggin (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
Johnson: 70,000 insane and incurable Germans k.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 70,000 k.in initial phase, 1939-41. 275,000 total k, acc. to Nuremburg Tribunal.

Air Raids

Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): "an estimated 500,000 Soviet citizens died from German bomb attacks."
Belgrade
London
Stalingrad
(continued on the referenced web site:)

Susan Jacoby:

A fine comment. More on it later. For now, I would point out that while the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a nazi Hitler-lover, the majority of Palestinian Muslims were not.

As for Muslims in other lands, most had not yet been subjected to hundreds of years of Christian anti-Jewish racism, as the Christians were to busy colonizing, murdering, torturing, etc., said Muslims, as they very well know. At this point, Christian racism has been Islamicized, and all too many believe the insanity.

As for what there is "to learn from the Holocaust," more later.

From the AP this afternoon: Sorry to interrupt the anti-Catholic rant with facts, but reality happens!

49 mins ago

VATICAN CITY – An ultraconservative society recently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI silenced one of its bishops on Tuesday and distanced itself from his claim that no Jews were gassed during World War II.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, also asked for forgiveness from the pope for the "dramatic consequences" of Bishop Richard Williamson's comments.

The Vatican press office issued Fellay's statement as part of its own efforts to quell an outcry among Jews that Benedict had removed Williamson's 20-year-old excommunication, despite his views on the Holocaust.

Fellay said he has forbidden Williamson from speaking publicly about any historical or political questions and that his views "don't reflect in any way the position of the society." Fellay himself referred to the "genocide of Jews" by Nazis.

"We ask forgiveness of the Supreme Pontiff and all the men of good will for the dramatic consequences of this act," Fellay said.

Benedict rehabilitated Williamson, Fellay and two other members of the society last week as part of his efforts to bring the traditionalist society, which opposes many of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, back into the Vatican's fold.

Jewish groups denounced Benedict for embracing Williamson, who denied during an interview broadcast last week on Swedish state TV that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. He said only about 200,000 or 300,000 were killed.

The Vatican has stressed that removing the excommunication by no means implied the Vatican shared Williamson's views. But amid increasing outcry from Jewish groups, it intensified its defense of Benedict's record denouncing anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

While I don't disagree with your assertions regarding the ongoing trend to delve meaning from the Holocaust, I would remind you that all historical events are fixed in time and place. As we view the acts and actors of history, we do so from the moving stream of time and our vantage point is ever changing. Our vision is shaded and filtered by our perspective and the distance from the action. Today we can emphatically state that slavery was a great evil just as was the Holocaust. I would like to be confident that were I alive in 1861 in the South I would have stood equally opposed to it as I am in 2009. Not having lived in that time and place I'm not. Nor can I presume to understand what the average "ordinary" German experienced living in post WWI Weimar Republic and subsequent Nazification of Germany. I like to think I would have resisted the group think that predominated, but our own Eric Hoffer, in his book "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements," recognized the seeds of the Nazi movement were sown in the draconian peace imposed by the French and English under the Treaty of Versailles in 1918 and germinated in the subsequent fertile soil of the failed Weimar Republic.

Let's all hope we recognize future mass movements and act rightly according to what are the only real moral yardsticks. "Do I love my God with all my heart?" and "Do I love my neighbor as I love myself?"

part agree,part disagree....the murder of 6 million is one of the worse atrocities committed by mankind...but in this era of internet and various 'sources', sometimes things get translated incorrectly..

Susan Jacoby

I have rarely seen so many ignorant, inflamed comments on this thread. There is hatred for Palestinians and for Jews, dismissal of the Holocaust as a Jewish plot to claim eternal victimhood, even a gun nut who imagines that the Holocaust could have been prevented if every Jew had greeted every storm trooper at the door with a pistol. Hello? There were a great many more storm troopers than Jews in Nazi Germany. Multiple guns will always prevail over one gun. Many of these comments do nothing more than support the truth of my assertion that even if there are any lessons to be derived from the Holocuast, the world certainly hasn't learned them.

I repeat: evil cannot be graded on a curve. I said explicitly, in my closing remarks about my unease at our failure to hold high military and government officials accountable for policies promoting torture, that I was not comparing this recent shameful episode in our national history to what happened in Nazi Germany. However, I will say this: to punish privates and sergeants and corporals, and let Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld retire to their expensive houses on their lavish pensions, is a national disagrace. That is, unless you think it would have been appropriate to let the Nazi leaders go free while bringing only the SS guards to trial.

I'm not about to join this exercise in name-calling; but, for what its worth, I am posting the statement issued this afternoon by the Lefevrists apologizing for the opinions of Williamson, establishing that his are not the views of the Church or of the Society of St. Pius X, and silencing him on this issue. This just came out on the website of the National Catholic Reporter http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/3182 The Italian press is also reporting it. For all those Catholic-haters out there, the Vatican had already said that it did not share Bishop Williamson's views and that it is committed to good relations with the Jewish community.

Statement of His Excellency Bernard Fellay, Superior of the Fraternity of St. Pius X

We have become aware of an interview released by Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of our Fraternity of St. Pius X, to Swedish television. In this interview, he expressed himself on historical questions, and in particular on the question of the genocide against the Jews carried out by the Nazis.

It’s clear that a Catholic bishop cannot speak with ecclesiastical authority except on questions that regard faith and morals. Our Fraternity does not claim any authority on other matters. Its mission is the propagation and restoration of authentic Catholic doctrine, expressed in the dogmas of the faith. It’s for this reason that we are known, accepted and respected in the entire world.

It’s with great sadness that we recognize the extent to which the violation of this mandate has done damage to our mission. The affirmations of Bishop Williamson do not reflect in any sense the position of our Fraternity. For this reason I have prohibited him, pending any new orders, from taking any public positions on political or historical questions.

We ask the forgiveness of the Supreme Pontiff, and of all people of good will, for the dramatic consequences of this act. Because we recognize how ill-advised these declarations were, we can only look with sadness at the way in which they have directly struck our Fraternity, discrediting its mission.

This is something we cannot accept, and we declare that we will continue to preach Catholic doctrine and to administer the sacraments of grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Menzingen, January 27, 2009

Nanodev declares, "It is time the Church modify (sic) canon law to begin the excommunication process for all who support intrinsically evil acts such as the Holocaust, the holocaust of abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and homosexual acts."

That's quite a list of 'intrinsic evils'. The systematic, state-directed murder of millions is in the same moral category as a young woman deciding that she is not ready to carry a child and choosing to have an embryo with, as yet, no developed central nervous system removed, or a couple using a condom, or a patient dying of a painful and incurable disease choosing to end his suffering and being helped to carry out that choice, or two consenting adults of the same sex having sex together? If this is what Catholicism demands, I'm grateful all over again for the separation of church and state. Intrusive obsession with the private (and especially the sexual) lives of other people is an unhealthy state of mind.

CLINTATL,

I agree - lets get rid of all of those things that have come from the Catholic Church - especially those medieval monks. Things like schools, hospitals, charitable organizations, welfare, and the like. Lets go back to "exposing children" - once a girl is born to a family that already has a daughter, leave her out in the woods to die.

Instead of the Super Bowl this weekend, lets kill a couple thousand wild animals in the stadium and have a couple of dozen people fight to the death.

When anyone, including Ms. Jacoby, speaks or writes of "the murder of six million Jews on the continent of Europe" when referring to the Holocaust they participate in and perpetuate "Holocaust denial". What they say is accurate to a point but it is not the complete story.

The Holocaust exterminated close to 20 million people. Besides Jews those who were murdered included Gay men, Lesbians, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Romany (Gypsies), Blacks, the infirm and handicapped, Communists, and other political and religious opponents of the Nazi regime.

PMARNAC!

So Farnaz2, are you saying that the actions of the state of Israel must never be discussed or criticised because some citizens of Israel have been murdered? I grieve for the dead, but I don't see how their deaths somehow justify silencing discussion.

In fact, the thought that someone would list the names of victims simply in order to shut down a political discussion is rather horrifying to me; it smacks of exploiting tragedy. I am honestly sickened at the thought. But I will not assume that it was your intent to use the dead as a tool in debate.

By the way, just a tip: using all caps is the equivalent of shouting on the internet. It's often taken as a sign that the speaker is losing their grip.
______________________

So, pMaranc1, you haven't yet crawled back under your rock. Aren't you lonely for the rest of the Slime? A short course, for your iliterate self. Ask Mommie, if she can read, to explain it to you. The point of the post is (1)that when you attack another people, they will respond, particularly, if they have been attacked year in and year out. (2) Israel does not have oil cache; hence, dead, dismembered Israelis don't photograph well for the American media. (3) The fact that the oil loving American media doesn't show the "pictures" doesn't mean that literate people can't know. I understand PMaranc1 that you are not a member of that population. Hence, my suggestion that you ask Mommie, if she's literate, to explain for your MORON self.

The thought of someone bringing to this discussion the activities of another country, well, frankly, it makes me sick, nauseates me to think about. But Slimy You did it.

Oh, and PMaranc1, JUST A QUICK TIP FOR ETHICALLY CHALLENGED YOU: BETTER FOR YOU TO CRAWL BACK UNDER YOUR ROCK NOW. READ EACH WORD SLOWLY
RACIST.

kayak23225 writes:

My previous post implied that Benedict is himself a holocaust denier. He has not personally denied the holocaust, but by publicly rehabilitating bishops who have not publicly recanted their stances on this he seems to be tacitly condoning their holocaust denial.

------
That's a pretty big leap. To the best of my knowledge Holocaust denial, may be ignorance or craziness, but I don't know of any religion that has as a prerequisite an accurate understanding of historical fact.

Do the Lutherans get to pick who can be a Rabbi based on a history test of their choosing?

How about the millions of Catholic Poles that died in the Holocaust? Do they get to vote on what's accurate history?

In Pope Benedict's actions I see parallels with the recent arrogant behaviour of big-bank CEOs - outrageously giving enormous bonuses to stunningly undeserving upper staff. Totally oblivious to probable public opinion,

I recall not too long ago that the Pope made a trip to the US in which he made deep apologies for the pedophile Catholic priests scandal. At the same time one of the chief enablers/prolongers of the scandal, Cardinal Law, apparently unpunished, is sitting comfortably in a high post in Rome.

This and the holocaust-denyer's appointment are so transparently insincere. They are shameful and unChristian in my view.

Garak writes
'I took a quote by then-Israeli Foreign Minister and now Israeli President Shimon Peres and merely substituted "Jews" for "Armenians." Peres said "What happened to the Armenians was a tragedy, not a genocide." You say I may well be racist. Would you say Peres may well be racist?'

Assuming you're truthful, heck yes! I don't hold one holocaust as being more important than another. The genocide against Native Americans was not 'better' than that against the Jews. The Isreali treatment of the Palestinians isn't made 'good' because it isn't genocide.

'Or are only some genocides worthy of affirmation?'

I think here we are in agreement - all genocides are horrible, should be illegal, and will be quietly ignored by the world.

'Israel has never officially acknowledged the Armenian Holocaust. No Jew, no one else, for that matter, but especially Jews, who denies the Armenian Holocaust has any right to criticize anyone else for genocide denial.'

Excellent point. One would think that after the Holocaust Israelis would be the first in line to be against genocide.

I am so sick of the Catholic Church. More evil has been perpetuated against the human race by this corporation charading as a religion than any war or holocaust. And this hypocritical Prada wearing Pope is the worst of the worst. Why people let the Catholic Church tell them what to do and how to live their life is beyond me. The sooner the world is rid of this corrupt organization the better.

Jack43: In fact, if you bothered to look into it, you would know that many prisoners (about 100 in all) have died in U.S. custody since 9/11. Those who continue to deny the seriousness of the law-breaking and grotesquely immoral torture campaign of the Bush administration are fooling themselves. History will judge, and judge harshly, those who dismiss and deny what happened. President Obama seems bent on restoring the U.S. to the rule of law-- but a full restoration will require, at the very least, a public investigation of what was done, and who is responsible.

Susan,

You comment on Holocaust films as a poor narrative for history. You decry them as ""they died with honor" narrative" and lead us to believe that, in doing so, Hollywood is somehow to blame for how people view the Holocaust.

You couldn't be more wrong. Most logical people will view those films as signs of courage against something incredibly evil. No one in their right minds thinks that, due to these movies, that the Jews are somehow to blame for their predicament. Highlighting someone's courage can be uplifting, and it can be educational to those who did not live during that time, or were unaware of the difficulties. If anything, these films show how difficult it was to save those men and women from death.

So Farnaz2, are you saying that the actions of the state of Israel must never be discussed or criticised because some citizens of Israel have been murdered? I grieve for the dead, but I don't see how their deaths somehow justify silencing discussion.

In fact, the thought that someone would list the names of victims simply in order to shut down a political discussion is rather horrifying to me; it smacks of exploiting tragedy. I am honestly sickened at the thought. But I will not assume that it was your intent to use the dead as a tool in debate.

By the way, just a tip: using all caps is the equivalent of shouting on the internet. It's often taken as a sign that the speaker is losing their grip.

Lots of astonishing assertions here regarding Pope Benedict. It is pretty evident that the lifted excommunication has to do with the illegal (church-wise) ordination of Richard Williamson et al by the schismatic Archbp. Lefebre. Has nothing to do with what Williamsons' attitude toward the Holocaust. Has every thing to do with healing a schism. That said, I do think lifting the excommuncation was a mistake: way too much is being conceded to the screwballs who compose the Socity of Pius X. They have conceded nothing. Let them be, they won't last. But hey, folks don't let truth, facts and documented history get in the way, rock on with your irrational hatreds.

fr azick:

>Am really sick and tired of the so called holocaust and whether it happened or not.I just do not give a damn about it....

How utterly SAD that YOU don't care about what happened to 6 million Jews, along with gypsies, gays, lesbians, people that little adolf considered to be "defective", such as mentally or physically disabled people.

What if they came for YOU and someone said they "just do not give a damn about it" as they took YOU away? Would YOU care then?

Take a world history course.

To ALL THE ETHICALL, MORALLY DEPRIVED, WHO KEEP BRINGING ISRAEL INTO THIS DISCUSSION, A PARTIAL LIST OF ISRAELIS MURDERED BY PALESTINIANS. THERE ARE A COUPLE OF THOUSAND TO GO, JUST IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. WE'LL START HERE.

ISRAELIS MURDERED BY PALESTINIAN MUSLIMS: PARTIAL LIST

May 9, 2008 - Jimmy Kadoshim, 48, of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, was killed by mortar fire from the Gaza Strip while tending his garden.May 12, 2008 - Shuli Katz, 70, of Kibbutz Gevaram, was killed while visiting relatives at Moshav Yesha, some 15 kms (9 miles) from the Gaza Strip.June 5, 2008 - Amnon Rosenberg, 51, of Kibbutz Nirim was killed and four other employees were wounded when a mortar bomb fired by Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip exploded outside the Nirlat paint factory in Kibbutz Nir-Oz. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.July 2, 2008 - Elizabeth (Lili) Goren-Friedman, 54; Batsheva Unterman, 33; and Jean Relevy, 68 - all of Jerusalem - were killed and over 50 wounded in a terror attack in Jerusalem. Driving a bulldozer on Jaffa Road between the Central Bus Station and the Mahane Yehuda market, the terrorist plowed into cars and pedestrians as well as two public buses (Egged buslines 13 and 60) carrying some 50 passengers. Police shot and killed the terrorist.July 11, 2008 - Border patrolman Lance Corporal David Chriqui, 19, of Rishon Lezion, critically wounded in a terrorist attack in the Old City of Jerusalem. He succumbed to his wounds on July 23.Oct 23, 2008 - Avraham Ozeri, 86, was stabbed to death near his home in Gilo, Jerusalem, by an Arab terrorist from the Arab village of Tekoa near Bethlehem.
Dec 27, 2008 - Beber Vaknin, 58, of Netivot was killed when a rocket fired from Gaza hit an apartment building in Netivot.Dec 29, 2008 - Hani al-Mahdi, 27, of Aroar, a Beduin settlement in the Negev was killed when a Grad-type missile fired from Gaza exploded at a construction site in Ashkelon; 16 other workers were wounded. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.Dec 29, 2008 - Irit Sheetrit, 39, of Ashdod was killed and several wounded when a Grad rocket exploded in the center of Ashdod. Hamas claimed esponsibility for the attack.Dec 29, 2008 - Warrant Officer Lutfi Nasraladin, 38, of the Druze town of Daliat el-Carmel was killed by a mortar attack on a military base near Nahal Oz

Lucylou1 and Asizk, here's the political reality: Because the holocaust affected many different groups, when you deny or downplay the holocaust for the jews, you're also dissing those other victim groups. The holocaust is a very sensitive topic for gay people, and although we know better than to engage in holocaust denial, we well know who our friends are.

So, next time you ask us for sympathy for the plight of the palestinians, you have nobody but yourselves to blame when we turn a deaf ear towards you.

At least the catholic church is consistent. When it signed the Reichskonkordat in 1933 between Pius XI and Hitler, which granted the church immunity and introduced the church tax, in return for two blind eyes on the 'Jewish question'in the years to come.
The holy sea also signed a pact (the lateral treaties) with Mussolini. For ignoring the duce's insanities the catholic church got Vatican City, Castel Gandolfo and 30 million Pound in cash.
So Mr. Ratzenberger is completely in line with his predecessors.

A noteworthy backgrounder on Benedict/Ratzinger is that he was in the Hitler youth movement.

It seems the readers’ expertise on the subject is greater than that of the author Susan Jacoby. Is the Washington-Post responsible for the accuracy of all it reporters and/or columnist, what they write no matter where it is published or when? For the modest or altogether lacking expertise on the subject matter? Surely the Publisher of the Post has as much if not greater control than the Pope has over Church members and should be held to a higher standard. What is sad is the anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism found in the comments after all these years; tolerance of the other is not in over supply

At least the catholic church is consistent. When it signed the Reichskonkordat in 1933 between Pius XI and Hitler, which granted the church immunity and introduced the church tax, in return for two blind eyes on the 'Jewish question'in the years to come.
The holy sea also signed a pact (the lateral treaties) with Mussolini. For ignoring the duce's insanities the catholic church got Vatican City, Castel Gandolfo and 30 million Pound in cash.
So Mr. Ratzenberger is completely in line with his predecessors.

As regards the Pope, he is a German, who fought in the German Army during WWII. Prior to becoming Pope, he headed the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the organ of the church focused on rooting out anyone different in the interest of maintaining a unity of the Church that is unified only because it is of a firmly homogenous right wing character. That he would embrace a holocaust denier probably shouldn't surprise anyone.

The main thing we should be saying is not that the Pope should not be embracing Holocaust deniers. Rather, we should be saying that there should never have been a right wing veteran of the Nazi military sitting on the throne of Saint Peter.

As a person raised in a "secular" Jewish family, who married a practicing Roman Catholic, I must sadly tell my wife of several decades, whom I have accompanied to Christmas and Easter masses over the years, that I will not step foot in the church of her faith again so long as Ratzinger/Benedict remains the Bishop of Rome.

Whatever the truth about Nazi actions, the jewish effort to remove Palestinians from land they had lawfully and peacefully lived in for over 2,000 years is at least as bad because, having once been persecuted, they should know better.

Despite her flawed logic, I actually agree with one of Jacoby's important points - it is time to stop valuing unity above all else. It is time the Church modify canon law to begin the excommunication process for all who support intrinsically evil acts such as the Holocaust, the holocaust of abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and homosexual acts.

marcedward1: You sound upset about my comment. And as well you should. I took a quote by then-Israeli Foreign Minister and now Israeli President Shimon Peres and merely substituted "Jews" for "Armenians." Peres said "What happened to the Armenians was a tragedy, not a genocide."

You say I may well be racist. Would you say Peres may well be racist? Or are only some genocides worthy of affirmation? Please be so kind as to tell us what you think of Peres after his denial of the Armenian Holocaust.

Bhusry asked "Is the current Pope any different from Ahmadinejad of Iran or Chavez? All seem to be on the same moral plane."

We can add the President of Israel to this list of maral degenerates. If you disagree, if you think that denying the Armenian Holocaust is OK, but denying the Nazi genocide of the Jews is not, please explain. Genocide denial is genocide denial. The identity of the victims does not affect this.

Israel has never officially acknowledged the Armenian Holocaust. No Jew, no one else, for that matter, but especially Jews, who denies the Armenian Holocaust has any right to criticize anyone else for genocide denial.

And before anyone has a problem with using the term "holocaust" in connection with the Armenians, that only Jews suffered a holocaust, keep in mind that using the term "holocaust" to describe a genocide was first done to describe what the Young Turks did to the Armenians.

As regards the Pope, he is a German, who fought in the German Army during WWII. Prior to becoming Pope, he headed the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the organ of the church focused on rooting out anyone different in the interest of maintaining a unity of the Church that is unified only because it is of a firmly homogenous right wing character. That he would embrace a holocaust denier probably shouldn't surprise anyone.

The main thing we should be saying is not that the Pope should not be embracing Holocaust deniers. Rather, we should be saying that there should never have been a right wing veteran of the Nazi military sitting on the throne of Saint Peter.

It's time to get past elevating the Holocaust exclusively to the level of the absolute and final disaster of human history. Of course, it was a terrible event, but the world remains awash in many quite bad events. Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Communist Eastern Europe, need I say more? So, what's the deal here anyway? Why only the Holocaust to "define all of history?" And, why is the Holocaust so often also connected with the fact that everytime another atrocity occurs in Gaza, it's "the Jewish state struggling for survival,...". Never mind that Israel today is a nuclear armed state bristling with USA supplied weapons. Or that any realistic question of survival seems nascent when your the biggest kid on the block. Hasn't our world also seen enough tragedy that we don't need to invoke one from 60 years ago to justify another one today? Enough already.

As a person raised in a "secular" Jewish family, who married a practicing Roman Catholic, I must sadly tell my wife of several decades, whom I have accompanied to Christmas and Easter masses over the years, that I will not step foot in the church of her faith again so long as Ratzinger/Benedict remains the Bishop of Rome.

Note to Benedict: Anyone who says the Holocaust did not happen should be excluded, not rewarded.

A question is should they be imprisoned, as is the case in countries such as Germany and Austria?

It would seem that if they wish to deny the holocaust or question some of the historical accuracies of it, then let them show us their evidence. If they cannot, then I say igore them. But imprison them? That seems a little reactionary.

kayak23225: "You're still being a jerk, though. Everybody loses when anyone engages in historical revisionism or denial."

I'm being a jerk, you say? How so? What did I do or say that has you so worked up?

You seem to be implying that I engaged in historical revisionism or denial, but I have to wonder what you're basing that on. I never have and never will deny the historical truth of the Holocaust, nor of any other genocide. I've merely pointed out something ironic: that many of those who scream loudest against denial of the Holocaust (which denial, I'll repeat, I condemn absolutely) nonetheless enable denial of other genocides.

Now, where's the revisionism and/or denial in that?

"Also remember that not all the victims of the Nazi genocide were jewish."

I never forgot it. What does that have to do with what I wrote? As far as I know, none of those other groups (including homosexuals and Gypsies) have allied themselves with genocide deniers, therefore no irony applies.

My goodness, some of you guys are really getting all worked up over this - you're seeing things that just aren't there. What's behind all the exitement?

"Look, Jacoby's article was about the Catholics and their holocaust-denying bishops. Not every article about genocide can cover every act of genocide."

Did I say that it should? Again, I merely pointed out an ironic fact. And now you're all upset and calling me a jerk. If it bothers you that much, take it up with Abe Foxman or Ehud Olmert!

"The only thing possibly more obnoxious than genocide denialism is genocide monopolism (the genocide of the victim group with which you identify is the only one that matters)..."

Yes, I might agree with you on that. Genocide monopolism (is that your coinage?) is bad. Which is why I didn't and wouldn't do it.

"...and genocide me-too-ism (we can't condemn or discuss any act of genocide unless we include the the victim group with which you identify)."

Condemn whatever you want. I condemn the Pope's actions in this case myself. That's why I called him an "ex-Nazi Pope". Nor am I insisting that Jacoby should have included the Armenian genocide in her article, nor any OTHER genocide. They're clearly not relevant to her point.

But they're relevent to MY point, which is (to repeat yet again) that I find it ironic that many of those who are condemning the Pope's reinstatement of a Holocaust-denying bishop are themselves deniers of another genocide. Do you get that? Do you see my point? Obviously not.

Somehow, I feel that my point is being deliberately misconstrued. I have to wonder why.

We should also recognize the Holocaust Japapese created and killed so many chinese and filipino, also the Holocaust Israelis are doing as we speek to Gaza and trying to rob and steal the land of the real owner.
This is double standard, everyone is just scared to say something wrong about Israel, and no one is able to tell the truth. if jews cries about the Holocaust, they should stop the killing and rape they are committing in Palestine and go back to where they belong to. ISRAEL never was a country, and Palestine never was thier land.

Dear kayak23225:

I am not denying the holocaust - I simply pointing out that Susan, a fallen away catholic, is letting her bitterness toward the church portray Pope Pius XII as a Nazi collaberator when in fact Hitler consisdered Pius his number one enemy.

I as someone who knows history well would be acting inauthentically if I were not to point out Susan's bias for no other reason that simpleton's might be inclined to believe she is accurate (and I afraid many of them do).

"Am really sick and tired of the so called holocaust and whether it happened or not.I just do not give a damn about it.

Let us now worry about the 22-day holocaust of Gaza adminitred bt the jews-allegedly victims of the "holocaust"."
---------------------------------

I think we can clearly see where you are coming from, Mr. Bigot. If you don't give a damn about 10,000,000 people being murdered, you are one sorry excuse for a human being. Your self-righteous criticism of others rings hollow as a result.

Moreover, "THE JEWS" did not invade GAZA for 22 days. Israel did. Do not falsely accuse me and other Jews of backing the invasion and death of civilians. I most certainly did NOT. Your bigotry is showing.

In addition, genocide required intent to kill a whole group (or as many as is possible) in the perpetrator's area. That is not what Israel did in Gaza, and they said they did not want to kill unarmed civilains. I've been looking for evidence that they intentionally targeted civilians, and so far have not seen any such evidence. The Israelis apparently did fire at locations where attacks against the IDF originated, as their artillery radar does that by computer - even where civilians are present. But to say that they are trying to commit genocide without criticizing the attacks by Palestinians and others directed at Israeli civilians is simply dishonest. The Germans and others in WW2 stated publicly that they intended to kill all the Jews they could. The Israelis say the opposite regarding the Palestinians. This isn't to say that I agree with the scale and effects of the Israeli action in Gaza- I disagree strongly with it. But it was not genocide.

Dear kayak23225:

I am denying the holocaust - I simply pointing out that Susan, a fallen away catholic, is letting her bitterness toward the church portray Pope Pius XII as a Nazi collaberator when in fact Hitler consisdered Pius his number one enemy.

I as someone who knows history well would be acting inauthentically if I were not to point out Susan's bias for no other reason that simpleton's might be inclined to believe she is accurate (and I afraid many of them do).

Farnaz2: "Indeed, you are, and, a potential genocider as well. Crawl back under your rock now."

And you arrived at that conclusion how? Let me help you out, here:

Farnaz2 says that PMaranci is a "genocider" because _______________.

This should be good.

As for making me crawl under a rock, it's fun talking like a tough guy on the internet, isn't it? You can hide behind your screen and feel all manly. Well, I suppose it's healthier for you than all that porn!

Yeah, the Holocaust happened. So did the Holocaust industry: the systematic manipulation and exploitation of one humanitarian tragedy to further the cause of a bunch of hysterical racist fanatics in their prosecution and continuation of an even larger one, the takeover of Palestine by and for the Chosen Race.

The Holocaust was a reaction to zionism, not a cause of it. Effects don't happen before their causes, in this universe. Ben Gurion and Weitzmann and the other instigators of zionism predated Hitler by at least ten years. So did the Stern gang, Irgun, numerous assassinations and wars and a massive propaganda campaign to bury the truth. And why is it that so-called "Holocaust deniers" can be thrown in jail in many European countries for questioning the worst-case scenario of the Nuremberg trials (i.e six million Jews died instead of, say 187,000 or 1.2 million) yet questioning the veracity of say, the number of blacks killed in our Civil War, is just dandy?

I for one am sick and tired of the reverse-racism that reeks so pungently in the Post these days.

The Pope's action is outrageous. As to "that's the way this church works" in reference to the Pope's authority, well, tell that to Galileo. It doesn't do him (or us) much good that the Catholic Church admitted error and apologized 300 years later.

The "rehabilitation" (as if they had been in any sense rehabilitated) of the bishops is another retreat from Vatican II on the part of this pope. If it were not for the many other ways in which he has shown a lack of concern for Jews, Muslims, Protestants, and any others outside of the fold, we could just write this bishop off as another nut. The pope says he does not embrace the beliefs of this neo-Nazi bishop. Yet he is willing to welcome him back as a leader of the church, without regard to the harm it does to Jews. He restates positions of the church that had been repudiated concerning Muslims, without regard to the harm it does to them. He restates a worn-out thrology that belittles Protestants, insisting that the Roman church is the only true form of Christianity. This pope is anathama.

I once spoke to an elderly gentleman who was a member of an all Black (yes the armed forces were segregated in those days) armored division that liberated one of the concentration camps. He said that the stench of the decaying bodies from the concentration camp was everywhere. Yet the people who lived near the camp denied any knowledge of what went on inside. Evidently there were those who denied existed of holocaust even when it occured right under their noses (no pun intended.

"People in power sometimes have to hold their noses while doing something beneficial for the greater good."

How is it beneficial not to cut Williamson loose, and how would be harmful to do so? The idea that Church unity comes first should apply only if the alternative is widespread grievous harm. I question the Vatican's assumption that the Williamson situation is critical to Church unity.

I want to share my outrage over the Pope's actions (why couldn't he have reinstated the other three bishops & left the anti-Semetic/Anti-American bigot out?) & I appreciate your insights & agree with nearly all of them except your views on what Hannah Arendt meant by "banality of evil"--she wasn't merely saying evil has or could become banal, rather that it is much more difficut to stick to a consisten moral code in modern society.

A couple of her case studies make the point: Denmark surrended minutes after the Nazis invaded, but only if the Nazi's allowed the current government to retain full control over their citizens & in exchange, the Danes would make all their economic resources available to the Nazi's--the latter not wanting to waste time & resources on a pointless battle, agreed.

Thus, very few Danish Jews & virtually no gays, lesbians or political dissidents went to the camps, but the country was a vassal state that supplied resources to help the Nazi's murder of millions. Can say it was evil for the Danes to abet the murderous Nazis even though it did protect their population & save thousands of lives?

Or her arguement that the state, traditionally organized as "divinely guided" & thus the keeper of law & social morals for a nation, could itself become a lawbreaker, as happened in Germany. And our older philosophic conventions can't handle the enormity of that concept of an entire society dedicated to evil, so the lessons we try to draw from the tragedy cartoonishly make Eichmann evil, Wallenberg good & the everday people, from the church going German who turned in his Jewish neighbor to the atheist German solider shot for refusing to put children on the death trains, are left out the debate when they, too, should be a part of it.

That's why Mr. Robinson's (I refuse to call him Bishop) views that Jews weren't murdered & American is responsible for the 9-11 attacks are so shocking; beliving in conspiracy theories saves you the trouble of hard thinking on morality & responsibility.

scooterlibre writes
'As a matter of fact, in the interview, the Bishop did "not" deny the Holocaust or he showed any sign that he hated Jews. He only raised doubt about cyanide gas chambers, he cited "historical" evidence that sounded more like "scientific" to be hard to believe because Cyanide was fatally toxic to both the giver and the receiver.'

Your ignorance is your problem. The use of Zyclone-B to kill Jews in gas chambers is well documented. There were countless witnesses. The Bishop is an ignorant man who doesn't mind clinging to unsupported ideas because it makes him feel better.

'And then the Bishop went on to comment on the "6,000,000" figure when asked by the interviewer. The Bishop was implying that historical and scientific evidence could not support the claim for that "6,000,000" figure to link it to "being gassed". '

There was no exact count of hoe many Jews were killed obviously. Does it make it better for you and the Bishop if it was 5 million?

Am really sick and tired of the so called holocaust and whether it happened or not.I just do not give a damn about it.

Let us now worry about the 22-day holocaust of Gaza adminitred bt the jews-allegedly victims of the "holocaust".

Ms. Jacoby's piece is correct on many counts, and it is good to see such a lucid explanation of the ideas in her piece. However, Mr. Jacoby misunderstands the title of Hannah Arent's book sub-title, "The Banality of Evil." She was not claiming that the acts of murder were banal, she was saying that horrific evil comes in many cases from the little, seemingly harmless decisions ordinary people make every day.

As for all the claims that Jews are committing genocide against Palestinians today... I have tried not to respond , as I am very much against the military actions of the Israelis that kill innocent Palestinians. However, it should be acknowledged that genocide involves the intention to murder an entire ethnic or religious or racial group in the area where the perpetrator is, and also the action of the perpetrator toward that end. I have yet to see any evidence that Israel intends or desires to kill innocent civilians who are not taking up arms to kill Israelis. The Israeli military has the weaponry and resources to kill almost every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza, if they wanted to. Instead, the Israeli's seem to be attacking military targets and other areas from which they are attacked. They are warning civilians to leave certain areas before they attack and in other ways trying to avoid killing civilians.

Obviously, the Israelis are killing unarmed civilians, through military actions and halting the flow of goods into Gaza, and that is WRONG. However, they are not committing genocide. Doing so would be against their interests and also would bring down the punishment of the world upon them and the U.S. for supporting them.

Those criticizing Israel for killing civilians should also practice what they say they believe and criticize the Palestinians for supporting groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah who are clearly acting with the intention of killing civilians.

Wow, what a colossal misreading of the Pope's act. People in power sometimes have to hold their noses while doing something beneficial for the greater good. Bishop Williamson will have his day and will most likely excommunicate himself through his actions.

This pope has been a brave and savvy leader. He was present at Vatican II and knows well exactly what was decided there. His actions have been consistently focused on putting the Church back on the track laid out by that council, but his desire is to reform in the continuity of the history of the Church (what was once sacred remains so for all time), rather than the complete break that so many (including Catholics who by all measures are really Protestants) would desire. The Pope is the successor Peter, to whom Christ said "whatsoever you shall loose on earth will be also loosed in heaven." So, in answer to one post, yes, we believe that the pope is a chosen leader of the Church. That may offend democratic sensibilities, but that's how this Church works.

"I believe that the burden of proof is quite heavy on the Jews."

That makes no sense since the figure of 6 million originally came from Adolf Eichmann. Also, a large percentage of those Jews died not in the camps, but in shootings and in the ghettos.

Thoughtful and well-presented. Thank you.

After the was interview released on the web, some news article titled Bishop Williamson a Holocaust denier. As a matter of fact, in the interview, the Bishop did "not" deny the Holocaust or he showed any sign that he hated Jews. He only raised doubt about cyanide gas chambers, he cited "historical" evidence that sounded more like "scientific" to be hard to believe because Cyanide was fatally toxic to both the giver and the receiver. And then the Bishop went on to comment on the "6,000,000" figure when asked by the interviewer. The Bishop was implying that historical and scientific evidence could not support the claim for that "6,000,000" figure to link it to "being gassed".
As I see this world, there are 3 groups of people, the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. The killers (Nazis) no longer exist. The victims (Jews) live and they want to maintain their victims' status for some reason. The bystanders (non-Jew), when hearing about what went on in World War II, wanted to see hard "6,000,000" evidence. Bishop Williamson belongs to the bystanders. Again, throughout the interview, he did not say that no Jew was killed, he simply raised doubt about how the Jews were killed.
I believe that the burden of proof is quite heavy on the Jews. To convince the bystanders, the Jews must show how "historically" and "scientifically" 6,000,000 Jews were killed. By guns and knives, the killers must dispose the dead bodies; if buried, hard evidence would be the bones i.e. 6,000,000 skeletons. If the killers used the burners to cremate all 6,000,000 dead bodies, the Jews need to show the calculation with the known number of burners, how long would it take to burn to ash? 10, 15, 20 years World War II lasted only a few years.
This Williamson/Jews case is similar to Gibson/Jews case. Gibson was called "Jew hater", "bigot". He's none of that. He simply stated "Jews caused all the wars ..." when Israel was bombing Lebanon.
I think the name calling should stop to confront the fact.

"But if you deny that it happened, or even blame a Jewish conspiracy to promulgate it as propaganda, then...presto! you can go back to your very satisfying bigotry."

I suppose it's possible to believe that say, the Allies were mistaken about the purpose of the camps. But I've never heard of a Holocaust denier who didn't cling to at least some of the myths about Jewish conspiracies.

Whistling, meet Pmaranci; Pmaranci meet Whistling. You two should get along well.

Look, Jacoby's article was about the Catholics and their holocaust-denying bishops. Not every article about genocide can cover every act of genocide.

The only thing possibly more obnoxious than genocide denialism is genocide monopolism (the genocide of the victim group with which you identify is the only one that matters) and genocide me-too-ism (we can't condemn or discuss any act of genocide unless we include the the victim group with which you identify).

But you expect the world to bless the holocaust waged by Israelis against Palestinians in the concentration camp called Gaza?

Garak writes
'What happened to the Jews was a tragedy, not a genocide.'

By what definition of genocide was the holocaust not genocide? Because they didn't get around to the Jews in the USA and the Middle East? Certainly they wiped out the Jews in many parts of Europe. I think you might be a racist.

Posted on January 27, 2009 12:51

jprfrog writes
'--- those whose rant against Israel as if it were the re-incarnation of Nazism are able to ignore the main reason why Israel was created --- as a haven for those who survived the horrors because there was no other place they could go.'

Horse manure. Israel was not 'to make up for the Holocaust' because if it were it would have been created in Germany, not Palestine. Moreover the Zionists were working on creating 'Israel" for nearly a century before the Holocaust. Certainly the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is nothing compared to the "Final Solution", but it is certainly similar to Hitlers treatment of the Jews pre-1937.

First of all - who gives a rat's a$$ about what the pope does - it is not news - and should be confined to catholic papers.

Second, it is the church (and the pope) who failed it's flock - they did not stand up for all the people - the church sides with the powerful, the state - and in that failing they are responsible for much of the ill will on earth.

Third and last, the Catholic church's policy of "no birth control" has created the overpopulation dilemma on this planet - sensible people do not breed like rats - remember, all sperm is holy, even that shot up the rectum of a child by a priest.

Perhaps if some rabbis scream and jumpup and down about what an excommunicated priest did
forty years ago...

people will be washed and suffused again in the victimhood of Jews and the holocaust...

and will believe that strong grown world wide of anti-semitism, is because of the cruxifiction...AND NOT ISRAEL'S barbarism, in Palestine and the
savagery in Gaza.

So we go once again to the old well, and expect no one to notice the middle east? Unbearable.
And note it isn't working, at all, anywhere.

ANTI-SEMITISM,

Considering Benedict was probably a Hitler youth 64 years ago makes this all the more absurd and ironic.

PMARANCI: I, too, condemn all genocide, perpetrators of genocide, and deniers of genocide.

You're still being a jerk, though. Everybody loses when anyone engages in historical revisionism or denial.

Also remember that not all the victims of the Nazi genocide were jewish.

I don't want to get lost in thickets of legalsim (canonical or otherwise), or debate without serious study of the record the policies the wartime Pope vis-a-vis the Nazis (although the Concordat of 1933 is hard to deny).

Holocaust denial might be harmless and it might not. I think it is, for two reasons:

(1) As counter-productive and repugnant as some of the actions of Israel's hard right-wing are to me (an American Jew) --- especially the fanatical and somewhat racist settler movement --- those whose rant against Israel as if it were the re-incarnation of Nazism are able to ignore the main reason why Israel was created --- as a haven for those who survived the horrors because there was no other place they could go. The history of such things always complicates the process of forming moral judgments...it is easy to rave with "moral clarity" if you ignore (or don't trouble to learn) the basic facts.

(2) Since the death-camps came to view, Jew-hating (the old fashioned kind, a nasty bigotry that only occasionally erupted into violence and murder --- e. g. Leo Frank in the US or the pogroms of Czarist Russia) become quite unfashionable. So to speak, the mass murderers of Jews ran the idea into the ground (pun intended) by showing where it logically led. But if you deny that it happened, or even blame a Jewish conspiracy to promulgate it as propaganda, then...presto! you can go back to your very satisfying bigotry. I mean, everybody needs a scapegoat now and then, right? So Holocaust denial is based on something very different than a desire to "set the record straight".

What happened to the Jews was a tragedy, not a genocide.

jessteshara wrote:
"...And who cares if someone denies the holocaust? Is it really worth getting riled up about? I seriously doubt some deniers would condemn us to repeating history. And just to play devil's advocate, I was born in 1971. I have no personal experience of the holocaust. If I denied it, it would be like me denying you had breakfast this morning. Whatever."

Wow. If the rest of the people your age are as apathetic and frankly, dumb, you really will deserve the lousy world you are well on your way to getting.

Jack43 writes
'Susan, you were doing just fine until you brought up the Left's "torture by America" myth.
There were excesses, but no one died'

You are ignorant. Not only have we tortured people to death, we have tortured innocents to death. When you stick up for torturers, you are no better than a Nazi who kills Jews because he thinks he's doing the right thing.

This little set piece, both the column and the
resulting posts...

does as much to unravel the whole story as anything I've read in some twenty five years.
Particularly the part about nothing much was written or talked about until the 1960s.

How could anything so monumental be so little known or believed? Why is it necessary to criminalize those who wonder? Doesn't make any sense.

And why is the genocide of the Palestinians, continuing against this morning, of no interest?

Before there was Fascism there was its father; Catholic Integrism. It is not surprising that Catholic traditionalists spout anti-semitic rhetoric at the drop of a hat.

AGAPN9: Your post really does nothing to confront the core issue -- six million murdered, and ongoing holocaust denial by current leaders of the catholic church.

This is not about Pius, plots to assassinate Pius, or cute anecdotes about a rabbi converting. This is about Benedict and the holocaust denialism of living bishops, who Benedict has just rehabilitated.

PMaranc1:

"are themselves, genoicide deniers."

Indeed, you are, and, a potential genocider as well. Crawl back under your rock now.

"the idea that there are some sort of general moral lessons to be derived from the Holocaust is rooted in the religious concept that something good must come out of something bad -- that everything, however terrible, is part of a greater plan wrought by an Intelligent Designer."

Not necessarily. Humans create their own lessons from suffering, creating good things out of bad. That doesn't conflict with Jacoby's main point that humans possess mixed moral impulses. But those created lessons and good things aren't part of any greater plan - the ideas behind them have no existence outside the human mind.

kayak23225:

"Next time you might be a member of the group that's targeted for genocide."

Actually, my grandparents (all four of them) and their many relatives WERE targeted for genocide - a genocide that Israel and the ADL have helped deny for diplomatic reasons, to appease the descendents of those who carried out the genocide. So I can't help but point out the irony in the current situation: many of those who are outraged that the Pope is reinstating a Holocaust denier are, themselves, genoicide deniers.

For myself, I condemn ALL genocide.

Benedict is on a dedicated course to return the Church to a highly conservative state, reversing some of what John Paul II did in his early days and certainly backing away from Vatican II. This move was clearly to re-integrate an ultra-conservative group and this was more of a priority for Benedict above anything else. Shame on him.

"What an unseemly business it is, to hear people argue about whose victimhood is greater. Perhaps one of the inarguable lessons of any major historical crime is that evil should not be graded on a curve."

So right. With evils the magnitude of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, one must regard each as residing alone in its unmatched category of "man's inhumanity to man."

Each is appalling and horrific in its own way, with its own statistics and narrators to tell the whole story. That's why a phrase like "the lesser of two evils" is so misleading. Sure, you can have the lesser of two "naughties." But evil has nothing to do with naughtiness and everything to do with runaway depravity.

Evil also has nothing to do with George Bush's infamous "axis" or with the "evildoers" he was constantly invoking.... Or, maybe it does. There is something inherently evil about using the horrible stink of true evil to conceptualize an ordinary enemy you're just dying to go after.

All this talk of absolute morals makes it appear as if you believe in absolute good and evil. Your argument would have more weight if you did, but since you don't, what are we to make of it? Without God, there is no absolute morality, so your argument can only be deemed a "preference" at best.

Posted on January 27, 2009 11:49

ipsc55 :
"The problem with viewing the Holocaust though the prism of dramatic resistance is that this redemption narrative promotes the notion that if only Jews had fought back, the Holocaust might never have happened. This, of course, ignores the inherent inequality between civilians and an armed force bent on brutalizing them. The Jews of Europe, as an entire group, were no more capable of doing what the Bielskis or the Warsaw ghetto fighters did than women in Rwanda and the Congo are capable of resisting the force of solders bent on raping and mutilating them, or than Bosnians were when their Serb neighbors took up arms and starting killing them."

The inevitability of victimhood being preached in that quote is a load of rubbish. If every Jew in Germany had met the midnight knock at the door with shots from a loaded gun, how long do you think the Nazi's would have continued trying to transport Jews to the death camps? If there is a 'lesson' to be drawn from the Holocaust it is it is that citizens cannot allow themselves to become defenseless vassals, even in "civilized" countries.

The problem with that is that Hitler enacted gun registration laws during the early days of the Nazi regime. The premise for gun registration was for public safety (the same argument that gun control advocates even today) The Nazis then used the lists of registed firearms to confiscate virtually all privately owned firearms, leaving the Jews and all other enemies of the state completely defenseless against the horrors to come.

"The Franks were highly assimilated; they were not the sort of European Jews who, with adherence to 17th-century religious rituals, had held themselves aloof from the gentile population."

Truly, you've got to be kidding. They "held THEMSELVES aloof"? Would that be while they were forced into ghettos and starving to death, unable to travel, get an education? Would that be during the Inquisition? Would that be while Catholics in the "East" were slaughtering one hundred thousand of them, ripping open the bellies of women and sewing living cats into them? Would that be while they were being deported from country after country?

Answer to the above: Yes

And, let us say, just for the sake of argument they did hold themselves aloof, like, say, the Amish for instance? And? So? Yes? Go ahead. Take it to the next step.

While genocide has not been Christendom's gift to us alone, our history, better than any group's, calls into question the Christians' self-identification as adherents of the "religion of love."

I'm sorry, Susan. There is no excuse, in the year 2009, for ignorance of Christian antisemitism. Indeed, there was no excuse for it 100 years ago. Racism says nothing about the victim, EVERYTHING, about the racists. I would think about that, if I were you, and I'd think hard.

"The unwillingness of Britain and France to stand up to Hitler at Munich was used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: by standing up to Saddam, we could prevent him from becoming a Hitler."

This is an important point about Bush's Iraq invasion. It may not have been in America's interests to do so; but don't say it's "wrong" until you've talked to some Kurds.

Joeschmoe06 and Dotherightthing, thank you. I did not know why Pope Benedict reinstated the bishops who denied the Holocaust. To just read the articles in On Faith caused me to think the only issue was denial of the Holocaust.

If I understand it, the Bishops were excommunicated because they refused to accept Vatican II changes in how the Mass was said. The Catholic Church has now says that these changes are no longer required. The Bishops, and the Society of St. Pius X, can now come back to the Church.

It does disturb me that the Bishops are Holocaust deniers. Such evil should not be forgotten or denied. And, the Church has a responsibility before God and the world to assure the truth is known and evil condemned. It does not look good, either, that the Pope who brings them back to the Church is German; that was a gutsy move on Pope Benedict’s part. I hope the Church keeps a tight rein on what these Bishops are now allowed to say about the Holocaust.

"The problem with viewing the Holocaust though the prism of dramatic resistance is that this redemption narrative promotes the notion that if only Jews had fought back, the Holocaust might never have happened. This, of course, ignores the inherent inequality between civilians and an armed force bent on brutalizing them. The Jews of Europe, as an entire group, were no more capable of doing what the Bielskis or the Warsaw ghetto fighters did than women in Rwanda and the Congo are capable of resisting the force of solders bent on raping and mutilating them, or than Bosnians were when their Serb neighbors took up arms and starting killing them."

The inevitability of victimhood being preached in that quote is a load of rubbish. If every Jew in Germany had met the midnight knock at the door with shots from a loaded gun, how long do you think the Nazi's would have continued trying to transport Jews to the death camps? If there is a 'lesson' to be drawn from the Holocaust it is it is that citizens cannot allow themselves to become defenseless vassals, even in "civilized" countries.

Susan if Pope Puis XII didn't oppose little Adolf then why did little Adolf plan to assasinate him?

You know as much about hisory as you do about God!

Even Albert Einstein, an atheist, said that the one organization he respected was the catholic church - they alone stood up to Hilter when everyone else cowed.

Now I know this isn't convenient history for you Susan but then again you brought it up.

The head Rabbi of Rome converted to catholicism so impressed was he with the heroicism of the Pope and the church.

At least 800,000 Jews were saved in Italy and much of it was planned, directed, and coordinated by none other than Pope Puis XII, the former Archbishop of Munich, extremely fluent in the German language and culture and was the only enemy of Hilter who really understood Hilter's major weakness: his laziness.

So instead of confronting Hitler directly which made the extermination of a particular groups of Jews a matter of pride, Puis threw up delays, and any matters of excuses he could think of to make it difficult so that Hitler would lose interest and move on to something else that was easier - like attacking his good friend Stalin.

By the way I am an ex-history teacher but you don't have to be a teacher to get this stuff right - its all well documented.

The palestinians have been paying for the hollocaust for over 60 years. israelis have wiped so many palestinian towns of the face of the map, they have demolished palestinain homes, stolen palestinian lands, ethnic cleansing of palestinians is going on right now. COLD HOLLOCAUST OF PALESTINIANS

Thank you. Yours is a powerfully stated, well-informed, and above all moving and heartfelt commentary. I hope that it gets wide distribution.

What you are saying about the pope emphatically needs to be said, and it ought to resonate with every reader, whether believer or non-believer and across all lines of faith. Whatever his qualities of personal piety, personal goodness, and "well-meaningness," the pope is also a fool, excusable only if he is already in the grip of senility. (And if so, what business does the College of Cardinals have in electing a senile and credulous old man to his position?) His obtuse blundering into the horrible thickets of appearing to condone a Holocaust denier, like his earlier stirring up of Byzantine and crusader rhetoric about Islam, simply shows the evil inherent in putting the institutional interests of a medieval theocracy--which is what the papacy is--over everything else.

Thank you again for your moral clarity and historical wisdom in writing as you have done here.

James Miller (Earlysville, Virginia)

It was fifty years ago, Sunday, that John xxiii announced Vatican II would convene.

Of course, it was too little, much, much too late, and almost an embarrassment as we Jews are very much the aggrieved party in this and remain so. And then, so much is left to be done. For instance, we're still waiting for a full release of all Vatican documents dealing with the nazi era. And then there is the blood money deposited by the murdering Croatian franciscans into Vatican Bank, where it still resides. That would be the money said franciscans (fifteen hundred of them) obtained from cutting to pieces Jews, Serbs, and Roma. Etc.

Sunday, on the anniversary of John xxiii's announcement of Vatican II, the Catholics' Ratzinger re-communicated that psychopathic-Shoah-denying-fascist-Lefebre-lover, Williamson.

What kind of God would approve of that? Not very pious of Ratzinger, was it? Or...was it?

Pun very much intended.

Do Catholics really believe the pope has special access to god that they do not? And doesn't the bible warn against false idols? Seems the pope has been raised on quite a pedestal.

My previous post implied that Benedict is himself a holocaust denier. He has not personally denied the holocaust, but by publicly rehabilitating bishops who have not publicly recanted their stances on this he seems to be tacitly condoning their holocaust denial.

Of course the Pope has a right to express his views, just as anyone does. The point, though, is that the church's pretense of moral authority is undermined by its history of accommodation of Nazism and fascism, and again by its acceptance of an excommunicated holocaust-denier back into the church. Any organization that presents itself as, first and foremost, a moral force, needs to ensure its own behavior is above reproach, and that wrong doing is punished and victims fairly compensated.
Between the history of the (un)holy inquisition, its long and persistent tradition of anti-semitism (including refusals to turn over Jewish children baptised during WWII) and its concealment of child abuse, the Catholic church has set itself a long road of penance to walk before it should presume to lecture anyone on (for example) sexual morality or the ordination of women-- an ongoing obsession that does the church no credit.

Susan, you were doing just fine until you brought up the Left's "torture by America" myth.

There were excesses, but no one died, and the miscreants were discovered and punished. By our own people. Were those abuses a good thing? Only if they led to actionable intel that saved the lives of innocents, which some did.

To bring up such trivia shows a lack of perspective to the point of moral blindness.

By noting that "evil cannot be graded on a curve" you are simply saying you can't discern the difference between the Holocaust and chattel slavery on the one hand, and the small misdeeds of a nation at war on the other.

Having lost relatives to the Holocaust, I'll use the term they would use for your misguided analysis were they still around: a shande.

Whether it is Darfur, Rowanda, Sudan, Ashwitz, Sabra& Shatilla camps or Gaza, killing people is not one of the high points of our civilization.
History if forgotten often repeats itself. History is often written by victors and people in power, and often to get mileage out of a situation, and smart ones gets the most mileage.

"A Vatican spokesman declared that while the pope didn't agree with these statements, the unity of the church came first. Yes, and that was exactly why Pope Pius XII did not use his moral authority to oppose Hitler and save Jews during World War II..."

A correlation to what happened in Germany can be made here in the U.S. during our time. When I - an Iraq vet - travel around the Midwest speaking out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I rarely see members of the Christian clergy speaking out against two clearly immoral wars being fought in clear contradiction to everything Christ taught.

I asked an old retired Lutheran pastor why members of the clergy weren't speaking out against the wars. His answer was unambiguous: they didn't want to offend members of the congregation who agreed with the wars. For the clergy, it was better to keep "unity", keep the members in the pews, and - above all else - have them keep filling the collection plates. The lack of clergy involvement was all about money, and nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.

George Mitrovich wrote, "It's quite remarkable how many non-Catholic Christians, of which I am one, believe the pope and his church accept us as one in Christ. They do not." George, if you are a Christian, meaning you believe the Nicene Creed, we ARE one in Christ - the Catholic Church HAS said so. That does not mean we are PERFECTLY united in Christ - to be so, you'd have to join the Catholic Church. Just as Jesus prayed at His Last Supper "that all may be one" even as He and His Father are one, so we pray at every Mass for the unity of all Christians. Please join us in praying with Christ for that which obviously was then and is now so important to Him. Thank you for prayerfully considering my request. \o/ >

Susan Jacoby: It's noteworthy that holocaust denial also dovetails nicely with the pope's ongoing dehumanization of gay people, since the Nazis also exterminated gay people in the concentration/death camps.

Jessteshara: So much is so wrong with your post. The reason everyone should care if religious or political leaders deny the holocaust is to keep that sort of thing from happening again. Doesn't really much matter much if some random, vapid WaPo commenter fails to accept, or care about, established historical facts. Matters very much if people who are religious or political leaders, and the pope is both, deny reality. That sets the stage for this sort of thing to be repeated, or for monsters like Hitler to be rehabilitated in the public mind.

Pmaranci: This isn't about the government of Israel, or the ADL. This is about the millions of dead bodies: jews, gays, gypsies, jehovah's witnesses. This is about learning from the past. Everyone should care about this so that it never happens again. Next time you might be a member of the group that's targeted for genocide.

Thanks for your article. Evil is evil, whether perpetrated by an American or anyone else. Yes there should be a war crimes trial in the US but there won't be one. Never will be. All we can hope is that the Obama admin. makes the records availible for the press and for researchers to write about and to bring to light the war crimes of the Bush administration. There is something fundamentally wrong with a (german) religious leader doing overridding prior leaders.

What's next, goodie bags for the thousands of priests who have cornholed little boys?

The Holocaust denier wasn't excommunicated for being such; he was excommunicated for his leadership of the heresy that states the pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council were illegitimate. Removing the excommunication has no bearing on the denier's beliefs regarding the historical truthfulness of the Holocaust. History shows that Pope Pius XII did all he could to oppose Hitler's campaign against the Jews while, at the same time, trying not to also endanger the Catholic population, too. Hitler specifically said nasty things about Pius XII BECAUSE Pius opposed his policies. And, the man who had been the Jewish Rabbi of Rome during WWII converted to Catholicism after the war SPECIFICALLY because of all that Pius and the Vatican did to save the Jews of Rome during the war. It is estimated that Pius directly acted to save more than 100,000 Jews during the war, hiding many of them in the Vatican, and ordering churches to issue baptismal certificates to Jews for proof of non-Jewishness.

Is the current Pope any different from Ahmadinejad of Iran or Chavez? All seem to be on the same moral plane.

I do not understand how so many people can completely miss the point of the story. My understanding is that Benedict is essentially reinstating the 600,000 strong Society of St. Pius X into the Church, reversing a schism caused by their refusal to celebrate the post-Vatican II Mass. Now that Benedict has declared that the pre-Vatican II (Tridentine) Mass can be said freely, there's no reason to exclude over a half million people from the Church.

On the other hand, you have one guy who's in a leadership position who is a schmuck. So you sacrifice the 600,000 to poke your thumb in the eye of the one? It makes more sense to bring everyone back in, then to publicly reprimand the one. After all, so long as the guy is already outside the Church, you can't throw him out more. But now that he's back in, he can and should be forced to recant or be disciplined.

Put differently, this is a matter internal to the Church and to the members of SSPX who desperately wanted to be Catholic but felt they needed to remain true to the old form of worship. Making this a Catholic-Jewish issue is irresponsible.

Only a nutbar could believe that the Holocaust never happened. Its one of the most well documented events in history.

On the other hand, being a Catholic Bishop requires one to believe things that are several magnitudes more unsupportable than the denial of the Holocaust, so who is surprised.

"this morally obtuse pope has demonstrated that he has no right to lecture anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, about anything." Ugh. The author sounds a bit morally obtuse here, I have to say, herself. Anyone has the right to lecture anyone about anything, in my opinion. And who cares if someone denies the holocaust? Is it really worth getting riled up about? I seriously doubt some deniers would condemn us to repeating history. And just to play devil's advocate, I was born in 1971. I have no personal experience of the holocaust. If I denied it, it would be like me denying you had breakfast this morning. Whatever.

This pope is out of touch, not just in this matter but many others. The opening of the church to the world beyond St. Peters Square is over.

The days of John XXIII are long past, but many remain illusionary the church today is the church he opened up. No it's not.

It's quite remarkable how many non-Catholic Christians, of which I am one, believe the pope and his church accept us as one in Christ. They do not.

But for all of its failings in matters of doctrine and practice the Church of Rome remains a force for good in the world.

George Mitrovich
San Diego

All religions suffer from serious historic and theological flaws and errors. B16 is the leader of one of them and should be cleaning up the mess. Instead he makes it worse.

Talk is cheap Catholics. So your church "forgave" the Jews for crucifying Christ, yet too many still hold anti-Semitic views. This current Pope has done something few else ever have, unified Muslims and Jews with their anger towards him.

The government of Israel and the ADL have no problem denying genocide that happened to OTHER peoples. Consider the Armenian Genocide and the contemptible record of both the Israeli government and the ADL, for example.

So how do they have any grounds to complain when an ex-Nazi Pope reinstates some neo-Nazi Bishops?

Not to shoot down a perfectly good rant, but the following facts should be noted:

1. The Vatican II proclamation, Nostrae Aetate, clearly stated the Church;s intolerance on antisemitism by rejecting the flawed "popular" but errant misreading of Sacred Scripture that had fed antisemitism among Christians for centuries. This position has been reiterated and deepened by each successive Pope since Vatican II, including Benedict XVI.

2 What people are objecting to in this case is canonical due process. Robinson (and four other bishops) were excommunicated for schism in 1988. As part of the cure of the schism, the excommunication was lifted by force of law.

3. Robinson's denial of the Holocaust probably constitutes a separate crime for which a new trial and penalty will be sought. But just as we in the US cannot apply or lengthen the prison sentence for one crime when the individual commits a new crime, so canon law requires a new trial and punishment for a newly committed crime.

4. Bishop Robinson and the other three are required to affirm the correctness of the teachings of Vatican II as a condition of lifting the excommunication. If Robinson fails to repudiate his statement of last week, which appears to deny the teaching of Nostra Aetestes, he may void the remission the lifting of excommunication ipso facto.

5. On Monday, January 26, 2009 the Vatican publicly repudiated without condition the remarks Bsp. Robinson made last week.

The current pope needs to be removed from his position, as it is clear he is a person who wants to rewrite history to ignore the Holocaust.