the holocaust

[luke]

i was a bit shocked at georges view on the holocaust last night, i'm completely against the idea that questioning anything, any historical event, however terrible ( which the holocaust was ) should be make illegal. will it one day be illegal to go back and question the iraq war? the battle of hastings? the armenian genocide?

i think theres lots of questions to ask, i mean i'm sure george said last night it didn't matter if it was 5 or 6 million who died ... what?! say that to any remaining family of the victims. how many did die? cos i've heard numbers now from 1.6 million to georges 6 million. asking questions, looking for facts, evaluating evidence, should be encouraged not made illegal.

if the nazi nutter types wanna piece together a fantasy argument that it didn't exist, that it never happened - fine, let them - because they won't be able to prove it, they won't have the evidence to support it, the facts don't match what they want to say - so we ridicule them, hi light there mistakes, reveal there bigotry, show there argument to completely false - thats the only way you can go forwards.

i'd do the same with people who think the world is still flat, i wouldn't make it illegal to say it was flat, or to have opinion that it might not be round - i'll just present evidence to make them look like fools.

i didn't like the way he seemed to say that those who question it are somehow hoping for a new holocaust - thats a ridiculous view. i've got questions, and i don't want a new holocaust.

what did others think?

* edit i've added a poll, check my forum skills *

[nekokate]

I'm re-listening to last night's show now. George didn't say it didn't matter if it was 5 or 6 million, he was making the point that the people who are so obsessed with trying to prove it was less than 6 million may well have a secret agenda.

It's exactly the same argument with the 655,000 dead in Iraq that the Lancet Journal polled - the people who say "bullshit, it is nowhere near that many!" are missing the point, too. Iraq is a slaughter whether it was 655,000 or more like 300,000 - and the Holocaust is still going to be the most terrible, racist, mass-genocide in history whether it was 6 million, or 5, or even less!

[Mandy]

Truth needs no laws to protect it.

I think they should "open the files" to see what the "files" say happened :

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Extract from this article : .

<b>Holocaust survivors seek Nazi files</b>

Witnesses told a congressional panel of their frustration with the long, still-unfinished process of opening a secret Nazi archive with millions of files on concentration camps and their victims.
Leo Rechter, an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust as a boy by hiding in basements and attics after his family fled to Belgium and his father was deported to Auschwitz, testified Wednesday of his incredulity that the information had been kept from survivors for more than sixty years.
"Of all the public archives in the world, what possible justification can there be to prevent us from learning the truth about what happened to our families during the Holocaust?" he asked. "This information really belongs to us; it's about our lives."

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FYI, I believe the Nazis kept huge amounts of records. I believe they also had some of the earliest computers from IBM to help them. Indeed, the numbers tattooed on prisoners were "record id numbers" for the computers' database.

We owe it to ALL survivors of the Holocaust (with capital H) to put all the information on a database so everyone can look up their ancestors / relatives etc. to see what happened to them.

Why is it in this modern electronic age, when there were huge computer and manual records, that there is no "database" of who went through the camps, who died, who survived, who is unaccounted for .. i.e. BASIC things done after a crime. WE OWE IT TO SURVIVORS and the relatives of the DEAD.

As a person with curiosity, I am always weary when "governments" or "religious" bodies try to keep historical things "secret", e.g. the secrecy around the "Dead Sea Scrolls" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls where it was admitted the "The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they are practically the only known surviving Biblical documents written before AD 100." It appears copies of these are now "leaked" .. but why the secrecy in the first place, and why don't the current holders of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" issue official copies of them, rather than "relying" on leaks which may or may not be original.

[faceless]

The Dead Sea Scrolls were on display in Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum a couple of years back - I'm not sure they were complete, but they were there to be seen by all.

As far as holocaust deniers are concerned - they represent meaninglessness to me. What do they hope to achieve? To show that Nazis weren't really so bad after all? The street I live in was bombed by the Luftwaffe in the Clydebank Blitz during WWII. I don't think the families of those killed back then would really care to consider that the Nazis "weren't really as bad as the papers make out".

[Mandy]

The Dead Sea Scrolls were on display in Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum a couple of years back - I'm not sure they were complete, but they were there to be seen by all.

If you know a web site which has images of all the scrolls which are in the collection, please let me know. Having some (or even all) on "display" has limited value if you can't take a copy to translate and analyse. If there isn't a "Public record" of all the scrolls which are in the collection, then I wonder why. Also, Wikipedia does mention the secrecy rule.

As far as holocaust deniers are concerned - they represent meaninglessness to me. What do they hope to achieve? To show that Nazis weren't really so bad after all? The street I live in was bombed by the Luftwaffe in the Clydebank Blitz during WWII. I don't think the families of those killed back then would really care to consider that the Nazis "weren't really as bad as the papers make out".

I think there is a Geneva convention that the war dead have to be counted .. and relatives told etc. Why is there an exception here ?

Even if not legally required, there is a moral duty to collate and computerise this information, i.e. What about your feelings to the relatives of the dead and survivors ? Shouldn't they be able to see "their" records (including their relatives) ?

Also, Israel uses the Holocaust to get "reparations". Well, 5 million dead versus 6 million is a 20% increase = more money.

In an age when governments routinely lie, I am sorry .. but sending people to prison for investigating a historical crime just rings alarm bells.

There are people who claim it was "impossible" to kill so many people using the chemicals / buildings found. Does that means the Nazis had chemicals and buildings which haven't been discovered. If trying to prevent a repeat of a crime, shouldn't we be certain how the crime was committed ?

[faceless]

I think there is a Geneva convention that the war dead have to be counted .. and relatives told etc. Why is there an exception here ?

I think this picture says it all as regards to records being kept.

[Mandy]

I think this picture says it all as regards to records being kept.

EXACTLY. Where is the master list of numbers and the names which go with them ?

These are "RECORD NUMBERS" i.e. an INDEX to the files.

p.s. in the 21st century, we don't need to tattoo the number on people .. we are far more humain now. We use RFID chips which can be injected into people. After all, a tattoo can be manipulated/altered/defaced .. and can't be remotely read and tracked.

[faceless]

I would have thought that making them "numbers" served to help the nazis in making sure that no other records were kept. It dehumanised them even more.

[Mandy]

I would have thought that making them "numbers" served to help the nazis in making sure that no other records were kept. It dehumanised them even more.

I don't agree with you on this faceless. The Nazis were assiduous record keepers. They use these numbers to track people .. e.g. who is a relative of who etc.

Actually, that's curious .. I just realized the photo shows 5 digits (i.e. up to 99,999). Are there photos with 7 digits ?

[Skylace]

I would have thought that making them "numbers" served to help the nazis in making sure that no other records were kept. It dehumanised them even more.

There are records and they are slowly being let out into the public. Just recently rooms of documents were opened up to researchers. There was a big segment on it here about three months ago. I believe on MSNBC. Some of the men (who were children at the time) were able to see their names on the records next to their numbers and able to see their names crossed off the lists for execution, but they aren't sure why yet.

[nekokate]

I don't really have a problem with any sort of investigation into a major historical event, but it seems to me that the only people doggedly interested in an investigation into the Holocaust are the Holocaust deniers - hence they would be approaching the task with an agenda already in their minds.

I don't have any links to other websites handy to back up my point of view, so based purely on my own reasoning my problem with this is that it's the racists who want to look into this, which is unacceptable.

As for reparations - even if it was proven that it was "only", say, 5 million, there would be a huge public outcry if anyone proposed to cut back on any reparations based on that. It's still the worst crime in history and I say those affected by it deserve as much compensation as humanly possible and logically sound.

[faceless]

I would have thought that making them "numbers" served to help the nazis in making sure that no other records were kept. It dehumanised them even more.

There are records and they are slowly being let out into the public. Just recently rooms of documents were opened up to researchers. There was a big segment on it here about three months ago. I believe on MSNBC. Some of the men (who were children at the time) were able to see their names on the records next to their numbers and able to see their names crossed off the lists for execution, but they aren't sure why yet.

I didn't know that - that's interesting.

[Skylace]

I would have thought that making them "numbers" served to help the nazis in making sure that no other records were kept. It dehumanised them even more.

There are records and they are slowly being let out into the public. Just recently rooms of documents were opened up to researchers. There was a big segment on it here about three months ago. I believe on MSNBC. Some of the men (who were children at the time) were able to see their names on the records next to their numbers and able to see their names crossed off the lists for execution, but they aren't sure why yet.

I didn't know that - that's interesting.

It really is.

We didn't find out about my opa being killed in the holocaust until the US government did a background check on my mother for her citizenship. They are the ones who uncovered it all and we learned he was killed at one of the concentration camps.

Research is being done but not to show it didn't happen, instead to uncover what really did happen.

[Mandy]

Sorry Kate .. hope you don't mind me replying point by point to you.

I don't really have a problem with any sort of investigation into a major historical event, but it seems to me that the only people doggedly interested in an investigation into the Holocaust are the Holocaust deniers - hence they would be approaching the task with an agenda already in their minds.

This could be a play on words. You use the phrase "only people doggedly interested" .. do you mean all others who don't have an agenda have been scared off from even looking at it ?

If you "kill off" the moderates, than you are left with what you may call "extremists" who strongly believe the history is wrong.

Then you use the phrase "Holocaust deniers" .. what does this actually mean ? It is a phrase like "anti-semitism" which is too easily
used to slander people.

I don't have any links to other websites handy to back up my point of view, so based purely on my own reasoning my problem with this is that it's the racists who want to look into this, which is unacceptable.

I don't agree with this. It is people who may have a huge variety of reasons may want to look into this.

E.g. Credit to Palestinians who didn't use this as an excuse when their homeland was stolen. They could have said why are you giving away our land to people for compensation for the Holocaust when we aren't allowed to investigate the crime.

As for reparations - even if it was proven that it was "only", say, 5 million, there would be a huge public outcry if anyone proposed to cut back on any reparations based on that. It's still the worst crime in history and I say those affected by it deserve as much compensation as humanly possible and logically sound.

I do worry about statements like this ... Especially when recent records shows the government of Israel STEALING / HIDING money from Holocaust survivors. If the records of the names of peoples who were jailed / killed, then it would be easier to allocate the reparations to the families actually affected .. e.g. £x for the family of each person dead, etc.

Isn't this how damages are paid when say a major crime is committed ? When Lockerbie occurred, Libya didn't pay the money to governments, but to families of people on the plane.

[Mandy]

I didn't know that - that's interesting.

Faceless, You are obviously very knowledgeable and you are exposed to a huge source of material and views right across the board.

Isn't it a reflection of the damage which the blanket ban on investigating the holocaust is causing that you had the wrong impression as to the significance of these tattooed numbers?

I wonder how many Holocaust survivors and relatives don't realise this, even to this day. Indeed, you saw the article I included above that relatives are very angry about still not having full access to the files.

What are they afraid of ?

As Michael Rivero says on https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/archi ... story.html
"Maybe the archives don't support the official version of history? - M. R."