[Misc] Rise in holocaust denial.

[Klaas]

Go to YouTube. There’s video there of him publicly retracting his claims.

He stands by his assertion that Aushwitz was a work camp rather than a death camp but now admits that the number killed by the Nazis is probably in line with what standard history claims.

There are lots of videos, many over an hour long. Which one should I be looking for?

 

[Gritt23]

Last week I popped into a pub for a quiet pint on the way home. The pub was fairly empty: me, a group of younger men at one end of the bar and a couple of blokes in their 50's/60's sat talking about 10 yards away from me.

I was reading my paper when I heard one of the pair of men say quite loudly, "keep it confidential but - ****ing Jews - Hitler was right." I went over to the bloke and said that if he wanted to think such disgusting things he should keep them to himself. He said that I was taking what he said out of context. "No context necessary for anti-semitic bullshit," I said. He then shouted, "Do you really think 6 million Jews died?" at which point he was thrown out of the pub.

Until last week I would have been equally surprised by the results of the poll - I had never met anyone who denied either the fact or the scale of the holocaust - but I think that until recently, most people who hold these views have kept them to themselves, it now seems that some people feel more emboldened to voice their hatred.

But that goes back to my point about the context of the survey. he clearly believes the Holocaust happened because "Hitler was right", but he clearly doubts the scale of the atrocity. If he believes it happened but cannot get his head round the scale of it and believes it to have been 1m who died, does that class him in the "Holocaust Denial" group? If so, where do you draw the line on that? 1m, 2m, 5m, 5,999,999?

I wouldn't class him as denying the Holocaust took place, he just can't get his head around the number. Oh, and he's a massive PRICK.

 

[Not Andy Naylor]

Go to YouTube. There’s video there of him publicly retracting his claims.

He stands by his assertion that Aushwitz was a work camp rather than a death camp but now admits that the number killed by the Nazis is probably in line with what standard history claims.

He is technically correct that Auschwitz was a work camp but Birkenau/Brzezinka just a couple of hundred yards up the road was an extermination camp where a lot of the workers were also housed. But they were both part of the same complex.

 

[rippleman]

I really don’t like the way this country is headed.

1 in 20 don’t believe it occurred.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47015184

So 1 in 20 people are ignorant knobheads? No surprise there really.

 

[ManOfSussex]

He is technically correct that Auschwitz was a work camp but Birkenau/Brzezinka just a couple of hundred yards up the road was an extermination camp where a lot of the workers were also housed. But they were both part of the same complex.

When I visited Auschwitz/Oswiecim in 2007 I walked through the gas chamber that was there. Granted Brzezinka/Birkenau down the road was an extermination camp,but Birkenau basically got built because they couldn't kill enough people up the road. The first experiments of using gas were done in the basement of the prison block at Auschwitz before the main chamber was built. The courtyard outside the prison block was where people were shot dead after a conviction in the kangaroo court. People were sent on death marches from Auschwitz. I visited it with Czech friends at the time who drove from near Ostrava over the border to Poland to Oswiecim and people were marched in the freezing winter round Ostrava and back on foot until they dropped dead, for example.

To say Auschwitz was anything other than a death camp is just plain wrong.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

The Balkans war was also about ethnic cleansing or another way of describing wiping out a section of people for their beliefs. Genocide is another way of describing it.
Rwanda, Myanmair, it is still happening now in this day and age.

That's why it must never be forgotten.

I was taught about the 6 million Jews, but there were also the Communists, Gypsies, anyone with mental illness ie Down's Syndrome, or physical disabilities, trade unionists, Resistance workers, Poles, etc etc. These added up to around another 5 million people. Eleven million deaths.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/holocaust-non-jewish-victims_n_6555604

I've recently been re-reading a book by Corrie Ten Boom, a watchmaker from Haarlem in Holland. Her father, brother, nephew, sister and sister in law were all arrested for hiding Jewish people in their home. Her father died in prison, but Corrie and Besjie ended up in Ravensbruck. Besjie died there but Corrie survived. It is a very profound book and has had a great effect on me.

Only last Friday, on BBC Breakfast, a man in his early 90s was talking about losing the majority of his family in concentration camps, whereas he was smuggled out of Germany as a child. We must keep faith with these people and make sure they are not forgotten.

6 million is probably correct but I’m not sure that all were Jews. The number of Jews killed is likely to be 4 million but that is the only number actually documented by monsters like Eichmann to Himmler. What isn’t factored is the massacres of Jews carried out by the Einsatzgruppen who were less clinical in their reports.

The Allies knew quite early by cracking Enigma that something dreadful was going on but they couldn’t believe what they were hearing so didn’t act by bombing the camps to free at least some of the detainees.

Eleven million were killed, of which six million were Jews.

 

[Bakero]

But that goes back to my point about the context of the survey. he clearly believes the Holocaust happened because "Hitler was right", but he clearly doubts the scale of the atrocity. If he believes it happened but cannot get his head round the scale of it and believes it to have been 1m who died, does that class him in the "Holocaust Denial" group? If so, where do you draw the line on that? 1m, 2m, 5m, 5,999,999?

I wouldn't class him as denying the Holocaust took place, he just can't get his head around the number. Oh, and he's a massive PRICK.

Did you read the original article? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47015184 Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found.

 

[Gritt23]

Did you read the original article? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47015184 Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found.

Read it, but don't believe it. It simply can't be 1 in 20, as that doesn't marry up anywhere close to what I've come across in life. Something must have gone wrong in the way it was asked, or the way it was answered, or interpreted. That result just doesn't make any sense, but is a great "sensational" headline. Do you think that sounds like a plausible ratio? How many Holocaust Deniers have you ever met and spoken to EVER?

 

[The Clamp]

I’d like to know the questions. Was it:

Do you know about the holocaust?

No

Okay well ( goes onto explain)

Don’t believe you.

Or was it:

Have you heard of the holocaust?

Yes

Do you believe it happened?

No

 

[daveinplzen]

I think some people want to seem 'interesting' and 'controversial'....as well as people just being 'knobs'.
The Nazis dedication to killing Jews until they very end, is exemplified by things such as 52 being executed at Terezin 4 days before the surrender. The Nazis even collated plenty of documents, so why its not believed is beyond me.

 

[Triggaaar]

I found out that I am Jewish (grandmother was a Jew but was ashamed of it so claimed Catholicism)

I'm not wanting to cause offence here, and you can obviously choose your religion, but if 3 of your grandparents were not Jewish, and 1 was, how does that make you Jewish?

 

[Machiavelli]

I don't understand why people find it hard to believe that 5% of UK adults are holocaust deniers.

This most recent survey simply echoes a similar one done by CNN last November https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/europe/antisemitism-poll-2018-intl/, where they surveyed >1k people in each of seven European countries (including GB) and found "About one European in 20 in the countries CNN surveyed has never heard of the Holocaust".

Still, 5% is somewhat better than the situation in the US, where another survey (referenced in the CNN one) found "...10% of American adults were not sure they’d ever heard of the Holocaust, rising to one in five millennials. Half of all millennials could not name a single concentration camp, and 45% of all American adults failed to do so."

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the level of holocaust denial, "A quarter of Hungarians estimated that the world is more than 20% Jewish, and a fifth of British and Polish respondents said so." 1 in 5 Brits think that Jews make up >20% of the world's population. Just wow.

What needs to be added to this is there's been a campaign behind this. The countries you've mentioned are precisely the heart of where Bannon and Mercer have directed their organisation and finances.

 

[Machiavelli]

This is as good a place as any to recommend If I Was a Man by Primo Levi

 

[Bakero]

I'm not wanting to cause offence here, and you can obviously choose your religion, but if 3 of your grandparents were not Jewish, and 1 was, how does that make you Jewish?

Jewishness is matrilineal so, according to Jewish tradition, if your maternal grandmother is Jewish, you're Jewish.

 

[Stat Brother]

Crikey, when i was 13 it was Grange Hill, Clare Grogan and early video games that appealed to me not facism and racism. Were you in the Hitler Youth at 13?

Draw a line from Grange Hill to Netflix, leave everything else the same, and you have the last 35 years of my life.

 

[Not Andy Naylor]

When I visited Auschwitz/Oswiecim in 2007 I walked through the gas chamber that was there. Granted Brzezinka/Birkenau down the road was an extermination camp,but Birkenau basically got built because they couldn't kill enough people up the road. The first experiments of using gas were done in the basement of the prison block at Auschwitz before the main chamber was built. The courtyard outside the prison block was where people were shot dead after a conviction in the kangaroo court. People were sent on death marches from Auschwitz. I visited it with Czech friends at the time who drove from near Ostrava over the border to Poland to Oswiecim and people were marched in the freezing winter round Ostrava and back on foot until they dropped dead, for example.

To say Auschwitz was anything other than a death camp is just plain wrong.

They certainly killed people there but as you know from your visit, much more was also going on - forced labour, torture, illegal experiments. Whereas Birkenau was where the majority of arrivals were herded straight off the trains into the gas chambers. Anyway, let's not quibble about where parts of the Holocaust happened. It did, and that's enough.

 

[Triggaaar]

Jewishness is matrilineal so, according to Jewish tradition, if your maternal grandmother is Jewish, you're Jewish.

That's only if it's your grandmother on your mother's side.

Also, their tradition doesn't make it so. What happens when you have several religious traditions that say you're one of them if one of you great-grandparents was? Suddenly you're Muslim, Jewish, Christian, etc.

 

[Bakero]

That's only if it's your grandmother on your mother's side.

Also, their tradition doesn't make it so. What happens when you have several religious traditions that say you're one of them if one of you great-grandparents was? Suddenly you're Muslim, Jewish, Christian, etc.

Well, yes. That's why I said maternal grandmother and according to Jewish tradition.

 

[Triggaaar]

Well, yes. That's why I said maternal grandmother

Oh yes, I missed that. He didn't say which grandmother though.

and according to Jewish tradition.

Yes I know that's what it is according to them, but Bev hasn't ever considered himself Jewish, so I'm wondering why he'd now consider himself Jewish when 3/4 of his grandparents aren't.

 

[The Clamp]

I think where the article fails is that it blurs the line between ignorance and denial. Are the subjects of the poll outright denying it or have they, unbelievably never heard about it?

The word used is denial. That’s a pretty strong concept and in my frame of reference means only one thing, they know about it and refute that it took place. One has to have knowledge of something before one can deny it.

Perhaps with the demograph of this board which despite differences of opinion on varying topics, seems to be made up of fairly well educated, capable, and by and large tolerant people who have travelled, worked all their lives, raised families and engage with society. Perhaps to us it seems implausible anyone could deny it?

I find it comprehensively implausible that there is a sector of society who enjoy Mrs Browns Boys. I’ve genuinely never met one person that admits to liking it. Yet they walk amongst us.