Why do we always hear six million for the Holocaust?

flaja wrote:

nimh wrote:
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum applies the term Holocaust when describing Romani victims as well:

Then why do the Gypsies have a separate term for what the Germans did to them?

The Roma and others who commemorate or study the Roma Holocaust use both the term Porrajmos and the term Holocaust -- just like others use both Shoah and Holocaust to describe the Nazi genocide of Jews. The term Holocaust is used by all because there are simply a great many people who know not of Shoah or Porrajmos. Much in the way like there are still a great many people who call the Roma, Sinti etc "Gypsies". It's a fact of life that people work with to be understood.

Meanwhile, my posts above addressed a range of points and questions you had made and asked earlier. You have only responded to this one point. Would you care addressing any of the others?

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nimh wrote:

The Roma and others who commemorate or study the Roma Holocaust use both the term Porrajmos and the term Holocaust -- just like others use both Shoah and Holocaust to describe the Nazi genocide of Jews. The term Holocaust is used by all because there are simply a great many people who know not of Shoah or Porrajmos. Much in the way like there are still a great many people who call the Roma, Sinti etc "Gypsies". It's a fact of life that people work with to be understood.

I have a background in history (40 credit hours of college courses to go with my bachelor's degree in biology), so I likely know more about the Holocaust than most people do. Since the time at which I first learned of what the Germans did during WWII I have heard the term Holocaust applied only to the Jews. The fact that groups like the Gypsies have a term for what happened to them shows that using the term Holocaust exclusively for what happened to the Jews is perfectly acceptable.

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Meanwhile, my posts above addressed a range of points and questions you had made and asked earlier. You have only responded to this one point. Would you care addressing any of the others?

Using a generic term for what Germany did when the victims came from such disparate groups is a disservice to each group because it lessens the emphasis on each group. Germany didn't have generic victims and we must not treat them as such. I don't want to loose sight of this fact by getting off on a tangent or lost in too many details.

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flaja wrote:

Since the time at which I first learned of what the Germans did during WWII I have heard the term Holocaust applied only to the Jews.

Up until you entered this thread, right? Because thanks to this thread, you should now know that many people, academics and organisations, up to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, do often apply the term Holocaust to the genocide against the Roma too. You've been shown links, quotes and references.

For sure, the question is not wholly without controversy or differences of opinion (as can be seen even on that Holocaust museum website), but the usage is nevertheless very general, in academic research as well as in common parlance and in commemorations.

There were some other things you mentioned earlier "not being aware of", too, that this thread might have helped with as well. You'll have learnt that yes, the deportation of Gypsies/Roma to concentration camps and ghettos "was a general thing", as was their mass murder there, including in gas chambers; and yes, the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior", and singled them out "for racial persecution and annihilation" on that basis as well. Some interesting and arresting descriptions and sources have been posted or linked here.

flaja wrote:

I have a background in history (40 credit hours of college courses to go with my bachelor's degree in biology), so I likely know more about the Holocaust than most people do.

40 credit hours of college makes for knowing "more about the Holocaust than most people do"? Good lord, I hope not. I hope most people know more about the Holocaust than is included in a 40-hour curriculum of history.. but who knows?

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nimh wrote:

Up until you entered this thread, right? Because thanks to this thread, you should now know that many people, academics and organisations, up to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, do often apply the term Holocaust to the genocide against the Roma too. You've been shown links, quotes and references.

Popular culture and historical fact don't always coincide. Personally I wouldn't use the term Holocaust for anyone but the Jews out of respect for the Jews.

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the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior",

That's a given since if you were not German you were racially inferior by German standards. But the Germans did not persecute the Gypsies solely for this reason.

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40 credit hours of college makes for knowing "more about the Holocaust than most people do"? Good lord, I hope not.

It shows the extent to which I have studied history in general so yes, I do likely know more about the Holocaust than someone who hasn't formally studied history does. My college work also shows that I likely have a better ability to analyze historical evidence and controversies than a layman does.

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flaja wrote:

nimh wrote:
Up until you entered this thread, right? Because thanks to this thread, you should now know that many people, academics and organisations, up to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, do often apply the term Holocaust to the genocide against the Roma too. You've been shown links, quotes and references.

Popular culture and historical fact don't always coincide.

What I wrote is that "many people, academics and organisations, ... often apply the term Holocaust to the genocide against the Roma too". Academics - not just "popular culture".

We've shown you specific instances of where academic researchers did so. I even referred you to a link that has hundreds, if not thousands of instances where websites of US universities apply the term Holocaust to describe the extermination of the Roma as well. Just browse through many of the results on the first page or two of these 29,000 hits on sites of US universities for <roma holocaust>.

flaja wrote:

But the Germans did not persecute the Gypsies solely for this reason.

The Germans did specifically single out the Roma/Gypsies for persecution because of how they were considered "racially inferior". You have, in fact, been shown links and quotes from different reputable sites and publications, varying from historical research to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, saying so in this very thread.

flaja wrote:

yes, I do likely know more about the Holocaust than someone who hasn't formally studied history does.

However, you happen to be in the company here of a number of people who have studied history a lot longer than you - for example, IIRC Dagmaraka is doing her PhD at Harvard on historical memory, I have a MA in East European History, bla bla et cetera. None of that is particularly relevant - we all come here with things we know a lot about, things we know some stuff about, and things we dont know much about at all. We come here to learn - at least, that's the general idea.

But you come here stating the things that you are "not aware of", are helpfully shown an array of links, maps and texts from both historians and organisations commemorating the Holocaust that inform you about them -- and yet you then end up flatly re-stating this stuff? That the Roma were not persecuted specifically for racial reasons, that "historical fact" precludes ever using the term Holocaust for the Nazi's systematic slaughter of the Roma? Come on. Ignorance is no shame, we're all ignorant of many things, but wilful ignorance is. Look up, read up, click those links, learn. And if you find interesting sources that do bolster your arguments, by all means, bring them back here.

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Habibi, i just wanted to drop by and tell you how much i've been enjoying your recent posts in this thread.

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Indead!

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Who is habibi?

Yes, really good references in this thread. However, my personal view is that people were killed and mistreated by the Nazis. They were people, were they Jew, Roma, or any other race. What does the term holocaust matter to whom it applies? They were all killed.

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nimh = no-it's-me-habibi

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Set, Walter - thank you very much Smile

Cello - fair enough..

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Thirding (?) Set and Walter's comments on Nimh's work in this thread.

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@Foofie,

You are wrong.Many non-Jews forced into slave labor by the Nazis have filed lawsuits against German firms for damages and unpaid wages.You can find details of these lawsuits on the Internet under "Nazi Slave labor".
Many of the non-Jews who were exterminated were political prisoners with no single group identity.

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@cello,

Hearst Jewish ??????????????????ROTFL! William Randolph Hearst was a supporter of Hitler and the Nazis.He at one time controlled most of the newspapers in the USA, but, after 1950, he was no longer prominent in the industry.

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The loss of nimh's contribution to this site is a tragedy. His legacy will endure.

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@cello,

William Randolph Hearst supported Hitler and the Nazis.Does that sound like a Jew to you?

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Because when people say Holocaust they refer to specifically Jews.

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@JoeBruno,

JoeBruno wrote:

You are wrong.Many non-Jews forced into slave labor by the Nazis have filed lawsuits against German firms for damages and unpaid wages.You can find details of these lawsuits on the Internet under "Nazi Slave labor".
Many of the non-Jews who were exterminated were political prisoners with no single group identity.

My point was that in "popular usage" the term Holocaust correlates to only six million Jews. While there was close to double that that died at the hands of the Nazis and their slave labor camps. So, why do so few non-Jews not want to correct the referencing to Holocaust as correlating to a number more like eleven, or more, lives lost?

While we know Jews are vocal about their victimization in the Holocaust, why are the relatives of the other millions not as vocal? I suspect it is a quality that few groups have, of being willing to admit that they were victims. Many groups, in my opinion, like to forget quickly, so it can be perceived that they were not victims, since to be a victim means that another group had little value for one's own group. People like to be thought of as likable.

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@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

While there was close to double that that died at the hands of the Nazis and their slave labor camps. So, why do so few non-Jews not want to correct the referencing to Holocaust as correlating to a number more like eleven, or more, lives lost?

Well, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, the US Holocaus Museum et. al. about 9 million Jews (the quoted number is: 8,861,800 Jews) lived in what was Germany or occupied by Germany for some time (that number includes the Jews living in those territories of e.g. Russia and Ukraine, which weren't occupied)

You got your numbers from where?

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Foofie wrote:
While there was close to double that that died at the hands of the Nazis and their slave labor camps. So, why do so few non-Jews not want to correct the referencing to Holocaust as correlating to a number more like eleven, or more, lives lost?

Well, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, the US Holocaus Museum et. al. about 9 million Jews (the quoted number is: 8,861,800 Jews) lived in what was Germany or occupied by Germany for some time (that number includes the Jews living in those territories of e.g. Russia and Ukraine, which weren't occupied)

You got your numbers from where?

There were Jews that survived WWII that lived in the Soviet Union. The number of Jews that died during WWII is six million. That includes two million Soviet Jews that are also counted in the 20 or so million that are counted as Soviet dead from WWII.

Must we trifle about Jews. The point is that many non-Jews died in the Holocaust, but they are not as vocal as Jews and their six million lost, so many people think that few non-Jews were victims of the Nazi slave labor camps.

Jews tend to refer to the Jewish part of the Holocaust as the Shoa. That should allow non-Jews to add their losses to the "Holocaust," without usurping any part of the Shoa.

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@Foofie,

Thanks for your response.

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Why do we always hear six million for the Holocaust?

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