
The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking - MarlonPro
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html
======
shantanubala
World War II never fails to horrify me.

The holocaust is only one part of it - the Japanese were _brutal_ in
unimaginable ways as well.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre>

They killed, raped, tortured, and experimented on living _humans_ (the first
time I found out what a vivisection was, I felt my stomach churn). It takes a
lot of effort to make an atomic bomb seem _humane_ , and somehow World War II
manages to do it.

~~~
ithkuil
That feeling is part of the problem. It's interesting how we humans find
easier to think in terms of "us" and "them" rather than just condemn both.

I can understand the argument that dropping the bombs made japan surrender
more quickly, and thus saved a lot of american soldier's lives.

Most of the people who died in the hiroshima and nagasaki were only
responsible of being victims of an oppressing government and state ideology.

Furthermore there were a lot of prisoners who died as well, for example 20000
korean prisoners.

Not sure though if most of the people would find ethically acceptable to
actively murder 250000 random people in order save some from cruelties.

I'm sure there can be an endless discussion about this. However, I just wanted
to note how easy is overlook completely this when you think in terms of
"them".

The bomb wasn't dropped on the torturers, the rapists, which in many cases
were not held responsible for the crimes they committed.

I know that it sounds obvious, but this way of thinking, is the one of the
reasons all this atrocities are allowed to start in the first place. By
thinking of other people as inherently different from you, they can be thought
of as inferior and thus you feel exempted of feeling wrong about the stuff
that's being done to them.

Humanity has very long history of this behavior, actually it was more common
than not (slavery etc). The thing that's peculiar about the WWII is the
systematic way, the unstoppable industrial approach and the way that cold
heartless "science" gave apparent purpose for nightmares to come true.

WWII helped shape the very notion of evil in our age, it's style and
motivation.

~~~
shantanubala
> The bomb wasn't dropped on the torturers, the rapists, which in many cases
> were not held responsible for the crimes they committed.

This is the tricky part. I don't remember exact figures, but wasn't Truman's
dilemma a choice between invading Japan or dropping the bombs? I don't really
see a viable third option, and I don't remember reading about one either. The
tragedy is that the Japanese were not given enough time to surrender after the
first bomb was dropped.

Also, the United States has also done some terrible things "in the name of
democracy," but I still think there is a difference in magnitude between
installing a dictator in a foreign country and encouraging the systematic
murder and rape of civilians.

The problem is that these things are on a spectrum - is it not possible to
condemn both while admitting that one alternative was better? I obviously
don't want anyone to use nuclear weapons, but how should we react when it is
the option that results in the least amount of suffering?

And as far as saying "them" -- this was out of convenience. It is a pronoun,
after all, and I was merely trying to say that elegant solutions are quite
hard to find when you're dealing with ugly problems. Sometimes "less ugly" is
all you can find.

~~~
yesbabyyes
Lest you forget, while installing dictators and facilitating genocide is bad
enough, the US also oppressed civilians during the time. Mississippi, for
instance, was a police state with apartheid a good 20 years after the end of
the war. Americans with Japanese heritage were forcibly removed and put in
concentration camps.

Suffice to say, your moral high ground is not as clear cut to me, especially
when you talk about justifying the atom bomb.

~~~
shantanubala
I'm not saying the US was always right - I'm saying that having the US win was
a better outcome than the other alternatives. Would you agree with that?

And I'm not justifying use of the atomic bomb in every scenario, or even
saying that it was the best possible outcome, but out of the options available
to Truman, it appears to be the one that would have resulted in the least
amount of suffering.

------
apaprocki
It is still pretty shocking to realize how lucky I am to be alive. My
grandfather was captured by Germans, sent to prison in Germany, _escaped_ from
Germany, was re-captured in Warsaw, sent to a prison which then forwarded him
to Auschwitz. Then for the next 3 years he was kept there, sent on to
Mauthausen, and then to Gusen until he was liberated by Americans in 1945.

The facts that make it even stranger -- he was not Jewish and was born in
Massachusetts in 1916. He apparently told them left and right he was a US
citizen and they just ignored him.

Talk about beating the odds.

~~~
OGinparadise
First congratulations on beating the odds :)

 _he was not Jewish and was born in Massachusetts in 1916. He apparently told
them left and right he was a US citizen_

Could he prove that he was an American or maybe Americans weren't that popular
by then either?

~~~
apaprocki
He was arrested while using a fake ID to evade the police from his first
capture and that ID had a fake first name and birthplace, so perhaps that is
the reason. (I never met him -- he died before I was born)

Passports were not required back when he left the US, so I doubt he had proof
handy and even if he did it was probably a fine line. Showing proof he was
American could have made him a target instead of helping.

------
flexie
The scale of this is absolutely shocking. How did they even manage in just 12
years to set up 30,000 slave labor camps, 980 concentration camps, 1,000
prisoner of war camps, 500 brothels with sex slaves and "thousands of other
camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm ...".

They must have really wanted it as a society and hundreds of thousands must
have been involved, one way or another. That's not the work of just a few
crazy fanatics.

~~~
robryan
I would say that those same people, those that were part of the machine,
wouldn't share the same views if they were part of society today.

If anything I think it shows peoples ability to see circumstances as normal
(even if they are horribly out of whack with morals from other times) if it
appears to be the prevailing wisdom of the group at the time.

I would like to think though that it was pretty much the last possible time
that this could happen in history on such a large scale. Today we still have
outliers like north korea but in general the world is too connected for the
same effect to happen.

~~~
steve19
Respectively, that attitude is why these horrific events continue to happen.
Writing them off as one-off events, outliers, which won't happen again in the
modern world only serves to relieve our conscious for doing nothing to stop
them. They happen frequently and will happen again. Internet or no internet.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot>

~~~
belorn
The current forced labor camps in North Korea looks to be indistinguishable
from how the nazi forced labor camps worked, except on a single nation scale.

The sad part is that there are no clear stop to it in any time soon. It seems
that as long it is a powerful enough nation/allied nation, they can do what
ever crimes they like. Only once it is all over will people be look back and
wonder why they let it happen.

~~~
rdl
Going to war with NK right now, even if China withdrew support, would cause
even more suffering to both NK people and SK/foreign people than we have now.
It's really lose/lose -- the best hope is isolation and clear
amnesty/reconstruction on offer, to encourage domestic political change.

Even somehow encouraging revolution could be dangerous, as long as the
military stays intact, since one way to deal with a domestic problem is to
start a foreign war against (what most of the population believe) is a serious
adversary.

My evolving theory of intervention is that any militarily opposed action which
can't be accomplished by a single brigade or smaller force in less than 3
months will bring more harm than good, and should only be executed in defense
with all other options exhausted. Liberating the people of Equatorial Guinea
or ending the MEND conflict (or destroying AQ presence in Afghanistan in 2001)
probably would be a net win for humanity (and each could be accomplished by a
very small force, maybe 500 + support); NK is at the extreme other end of the
scale with occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

------
rdl
I guess I'm just willing to accept the holocaust without questioning the evil
involved -- a small kernel of evil, and then lots of self-reinforcing fear and
self interest, could lead a population of some evil and some just weak people
to do horrible things. The banality of evil and all. It's less bad than
otherwise because the Nazis were utterly destroyed; yes, they were horrible
almost beyond consideration, but they're gone now, so there isn't as much of
an ongoing concern there.

But what amazes me and makes me feel the most shame about humanity is how the
US and other western nations acted w.r.t. immigration and refugees during the
pre-war period, and then how the victors acted after the war (large numbers of
German civilians and non-nazi German POWs died after the war, too, and in the
USSR, there were POWs in "prison" for a decade after). And the US Japanese-
American internment, etc. Very little was said about any of this until the
1980s.

~~~
oijaf888
I thought after the war the victors (at least England and the US) treated the
refugees and immigrants quite well. Admittedly not as well as their own troops
in the area but humanely. I know France and the USSR treated the refugees very
harshly though.

~~~
rdl
I don't know how much of it was limited resources vs. punitive, but even the
US and UK (who were the best of the victors) allowed hundreds of thousands
(potentially millions) to die of starvation and disease. But life for UK
civilians in the immediate post-war period was also not very good.

The US is the country which probably retained the most industrial/agricultural
capacity and could have done more.

~~~
oijaf888
Yeah from my understanding everyone was on rations in Europe and the
civillians got the short end as far as quantity and quality goes. That is a
good point though, I wonder if the lack of food was due to long supplie lines
and a decrease in production in the US or if it just wasn't prioritized high
enough.

------
kgarten
There are 2 major problems I have with world war II stories (the article
tackles the first one extremely well) ... First of all, most Holocaust
memorial articles etc. in general just focus on jews, however, there were
other people also equally affected by it (sinti and roma, homosexuals,
political left etc.). They all were systematically identified and killed with
the knowledge and help of "normal" people in Germany.

Why does the US not focus on their own wrongs in history? I'm German and as a
consequence as adolescent I was "forced" every year during high school to hear
about Nazi Germany (in German and History courses). This is very important and
shaped me as an individual and a lot of my friends. So don't get me wrong, it
is important to remember and it's important to understand what happend (and to
realize that it's easy to do/support similar ideologies .. most of the German
people at the time were no monsters and had also support from people all over
the world, who believed that Hitler was needed against Communist Russia ...
This is sad to hear yet important. Also a lot of the German scientists who did
abysmal things to Humans continued working for the US after the war). I
believe the lessons we should draw from Nazi Germany in World War II is that
it is very easy for us (for everybody) to accept inhuman behavior, racism and
genocide :(

Maybe as German, I don't have the right to say that ... yet,I find it
hypocrite to hear from US researchers, French, Austrians or Swiss how much we
Germans did do wrong ... When part of the Austrians/French/US actively
supported it and some Swiss took the money and gold from Nazi Germany and
closed the borders for the victims. This is by no means meant as a
justification of the crimes towards humanity my ancestors did, it's important
to remember. everybody should visit Dachau or a similar concentration camp and
remember not what cruelty we Germans were capable of but what cruelty we as
human race are capable of.

*edit: typos

~~~
Svip
I particularly took notice of this:

>Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that
many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war,
must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

>“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced
labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were
everywhere.”

We all know that the allies were almost oblivious to these concentration camps
during the war.[1] I would be surprised to learn that the allies did not have
agents, spies or informants stationed in Germany during the war. How did these
people also fail to notice what - according to Dr Dean - would have been
obvious?

Even 40'000+ sites takes few people to pull off in a country of over 50
millions. It was a very different time, and as the parent correctly points
out, people accepted genocide, torture and blatant racism. Not just in
Germany, but everywhere.

A lot of people seem to think that it is something _inherently German_ that
made the Holocaust so terrible, but truth be, any other country could have
fallen victim to the same propaganda had their situation been similar.

That being said, I still find the Second World War rather uninteresting.

[1] Although, as their progressing through German held Europe moved forward,
the true picture began to emerge.

~~~
coldtea
> _A lot of people seem to think that it is something inherently German that
> made the Holocaust so terrible, but truth be, any other country could have
> fallen victim to the same propaganda had their situation been similar._

If not "any other country", surely, "a lot of similarly thinking countries".

Belgium, France and Britain for example, also committed terrible atrocities
and countless murders and deaths in their colonies at the same time (and even
after world war 2).

------
friendly_chap
A genuine question, please don't take it as an attack, I have some remote
jewish blood in my veins, but I have to ask:

What was so special in the Holocaust? I mean there were a lot of similarly
dark points in history, both in terms of numbers (people killed) and cruelty,
but still, it seems we always only care about the Holocaust (or at least it
overshadows everything else).

I think we should remember other events too, more frequently.

~~~
doctorpangloss
I am not an expert of Holocaust scholarship. But the Holocaust is
unprecedented in many ways.

Germany was a normal Western state—the Weimar Republic was in many ways at the
forefront of liberalism and governance. It is unprecedented that by legal and
popular politics, Germans created the political and lethal machinery to
victimize so many other Germans.

The Holocaust was a civil war where innocents were murdered or forced into
slavery.

Hitler was a fool. Germans were among the best educated in the world, but
Hitler personally was without precedent Europe's worst governor. Nevermind the
betrayal of his own people; his economy relied unsustainably on slavery, his
theories were bunk, his cowardice was monumental... He benefited from the
long-term gains of the Weimar Republic's governance while simultaneously
killing or exiling Germany's greatest asset, its intellectuals.

The Holocaust was a vehicle of this, Hitler's personal madness, unlike any
other genocide.

Collaboration, most of all, defines the Holocaust. Hitler found collaborators
throughout the whole world, from Japan to Moscow. The Soviet Union, itself the
most victimized by the war, was for five years allied with Germany. There were
Poles who eagerly betrayed their neighbors. Hungarian fascists were condemning
civilians to death not months before the end of the war. The French
collaborated in the Holocaust. It is unprecedented that anti-Semitism was so
pervasive as to infect all of Europe.

The Holocaust showed that Western civilization, not just Hitler's Germany, was
eager to execute unprecedented crimes against humanity.

These are but a few ways the Holocaust is distinct from other genocides, from
the experience of American slavery, from even North Korean concentration camps
and Soviet gulags. It is not about numbers. It is about what our civilization
turned out to be capable of.

~~~
mcantelon
>The Holocaust showed that Western civilization, not just Hitler's Germany,
was eager to execute unprecedented crimes against humanity.

Western governments did nothing about Hitler's rise, but to equate that with
Western civilization as a whole eagerly executing these crimes seems a bit of
a stretch.

------
dajohnson89
"History in Images"[0] is a gold mine of photographs and research into some
atrocities committed during WW2. I highly encourage you to view the pictures.
The accompanying articles are extravagant, but many of the facts, anecdotes,
and statistics are from somewhat credible sources ([1], [2]).

One quote, describing the Red Army occupation of East Berlin: _"In one
notorious instance, Red Army soldiers entered the maternity hospital at Haus
Dehlem and raped pregnant women, women who had just given birth, and women in
the process of giving birth."_ [3]

[0]: <http://historyimages.blogspot.com/> (WARNING: Graphic images, and poor
formatting)

[1]: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465003389>

[2]: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/01/news.features11>

[3]: [http://historyimages.blogspot.com/2011/10/mass-rape-of-
germa...](http://historyimages.blogspot.com/2011/10/mass-rape-of-german-women-
when-germany.html)

------
jnxfgf456
I know you will recoil in horror, you won't believe me, you will fling hate at
me. But my duty as a hacker and a person who prides intellectual curiosity
above everything: THE HOLOCAUST DID NOT HAPPEN. It's a propaganda lie with no
substantiated evidence to defame White European people. To extract monies for
Israelites and to justify the ethnic cleansing and race replacement of Whites
in Europe and western countries through the "asylum industry".

~~~
alexgartrell
Excuse me for stating the obvious but [citation needed].

Apologies to good HNers for feeding the troll here, but I've always been
curious about how holocaust deniers could have the balls to carry through with
their opinions despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

~~~
NuZZ
One must also be open to the possibility that due to the Jews'
disproportionately large influence on the media - in that they are more
commonly know as to "control the media", that said Jews would propagate lies
to forward their own agendas.

I would argue that the holocaust has afforded the Jews enough to warrant
motive.

To say "it did not happen", though, I wouldn't take such a stance. I
personally would dispute its scope, greatly, in regard to the specific
slaughter of Jews, and more relevantly, the constant reminder (read:
disproportionately, as mentioned by other commenters) to sympathize with them.

Also, I'm with you on the _[citation needed]_. I've too little interest to
contribute, myself.

