this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Hello.
I'm a german citizen and i feel obliged to educate you on this topic. I still see the remnants and aftermath of the second world war every single day, living in this history rich country.
The holocaust was ordered in the last few years of the second world war, since it was good knowledge that germany would be loosing amongst german officers. That means approximately 6 mio. People have been killed in around 3.5 years (Yes of course people also died earlier on, but let's keep it easy). Or equal to: 40.000 people Per Day. So imagine your stadium, gone, every 24 hours. For around 3.5 years.
But thats not it. Those people got tortured, they got used for horrific "scientific" experiments, there were surgery's held on those people without any kind of painkiller (excuse me English is not my first language).
They were treated less than animals. They had to work in the factories for Hitlers war effort and did horrific jobs, often times loosing limbs. They were extremely malnutritioned, dehydrated, and kept awake forcefully by beeing dumped full of drugs like cocaine and crack. Many times, actually most of the times, they died from exhaustion. If anything was out of the ordinary or they seemed unfit for work, they got used for experiments and if they survived that, killed.
They sometimes stayed for years in those camps.
But the crazy thing about this is. It depends on how you count. In the second world war there were around 12-18mio. Deaths. So depending on who you ask, and what counts for you as a holocaust, for example being forcefully drafted into a military as say a 14 year old and told to run into machine gun fire, you could be closer to around 2 stadiums, per day.
Yes. A stadium full is mass murder, but its not a holocaust. And statements like these will make you hard to believe for many people. I know what you are trying to say. Its a lot a a lot a lot a lot of people. Yes. But if you compare it to the holocaust, thats something whole different.
While I do agree with you on a general level, I think this is largely a discussion about how different cultures and languages use the word holocaust.
In Germany, the word Holocaust has a connotation that particularly emphasizes the exceptional nature of the event in comparison to everything that has happened before and since.
This connotation is not necessarily present in other societies, where the meaning is closer to the Greek root ‘holókaustos’ - ‘completely burnt, destroyed’ and this results in the difference between the Holocaust and a holocaust in English.
It is therefore understandable that the term holocaust is used in other languages for what is happening.
Is it helpful though? Here's my - slightly different - take of why using the word is not necessarily wrong... but unhelpful.
I myself prefer the term "genocide" in the Israeli-Palestinian context, especially because the term holocaust in close proximity to Judaism is extremely loaded and in this context has connotations that are less about Israel's terrible crimes and more about the somewhat conspiratorial accusation of ‘victims becoming perpetrators’ against Jews as a whole, which resonates with antisemitism and understandably gives rise to accusations of antisemitism to the point of completely losing focus of the important part of the discussion:
The state of Israel is committing extended, organized and deliberate genocide against Palestinians, out of hatred of and revenge against Hamas. This hatred and revenge against Hamas is justified. Targeting innocent Palestinians is not.
One can call this a holocaust, but this choice of word is more likely to derail the discussion and serve an entirely different agenda than the one that tries to achieve some end of the murders in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.