Walter Hinteler wrote:pachelbel wrote:Some people on this thread are bothered that I'm using the word Holocaust to describe what the Irish went through. What does that tell you? They seem comfortable using the word 'famine', but holocaust seems reserved for a certain race.
As for school - you cannot remember anything about the Irish Famine/Holocaust? But you have no problem remembering the Jewish Holocaust? That is because it was presented over and over again. .
a) There are certain terms, (professional) use to name a special event, time, period, fact. Like Holocaust.
You are free to call it different and/or use such a term for various others - but then you must accept the response.
b) I wrote above that I remembered the Irish Famine (actually, there were two). I remember other similar events - if happened before 1969, when I left school, as well being a topic in classes.
c) The Holocaust can't be presented often enough.
We see the results ...
The word Holocaust is used in many articles that I found in a short investigation on the net: irishholocaust.org, noraid.com, catholicatplogetics.net, members.tripod.com, irelandsown.net, amazon.com (Elizabeth I and the
first Irish Holocaust -referring to Cromwell), Irish Holocaust and artbabyart.com;
There was more than one Irish Holocaust for those who know a bit of Irish history.
The Irish Genocide
Author Thomas Gallagher sets the scene for this unspeakable tragedy in his moving testament to the Irish dead, Paddy's Lament: "A famine unprecedented in the history of the world, a chapter in human misery to harrow the human heart was about to start, and even little children could see its quick, sure approach in the nakedly fearful eyes and faces of their parents."[19]
By the mid-19th century, Ireland was a country of eight million, mostly peasants. As a result of years of exploitation, they survived as tenant farmers and were never far from economic disaster. They were forced to exist on a single crop: the potato. A disease turned the potato into a foul slime. When the Irish masses turned to the British government for relief, they received the back of London's hand.
Meanwhile, "Food, from 30 to 50 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint (from Ireland) by 12,000 British constables, reinforced by 200,000 British soldiers, warships, excise vessels, and coast guards... Britain seized from Ireland's producers tens of millions of head of livestock, tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products-enough to sustain 18-million persons."[20]
Gallagher estimates two million died from the famine. Writer Chris
Fogarty, however, places the numbers "murdered at approximately 5.16 million... making it the Irish holocaust."[21] Distinguished legal scholars, like Professors Charles Rice of Notre Dame U. and Francis A. Boyle, U. of Illinois, believe that under International Law, that the British pursued a barbarous policy of mass starvation in Ireland from 1845-50, and that
such conduct constituted "genocide."[22]
************
Anyone wish to argue the facts that the Irish did not have a Holocaust? 5.16 million is quite a lot of people for history to not know about.
Does that include the Irish murdered by Cromwell?
