The Holocaust never happened Subjective/Objective Views on History

In some countrys if I was to claim that the Holocaust never happened it would be illegal. What are peoples views on this?

Is History so subjective that this would be unfair? or is History so objective that we can call these people liers?

 

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What are you talking about? Holocaust? Germany was on vacation during WW2.

 

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What countries? I'm not even sure that Germany still has that law ...but even so, what other country makes such "speech" illegal?

Baron Max

 

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Does anyone actually knows what holocaust means?
Etymologic I mean offcourse what excatly does in refine to, is it yust a made up word referring to one single event in history. Or does the word actually means something.

 

Yes, basically it refers ONLY to the German/Jew situation in Germany.

Baron Max

 

Austria, Belgium, France, Poland and Switzerland (and others, I think) -- as well as Germany and Israel -- have laws against so-called "Holocaust denial", and have jailed people who have expressed illegal views. Such illegal opinions have often stopped short of what really amount to denial. In some countries you can go to jail for expressing opinions about the nature of the executions (whether by gassing, etc) or about the numbers of victims (i.e. less than six million).

 

Well, much of history is subjective anyway.
But if anyone has any evidence that about 5.2 million jews werent killed during WW2 in death camps set up for the purpose, I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

Take care, guthrie. The founder of the Opus Dei movement, Jose Maria Escriba, is on record of uttering the opinion that Hitler could not have murdered more than four million Jews. I am told that he could have faced prosecution if he had voiced that opinion in Germany. SIX million if you want to play it safe!

The Israeli Yad VaShem memorial and museum commemorating victims of the holocaust has accumulated a database of three million known victims.

As for those who think the total of dead was fewer, take a look at this site.

 

Yes, basically it refers ONLY to the German/Jew situation in Germany.

Baron Max


Are the elderly, homosexuals, gypsies,... not included, it's hard to believe that.

The worst part is that if you look up concentration camps on yahoo, the first site you encounter talks about the American concentration camps.

I believe National geografic had a nice documentary about the subject named: the art of killing.

Saying that the holocaustnever happend is a criminal offence(fact it stance somwhere in a book). But then again. Somewhere you can relay that some idiot thinks that nobody is that cruel. But being a nice citizen and saying yes it happened and the Nazi's should be sorry and ignoring the fact that your own soldiers are torturing people stripped of all their reights. Makes that person a hypocryt.

 

Originally Latin--I believe it meant a fire to heat a building? My Latin's a bit dodgy. The word only became associated with its modern meaning after 1945.

 

So Escriba knows so much about WW2 Germany, its transport system, availability of poison gas, the relics and relatives left behind, as well as the records kept by the Nazis, that he can show that only about 4 million Jews were killed, not 5.2 million? If so, I'm sure a lot of historians would like to talk to him. Or is he dead yet?
(The 5.2 million is the last reliable figure I saw, from years ago, it may well not be exactly correct.)
I'm not entirely convinced that prosecuting people for denying the holocaust ever happened is a sensible idea, but if it helps bang it into people that, you know, killing a few million people is a bad idea, then go ahead.

 

I looked the word holocaust up my self:

Totality of destruction has been central to the meaning of holocaust since it first appeared in Middle English in the 14th century, used in reference to the biblical sacrifice in which a male animal was wholly burnt on the altar in worship of God. Holocaust comes from Greek holokauston (“that which is completely burnt”), which was a translation of Hebrew ‘ōlâ (literally “that which goes up,” that is, in smoke). In this sense of “burnt sacrifice,” holocaust is still used in some versions of the Bible. In the 17th century the meaning of holocaust broadened to “something totally consumed by fire,” and the word eventually was applied to fires of extreme destructiveness. In the 20th century holocaust has taken on a variety of figurative meanings, summarizing the effects of war, rioting, storms, epidemic diseases, and even economic failures. Most of these usages arose after World War II, but it is unclear whether they permitted or resulted from the use of holocaust in reference to the mass murder of European Jews and others by the Nazis. This application of the word occurred as early as 1942, but the phrase the Holocaust did not become established until the late 1950s. Here it parallels and may have been influenced by another Hebrew word, šô’â (“catastrophe,” in English, Shoah). In the Bible šô’â has a range of meanings including “personal ruin or devastation” and “a wasteland or desert.” Šô’â was first used to refer to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in 1939, but the phrase haš-šô’â (“the catastrophe”) became established only after World War II. Holocaust has also been used to translate ḥurbān (“destruction”), another Hebrew word used to summarize the genocide of Jews by the Nazis.

 

He is not only dead -- but a Saint! (I see that his name is being more commonly spelled Escriva these days, it was always pronounced that way in Spanish of course.) Like most people who have looked into the matter, he thought the six million figure an exaggeration.

Ah, but as I say, it seems you can be jailed merely for expressing doubts about the official (Nuremburg trials) version. At what point do you think it would be tolerable to jail someone? If he/she said the total was less than 3.5 million, for example? Or that something other than Zyklon B was used? Or expressed the opinion that the holocaust was a "detail" of WWII? Or wrote a six volume History of the Second World War without mentioning it?

I believe that the holocaust was a myth -- but not in the sense that it did not happen. I believe that the myth lies in its treatment as a uniquely terrible historical event. I should like to be free to express that (or any other opinion) without endangerment to my liberty.

 

Well, we're getting all semantical here. The holocaust clearly happened. And debate about precisely whether it was 4 million or 5.2 million as established by Nuremberg etc is not a myth, nor even a creditable debate topic. I see no necessary connection between the matter of numbers and anyone saying it was a unique historical event.

Certainly I dont see any way in which you could get jailed for saying that the holocaust was not a uniquely terrible historic event. Attempts at genocide happen all over the place every century.

 

"History is the propaganda of the victors.'' - Ernst Toller, German poet and dramatist (1893-1939).

 

What are you talking about?
The word has a long history far outdating WII.
Do you often speak authoritatively on subjects you obviously are unaware of the answer?

 

Take a look at the Politics forum here.
Listen to "pundits" on the "news".
If we can't even agree on an objective view of the present, what makes you think a view of the past would be MORE accurate and truthful?

 

Thank You. You have proved out my point. So we have it, History is subjective!

However the true events of history in their purest form are clearly objective, maybe man is just not able to be objective? It is not within his nature?

 

I am not exactly sure what you mean by subjective versus objective in regard to historical events. Are you certain an historical event does not become subjective purely through being recorded as a result of human thought-processes? Would it not cease to be objective however unbiased the historian? Deciding the time-frame and place-frame of what constituted an event would itself be subjective.

I am not even certain that an event "in its purest form" can be considered objective. An object has object-ive properties - such as mass, density and temperature. An event would have event-ive properties - but what would they be?

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Do you make a distinction between (on the one hand) objective-versus-subjective and (on the other) accurate-versus-inaccurate? I feel that a maximum of intellectual rigor is required here!

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The Holocaust is a very subjective topic. There are so many variances to it that it's unclear what really happened given all of the propoganda surrounding it. There are several who are profiteering politically and financially from the event(s). It's a concept that is now so widely dispersed that very little reverence is given to Holocaust.

Eastern Europe is erasing the events surrounding WW2 and the barbarism handed out by Stalin/Hitler. Their intent is to provide its people fresh confidence in themself and to not be somehow ashamed of what they are not responsible for. It would be a shame if the 'exploiters' tried to link the Holocaust with the war attrocities committed against the Eastern bloc residents as there is no association to begin with. There will probably be an attempt in order to try and subject weak minded people into sympathy for further financial/political gain.