# The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking



## 57Chevy (2 Mar 2013)

From the Sunday Review of The New York Times and shared with provision of The Copyright Act
 The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking  
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, 01 Mar

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. 

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust. 

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. 

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington. 

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data. 

“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.” 

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel. 

Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site — the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear. 

The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions. 

The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.) 

The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was. 

The brutal experience of Henry Greenbaum, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives outside Washington, typifies the wide range of Nazi sites. 

When Mr. Greenbaum, a volunteer at the Holocaust museum, tells visitors today about his wartime odyssey, listeners inevitably focus on his confinement of months at Auschwitz, the most notorious of all the camps. 

But the images of the other camps where the Nazis imprisoned him are ingrained in his memory as deeply as the concentration camp number — A188991 — tattooed on his left forearm. 

In an interview, he ticked off the locations in rapid fire, the details still vivid. 

First came the Starachowice ghetto in his hometown in Poland, where the Germans herded his family and other local Jews in 1940, when he was just 12. 

Next came a slave labor camp with six-foot-high fences outside the town, where he and a sister were moved while the rest of the family was sent to die at Treblinka. After his regular work shift at a factory, the Germans would force him and other prisoners to dig trenches that were used for dumping the bodies of victims. He was sent to Auschwitz, then removed to work at a chemical manufacturing plant in Poland known as Buna Monowitz, where he and some 50 other prisoners who had been held at the main camp at Auschwitz were taken to manufacture rubber and synthetic oil. And last was another slave labor camp at Flossenbürg, near the Czech border, where food was so scarce that the weight on his 5-foot-8-inch frame fell away to less than 100 pounds. 

By the age of 17, Mr. Greenbaum had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on his way to a sixth, when American soldiers freed him in 1945. “Nobody even knows about these places,” Mr. Greenbaum said. “Everything should be documented. That’s very important. We try to tell the youngsters so that they know, and they’ll remember.” 

The research could have legal implications as well by helping a small number of survivors document their continuing claims over unpaid insurance policies, looted property, seized land and other financial matters

“HOW many claims have been rejected because the victims were in a camp that we didn’t even know about?” asked Sam Dubbin, a Florida lawyer who represents a group of survivors who are seeking to bring claims against European insurance companies. 

Dr. Megargee, the lead researcher, said the project was changing the understanding among Holocaust scholars of how the camps and ghettos evolved. 

As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found. 

The biggest site identified is the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, which held about 500,000 people at its height. But as few as a dozen prisoners worked at one of the smallest camps, the München-Schwabing site in Germany. Small groups of prisoners were sent there from the Dachau concentration camp under armed guard. They were reportedly whipped and ordered to do manual labor at the home of a fervent Nazi patron known as “Sister Pia,” cleaning her house, tending her garden and even building children’s toys for her. 

When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500. 

The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers. 

In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites. 

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.” 

(Eric Lichtblau is a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.)

 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum


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## NavyShooter (2 Mar 2013)

I visited "Stalag 339" in Trieste Italy a number of years ago when HMCS Charlottetown was in port there.  (Check your hull numbers for co-incidence's sake.)

They "only" killed 5000 people in that camp, but I can still remember the cold feeling as I walked into the "hanging room."  The fact that the crematorium had been destroyed was to little concern...you could clearly see the black streak where the chimney had been laid up in brick, 3 sides brick, 4th side against the concrete wall of a factory building, they tore down the brick and left the black streak up the wall.  Eerie.

NS


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## Mr.Neville (3 Mar 2013)

NavyShooter said:
			
		

> I visited "Stalag 339" in Trieste Italy a number of years ago when HMCS Charlottetown was in port there.  (Check your hull numbers for co-incidence's sake.)
> 
> They "only" killed 5000 people in that camp, but I can still remember the cold feeling as I walked into the "hanging room."  The fact that the crematorium had been destroyed was to little concern...you could clearly see the black streak where the chimney had been laid up in brick, 3 sides brick, 4th side against the concrete wall of a factory building, they tore down the brick and left the black streak up the wall.  Eerie.
> 
> NS




During August when I went on a trip across Europe I stopped at Dachau on the outskirts of Munich. The aura around the place was awful, and I hated being there. You could tell just from the feeling in the air that horrible things had happened there. I don't believe in ghosts or souls, but you could almost hear the cries of pain and suffering walking around there. Very rarely do you get to see a grown man like me have a breakdown, but at the end of the tour when we were brought into the gas chambers I just got the worst feeling inside and broke down crying. God awful place it was. I feel so sorry for all the poor souls that lost their lives their.


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## UnwiseCritic (3 Mar 2013)

As well as what isn't documented as a part of the holocaust is the amount that Stalin killed, but hey he won the war for us?. So we don't attack him as much, bloody politics.


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## cphansen (3 Mar 2013)

UnwiseCritic said:
			
		

> As well as what isn't documented as a part of the holocaust is the amount that Stalin killed, but hey he won the war for us?. So we don't attack him as much, bloody politics.



The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You're right politics are bloody but you are forgetting WWII was a world war with global consequences.  The Nazi regime was based upon the hatred and despair created as a result of WWI. The Nazis can be defined as a cancer in the world body politic.  They had a talent for infecting other countries with their evil.  Look at the politics of WWII.  Every country bar none had Nazi type political parties.

Now Stalin was a tyrant, who murdered millions of people, but his forces were actively fighting the Nazis and that was a great aid to us.  Don't underestimate the contribution of the Soviets.

Don't think the Allies were blameless. They were ruthless in their conduct of the war.  We like to think they were innocent and were forced to do what they did by the Nazi's.  But the Allies were the ones who forced Russian POWs to be forced back to Russia after the war knowing they would be murdered for being captured.  The Allies also were the ones who set up prison camps, once again after the war, consisting of nothing more than plowed fields surrounded by barbed wire. They did feed the prisoners but hundreds of them died of starvation and exposure because of predators among the prisoners and guards.

Politics, very bloody politics, Thank God for the ruthless bastards who were able to tarnish their souls to protect the rest of us.  We must never forget that fighting evil demands a price and how terrible the price is.


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## OldSolduer (3 Mar 2013)

UnwiseCritic said:
			
		

> As well as what isn't documented as a part of the holocaust is the amount that Stalin killed, but hey he won the war for us?. So we don't attack him as much, bloody politics.




Sir Winston Churchill abhorred the Nazis and Hitler so much that he said he'd deal with The Devil if it brought and end to the Hitler regime.

This is not a clinical black and white scenario. There are many, many shades of grey in the world. I reckon that the Allies could have said to Stalin "you're on your own mate" but the Soviet input was needed in order to defeat the Nazis.


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## dimsum (3 Mar 2013)

VancouverIslandHunter said:
			
		

> During August when I went on a trip across Europe I stopped at Dachau on the outskirts of Munich. The aura around the place was awful, and I hated being there. You could tell just from the feeling in the air that horrible things had happened there. I don't believe in ghosts or souls, but you could almost hear the cries of pain and suffering walking around there. Very rarely do you get to see a grown man like me have a breakdown, but at the end of the tour when we were brought into the gas chambers I just got the worst feeling inside and broke down crying. God awful place it was. I feel so sorry for all the poor souls that lost their lives their.



I also went to Dachau as part of my Europe trip on HLTA; there was a tour group that went there as part of the hostel I was staying in.  This was the same group I was with for a few days on the Munich "walking" (drinking) tour, but when we got off the U-Bahn and the bus into Dachau, everyone shut up.  None of us went for drinks that night.


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## ModlrMike (3 Mar 2013)

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Sir Winston Churchill abhorred the Nazis and Hitler so much that he said he'd deal with The Devil if it brought and end to the Hitler regime.



He even publicly said as much.



			
				Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> This is not a clinical black and white scenario. There are many, many shades of grey in the world. I reckon that the Allies could have said to Stalin "you're on your own mate" but the Soviet input was needed in order to defeat the Nazis.



The Allies knew all about Stalin, but also knew that they needed his help to defeat Hitler. Churchill is reported to have suggested that the western powers keep driving east once they got to Berlin. For those that don't know, it was he who coined the phrase "Iron Curtain".


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## Old Sweat (3 Mar 2013)

The site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is close to the Hohne and Trauen training areas which were used by Canadian armoured and artillery units stationed in Germany. Here is a link to an informative, and sobering, site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp

I visited it a few times and came away each time with the feeling that I had been in the presence of abiding evil.


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## UnwiseCritic (3 Mar 2013)

Hey you won't hear me complaining about the Russians and they're 5 year plans. They won the war for us. I would have allied up with them at any cost. And yes the allies have there share of dirty deeds, the bombing of Dresden, Churchill bombing the french Navy, Nuking Japan, the allies also locked up Japanese immigrants and put them in camps and the list goes on, even Canadians killed POWs. I don't disagree with a lot of it and would have done the same thing had I been there. It was total war with stakes too high to second guess oneself. All my grandparents come from occupied holland.

Churchill said "History is written by the Victors." I'm merely stating that maybe we should document and add what the Russians did to the record, even if our names are attatched to it.


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## cphansen (3 Mar 2013)

Actually what the OP was referring to was The Holocaust which refers to the attempted genocide by the Nazis of the Jewish people.  While Stalin's purges etc may have been holocausts they are not The Holocaust, that specifically refers to the Nazis and Jews.


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## Chispa (3 Mar 2013)

The information has been around for Decades, on the American version of "The Holocaust." 
Not very shocking, the one sided version we have been subjected to.

The bench mark was set a few decades ago around 17. to 21 million died in the so called "The Holocaust."
That includes individuals that died from hunger, sickness, medical reasons , old age, ect., ect., or getting Killed by the 
Allies aka friendly fire per say, were all added.

I heard many first hand accounts from Jews on the great Shoah. Conditions in the camps, ect., and I never heard any Jewish survivor 
I knew use the word or term holocaust. Many Jews conspired against other Jews and were responsible for many deaths, Jewish gangs also killed, 
robbed ect. ect other Jews in the ghettos in the Shoah.


At the end of the War in Jul. 1945 the US Army in a few months casually exterminated over 1 million Germans, aka Eisenhower's German Death-Camps,  "The Golden Mile."

Source US National Archives College Park.

June, 1945 US POW camp in Germany. 
  
"Starting in April 1945, the United States Army and the French Army casually annihilated one million [German] men, most of them in American camps . . . Eisenhower's hatred, passed through the lens of a compliant military bureaucracy, produced the horror of death camps unequalled by anything in American history . . . an enormous war crime." 
  
--Col. Ernest F. Fisher, PhD Lt. 
101 st Airborne Division, Senior Historian, United States Army


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## UnwiseCritic (3 Mar 2013)

You have got to be kidding me...

They may not have used the term holocaust but the Germans documented everything. And it clearly shows they were harvesting the people (hair, gold teeth etc) Working them to death and exterminating them. I heard a story of man scooping up the fat from fellow burned jews and then pouring it on the bodies to help burn them. 
 Passing of the "Holocaust" would be a grave mistake to anyone who does not want to repeat history. Same goes for the pows that we killed.


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## IBX.Lee (3 Mar 2013)

UnwiseCritic said:
			
		

> Hey you won't hear me complaining about the Russians and they're 5 year plans. They won the war for us. I would have allied up with them at any cost. And yes the allies have there share of dirty deeds, the bombing of Dresden, Churchill bombing the french Navy, Nuking Japan, the allies also locked up Japanese immigrants and put them in camps and the list goes on, even Canadians killed POWs. I don't disagree with a lot of it and would have done the same thing had I been there. It was total war with stakes too high to second guess oneself. All my grandparents come from occupied holland.



And let's not forget "None is too many" or the MS St. Louis. During WWII it would seem Jews didn't have any true allies and I think it's amazing that people look back on it and congratulate the Allies for saving the Jews when realistically they caused so many more deaths not only by inaction, but by anti-Semite policies and war acts.

Additionally, I think The Holocaust stories greatly downplay the suffering of others in the camps such as Communists, Russians, Gypsies, gays and mentally handicapped people.

Just my :2c: on a pretty controversial topic.

EDIT: And my Polish friend just chastised me for forgetting the Poles...


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## SeR (3 Mar 2013)

IBX.Lee said:
			
		

> And let's not forget "None is too many" or the MS St. Louis. During WWII it would seem Jews didn't have any true allies and I think it's amazing that people look back on it and congratulate the Allies for saving the Jews when realistically they caused so many more deaths not only by inaction, but by anti-Semite policies and war acts.
> 
> Additionally, I think The Holocaust stories greatly downplay the suffering of others in the camps such as Communists, Russians, Gypsies, gays and mentally handicapped people.
> 
> ...



According to this pie chart, 42% of victims in the concentration camps were Jewish.

I just found this interesting and I thought it would fit in here well following your post.


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## IBX.Lee (3 Mar 2013)

If that pie chart is true I'd say it would seem they wanted to exterminate the Poles rather than the Jews considering the petite 1% of German Jews who one (or at least I did previously) would think as the primary target of the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies. 

42% Jewish certainly, and 46% Polish... My friend was right to chastise me for forgetting the Poles.


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## UnwiseCritic (3 Mar 2013)

I don't think it means 1% of german jews were targeted, they account for 1% of people overall. And a lot of German Jews left the country prior to the war. Of which a lot tried to enter Canada and the USA but we both turned them away


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## daftandbarmy (3 Mar 2013)

Thanks for this. 

You have convinced me that my new charity of choice is any proactive 'revenge' programs in operation at the moment against these 'people' and their supporters.

One catch: Can I help? The only proviso I have is that I get to use a regiment of field and medium guns, supported by direct fire 40mm and flame weapons, like my dad had with the 3rd Div in WW2. 

It's never too late for the 'maximum effort'.  ;D


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## Chispa (4 Mar 2013)

The Term Holocaust was popularized in an American mini-series, and credited with introducing the term after 1978.


The biblical word Shoah (שואה) (also spelled Sho'ah and Shoa), meaning "calamity", became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust 
as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. 

Many Jews for a number of reasons, consider it very offensive nature of the word "Holocaust", which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom.


The Nazis historical documentation, the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" and the phrase "Final Solution" has been widely used as a term for the 
 by main stream historians, genocide of the Jews.





Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust

By Karen Silverstrim, MA Candidate
University of Central Arkansas 


Table 1
Estimates of Non-Combatant Lives Lost During the Holocaust
Ukrainians 5.5 - 7 million
Jews (of all countries) 6 million + 
Russian POWs 3.3 million + 
Russian Civilians 2 million + 
Poles 3 million + 
Yugoslavians 1.5 million + 
Gypsies 200,000 - 500,000 
Mentally/Physically Disabled 70,000- 250,000
Homosexuals Tens of thousands 
Spanish Republicans Tens of thousands 
Jehovah's Witnesses 2,500 - 5,000 
Boy and Girl Scouts, Clergy, Communists, Czechs, Deportees, Greeks, Political Prisoners, Other POWs, Resistance Fighters, Serbs, Socialists, Trade Unionists, Others Unknown.

Table assembled from figures quoted by Milton; Lukas 38-39, 232; Gilbert 824; Berenbaum 123; and Holocaust Internet information sites.

The six million figure used in the Jewish death toll is an estimate for total lives lost. These Jewish lives were taken by a number of groups, not just Nazis. The six million figure includes Jewish lives lost in other countries as well, not just Germany, and by the various modes of killing, not just camp deaths. Ukrainian deaths were due to Russian and Nazi perpetrators alike, some killed on "acquired" German soil, others killed on Russian soil, some killed outright, others slowly worked or starved to death. If Russian Jews, killed on Russian soil by both Nazis and Russians, are considered Holocaust deaths, then the Ukrainians killed alongside them should also be categorized as Holocaust deaths. When groups of people are killed side by side -- in the same manner, by the same perpetrators, for the same reasons (their ethnic identity) -- one cannot separate some from the group and call it a Holocaust and say the others were merely victims of war.



If you compare the barbaric nature of humanity in past History, and in the manner we have butchered each other through thousands of years, what happened in the Second World War,  Holocaust as a whole is not very socking and quite expected from us.


Read your Old Testament, The God of Abraham, Issac, Jacobo, Moses and Joshua was a War God. And Ordered Moses onto the Promised Land to Kill every man women and child and set them all on fire while many were still alive, in the conquest of Canaan, Jehrico ect ect ect til they got to God's promised Land. The Temple of Solimine was built from the sacking of those kingdoms all except Jericho. Why???? because he wanted the Spoils for himself. All the people of the city were killed, with the exception of Rahab and her family, whose lives were spared in keeping with the spies’ promise, and the city was leveled by fire. No Israelite was permitted to enrich himself by looting. God placed a ban on the city, declaring that it was “devoted” to Himself (Josh. 6:17-18)

At Gibeon, Joshua asked God to cause the sun and moon to stand still, so that he could finish the battle in daylight. This event is most notable because "there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel." (Joshua 10:14) God also fought for the Israelites in this battle, for he hurled huge hailstones from the sky which killed more Canaanites than those which the Israelites slaughtered. From there on, Joshua was able to lead the Israelites to several victories, securing much of the land of Canaan and killing everyone, according to biblical accounts.


E.A. Poe clearly stated "Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear."



The amount of Millions that died in the Second World War needlessly and still today we are no better for it. And that's the Shocker and the real shame of humanity as a whole.


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## Jarnhamar (4 Mar 2013)

> If you compare the barbaric nature of humanity in past History, and in the manner we have butchered each other through thousands of years, what happened in the Second World War,  Holocaust as a whole is not very socking and quite expected from us.



ya man, people die every day. No big deal right?


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## SeR (4 Mar 2013)

Chispa said:
			
		

> If you compare the barbaric nature of humanity in past History, and in the manner we have butchered each other through thousands of years, what happened in the Second World War,  Holocaust as a whole is *not very socking* and quite expected from us.



Are you saying that the fact that an entire community, consisting of millions of people, was almost decimated is not shocking at all?



			
				Chispa said:
			
		

> E.A. Poe clearly stated "Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear."



As well, could you please clarify the reasons for quoting this?


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## OldSolduer (4 Mar 2013)

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> ya man, people die every day. No big deal right?



Shocking - yes. You lose over 20 million people is shocking.

Surprising? Not at all. We are barbarians despite our veneer of civilization.


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## Kat Stevens (4 Mar 2013)

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.
Joseph Stalin


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## a_majoor (4 Mar 2013)

The National Socialists were pikers compared to their Communist counterparts, Stalin's death toll _starts_ at an estimated 20 million and Mao is responsible for up to 60 million deaths during his tenure. Even smaller countries like Cambodia suffered proportionately, something like 3 million people were left to rot in the Killing fields...  

Perhaps the only real difference between the National Socialists and the others is their mania for excellent book keeping; you won't find definitive records from Russia, China or other places to verify the count.

While *we* may not have been angels either, the toll the Allies exacted was lower by orders of magnitude. The death toll was more a case of collateral damage rather than the panned and systematic destruction of peoples defined by ethnicity or economic class.


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## Jarnhamar (4 Mar 2013)

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Shocking - yes. You lose over 20 million people is shocking.
> 
> Surprising? Not at all. We are barbarians despite our veneer of civilization.


I agree, I'm just sensing a certain angle.


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## OldSolduer (4 Mar 2013)

Good points but still....it is estimated that Ghengis Khan was responsible for at least 10 million deaths.  It may be more. 

My point? 

We will kill each other in the 10s of millions if we think there may be no consequences. And it has happened all through history.


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## 57Chevy (4 Mar 2013)

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> ... it has happened all through history.


True enough,
men have been slaughtering each other for thousands of years but the Holocaust
was the only industralized manufacture of mass death which included process improvements
for maximum efficiency.
Very much like what we know as the assembly line.


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## GAP (4 Mar 2013)

not so.....it is the first recognized as such.....


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## OldSolduer (4 Mar 2013)

GAP said:
			
		

> not so.....it is the first recognized as such.....


ghengis khan did it.


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## UnwiseCritic (5 Mar 2013)

I have to agree with chevy on this one. Not only in the industrialization of it but the fact that they so meticulously documented it.


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## Mr.Neville (5 Mar 2013)

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> ....it is estimated that Ghengis Khan was responsible for at least 10 million deaths.  It may be more.



He also apparently has over 16 million descendants in central Asia (Dan Bradley, Trinity College Dublin). Says a lot about him.


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## 57Chevy (5 Mar 2013)

From Canada News Centre (news.gc.ca) 
WTG Canada   

 Canada to Lead the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance 

Berlin, March 5, 2013 — Canada today assumed the chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and committed to an ambitious campaign in the year ahead to raise Holocaust awareness and fight anti-Semitism.

Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney, along with this year’s Chair of the Alliance, Dr. Mario Silva, attended a ceremony in Berlin where Belgium handed over the chairmanship to Canada.

“Our government believes it is critically important to be engaged in efforts to teach future generations the lessons of the Holocaust and help prevent future acts of genocide,” said Minister Kenney. “The Holocaust stands alone in the annals of human evil and has important lessons to teach all of us—universal lessons that must not be forgotten.”

Canada became actively involved with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2007, and became a full member in 2009. Canada will Chair the Alliance until March 2014.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is an intergovernmental body made up of government officials and experts from 31 countries. It is devoted to fostering and promoting Holocaust education, remembrance and research around the world. Each year, the Alliance nominates a member country to assume leadership of the organization.

“As Chair, Canada will work with all Alliance member countries to implement an ambitious, multi‑year work plan that includes research into Holocaust killing sites outside of major death camps, the development of educational resources for teachers, and strengthened relationships with international partners,” said Dr. Silva.

The handover ceremony was also marked by the restitution of a painting from the Stuttgart Gallery in Germany to the estate of the late Jewish-Canadian art dealer, Max Stern. With the Nazis’ ascension to power in the 1930s, the painting was part of a forced sale held by the Stern family. Today, the painting by the artist Master of Flémalle was returned to Concordia University in Montréal, which leads the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, one of the most recognized initiatives of its kind in the world.

Many events and initiatives in support of Holocaust education and remembrance will also take place across Canada this year, among them the undertaking of a national project to preserve survivor testimony, an Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education to recognize outstanding teachers, and an international poster competition for Canadian students in Graphics, Art and Design to support Holocaust Memorial Day activities. In addition, the development of a new Holocaust memorial in Canada’s National Capital Region is underway.

Canada is recognized as an international leader in the fight against anti-Semitism. In 2011, Canada was the first country to sign the Ottawa Protocol on Combating Anti‑Semitism, an international action plan to help nations measure their progress in the fight against anti-Semitism.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Conference will be held in Toronto in October 2013.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance was founded in 2000 under the name Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF).

more at link...


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## cupper (5 Mar 2013)

Industrialization of genocide doesn't necessarily make it more efficient or horrific. If you look at the numbers that came out of the Rwandan genocide in the early 90's, between 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were killed in a period of about 100 days. This is roughly 20% of the population. And there was no industrial methodology in the way this was carried out.

But we can sit here and throw out example after example of periods when the Human Race degenerated back to something inhumane. When you boil this all down to numbers and statistics, you've lost all context that these were real living people who lived lives much the same as the rest of us. Simply because they were members of an ethnic group, held political beliefs that ran contrary to the government or were deemed unfit to live on the whim of some other person playing God, they were killed.

And when you've lost that context, it becomes too easy to have it happen again.


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## Chispa (10 Mar 2013)

SeR said:
			
		

> Are you saying that the fact that an entire community, consisting of millions of people, was almost decimated is not shocking at all?
> 
> As well, could you please clarify the reasons for quoting this?




To all that asked to elaborate, I will move on since I've been unjustly accused of trolling and - many point's quite trivial.

Like I said this information has been vigorously discussed and documented over two decades ago believed by many to be 
22, to 25, Million.


Total Deaths: 22 to 26 Million 




Numbers based on these sources.

Michael Berenbaum,ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York/London, 1990), xi

Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985.

Lipstadt, Deborah E. Beyond Belief: the American Press & the Coming of the Holocaust 1933-1945. New York/London: The Free Press, 1986.

Lukas, Richard C. The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1986.

Milton, Sybil. Senior Historian, The United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC. Telephone interview. with Karen Silverstrim, 16 April 1997.

Silverstrim, Karen. Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust. MA Candidate, University of Central Arkansas.


http://phdast7.hubpages.com/hub/Civilians-Murdered-During-the-Holocaust


What I fined socking is those two researchers are trying to pocket, per-say from legwork others have done in the past two decades.
If I knew this  information two decades ago and now it's been seen by the whole Main stream  as fact. Why would I be shocked, 
since I have vigorously discoursed this two decades ago.

Like I stated for 6 thousand years history and now believed to be 10-14 thousand years ago, clearly shows we have been barbaric 
towards each other for what ever reason, and our thirst for blood. If history is any indication we are still in this day and age.

Do YOU know the term " 3 DAYS TO ANIMAL ?" 

If you consider the manner in the way tens of thousands or more all together.  Some estimates claim 20,000 a year, enemy's of the Aztec, 
and all central and south American Indians, horrific manner they slaughtered while the majority were still alive ect.
Not counting the 6 thousand years, what happened in the First and Second is quite expected for us Humans.



Poe , Humm  In 1997 the States that were involved in the Second World Ward, opened the files to public viewing. 

Half of what's been written concerning accounts, is still up for debate.
War is usually written in a one sided perspective, the winners.


Also like I stated I grownup with Hasidic and Orthodox Jews for over 30 years, and found out about the "Great Catastrophe" or the Shoah
when I was 7, and never heard it discussed in any school history, even after I saw the Mini series The Holocaust.

Like I said many Jews I know consider the term Holocaust very offencive, a slur, to the Horrific and despicable nature the Jewish people endured 
during the Second World War.

As for Poe ......Rabbi Abraham Moses Klein the poet ect. ect. ect., told me every coin has 3 sides. 


Also read how Russian Jews were treated Pre and post Second World War.


moving on.


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## cupper (10 Mar 2013)

If there was an argument there, you lost it in the fog of incoherence.


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## BeyondTheNow (10 Apr 2013)

http://www.ibtimes.com/new-encyclopedia-holocaust-will-completely-redraw-atrocities-third-reich-1183393?ft=h6k97

"With the recent discovery in early March of more than 42,200 new sites used by the Nazis as ghettos and labor, concentration and death camps, comes the redrawing of the map of World War II, the Holocaust and the Third Reich.

 National Geographic reports that Geoffrey Megargee, one of the scholars who discovered the vast network of genocide, is now working on completely rewriting the book on the Holocaust. The planned seven-volume encyclopedia, which will be called “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945,” will include the new sites and is expected to dramatically alter the previously understood landscape of the Holocaust.

"To document this on a map and see how the Holocaust affected every single community throughout Europe makes quite clear the scope of the Nazi regime's murder campaign," said Martin Dean, the editor of the encyclopedia.

 Sites with gas chambers are not the only ones under consideration for inclusion on the new map, Megargee told National Geographic. "We're not just looking at sites directly involved with the Holocaust, but with the entire range of persecutory facilities that the Nazis and their allies ran," he told National Geographic.

To be included, a site must have housed at least 20 people and have been in operation for at least a month. Descriptions of the sites will be drawn from any possible records that still exist as well as survivor testimony.

Two of the seven volumes of the new encyclopedia have already been released, the first in June 2009, and the second in April 2012. It is being published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington conjunction with Indiana University Press.

April 7-8 was Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, and April 7-13 marks Holocaust Remembrance Week in the U.S. "


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## SOES_vet (16 Apr 2013)

I just noticed this tread and read through it. To be honest, I don't really know what some of the posters were trying to get across or if there is an overriding narrative with this thread.

But here is a number for perspective. During the Second World War, over 1 in 3 Jews were killed. At the start of the war there was approximately 16 million Jews. Approximately 6 million were killed. 

Considering everything, and even the denials that happen to this day, I can't help but think the Jews have taken the Holocaust pretty well.


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