The Holocaust

[CG6468]

Why do we hear only of the Jewish victims and survivors of Hitler's holocaust camps? There were also thousands of Catholics and other Christians, and various people who did not fall into lockstep with Hitler, who were interred in these camps.

Jews were undoubtedly the greatest number of prisoners, but what about the non-Jews? Do they not count for anything?

[TVDOC]

Why do we hear only of the Jewish victims and survivors of Hitler's holocaust camps? There were also thousands of Catholics and other Christians, and various people who did not fall into lockstep with Hitler, who were interred in these camps.

Jews were undoubtedly the greatest number of prisoners, but what about the non-Jews? Do they not count for anything?

Probably because he was dedicated to wipe out an entire ethnicity/religion, that he and his minions thought were "polluting" the blood of his master race.  The then Pope cut a deal with him so the Catholics eventually skated, unless they'd committed some other perceived slight to the Reich.  

However, your base premise is true.....there were homosexuals, gypsies (Roma), mentally retarded, and other disabled people sent to the camps........Hitler was an "equal opportunity" mass-murderer.  The sheer numbers of the Jews, and the percentage of their entire population make them the significant losers in the Holocaust.

".......Never Again......."

doc

[DumbAss Tanker]

The Jews outnumbered any other group in the actual extermination camps, though about a million Gypsies/Romany were also exterminated in them.  Very likely far more Slavic speakers than Jews were killed (Not in death camps as such, though the German PW compounds in the East might as well have been death camps, because the Nazis weren't too concerned with actually feeding prisoners; at the same time, the ruthless exploitation of the population and purposeful destruction of the intelligentsia in occupied Slav lands like Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine very likely killed at least as many Slavs as the Holocaust did Jews). 

But really it comes down to European Jews having a voice to tell their story, and a receptive audience to tell it to, in the West, while for various reasons none of the others did.

[FreeBorn]

Let's not forget that Hitler did not in any way have a monopoly on genocide.
Stalin and Tito in the east were wiping people out wholesale at the same time.
As usual it is the victors who get to write the history books so the truths of what happened in the east under the red banner vanished behind the iron curtain.

[Eupher]

The Jews outnumbered any other group in the actual extermination camps, though about a million Gypsies/Romany were also exterminated in them.  Very likely far more Slavic speakers than Jews were killed (Not in death camps as such, though the German PW compounds in the East might as well have been death camps, because the Nazis weren't too concerned with actually feeding prisoners; at the same time, the ruthless exploitation of the population and purposeful destruction of the intelligentsia in occupied Slav lands like Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine very likely killed at least as many Slavs as the Holocaust did Jews).  

But really it comes down to European Jews having a voice to tell their story, and a receptive audience to tell it to, in the West, while for various reasons none of the others did.

That was my thought, too. Simon Wiesenthal had no peer in the former Soviet Socialist Republics like the Ukraine, Belarus, and other eastern European countries like Poland and Czechoslavokia. His voice was the loudest and he was heard. Not so much elsewhere, unfortunately.

When the SS Sondergruppen came through the Ukraine and Belarus and other Soviet republics, they simply had mass graves dug then shot many. When it became evident that that type of extermination was inefficient, that's when they went to Zyklon B and the gas chambers. Much more efficient at killing.

But initially, they shot most of their victims. I suppose there weren't many left over to tell the story.

[RonBush]

Why do we hear only of the Jewish victims and survivors of Hitler's holocaust camps?

I knew about the other victims.  Is there anyone here that didn't?  I'm not sure why you would think that we only hear about Jewish victims.  As others have said, there were more Jews than any other group, and it was a dramatic attempt to wipe out a whole ethnic group, so there is more awareness of it.

[DumbAss Tanker]

That was my thought, too. Simon Wiesenthal had no peer in the former Soviet Socialist Republics like the Ukraine, Belarus, and other eastern European countries like Poland and Czechoslavokia. His voice was the loudest and he was heard. Not so much elsewhere, unfortunately.

When the SS Sondergruppen came through the Ukraine and Belarus and other Soviet republics, they simply had mass graves dug then shot many. When it became evident that that type of extermination was inefficient, that's when they went to Zyklon B and the gas chambers. Much more efficient at killing.

But initially, they shot most of their victims. I suppose there weren't many left over to tell the story.

Well before the launch of Barbarossa, they went about the purposeful eradication of the Polish educated classes (Anti-Soviet and racially-indistinguishable from the Germans themselves as they were) - teachers, clerical workers, merchants, lawyers and jurists, politicians, etc. - with the goal of reducing the population to peasant farmers feeding the Reich.  Mainly rounded up and shot by the Sonderkommando, Gestapo, agents of the Gouvernment General (Occupation government), or simply shipped to work camps and then worked to death, not anything as straightforward as the later death camps, but no less lethal for all that.     

[CG6468]

I knew about the other victims.  Is there anyone here that didn't?  I'm not sure why you would think that we only hear about Jewish victims.  As others have said, there were more Jews than any other group, and it was a dramatic attempt to wipe out a whole ethnic group, so there is more awareness of it.

You missed the entire point of my thread. We KNEW about people other than Jews, but today we never HEAR of anyone else but the Jews.

All of the so-called relief programs are only for Jews. Are there no others, non-Jews, who remain alive who do not deserve similar support?

[JohnnyReb]

All my adult life that has been my one gripe with the Jews. They're forever reminding us of the 6 million Jews that died while seldom mentioning the other 5 to 7 million that died in the camps and Nazi actions.

Come on Jews, at least give them an honarable mention sometimes. 

[Ptarmigan]

The Jews outnumbered any other group in the actual extermination camps, though about a million Gypsies/Romany were also exterminated in them.  Very likely far more Slavic speakers than Jews were killed (Not in death camps as such, though the German PW compounds in the East might as well have been death camps, because the Nazis weren't too concerned with actually feeding prisoners; at the same time, the ruthless exploitation of the population and purposeful destruction of the intelligentsia in occupied Slav lands like Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine very likely killed at least as many Slavs as the Holocaust did Jews).  

But really it comes down to European Jews having a voice to tell their story, and a receptive audience to tell it to, in the West, while for various reasons none of the others did.

I have read that more Slavic people were killed than Jews in the Holocaust, 8 to 10 million Slavs killed. Before the Holocaust, there was 10 million Jews in Europe and 6 million of them were killed or 60 percent. I think the death toll for Gypsies, Christians, homosexuals, and disabled is underestimated. Also, many people were killed in the field through Einsatzgruppen.

Einsatzgruppen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

European Jews are the ones who told the story. As for Slavs and Gypsies, I do not know why they tell their story. Slavic culture tends to not to forget, they have a long memory.

[MrsSmith]

Almost every school kid is assigned "The Diary of Anne Frank" in middle school, so they are all taught about the Jews. 

Just like every kid gets some basic knowledge in school of the Crusades and the witch hunts blamed on Christianity, while the other 99.9% of actual history is ignored.

Seriously, look what the schools teach about our own country!  How many kids have any clue what the Bill of Rights meant when they were written.  If they had a clue, there would be no government intervention into religious freedom.

Schools complain about 'teaching to the test,' but those tests should include a lot of the truths that are currently skipped.