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'Hear-Say in subarticle 3.2.3'

In the subarticle 3.2.3 'South and East Slavs' there is hear-say statement of a former Nazi official which is taken as true, or at least trying to imply something for a fact.

Quote: Hitler's high plenipotentiary in South East Europe, Hermann Neubacher, later wrote: "When leading Ustaše state that one million Orthodox Serbs (including babies, children, women and old men) were slaughtered, this in my opinion is a boasting exaggeration. End quote:

The objective data is at the end of the subsection.

Quote: The USHMM reports between 56,000 and 97,000 persons were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp However, Yad Vashem reports 600,000 deaths at Jasenovac.This is not the truth. You can see on Yad Vashem website in the article about Jasenovac (http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206358.pdf) that it is quote: many thousands were murdered, most of them Serbians" The person who wrote this section is a lyer End quote:

Instead of the quote from Neubacher I suggest putting a list of WW2 casualties in Yugoslavia of all nationalities not just one.

The following link contains one such list. It is an online version of the paper number 69 in the quote list. Table 5 of the paper has a column named 'victims in camps' which should indicate victims in concentration camps. http://www.hic.hr/books/manipulations/p06.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mljk (talk • contribs) 23:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Multiple problems with Death Squad (Einsatzgruppen) section

There are a number of errors, unsourced statements of "fact", and irrelevant material in the The Holocaust#Death squads (1941–1943). My thesis, outlined above, is that the length of this article (189kb) discourages fact checking. I will be specific about the major problem areas in the Death Squad section of the article:

Claims of inherently more antisemitism in Eastern Europe

As written, the article now states:

In these territories, there were fewer restraints on the mass killing of Jews than there were in countries like France or the Netherlands, where there was a long tradition of tolerance and the rule of law, or even Poland where, despite a strong tradition of antisemitism, there was considerable resistance to Nazi persecution of Polish Jews. In the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, native antisemitism was reinforced by hatred of Communist rule, which many people associated with the Jews.

Criticism: This is a very broad and unsourced generalization. Sources support the fact that there were people in, say, the Baltic States who assisted the Nazis and who, at least in Lithuania and Latvia, actually carried out large numbers of murders, see Arajs Kommando. Bad as this was, the article overstates the case. Is it really true that a country such as, say, Latvia, was more antisemitic in 1941 than a country like the Netherlands for example, where the native police actively assisted in the identification, sequestration, and arrest of the Jews. Yet in German-allied Hungary, until the German occupation in 1944, the Jews remained essentially safe, as they were protected by the Horthy regime. Poland is itself a special case, particularly in Galicia and the complex interaction between and among the Poles, the Ukrainians, and the Jews is far more complicated than the single sentence here can ever convey. Even the Nazis reported that that, at least in the Baltic States, they were having trouble stirring up anti-Jewish actions in the city of Riga. See for example Burning of the Riga synagogues for some details on that topic. In any case, some sources are needed and there's none now.
Revision. With no response after 10 days, unsourced material deleted and replaced with sourced paragraph.03:22, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Erroneous separation of Wehrmacht from killing operations

As written, the article now states:

Despite the subservience of the Army high command to Hitler, Himmler did not trust the Army to approve of, let alone carry out, the large-scale killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories.

Critcism: Unsourced and potentially misleading. Einsatzgruppen were actually organized by Reinhard Heydrich. This gives the impression that the Wehrmacht had nothing to do with these killings. There is good evidence that the Wehrmacht was heavily involved in all kinds of killings of civilians. See for example War crimes of the Wehrmacht. Liepaja massacre gives a good sourced example of Wehrmacht (German Navy in this case) involvement in Einsatzgruppe mass shootings of Jews in 1941. Really, what happened was that the Army leaders made a cynical deal that they would look the other way while Himmler committed any and all possible crimes behind the front line. Gerald Reitlinger makes this point in SS - Alibi of a Nation.

Inclusion of extensive material unrelated to Einsatzgruppen

As written, the article now states:

In December 1941, a few cases of typhus broke out in the Bogdanovka concentration camp in Transnistria, where over 50,000 Jews were held. A decision was made by the German adviser to the Romanian administration of the district and the Romanian District Commissioner to murder all the inmates. The Aktion began on December 21, and was carried out by Romanian soldiers and gendarmes, Ukrainian police and civilians from Golta, and local ethnic Germans under the commander of the Ukrainian regular police, Kazachievici. Thousands of disabled and ill inmates were forced into two locked stables, which were doused with kerosene and set ablaze, burning alive all those inside. Other inmates were led in groups to a ravine in a nearby forest and shot in the neck. The remaining Jews dug pits with their bare hands in the bitter cold, and packed them with frozen corpses. Thousands of Jews froze to death. A break was made for Christmas, but the killing resumed on December 28. By December 31, over 40,000 Jews had been killed.

Criticism: This by its terms has nothing to do with the Einsatzgruppen, see bold type. What is needed is an article on the highly important topic of the Holocaust in Romania. There is at least one important and readily available work which could form some of the basis for this:

• Ioanid, Radu, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, Ivan R. Dee, 2000 ISBN 1566632560
  

Revision: With no response after 10 days, the material has been deleted from The Holocaust but remains at Bogdanovka.Mtsmallwood (talk) 03:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced material on numbers killed and establishment of death camps

As written, the article now states:

By the end of 1941, however, the Einsatzgruppen had killed only 15 percent of the Jews in the occupied Soviet territories, and it was apparent that these methods could not be used to kill all the Jews of Europe. Even before the invasion of the Soviet Union, experiments with killing Jews in the back of vans using gas from the van's exhaust had been carried out, and when this proved too slow, more lethal gasses were tried. For large-scale killing by gas, however, fixed sites would be needed, and it was decided—probably by Heydrich and Eichmann—that the Jews should be brought to camps specifically built for the purpose.

Criticism: Again, no source given for the very specific claim that only 15% of Jews had been killed. Where does this come from? Certainly in Latvia the percentage was more like 95%. (See Wannsee conference, where it was reported that only 3,500 Jews were left alive in January 1942. In addition, this paragraph glazes over the decision, apparently reached in October 1941, according to Professor Browning, to fully implement the Final Solution, that is, to construct the extermination camps. Also, where is the evidence that Heydrich and Eichmann "probably" made the decision to build the concentration camps. I think it quite unlikely that Eichmann made any decision at that level. Heydrich maybe, but what about Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Goebbels? Need some sourcing here for statement that implies, apparently, that they were out of the loop, especially since the very next paragraph says that it was Himmler who ordered construction of Auschwitz.

Finally, what is a discussion of the construction of Auschwitz doing under the heading of Einsatzgruppen? Mtsmallwood (talk) 05:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Revision: After ten days with no response, (a) deleted the unsourced paragraph and (b) moved the following paragraph, containing sourced material on the construction of Auschwitz to Auschwitz concentration camp.Mtsmallwood (talk) 03:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Is is possible to define "holocaust" in a way that respects The Holocaust and allows us to use the term for other events going forward?

The traditional definition of holocaust (pre 1935) was "A great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire". This does not reflect the modern usage very well. Most modern definitions either limit it to a uniquely Jewish experience that cannot be related to history going forward or they are badly offensive to anyone who was affected by The Holocaust. There are many horrific tragedies in history, but we need tools in our language to define something of the magnitude and impact of The Holocaust. Definitions like "large-scale, systematic killing of members of an ethnic group" create several problems. What is "large scale", what are the boundaries of an "ethnic group"? Historically, people have exploited these ambiguities to include everything that affects them into the definition, rendering it useless and insulting to people affected by The Holocaust.

The Holocaust was different because it was such a massive event that it changed the way people interacted, including those not directly affected. Even the act of denying The Holocaust is a concession to the importance of this event on history. Eleven million civilians were systematically killed!

In all of WWII, some 50 million people died. This was bigger than The Holocaust, but these were soldiers killed in warfare, and the implications and impact on humanity were very different. The African slave trade saw some 12 million people captured as slaves. This is a similar magnitude as The Holocaust, and had a similarly profound impact on history, but these people were not rounded up to be killed. Hence, the slave trade was a similarly important tragedy, but it was a different kind of tragedy. In the Rwandan masacres, 500-800 thousand people were killed and in Bosnia Hertzegovina, 200-400 thousand were killed. These were horrific tragedies that shared many similarities to The Holocaust, but they were so much smaller in magnitude that they did not have any of the impact on humanity. It is not possible to use the word "holocaust" to describe any of these events without trivialising The Holocaust in a way that causes real pain and suffering for those who were affected by it.

I am teaching a class in ethics and my class has proposed the following definition for consideration:

holocaust: The systematic killing of more than 5 million civilians

This gives full respect to people who were affected by The Holocaust and also provides a simple criteria to apply it to other events in history. While every human death is a tragedy, and an important part of civilisation is the constant struggle to minimise suffering in the world, I hope that we will never have cause to use this word again to describe any other event in history. Lennyb (talk) 21:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

You can't redefine a word, and we can't either - all our statements, definitions and so on are based on reliable sources - to redefine such a thing would be original research. Your definition fails on several points though - firstly, Holocaust was used during the cold war to refer to nuclear extermination, something your definition doesn't cover. Secondly, a holocaust is also a burnt offering. Thirdly I'd point you towards the Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust, in which less than five million people were killed in a non-systematic way. Fourthly, your definition implies that any killing of more than 5 million civilians in a systematic way is a holocaust - I've never heard Stalin's Great Purge described as a holocaust, or the Khmer Rouge killings. 02:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Your definition does not work at all. As if a certain number sets the definition is silly. If someone kills four million it is not a holocaust? Four mill to two is a tragedy? Then its merely a unit of measurement, and thats pretty damn disrespectful.

A better word to clarify would be genocide, as many things are called genocide when they're only ATTEMPTED genocide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.24.252.234 (talk) 19:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

what photo for lede section? I believe that the train platform picture does not capture the concept well enough

Hi, I replaced the photo of Jews at a train station with a photo of Dachau inmates that I argue more immediately conveys the concept of the Holocaust. The photo of Jews standing in line on a railway platform is of course an important photo, in that the Jews are being divided up into groups (labour camp VS. gas chamber). However, I argue that given that the goal of the lede is to provide a standalone introduction to the subject, it may be desirable to have a photo that more directly captures the concept. While the image that I proposed is difficult to look at (Jews from Dachau who were killed), I feel that it is captures the concept of the Holocaust in a more immediate fashion than the "Jews on railway platform" picture.OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 23:06, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Comprehension

Having just seen the The Reader (film), I see that The Reader article's introduction states that the book "deals with the difficulties which subsequent generations have in comprehending the Holocaust.."

Reading this, it occurred to me that "difficulties.. in comprehending the Holocaust" - Holocaust comprehension perhaps (or rather attempts thereof) - could itself be an article about how different people try their best to understand the meaning of human sin and suffering within this particular context. -Stevertigo 20:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

1. "Bogdanovka" (PDF). Yad Vashem.
2. A district of Transnistria, see map.
3. "December 21: More than 40,000 Jews shot at Bogdanovka". Yad Vashem.

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