the holocaust

[luke]

i was a bit shocked at georges view on the holocaust last night, i'm completely against the idea that questioning anything, any historical event, however terrible ( which the holocaust was ) should be make illegal. will it one day be illegal to go back and question the iraq war? the battle of hastings? the armenian genocide?

i think theres lots of questions to ask, i mean i'm sure george said last night it didn't matter if it was 5 or 6 million who died ... what?! say that to any remaining family of the victims. how many did die? cos i've heard numbers now from 1.6 million to georges 6 million. asking questions, looking for facts, evaluating evidence, should be encouraged not made illegal.

if the nazi nutter types wanna piece together a fantasy argument that it didn't exist, that it never happened - fine, let them - because they won't be able to prove it, they won't have the evidence to support it, the facts don't match what they want to say - so we ridicule them, hi light there mistakes, reveal there bigotry, show there argument to completely false - thats the only way you can go forwards.

i'd do the same with people who think the world is still flat, i wouldn't make it illegal to say it was flat, or to have opinion that it might not be round - i'll just present evidence to make them look like fools.

i didn't like the way he seemed to say that those who question it are somehow hoping for a new holocaust - thats a ridiculous view. i've got questions, and i don't want a new holocaust.

what did others think?

* edit i've added a poll, check my forum skills *

[nekokate]

I'm re-listening to last night's show now. George didn't say it didn't matter if it was 5 or 6 million, he was making the point that the people who are so obsessed with trying to prove it was less than 6 million may well have a secret agenda.

It's exactly the same argument with the 655,000 dead in Iraq that the Lancet Journal polled - the people who say "bullshit, it is nowhere near that many!" are missing the point, too. Iraq is a slaughter whether it was 655,000 or more like 300,000 - and the Holocaust is still going to be the most terrible, racist, mass-genocide in history whether it was 6 million, or 5, or even less!

[Mandy]

Truth needs no laws to protect it.

I think they should "open the files" to see what the "files" say happened :

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Extract from this article : .

Holocaust survivors seek Nazi files

Witnesses told a congressional panel of their frustration with the long, still-unfinished process of opening a secret Nazi archive with millions of files on concentration camps and their victims.
Leo Rechter, an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust as a boy by hiding in basements and attics after his family fled to Belgium and his father was deported to Auschwitz, testified Wednesday of his incredulity that the information had been kept from survivors for more than sixty years.
"Of all the public archives in the world, what possible justification can there be to prevent us from learning the truth about what happened to our families during the Holocaust?" he asked. "This information really belongs to us; it's about our lives."

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FYI, I believe the Nazis kept huge amounts of records. I believe they also had some of the earliest computers from IBM to help them. Indeed, the numbers tattooed on prisoners were "record id numbers" for the computers' database.

We owe it to ALL survivors of the Holocaust (with capital H) to put all the information on a database so everyone can look up their ancestors / relatives etc. to see what happened to them.

Why is it in this modern electronic age, when there were huge computer and manual records, that there is no "database" of who went through the camps, who died, who survived, who is unaccounted for .. i.e. BASIC things done after a crime. WE OWE IT TO SURVIVORS and the relatives of the DEAD.

As a person with curiosity, I am always weary when "governments" or "religious" bodies try to keep historical things "secret", e.g. the secrecy around the "Dead Sea Scrolls" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls where it was admitted the "The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they are practically the only known surviving Biblical documents written before AD 100." It appears copies of these are now "leaked" .. but why the secrecy in the first place, and why don't the current holders of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" issue official copies of them, rather than "relying" on leaks which may or may not be original.

[faceless]

The Dead Sea Scrolls were on display in Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum a couple of years back - I'm not sure they were complete, but they were there to be seen by all.

As far as holocaust deniers are concerned - they represent meaninglessness to me. What do they hope to achieve? To show that Nazis weren't really so bad after all? The street I live in was bombed by the Luftwaffe in the Clydebank Blitz during WWII. I don't think the families of those killed back then would really care to consider that the Nazis "weren't really as bad as the papers make out".

[Mandy]

[faceless]

[Mandy]

[faceless]

I would have thought that making them "numbers" served to help the nazis in making sure that no other records were kept. It dehumanised them even more.

[Mandy]

[Skylace]

[nekokate]

I don't really have a problem with any sort of investigation into a major historical event, but it seems to me that the only people doggedly interested in an investigation into the Holocaust are the Holocaust deniers - hence they would be approaching the task with an agenda already in their minds.

I don't have any links to other websites handy to back up my point of view, so based purely on my own reasoning my problem with this is that it's the racists who want to look into this, which is unacceptable.

As for reparations - even if it was proven that it was "only", say, 5 million, there would be a huge public outcry if anyone proposed to cut back on any reparations based on that. It's still the worst crime in history and I say those affected by it deserve as much compensation as humanly possible and logically sound.

[faceless]

[Skylace]

[Mandy]

Sorry Kate .. hope you don't mind me replying point by point to you.

[Mandy]