Talk:The Holocaust/Archive 25

Romani Term?
I can't remember what the word was but I think "the consuming" is the term used by Romanis when referring to The Holocaust. --Arima (talk) 23:27, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Porajmos Paul B (talk) 11:25, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

False Reference (please change it)
Yad Vashem does not claim that 600,000 Serbs died in Jasenovac. The reference you are using mentions "many thousands" but not 600,000 http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206358.pdf. Please change it. Serbs also collaborated with Nazis, if that counts. MarinaJovljak (talk) 01:51, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * OK. I've checked on this. Yadvashem reports "over 500000" Serb deaths at the hands of the Ustasa, but does not say they occurred at Jasenovac. It seems to be an overall number. Paul B (talk) 11:25, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Official numbers ?
Are these figures accurate / in the vicinity at all / confirmed by anyone / still the official numbers? (from) The figures below are from the Nazi records which were turned over to the Red Cross by the Soviet Union after the fall of Communism. They were published in a book written by Danuta Czech. Male prisoners in Auschwitz III Monowitz (Buna-Werke) 10,223 Golleschau 1,008 Jawischowitz (Jawiszowice) 1,988 Eintrachthutte (Swietochlowice) 1,297 Neu-Dachs (Jaworzno) 3,664 Blechhammer (Blachownia) 3,958 Furstengrube (Wesola) 1,283 Gute Hoffnung (Janinagrube, Libiaz) 853 Guntergrube (Ledziny) 586 Brunn (Brno) 36 Gleiwitz I 1,336 Gleiwitz II 740 Gleiwitz III 609 Gleiwitz IV 444 Laurahutte (Siemianowice) 937 Sosnowitz 863 Bobrek 213 Trzebinia 641 Althammer (Stara Kuznia) 486 Tschechowitz-Dzieditz 561 Charlottengrube (Rydultowy) 833 Hindenburg (Zabrze) 70 Bismarckhutte (Hajduki) 192 Hubertushutte (Lagiewniki) 202 Subtotal 33,023 Total for Auschwitz III : 35,118 Nunamiut (talk) 12:24, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.scrapbookpages.com/auschwitzscrapbook/history/Articles/Monowitz.html


 * On the same website http://www.scrapbookpages.com/auschwitzscrapbook/history/Articles/DeathStatistics.html the higher estimates are mentioned.  I think that the figures you list are estimates from those who were originally registered for work.  It says on the link I post here that those who were killed on arrival were never registered in any book.  Epa101 (talk) 16:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * These numbers are just for Monowitz; I'm not sure what the relevance is. --jpgordon:==( o ) 17:31, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes
This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Pending changes/Queue  are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:20, 17 June 2010 (UTC).

Other articles in disagreement
World War II casualties holds to the notion that the Holocaust was not perpetrated against non-Jews, in stark contrast with this article (at least, this article makes mention of non-Jewish deaths in the header, then goes on to count non-Jewish deaths again later). Even the footnotes for the non-Jewish figures are given at the lowest possible estimates. I don't think non-Jews killed in the holocaust are even counted among the total killed in World War II in that article (which I have a rather strong opinion about). I think these two articles, being in close relation, need to come into harmony. Its very sloppy to see two pages on the same encyclopedia give extremely varied takes on the same subject. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 14:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This is not so, the user apparently did not read World War II casualties Holocaust Victims- The non-Jewish victims of the Nazis have a section detailing the losses. There is more to the article than the main table--Woogie10w (talk) 17:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I mentioned the notes. Those counted in the notes, where do they figure into the other tolls? Are they listed with civilian dead, or are they show in those tolls at all? Also, you didn't address where I mentioned that there is no room for variables in your death toll (I see no evidence that you read my post above at all). Why are you so defensive about others taking a look at your article? It seems you've had plenty of time with it over the past few years. IronMaidenRocks (talk) 20:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)--


 * Again, I ask that you read World War II casualties Holocaust Victims. The information is there.--Woogie10w (talk) 21:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Again, I read the notes. But that article does not conform to this article, nor does it follow the standards set by other related articles, such as the Porajmos article. It is obvious that some do not want anyone besides Jews being counted in these tallies, but it is only that minority viewpoint which is leading to this confusion. Again, I say that it is logically and encyclopedically incorrect not to include non-Jews in the tally, simply because the word (which is now used as a blanket term that refers to all Nazi genocide and mass murder) is of Jewish origin and originally referred to genocide upon Jews. We must either follow what this article is currently doing, or make a master article that is about general Nazi genocide and mass murder; linking concepts like The Holocaust and Porajmos to it. Then we can change your tallies respectively. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 03:42, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

some effort was made to evacuate Jews, and about a million succeeded in escaping further east.
"Despite the chaos of the Soviet retreat, some effort was made to evacuate Jews, and about a million succeeded in escaping further east."

This sounds very intersting, but at the same time, very unsoviet. It has been tagged as unsourced for about a year. Has anyone ever heard of anything to this effect before. If not I'm probably going to remove it. - Schrandit (talk) 06:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It has been a week, let me know if anyone finds any source to bring it back. - Schrandit (talk) 02:11, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

>>According to general estimates based on overall Soviet evacuation statistics, 800,000 to 900,000 Jews fled from Ukraine during the massive Soviet evacuation to the east.<< From http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/pages/H/O/Holocaust.htm And >>Rebecca Manley does a fine job of telling the tale of how [Soviet authorities] evacuated millions of people as the Germans advanced in 1941 and 1942 .<< http://newbooksinhistory.com/?cat=346 And >>In at least one place [in Soviet occupied Estonia] — Viliandi — the authorities actually encouraged the Jews to flee. Alfrida Pick, a veteran Communist who headed the local municipality, "personally went to all the Jews to persuade them to leave,"and as a result at least half of the Jews left for Russia, including old people who previously had not intended to leave.<< p 282 http://eja.pri.ee/Community/Dov%20Levin.pdf

No question in my mind that a million plus  Jews did escape East from Ukraine, Belarus etc -- along with millions of Gentiles. The question for me is whether Jews were significantly favored because they were seen by Soviet officials as being in more danger. I doubt it. But certainly Jews were often more motivated to flee than Gentiles and probably because of their concentration in valued professions were more likely to be favored with tickets on trains etc.

AND I am puzzled by the statement at the end of first paragraph, "Death Squads" section:

>>The Soviet territories occupied by early 1942, including all of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Moldova and most Russian territory west of the line Leningrad-Moscow-Rostov, contained about three million Jews, including hundreds of thousands who had fled Poland in 1939. The remaining three million were left at the mercy of the Nazis.<<  Kits2 (talk) 04:10, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I suggest >The Soviet territories occupied by German forces in early 1942 had contained in June 1941 about three million Jews. Perhaps a million escaped East in the general semi-organized Soviet retreat, leaving circa two million Jews on the former Soviet territory in Nazi hands.Kits2 (talk) 04:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that is confusing, any idea where we could get solid numbers? Also, "German" forces could be confusing for the areas occupied by Romanians, Finns, Italians, Hungarians, Slovakians and Croatians.  Maybe "Axis" forces? - Schrandit (talk) 13:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The idea that solid numbers exist or can be deduced is a misconception. To illustrate the point a Russian historian estimates that the figure of 25 million for total Soviet death as a consequence of World War II could be off by 5 million. (Braithwaite, Moscow 1942, p 309.   1941 was real chaotic on the Eastern front.  And the areas occupied by the Germans in the first month of the war generally had not been Soviet in 1939 -- the Soviet Union of June 22 1941 included something like 20 million Soviets (10% of the population) who were not Soviet on 15 Sept 1939 but Polish, Rumanian etc (see Table 4 http://www.freewebs.com/oshistory/baltic/resettlement/resettlement.htm )    Wikipedia should acknowledge that reliable figures do NOT exist and use words like "about" and "circa"

And I take the point above re "German". But I think "Axis" does not effectively convey that the forces were overwhelmingly German --- how about "Soviet territories occupied by Germany and her allies" Kits2 (talk) 05:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think something like that would do. I can see how "Axis" would include Japan and could give the impression of an equal partnership between those allies. - Schrandit (talk) 14:57, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Albania -- I am proposing an additional couple of sentences plus footnote in section 4.1 Jews
Following the sentence: "Countries with notably lower proportions of deaths include Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy, and Norway." [now at the end of a paragraph] I suggest:

>>Albania was only country occupied by the Nazis that had a significantly larger Jewish population in 1945 than in 1939. About two hundred native Jews and over a thousand refugees were provided with false documents, hidden when necessary, and generally treated as honored guests in a country whose population was roughly 60% Muslim.<<

And a footnote: >>Shoah Research Center;– Albania http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205725.pdf The Jews of Albania during the Zogist and Second World War Periods: http://www.heimat.de/home/illyria/i.php3?s=e&p=2004_01_09_fisher_jews_in_albania   and see  also Norman H. Gershman's book Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II -- for reviews etc http://www.amazon.com/Besa-Muslims-Saved-Jews-World/dp/0815609345 (all consulted 24 June 2010)<<

Objections ?? Improvements ?? Kits2 (talk) 20:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Germany and Austria 90%
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005469 - many German Jews were expelled before the war, so maybe two numbers should be given - the 90% (1939) and less than 50% (1933). German Wikipedia quotes three sources (numbers, no %) for European countries, Wolfgang Benz (2/1996) Enzyklopädie des Holocaust (4/2002) Burkhard Asmuss (1/2002). Dawidowicz's book is old (1986). Xx236 (talk) 08:06, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The Dawidowicz's number suggest that the fate of German Jews was the same like of the Ostjuden. It's not true, the majority of German Jews emigrated before the Holocaust.Xx236 (talk) 06:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

German holokaust crimes against Soviet Jews
Could someone with more knowledge of this topic please take a look at German holokaust crimes against Soviet Jews and see if there is any information that can be used and guide the new editor in his approach to those sensible topics? Regards  So Why  12:45, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The contents of that article were duplicated as a new section in this main article, which I've removed. The problems were:
 * I felt a long list of separate mass murders didn't improve this (already huge) article.
 * Some of the information was already included or linked (Babi Yar), and an overview of this topic is already present in the 'Death squads (1941–1943)' section.
 * It's a list, without indication of inclusion criteria or completeness.
 * It was largely unsourced, and the four sources used were hard to evaluate for reliability since they were not in English (3 Russian, 1 German language). This doesn't necessarily disqualify sources, but there must be English-language RSs we can use.
 * Numerous grammar and format issues.


 * I've also moved the other article (to German Holocaust crimes against Soviet Jews), fixed the grammar, and tagged (for prose-ifying and citations), but I still don't think it should be copied as a section here. Some of the information may be helpful to improve this article, but it should be as connected prose rather than a list, IMHO. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  12:14, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

No mention of Holocaust denial
There is no mention of the Jewish Holocaust denial theories that are based on contradicting but cited facts. At the very least it should have a link to the Holocaust Denial page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.103.34 (talk) 19:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

5 Uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust
There is a debate which exists which seeks to show that the mass murder of 6,000,000 Jews within their Holocaust was not unique. I don't think you can get any more unique than what the term implies and what the action of history now seeks to unravel. What was composed of a mass destruction, is a uniquely horrendous act of 'genocide', perpetrated by many against a largely Jewish contingent of victims. While it is true that not all victimes were Jews, all Jews were victims. see Elie Wiesel for such truth's. Patrick Dempsey.


 * "...it is true that not all victimes were Jews..." Your statement contradicts your argument. You don't want anyone but Jews counted as holocaust victims, and yet you admit not all holocaust victims were Jews... On another note, please stop lining your posts with equals signs. Please sign your posts with --~ . Thank you. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 04:50, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Why does this section exist, it seems to have no context and no real point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.35.57 (talk) 01:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about?--Ojos de Lince (talk) 14:18, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

There is a book on the subject Is the Holocaust Unique?, but that already has an article. I don't think the debate exists much outside that book. I'll just put a link to that at the end. Epa101 (talk) 15:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The Holocaust, by definition, cannot only apply to the planned killing of all Jews in WWII. The Holocaust included Poles, Russians and Gypsies/Romani among others including "undesirable" Germans. What happened a few years ago in Ruwanda/Burundi was clearly also a Holcaust as was the slaughter of Armenians by the Turks. Certainly the Jews suffred a tremendous amount and were very much target but to ignore others within the term of Holcaust is simply denying an, unfortunate, label to other victims. Perhaps the term should be WWII Holocaust. Also remember that 6 million Poles were killed, of which 3 million happened to be of the Jewish faith.Just some thoughts.

Nazis worked hand in hand with Zionists to relocate German Jews to Palestine
Why is relocation of Jews to Palestine only mentioned once, in passing? The truth is that the Nazis supported the Zionist proposals to relocate German Jews to Palestine, and actually cooperated closely with them in many cases. The Nazis didn't aid in sending Jews to other lands - however, they expressly aided them to go to Palestine, tens of thousands of German Jews, and millions of dollars worth of German equipment and cash. This is well documented in other Wikipedia articles, such as the Haavara Agreement, and the information about the Stern Gang, and Aliyah Bet (only a few examples of many). The refugee ships coming to Palestine were coming from Nazi controlled areas - i.e. the Nazis were assisting them on their voyage to Palestine. The article about the Mefkura ship of 1944 from Romania states that "The German navy (i.e. Nazi navy) provided them with escort and signal flags to facilitate their departure from the harbour and the mined area around it." All this needs to be mentioned in this Holocaust article. The Nazis would have been happy if Europe's Jews had all left to go to Palestine, and only resorted to the Holocaust methods later, during the desperation of war. After all, the British were not permitting the Jews to settle in Palestine, and the ships that were sent out from Nazi Germany (under the auspices of the Nazis), were turned around by Britain and the U.S. and sent back to Nazi Germany. The factor that the Nazis were encouraging and supporting Jews to go specifically to Palestine should be clearly portrayed in this Holocaust article, and is well documented (as is seen in the articles referred to above).Jimhoward72 (talk) 11:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * First, the article is about the Holocaust and what you're describing doesn't sound like part of the Holocaust to me, just a minor event that led up to it, which is how it's treated in the article. Second, do you have a source for any of this? I mean without resorting to anything completely absurd like the IHR. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 12:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, if this article is about the Holocaust, then it should mention Palestine with the proper importance, instead of like this, only once:
 * Areas considered for possible resettlement included British Palestine,[65] Italian Abyssinia,[65] British Guinea,[66] British Rhodesia,[66] French Madagascar,[65] and Australia.[67]
 * I already gave my sources, they are in the articles I referred to: Haavara Agreement, Stern Gang, etc, and in the notes and references there. If Palestine as a Nazi solution is going to be mentioned in this article, it should be given the proper importance with respect the the Haavara Agreement. Your questioning the sources indicates that you, as well as apparently others, are apparently unaware of or ignoring substantial portions of the development of the Holocaust.  Killing the Jews wasn't the Nazis first idea.  Their original major project was removing the Jews, and their greatest practical success was in them going to Palestine. Sources? Click here --> Haavara Agreement Jimhoward72 (talk) 13:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The Mefukar's departure in August 1944 was facilitated by the Nazi navy in the sense that they did not want the ship blown up by one of their own mines BUT this was in a context of not wanting to irritate the Rumanian government who had agreed to the departure or the Turkish government, the ship was carrying a Turkish flag -- and in the context of a war that the Nazis were clearly loosing and thus the Nazis were increasingly anxious to keep their friends friendly and neutrals neutral. And the Germans had tried to prevent the issuance of exit visas and the ships being refitted. http://books.google.ca/books?id=vpjLBrFvtbsC&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=Mefkura&source=bl&ots=jrD47ABOVD&sig=39w-KmoVEQ3ZIpzysLv05HERuhU&hl=en&ei=YH0pTLevCtnsnQfDjdCaAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Mefkura&f=false

And the mass killing of the Holocaust began circa July 1941 but the Haavara agreement effectively ended once Britain was at war with Germany in September 1939. Certainly the Nazi's were interested in seeing Jews leave territory they controlled until perhaps 1940, but not just to Palestine. (The Danish Jewish exodus to Sweden of 1943 was arguably facilitated by German Nazis, e.g. the German navy pulled its patrol boats into Danish harbours for 'repairs'. See http://diemperdidi.info/nordicnotes/vol03/articles/lopresto.html )

Re: >>The Nazis would have been happy [in mid 1939] if Europe's Jews had all left to go to Palestine, and only resorted to the Holocaust methods later, during the desperation of war.<<  That sentence from the first paragraph of this section -- without the disgusting Nazi apologist/ excusing phrase "desperation of" might be true for Hitler pre September 1939. The Holocaust article, however, is primarily about the Nazi actions of mass murder  (directed overwhelmingly against Jews who were not in Nazi controlled territory in mid 1939)  and is not concerned with the frame of mind of the mass murderers well before mass murder commenced. (For the record: Jews were certainly murdered by Nazis in 1938, think Kristalnacht and its aftermath.) Kits2 (talk) 06:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The main problem, in my eyes (which you didn't address), is that this article (under "Resettlement and deportation to colonies and reservations"), mentions a list of options considered by the Nazis, including both Madagascar and British Palestine. Whereas the Madagascar option (which was never implemented), is discussed in some detail, the Palestine option (which was actually implemented with fairly outstanding results), is not mentioned at all.  This seems simply bizarre that it was completely ignored in the very section that discusses these options.Jimhoward72 (talk) 06:55, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

In my view, plans for forced resettlement of roughly post September 1939 have a very different quality than the pre Sept 1939 Haavarah emigration. In my view, the Haavarah agreement should be discussed in section 3.2 "Legal repression and emigration" and not in 3.7 "Resettlement and deportation to colonies ..." (but it could be referenced in passing in that section.)

And the section in 3.2 dealing with emigration needs to be rewitten -- its real thin, mentions some well known names but gives no sense that most German Jews did get out, and survived the war. The Holocaust Encylopedia >http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005468< does a good job with the history and their nine paragraphs could perhaps be condensed to three with a short paragraph on the Haavarah agreement.

The article should make clear that 1) in general until late 1941 Nazis were happy to see Jews emigrate -- per web site just mentioned: >Until October 1941, German policy officially encouraged Jewish emigration<, that 2) finding a country to immigrate to was difficult in part because Jewish property generally could not be taken from Germany. And 3) Jews emigrating to Palestine could transfer a large part of their property to Palestine because of the Haavarah agreement and thus propertied German Jews could easily procure 'capitalist' immigration visas to British controlled Palestine. (A book review dealing with the Haavarah agreement http://www.anthonyflood.com/murraythirdreichpalestine.htm ) Kits2 (talk) 11:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. It seems that there is so much effort for Nazi-Zionist cooperation in sending Jews specifically to Palestine, that it deserves a prominent place. Even Reinhard Heydrich originally supported and set up offices to have German Jews transferred to Palestine, and apparently said "Als Nationalsozialist bin ich auch Zionist" ("as a Nazi, I'm also a Zionist") (although I've searched google and cannot find a source for this quote, although it's mentioned in this (BBC?) documentary of Heydrich: Heydrich "I am a Zionist", at 5:30. Hitler continually supported the German Jews to Palestine program, too.  There is a wealth of information on this, it should be somehow prominently mentioned (instead of drifting to the periphery, for whatever strange reason), as well as emigration being the original solution of the Nazis before they were confronted with the logistical problems of the war, combined with the growing difficulties, apparently, of putting Jews on ships and having them successfully arrive to and remain in Palestine (coupled with the refusal of other countries to accept boatloads of Jewish immigrants).Jimhoward72 (talk) 20:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Terms
In the article's introduction, it refers to the Holocaust as genocide. "In the original definitions of the term Genocide by lawyer Rafael Lemkin (1943) there is an interesting contradiction: on the one hand, Lemkin defines Genocide as the "extermination" of a people; but on the other hand, he goes into great detail describing the selective mass murder of leadership by the perpetrators, the destruction of religious life, the appropriation by the perpetrators, the destruction of religious life, the appropriation by the perpetrators of economic advantage, and the moral corruption of the victims. Obviously, is people are murdered, they cannot be victimized by moral corruption.  Lemkin's definitions were in essence, and with some amendations, taken over by the United Nations in its Genocide Convention of 1948, which has been signed by most countries of the world.  What is suggested here is that of the two definitions offered by Lemkin, the second is what is here called Genocide, and the first, the total "extermination," is Holocaust. Obviously, they are closely interralated." - Yehuda Bauer (Leading Authority on Holocaust History) from: A History of the Holocaust (Revised Edition): Bauer, Yehuda, and Nili Keren. "Holocaust and Genocide - Is There a Difference?" A History of the    Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 2001. 363-364. Print.

I propose that the article be changed from "the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany." to, "the state-sponsored, systematic murder of approximately six million European Jews during World War II by Nazi Germany." Silencedeafensme (talk) 16:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)Silencedeafensme

The Nazis and the Black Holocaust-worth a mention in this article
The Nazis and the Black Holocaust When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1932, the racist policies of the Nazis impacted other groups besides the Jews. The Nazis' racial purity laws also targeted gypsies (Roma), homosexuals, the mentally challenged, and blacks. Precisely how many Afro-Germans died in Nazi concentration camps is not known, but estimates put the figure at between 25,000 and 50,000.

http://german.about.com/od/culture/a/blackhistger_2.htm 68.245.137.36 (talk) 21:18, 11 July 2010 (UTC)


 * People were not sent to concentration camps for being black. I've no idea where this figure comes from. Paul B (talk) 15:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe a quote from Hitler (or possibly someone else) said something that the Germans were the Master Race, meaning there were many inferiors races, including Negroes, but 'worst of all are the Jews' or something. Unfortuantly I have no sources of the quote, and I'm writing those bits down from memory. I don't think being black would get you into a concentration camp, though. But I don't think Hitler was exactly Mr. Racial Equality. Harry Blue5 (talk) 10:57, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course he thought black Africans were racially inferior. So did a rather lot of people in the USA at the time, and elsewhere. Under Nazi law, restrictions on employment and on sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans applied to blacks as well as Jews, but that's racial discrimination, not a holocaust. Paul B (talk) 09:33, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Claretindale, 8 August 2010
editsemiprotected

Please change the following second paragraph under the heading "Extermination Camps" From 'Extermination camps are frequently confused with concentration camps such as Dachau and Belsen, which were mostly located in Germany and intended as places of incarceration and forced labor for a variety of enemies of the Nazi regime (such as Communists and gays).' to 'Extermination camps are frequently confused with concentration camps such as Dachau and Belsen, which were mostly located in Germany and intended as places of incarceration and forced labor for a variety of enemies of the Nazi regime (such as Communists and homosexuals). Due to the fact that 'gays' sounds colloquial and slang like therefore is not really appropriate in this article given the context. Thanks Claretindale (talk) 13:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done. Salvio  Let's talk 'bout it! 14:01, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

"Some" scholars
The article states that "some" scholars feel that "The Holocaust" should apply to all of those murdered by the nazis, and not just the Jews. It then lists one book, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. That the term should apply to those other than Jews is not a mainstream belief, at least in this day and age. Therefore, the article should quote the specific book, and or authors on this, rather than use the term "some", which seems to at least brush against "avoid weasel words." 2tuntony (talk) 16:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The Columbia guide is a compendium of many other works, and at one point, we did cite the scholars, by name, who had a larger definition. Check out the talk archives for the many debates and discussions which led to the current paragraphs. Ronabop (talk) 19:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Gun control

 * On this subject, Hitler stated: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so." 

This quotation is copied all across the Internet, with an identical translation and citation. For that reason, I doubt that whoever added it here saw the actual source, and they probably got it from some gun control-related website instead. If we can't find the original source we should remove it. It's more about gun control than about the subject of this article.  Will Beback   talk    04:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Never mind. It was added by the sock of a banned user, so I've deleted it.   Will Beback    talk    05:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I know people have just discussed this, but the truth is that the Nazis specifically made it illegal for Jews to own weapons, and the material that was just deleted does have valid references for it: 1938 German Weapons Act; Halbrook, Stephen P. (2000) "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews." Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol 17. No. 3. p.528. Also, the book mentioned above by "Dr. Henry Picker" is a valid book, and the quote is probably valid (look in google). The question is, is it important enough to mention in passing that the 1938 German weapons act banned Jews from owning or manufacturing weapons?  At least, take a look at 1938 German Weapons Act before deciding. There is also a Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons mentioned there.Jimhoward72 (talk) 20:32, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I just added short sentence mentioning the gun laws, which seemed to be one of the outcomes of Kristallnacht.Jimhoward72 (talk) 20:57, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Emigration material is not in chronological order, needs to be relocated
Most of the material (not all) under Resettlement and deportation to colonies and reservations, actually belongs together with Legal repression and emigration. It is completely out of place chronologically where it is now. I'm going to move it, if no one minds.Jimhoward72 (talk) 21:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The original meaning of Holocaust is not destruction. It's 'burnt offering' or 'sacrifice by fire'. Any etymology dictionary will say so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.86.121.87 (talk) 12:40, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * That's also what the article says. Paul B (talk) 14:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Escapes, publication of news of the death camps (April–June 1944)
I'm not sure if this note is necessary, but, given the sensitive nature of the subject, I'd rather be safe than sorry. Under the section of the news of the death camps, there was a line reading: "In 1943, the news about gassing Jews was broadcast from London to The Netherlands." An entry in Anne Frank's diary, however, dated 9 October 1942, refers to English radio broadcasts about the gassing. So, I have added this in a few paragraphs above (in order to fit with the chronological ordering), given the reference to the Dutch edition (2008) of the diary, quoted the relevant sentence (and my English translation of it), and removed the sentence referring to 1943. I have then re-written the "It" at the start of the next sentence as "News of the gassings", because that appears to have been the intention. If someone would prefer to give a published English translation of the sentence, that is fine, but the original Dutch should remain, so that there is no mistake about the specific wording used by Anne Frank.

Please also note that, on this, I am using Anne Frank's Diary as a historical primary document, and am simply ignoring the debate about its authenticity.

Finally, there is a problem with this section, in that it has the dates (April–June 1944) in the heading, but the discussions start as early as 1940, so perhaps it needs to be re-worked, or the heading changed. Kmasters0 (talk) 13:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit request for intro
The intro says "Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' systematic murder of millions of people in other groups, including ethnic Poles, Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other political and religious opponents."

As we are mentioning the other groups including less numerous groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses I think mention should be made of the Catholics, an estimated 3000 Polish Catholic Clergy were killed, 2,600 killed in Dachau, 80% of Clergy in Reichsgau Wartheland were killed. Also some Protestant groups were persecuted see -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims#Religious_persecution —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.36.20.132 (talk) 13:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Churban
Somebody knows what Churban means? If someone does, pleas put it in ethymology. --Enkiduk (talk) 07:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It's from the Hebrew, it means "destruction". I'll add it to the article. Churban

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Result: There is no consensus to move the article at this time.  GB fan  06:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

The Holocaust → — Unless I'm missing something, I would strongly have expected the article on the Holocaust to be at "Holocaust" rather than "The Holocaust", per Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name). That is why we use White House instead of The White House, or United States rather than The United States, or Rwandan Genocide rather than The Rwandan Genocide. The disambiguation page is located at Holocaust (disambiguation), and as the mass murder of the Jews during WW2 is clearly the primary topic (Holocaust already redirects here), there wouldn't appear to be an issue with disambiguation. There are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of pages that link to "Holocaust", which suggests that most people expect this page o be located there. Most other encyclopedias use "Holocaust", such as Encyclopedia Britannica.  City   of   Destruction  23:01, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * This has been discussed before. A comparable example would be Pentagon and The Pentagon. 'Holocaust' is a word that can be used for many different things. If it is retitled 'holocaust', various editors will quickly come along and say that many events in history have been called holocausts, so this article should include the X Holocaust and the Y holocaust. Others will say it should include the argument that the bombing of Dresden was a 'holocaust' (which it was in the traditional use of the term). But when we say The Holocaust we mean systematic mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis, principally of Jews. Paul B (talk) 23:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that some people may be looking for "holocaust" as a word. However, I think it's reasonable to assume that most people typing "Holocaust" into Wikipedia or finding this page via a search engine with expect to find information about the Nazi genocide; in any case this page will come up, either at the top of a search engine or by redirection. Such is the importance of the genocide that I think it is impossible to use the term "holocaust" to describe something without evoking comparison with it, making the mass murder of Jews the primary meaning of "Holocaust".  City   of   Destruction  23:24, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course most people will be looking for the Nazi genocide, no-one doubts that. It's the agendas of various neo-Nazis and proponents of the equal victimhood of various other ethnic groups that's the main issue. The simple inclusion of 'the' allows us to say that this article discusses this one event and no other, so we don't have sections on the holocaust of Dresden, or the Sudra Holocaust or the African Holocaust or the Armenian Holocaust. Paul B (talk) 00:40, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia should not have to pander to these far-right groups. While people sometimes use the term "holocaust" as part of a compound to describe other genocides and evoke comparison with the Nazi genocide, very few people would expect the page Holocaust to be about anything but the mass murder of European Jews.  City   of   Destruction  22:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The article describes a specific historic event, not a generic class of instances. Therefore, the current name is appropriate, and the article should not be moved. Hovever, Holocaust (disambiguation) should be expanded and tell the reader some background about the term Holocaust, and we may need a separate article on the origin and the use of the term "Holocaust". Cs32en   Talk to me  00:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It exists in the article Names of the Holocaust, though perhaps that should be retitled. Paul B (talk) 14:33, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "The article describes a specific historic event, not a generic class of instances". Right but so does Holodomor, Rwandan Genocide, Chhotaa Ghallooghaaraa, &c.  —   AjaxSmack   17:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but that's not the point. No other events have been called Holmodor, Rwandan Genocide, Chhotaa Ghallooghaaraa etc. The word holocaust is specifically contested. Paul B (talk) 18:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think there are any mainstream organisations or individuals that contest the primary meaning of "Holocaust". If there are, please provide reliable sources. By that, I do not mean using the term as part of a compound phrase as a synonym for genocide.  City   of   Destruction  22:50, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Support a move per WP:THE, general linguistic usage, and nom's arguments. As noted, Holocaust already redirects here so there's not an issue with disambiguation.  —   AjaxSmack   17:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Support as Holocaust already redirects here so this is established as primary topic. By comparison, The Pentagon is not the primary topic for Pentagon. Cjc13 (talk) 18:01, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as the use of "Holocaust" will just play into the hands of Neo-Nazis and other axe grinders. This is the holocaust, and we are not going to include Rwandans or bombing victims. Paul B (talk) 18:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This title is specific to the event; there are plenty of things that can be and have been called holocausts, but "The Holocaust" is generally known to refer to the Shoah. --jpgordon:==( o ) 18:39, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This proposal is effectively (but no doubt unintentionally) a move to merge this page with Holocaust (disambiguation). Bad idea. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  18:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * To the above three commenters: I'm not suggesting we include other genocides, nor that we merge this page with Holocaust (disambiguation); which I agree would be a bad idea. I also do not see how removing "The" will give any benefit to Neo-Naxis and other vile groups; I certainly think we should not concede ground to placate the far-right. All we need to do is to slightly modify the hatnote so that it states more explicity that "This article is about the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II. For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation)."  City   of   Destruction  22:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't suppose anyone thought that was your intention, but if you hang around on this talk page for a while you will see that that is the aspiration of some editors. Your innnocent proposal unintentionally assists their agendas: Talk:The_Holocaust/Archive_24 Paul B (talk) 10:08, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose Per my comment above. Other events like "Holodomor" are not called "The Holodomor", because "Holodomor" has not been used to describe other events. Cs32en   Talk to me  23:16, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose "The Holocaust" is the only correct form for this subject. "Holocaust" without the definite article means other things, and virtually never this specific event. So it's the only way to identify this particular topic, and without it the title would be incorrect. Crum375 (talk) 02:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose To quote from WP:THE the definite article should be used "if a word without a definite article would have a general meaning, while the same word has a specific and identifiable meaning, understood by all, if adding the article". The word holocaust certainly has a more general meaning that could be applied to a number of diferent events - it is indeed a word and does not have an article here because wikipedia is not a dictionary. However, adding the article "The" to the title will unambiguously give the specific definition that exists in common understanding of these particular event discussed in this article. Solid State Survivor (talk) 03:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose the suggested move. The subject matter that is intended for this article is most accurately referred to as "The Holocaust." Reducing that term to "Holocaust" results in a corresponding reduction of equivalency between the title of the article and the subject matter that this article is intended to cover. Bus stop (talk) 13:07, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Support per Cjc13 --Labattblueboy (talk) 01:10, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Solid State Survivor. -- Ja Ga  talk 18:40, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Picture at top right of page
The information describes to be sent left was to the gas chambers, to be sent right forced labour. To my knowledge, this is true, but that is facing away from the entrance to aushwitz, the picture is facing to the entrance. This does have relevance to the picture as the SS officer is clearly pointing to the gas chamber hence why the women with the baby is going there. I don't want to change anything without discussing this first and getting the facts right. Shaunthered (talk) 22:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Add to the "See Also Section" * Incendiary Weapons * Napalm * White Phosphorous * Molotov Cocktail * Agent Orange etc...
As the title of this article suggests, via etymology it clearly has failed to link to corresponding articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.0.76 (talk) 19:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Too tangential/obscure. The 'see also' section is already massive, and these topics are not obvious follow-up material for someone interested in this topic. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  22:22, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a disingenuous request, implying that the "real" meaning of holocaust is destructive burning... as at Dresden. Paul B (talk) 22:27, 6 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Then all use of the word Holocaust within the article is disingenuous verbiage. In addition; "This article is semi-protected indefinitely in response to an ongoing high risk of vandalism." The semi-protection of the invalid article (see "The Holocaust" and the application of the word within) by moderators has yet to be explained when its contents are misleading and can be construed as vandalism of language and misleading those in pursuit of historical revision materials. If the intended goal of the article is the one sided propagation of war & atrocity material for personal goals then it should not be hosted on a site that alleges to be a Free Encyclopaedia and kept to a private web address.

"The writing is on the wall."

Lead image
I appreciate that changes to articles like this are often controversial, so I'm asking here first. Basically, the current lead image is used here under the non-free content criteria- meanwhile, we have a a large number of free images which illustrate the subject. Could we please have a free image to lead the article? J Milburn (talk) 22:47, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The Holocaust was not only a European event as stated by Dr. Robert Satloff in his book, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands.
It is wrong to define the Holocaust as the murder of 6 million EUROPEAN jews. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum took out the word "European" in 2006, following request from top Holocaust scholars. Yad Vashem tells the story of the Shoah in French North Africa - Tunisia, ALgeria and Morocco, in Italian Libya, in Iraq (Farhud) and in Palestine.

See hsitorically correct map of German expansion at: http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/related/maps/german_expansion.pdf  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edith Perlman (talk • contribs) 00:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The Holocaust is a Jewish tragedy as stated by Sir Martin Gilbert, who correctly declared that the Holocaust in French North Africa was part of the Shoah in France. It is very unfortunate that there is a wrong consensus to make the Holocaust a European event - the Nazi regime planned to kill Jews - period. The RESULTS of the Final Solution was the tragic destruction of Jewish communities in the continent of Europe.

Holocaust scholars cannot state that the specifity of the Shoah was that the Nazi regime wanted to kill Jews everywhere (correct statement by Bauer), and then limit the genocide of the Jews to the European continent.

A correct meaningful definition of the Holocaust as per statements by Yehuda Bauer, Sir Martin Gilbert, Himmler, Hitler, the USHMM and others:

Definitions that focus only on antisemitism in the ideology of the perpetrators and only on Jews as victims, limit the scope of Holocaust education. Elie Wiesel appropriately declared that all the Jews were victims, but not all the victims were Jewish. Y. Bauer, an Israeli scholar and a most respected authority on the subjects of the Holocaust, declared that Nazism’s goal to reorganize humanity according to race all over the globe did not endanger the Jews only. The Nazis planned to implement a global solution to the Jewish question, and to create a racist world dominated by the “Aryan” race. He explained that the unprecedentedness of the Holocaust is “based on unprecedentedness of National Socialism/Nazism as a threat to all humans” – thus, Shaked stated: The Nazis decided who did not have the right to live. I combined different definitions (mainly Bauer; Yad Vashem, and the USHMM), and came up my own definition, which I think reflect the impact of Nazism and the historical realities of the Holocaust era:

The Holocaust refers to the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored massacre by the Nazi regime and its collaborators, of more than 11 million undesirable ‘others’/Christians/Gentiles and Jews, during the Holocaust era, 1933-45. Because of WHO they are: “Although Jews were the primary victims, millions of others/Gentiles/Christians labeled “undesirable,” “enemies of the state,” or “subhuman” were also murdered. “Nazis targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority:" Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped - the physically and mentally challenged - at least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled people were murdered in the Euthanasia Program-, the “Black” or Afro-German, African-American and Jewish American soldiers, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles - the Germans targeted the Christian Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet citizens for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland; Russians - more than three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment, and others).

Because of WHAT they did: Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds - because of WHAT they did: Among them Communists, Socialists and trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses - religious dissidents- and homosexuals (from the earliest years of the Nazi regime, homosexuals and others deemed to be behaving in a socially unacceptable way were persecuted). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.” Shoah. “At the center of the Holocaust stood the Shoah. Shoah is a Hebrew term, “meaning great disaster, and also applied to such natural catastrophes as floods and earthquakes.” “The word Shoah was chosen in Israel and institutionalized by the Knesset on April 12, 1951, when it established Yom Ha-Shoah Ve Mered Ha-Getaot, the national day of remembrance.”

The Hebrew term Sho’ah is used to describe the murder of approximately six million Jews including 1,500,000 children, the almost complete destruction of the European Jewish communities, and the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people, from France in the west to the Soviet Union in the east and from Latvia in the north to French North Africa and Italian Libya in the south, in Iraq (Farhud), and in the rest of the world.
 * “… Shoah is an accurate description of the genocide of the Jews from a Jewish perspective, since it evokes the fact that this was indeed a disaster for the Jewish people. It is free of religious connotations … Since Claude Lanzmann’s film entitled Shoah, French intellectuals have tended to use that Hebrew-language term.”
 * “Germans use the troubling term ‘Judenvernichtung,’ same term which Nazis used and because “destruction of the Jews” evokes a scientific, methodical, detached, clinical operation (effect of creating detachment, both personal and moral; has a bureaucratic ring, military neatness …) ....” “… industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people.”  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edith Perlman (talk • contribs) 23:36, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Motivation behind Holocaust
I once read that part of the motivation behind the Holocaust was lack of food in Nazi Germany. It's rational (however immoral) to assume that, faced with this problem, Nazi leadership would chose to let the least valuable segment of their population die in a manner which would not lead to riots and unrest. A line from the article supports this: "...their clothes and other possessions were seized by the Nazis to help fund the war." Why would someone bother seizing prisoner's clothes unless you were in a very dire economic situation?

I don't know if this is true or widely supported. But, I do know this article has very little information about the point of view of the Nazis and their reasons for performing the Holocaust. A government doesn't set up a incredibly complicated logistics system just because they are immoral and want to slaughter people. Also, the mass murder of Holocaust victims did not start until late in the war, even though the concentration camps were founded earlier. Something had to have changed to cause the Nazi leadership to move from working Jews to death to purposefully killing them. What was it? --Acewolf359 (talk) 17:11, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Acewolf359—the Talk page is for improving the article. If you wish to suggest material for addition, material for subtraction, or material for modification—then please do so. That is based on my reading of talk page guidelines. Are you suggesting any immediately applicable modifications to the article? Bus stop (talk) 02:13, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

You made a good point about starvation. Many Jews and non-Jewish political prisoners, died in Poland during the years of 1944-1945 of starvation and nutrition related diseases. This happened because the Allies bombed supply lines. They did this know the casualties. I would like a discussion as to why this should be put in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.89.212.141 (talk) 04:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The IP above has been going around the wiki declaring that Jews did 9/11 and are spreading AIDS through vaccines; something to bear in mind in this discussion.  Acroterion  (talk)  11:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The IP is to be ignored. The issue raised by Acewolf359 is legitimate. It's linked to the wider "Functionalism versus intentionalism" argument. The functionalist position holds that the events of the war led the Nazis to adopt a genocide plan, to get rid of their self-made 'problem' of 'storage'. But of course a sanguine (in both senses) attitude to mass killing was there from the moment the Nazis invaded Russia, which had been part of their plans for years. Paul B (talk) 12:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Correct, I didn't want to marginalize Acewolf's comment or for the IP to drag the discussion elsewhere.  Acroterion  (talk)  12:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The 'origins' section leaves a lot to be desired, I think. It needs to give more context about 19th/early 20th century (German) anti-semitism and biological theories of race (which were widespread), rather than starting with the Nazis. The long Hitler quote could be trimmed or summarised, and the functionalist/intentionalist argument should be mentioned and linked. I also think the Hans Kung quote is worthless - historians of the subject don't now use the 'godless criminal' type explanations which were popular just after the war. Thoughts? Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  12:30, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that the "origins" section could be improved. There is plenty of material around, starting perhaps with Philippe Burrin's Hitler and the Jews or Christopher Browning's  new book The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939-March 1942. It should be enough to refer to Hitler's 1922 statement without the long quote.  However, I disagree with the opinion about Kung's quote: While he is not an historian, he has written alot about history, and the importance of his quote is that a prominent Christian theologian highlights the contribution of a long history of Christian "anti-judaism" to the work of what he calls "godless" criminals. Maybe not a historian's word, but nevertheless an authoritative statement.Joel Mc (talk) 09:07, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * As there is an Aftermath of the Holocaust article (which needs improvement and gets less attention than the main Holocaust article), perhaps there should be an Origins of the Holocaust article as well. About the original point, what caused the Nazis to set up the system, a major factor was the 1939 German invasion of Poland. With that, the Nazis had a the huge population of Polish Jews to deal with, as well as a long war ahead of them. Factors I believe are missing from the articles are things like this:  When confronted with the original German Jewish problem, the Nazis really had less of a problem.  The Nazis actually encouraged and permitted Zionist organization for the purpose of having German Jews leave Germany. German Jews, as well, spoke German, so they much more easily could interact with German (Nazi) authorities in these respects.  However, Polish Jewry was completely different - now the Nazis had a new population of over 3 million new Polish Jews, who spoke not German, but Yiddish. To me, this is one of the most blatantly obvious factors affecting the Holocaust, that is almost completely ignored. To explain the origins of the Holocaust, people always want to explain it from the German, European perspective.  However, why not explain just exactly who the Jews were in Europe - the people that the Nazis wanted to eliminate.  What made the Jewish population unique in Europe, what factors caused them to blatantly stick out in the face of the Germans?  Factors such as these: a people with no country, a huge Yiddish speaking population (13 million), a people that eternally rejected the premises of Christian Europe, and more factors.  Identify the European Jewish phenomenon first - what exactly was this people that the Nazis wanted to kill?  The Jews are not described clearly at all, in their relation to Europeans and Germans, in this article. To me one of the most important factors is the huge Yiddish population.  For a German (Nazi), Yiddish = very bizarre sounding German dialect, written in very bizarre, incomprehensible letters (Hebrew letters), spoken by huge hordes of non-Christian, non-European "barbarians", who are insisting that they be recognized as a valid European population (Yiddish was an even official language in some of the countries the Nazis were invading).  Look at the movie The Eternal Jew, to see the Nazi point of view.  Now, re-write the same movie, but from the Jewish point of view.  That is the perspective that is missing in these articles in Wikipedia, perhaps because they are written by European-minded English speakers who can analyze the Nazi point of view all day, but can't really analyze the Jewish/Yiddish point of view at all.  So, (to end this long-windedness), the Holocaust articles can be improved by first describing what made the Jews in Europe unique, and then describing how the Germans reacted to that unique phenomenon.  Gershom Scholem actually wrote an essay about something similar, called "Germans and Jews", in his book "Jews and Judaism in Crisis".  However, he doesn't mention the Yiddish issue (perhaps because he was a German Jew, and thought Yiddish was a barbaric eastern language? Yes, that's the common sentiment among German Jews, who spoke "real German")Jimhoward72 (talk) 05:37, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Deletaiton of Japanese Jew related links and insertion of Japanese war crimes
Some users are sticking to isert Japanese war crimes and delete Japanese Jew related links. Japanese policy was anti holocost, Japanese war crimes were no relavence to holocost. Is there anti-Japanese sentiment?--Bukubku (talk) 14:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't find United States war crimes, British war crimes... in this page. Why insert Japanese war crimes? Why delete Japanese good deed for Jew. 442nd Infantry Regiment (United States) is relevant to Holocaust, but I dont find in this page. This page disguize Japanese good deed and disparag Japan.--Bukubku (talk) 15:22, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The insertion of your changes was completely out of the context of the article. Japanese warcrimes is listed under "Related Links", which are links to events by other peoples/countries that may have similarities to genocides/holocausts. Japanese war crimes is relevant to that section. The links you put in were completely unrelated to that section, as well as deleting a relevant link. If you want to discuss Jewish Japanese relations, you can find the appropriate article and section to discuss it, for example Fugu PlanJimhoward72 (talk) 15:32, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of out of context links
The "Related Links" section is not simply a list of war crimes committed by various countries. It is a list of articles/events that bear some resemblance to characteristics of the Holocaust described in this article. This includes the Japanese war crimes article. I am removing the newly added links to Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, British war crimes, Italian war crimes, Jew war crimes, and United States war crimes, which are clearly out of context, and don't describe in general Holocaust similar events, as described in the present article.Jimhoward72 (talk) 08:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)


 * You are pussing POV. Don't targeting Japanese. I don't want to insert every countries war crimes which are non Jew related, however user Jimhoward72 is stiking to insert Japanese war crimes. So I have to insert other countires war crimes equally. And atomic bomb was made by Jew, atomic bombing is more related than japanese crimes.--Bukubku (talk) 11:45, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * And I've removed those completely irrelevant links. Please familiarize yourself with WP:POINT; it will save you some grief. --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:30, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Jpgordon, tell where is the relation between Japanese war crime and the Holocaust. Japanese saved Jews despite of German oppotion. Why did you delete other countires and atomic bombing?--Bukubku (talk) 15:43, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Japanese saving Jews (belongs here: List of people who assisted Jews during the Holocaust), or war crimes or the atomic bombing, have nothing to do with the "Related Links" list of topics - which are a list of other Wikipedia articles bearing a resemblance to the planned genocide/Holocaust described in this article. If you read those articles (including the Japanese war crimes one), it is self explanatory why they are all included in the list.Jimhoward72 (talk) 17:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I read your comment in Talk:Racial Equality Proposal, 1919. You seems dislike Japanese.--Bukubku (talk) 17:19, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please assume good faith; accusations of racism are personal attacks and are not tolerable. Further, you are edit warring; that must stop immediately. Continue discussing the issue here, please; returning those irrelevant links to the article is asking for a block. --jpgordon:==( o ) 17:22, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * My only comment is that the user Bukubku is adept at adding edits which are out of context, not related to each other, and in violation of Wikipedia principles (as can be verified by reading through their edits/links in the present article). Additionally, the new links being re-added in the "Related Links" section, are unrelated/irrelevant and need to be removed.Jimhoward72 (talk) 17:31, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Japanese war crimes are are out of context, why are sticking only Japanese war crimes. You should reply my quetions above.--Bukubku (talk) 17:36, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Your comment in Talk:Racial Equality Proposal, 1919 is no ground. Why do you specialize only Japanese case?--Bukubku (talk) 17:40, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You should click through each of the "Related Links" articles, read their beginnings, and you will see for yourself. Under the Japanese war crimes, it says it has been described as an "Asian Holocaust". The other articles there have similar themes. American war crimes, on the other hand (or the others you added), mention little or nothing about Holocaust/genocide. So they are out of context. I shouldn't have to tell you this, since you should have read the articles before you edit them, and then insert your edits in the appropriate context (which you seem to have no intention of doing).Jimhoward72 (talk) 17:45, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * American Indians were massacred by Americans. This is very clear genocide. Manchukou populations increased, and other Japanese colonies too. Japanese crime were war crimes, not genocide.--Bukubku (talk) 17:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In Tasmania native aborigine were extinguished, this is more related.--Bukubku (talk) 17:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you are confusing the more general subject of genocide with that of The Holocaust; feel free to bring this stuff up at genocide. --jpgordon:==( o ) 22:57, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please reply concretely. There are no your reply to justify specializing Japanese case. You are censoring this page, so you should state your reason concretely.--Bukubku (talk) 23:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
 * There's no censorship going on. There is a content disagreement; you seem to lack consensus for your suggested changes. --jpgordon:==( o ) 00:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I have very wanted consensus, however your first comment was "I've removed those completely irrelevant links.". Please seek consensus. Why do you try to specialize Japanese? And Why do you judge other countries cases are "completely irrelevant links"? I propose we should not target single one country. According to a Jew rabbi opinion, “We Jews are hated because we are Asiatic.” The american indian genocide is more related than Japanese war crimes. Because American Indians are Asiantic like Jew. The half of criminals are German decendants.--Bukubku (talk) 11:09, 14 October 2010 (UTC) --Bukubku (talk) 11:57, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The questions you continue to ask have already been answered previously (see above).Jimhoward72 (talk) 14:24, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Removal of section: Japanese Policy of Prohibition of Persecution
I am not sure what is going on here. Bukubku's edit warring seems to be making a point about genocides which doesn't have much to do with an article on the Holocaust. I am not sure of the link to Japanese war crimes in this article are very important. But it is clear to me that the section on Japanese Policy of..... is out of place in an article on the Holocaust. The points made are important, but belong (and are present) in other articles. What is more these points are well discussed in many English books (i.e. David Kanzler) and thus there is not need for references which cannot be read by those who do not read Japanese. I do hope that this point is obvious to those who know anything about the Holocaust and will not turn into another edit war.Joel Mc (talk) 21:48, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This Japanese material is missing from this article: The_Holocaust_(responsibility). There is no mention of Japan there. Since Japan was one of the Axis members, Japan should be mentioned there, and their attitudes to the Holocaust.Jimhoward72 (talk) 12:59, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * What is the responsibility? Japanese rejected German protest.--Bukubku (talk) 13:27, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The Lives of Jews during the Holocaust
-Primo Levi’s Memoir: “Thousands of individuals, differing from age, condition, origin, language, culture and customs are enclosed within barbed wire: there they live a regular, controlled life which was identical for all and inadequate to all needs, and which is much more rigorous than any experimenter could have set up to established what is essential and what adventitious to the conduct of the human animal in the struggle for life.”

-Recollection from concentration camp prisoner: “the Kapo (commander) of our unit killed a friend of mine because he was not standing up straight.” Roll calls were held when inmates returned from work, at midnight, and even for an entire day. Roll call was when workers would be ordered into formation.

-Kapo’s were sometimes 18 years old. One was reported to have killed 400 Jew’s for their food rations.

-Camp work included working in underground stone quarries for a year without seeing daylight.

-A Usual work day was seventeen hours of work and two to five hours of sleep.

-One inmate had frostbitten feet. The German guards responded to his problem by wrapping paper around his feet and sending him back to work in the snow.

- The diet of inmates consisted of bead chunks made of flour and sawdust, watery soup that was spoiled and spoiled sausage.

-Prison Guards were rewarded for ordering inmates to do impossible tasks (such as running to washrooms even when the inmate did not know where it was) and then beating them to death for not being able to comply. Sadistic fun was normal.

-Some Inmates were worked so far to exhaustion that the inmate would intentionally provoke the German Overseer to shoot him dead. Jewish infants would sometimes be tossed up in the air and shot by German soldiers.

-Practice of religion was punishable by death

- Obedience was more dangerous than disobedience. Anything could be stolen. If people obeyed they were frostbitten, starved literally to death, and deprived of sleep enough to die of exhaustion. Therefore they were called mussulmans (zombies).

- Most Holocaust survivors were non-Jews

“In Odessa, on October 23, 1941, 19,000 people were taken to a square, doused with gasoline, and set afire.” Daily Life During the Holocaust

Jews have been hated since the middle-ages.

Birkanau or Auschwitz II Concentration camp killed almost 12,000 people a day by the use of gas chambers disguised as showers for Jewish inmates.

Experiments on dead and alive death camp inmates were conducted by the Nazi’s at Bikanau, the German experimenters had little to no medical training. Some inmates would volunteer to be experimented in exchange for food to eat. Experiments included being injected with typhus, malaria, various other diseases and gasoline just to see the effects of the injection.

-People had to wait in line for hours to get one food ration which sometimes never came. Surviving on this diet was beyond possible.

-Water used for drinking and washing was polluted. People even got to the point where they traded their clothes for food.96.238.183.115 (talk) 20:09, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * What exactly is the point of this unreferenced information? Please note WP:TPG and the notice at the top of this page stating that this page is not a forum. RashersTierney (talk) 20:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Factual Error in the article
There was a factual mistake in the article. Look the table in the section titled "Extermination Camps". The reference '139' "Yad Vashem" does NOT say that 600,000 died in Jasenovac. Take a look: http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206358.pdf. The USHMM puts the figure of victims in Jasenovac (including Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, Jews and Roma) to 100,000. Yahalom Kashny (talk) 21:12, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It looks like you're right about the Yad Vashem link. It contains no figures. But I don't see the 100,000 number at the USHMM link. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 22:24, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't quite know what is going on here. About a year ago, if I recall, the article did say that "600,000 died in Jasenovac". But that was changed ages ago. It now says that between "56,000 and 97,000" died there per the JVL source and that around 500,000 died overall per Yad Vashem, so where is this supposed 600,000 figure? The Yad Vashem link footnoted in the article certainly does give the 500,000 figure. Paul B (talk) 10:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see now. The figure was changed in the text, but no-one noticed that the tablulation of deaths per camp had been left unaltered - until now! Good catch. Paul B (talk) 10:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Reineke80, 7 November 2010
edit semi-protected

Please correct typo: considerd -> considered

Reineke80 (talk) 20:20, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks for pointing it out. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  21:41, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Removal of section: Japanese Policy of Prohibition of Persecution (cont'd)
Continuing what I wrote above, this section is grossly out of place here in the section "Development and execution". In fact there is no mention of the policy of the other Axis power, Italy in this article. Japanese policy is presented at: Japanese Response I propose to delete the section within the next couple of days.Joel Mc (talk) 11:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That seems right to me - I agree it's out of place here and breaks up the flow. The international response article is linked in the 'see also' section, and this article is already very long. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  13:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "breaks the flow" is my first reaction, too. While the material does belong somewhere, unfortunately no contextual thought (and whatever Wikipedia policy) was given when placing it in the middle of the current article. What I can't yet find in Wikipedia is something like "Reaction of other Axis powers to Nazi "Jewish problem" proposition". Is this discussed anywhere? It would include Italy and others, and Japan could be juxtaposed there. Either in International response to the Holocaust, or (I think better) The_Holocaust_(responsibility). Japan is unique in these list of responses to the Holocaust, in that it was an Axis power itself.Jimhoward72 (talk) 16:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Jews Only
Thousands and thousands of non-Jews were killed by the Nazi's, why does the opening paragraph state that the Holocaust only refers to the Jewish dead, there were more than just Jews at the camps, everbody knows that and changes should be made, this is the 21st century, we should have gotten this right by now.
 * We assume people are capable of reading more than the first sentence of the article and continuing to the second. --jpgordon:==( o ) 06:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph should be a summary of the whole doc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.14.173.77 (talk) 13:33, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 186.19.195.227, 22 November 2010
I noticed in the section titled "Pogroms (1939–1942)" it says: "[...]on June 30, 1941, in which as many 14,000 Jews were killed by Romanian residents and police [...]" It should say "as many AS".

186.19.195.227 (talk) 07:32, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Done. Thanks for pointing it out. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  09:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

This article is too long and repetitive because it's poorly written....
Sorry but the article dwells too much on some aspects and does grand leaps and bounds of over sections. It also reiterates itself time and time again. It needs a good copyeditor to trim it and move wads of material to sub articles, where the information can be expanded and looked at more closely without filling up the main article. In simplicity itself, this article should be the main introduction to the whole topic.

Besides there isn't even a mention of Action 14f13, come on!! If this is mean to to be encyclopdic quality drop the pop culture style and present the facts in a more tidy way, cross referenced with ever other page on the Holocaust. This page is the one stop shop gateway to the whole topic, not just another article among many similar articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.5.223 (talk) 00:29, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It has been pointed out a number of times that this article is too long, messy, not user friendly, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that any general reader who wants to look up something on the proper noun, The Holocaust, will go away confused if not intimidated by the length.  No question that it needs a good copy edit, but the fundamental problem is elsewhere.  It has been a virtual war zone for competing agendas. It is my experience when major European historians use the proper noun "the Holocaust" they refer to the mass killing of Jews by the Nazis.  This is not a POV, but the experience of somebody who has read widely.  It is about classifying not an expression of ownership of a tragedy nor the downplaying of the mass murder of an equal number of non-Jewish civilians by the Nazis. (a recent reaffirmation of this definition can be found in Yale History professor Tim Snyder's latest book, Bloodlands--see section Numbers and Terms or location 7593 in its Kindle edition).  Thus such a straight-forward definition should lead for example to sources of such a policy, its development and its implementation.  It is true that a few historians still take issue with confining the definition to the mass killing of the jews and it would be appropriate to mention this in a sentence with references.  But reiteration of the debate belongs elswhere. Having accepted the definition, it is clear that the rather long section 4.2 belongs elsewhere.  However past experience leads me to fear that such a change will open a pandora's box as editors want to include their own choices of victims.  It was just such editing issues that drove me away from editing this article and I suspect that is true of a number of editors who knew more than I do. As I pointed out long ago, this plays into the hands of those who want to obscure what the Holocaust was about.Joel Mc (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

No mention of Revisionism?
I'm a little surprised to see no mention of Irving or Zundel. Any reason? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.116.40.140 (talk) 12:56, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Minor Grammatical Error: programme
The introductory paragraph uses the following test:

"a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination"


 * program* is the American English variant and should be used instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.58.165 (talk) 18:08, 15 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Why would the American variant be preferred? I don't see any obvious trend toward US or UK usage, and where there is no internal inconsistency in an article, neither variant is preferred.  Acroterion  (talk)  18:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there any Wikipedia policy regarding this? As far as standardization? There is the same problem with Hebrew pronunciations (transliterations) in Wikipedia - half the time they use the Yiddish pronunciation, and half the time the Israeli. There is no consistency.Jimhoward72 (talk) 20:41, 15 November 2010 (UTC)


 * My understanding of this issue is that if the article pertains directly to the United States, such as New York, then American spelling should be used.  If the article pertains to the United Kingdom, such as London, then British spelling should be used.  And so on for other English speaking countries.  In this case, where no such connection exists, the spelling standard established when the article was first written should be maintained. Cullen328 (talk) 22:20, 3 December 2010(UTC)
 * I would advocate the same policy for Hebrew transliterations - Ashkenazi pronunciation for articles about Polish Jews, for example, and Israeli pronunciation for Israeli topics. Cullen328 (talk) 22:27, 3 December 2010 (UTC) (UTC)

The Holocaust is Jewish Genocide
The Holocaust article should be reserved only for Jewish victims. Mention of homosexuals, mentally challenged, Romani and other people should, perhaps, be moved to a different article, or perhaps, included in individual articles like Genocide of Romani People etc...Yahalom Kashny (talk) 01:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand your opinion on that, but this is not a matter of personal opinion. If many or most of the reliable sources that discuss the topic include groups other than Jews as Holocaust victims, then the Wikipedia article must reflect that scholarly consensus. If you can find several mainstream scholarly sources to back your point of  view, then perhaps that judgment could be incorporated into the article. Please note that an editor four sections above had just the opposite concern. Cullen328 (taxlk) 22:33, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Lucy Dawidowicz statistics "pre-war"

 * Victims and death toll
 * By country

"The following figures from Lucy Dawidowicz show the annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe by (pre-war) country"
 * I would appreciate it if someone could define what "pre-war" exactly means. 1939? Thanks. 188.192.116.156 (talk) 11:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I am traveling and don't have Lucy Dawidowicz's book with me, in general she means countries which were in existence before WWII i.e. the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were sovereign states at that time and were incorporated into the Soviet Union after WWII. The table shown is a little confusing i.e. it gives figures for Moravia and Bohemia which in fact were incorporated into Czechoslovakia after WWI.  The census data that she was working with would have come from countries reports before WWII and may have included regional names.Joel Mc (talk) 08:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust were killed.
Numbers please. Did six million Jews die in the holocaust? Is that what the author is saying?

Ok sorry just noticed that it states 6 million. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.227.129.233 (talk) 19:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Two typos in one line
Under "Legal repression and emigration," the first paragraph after the quoted material, second line, "through" should be "though," and "owning" should be "owing." Proofraeder (talk) 08:11, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Done, tharks very much. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  10:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The causes are still not explained
A while back I gave numerous sources supporting the view that the Holocaust was driven by German beliefs that Jews were too heavily involved at an elite level in German society. Since then, nothing has been done. In fact the section is worse now because it invokes eugenics, whereas in reality the Nazis targetted Jews because they thought they were too smart, not too stupid.

I would like to add another cause: the perception shared by Hitler and the political right in general that Jews were behind communist movements and that communism was an ideology to promote the interests of Jews. This is elaborated upon in the Jewish Bolshevism article. Lenin's right hand man, Leon Trotsky was a Jew, Bela Khun, Hungarian communist leader was a Jew, the leader of the Bavaria Soviet Republic was a Jew, as were the two leaders of the Spartacist Berlin uprising of 1919. Of course, this could be regarded as a coincidence but it nevertheless is critical to understanding the National Socialist worldview.

It's stunning that none of these basic facts are in the article.

71.65.71.145 (talk) 20:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I have also noticed this trend, of the article not to delve into the causes of German sentiment toward Jews. I can think of three factors right off hand (some related to what you just mentioned: 1. The sudden assimilation of Jews into German society, producing German Jews that were "too smart" 2. The Nazi/German (and also German-Jewish) perception of the "Ostjuden" (eastern Jewish) hordes, who spoke Yiddish, and were looked down upon as masses of "barbarian" Jews (unlike the German-Jewish elite). These eastern, Yiddish speaking hordes, incidentally, were by far the majority of the victims of the Holocaust. 3. The relation of the Nazis to communism. Jewish or not, it seems like the Nazis saw their main enemy of war, the communist Soviet union (which lay in the same geographical direction - east - as the vast hordes of eastern-European Jews). I want to suggest an article by Gerschom Scholem, "Jews and Germans", in his book "Jews and Judaism in Crisis", which goes into quite a bit of detail about the sentiment of Germans towards Jews prior to WW II.Jimhoward72 (talk) 21:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Europe map.
Can somebody retouch ? It supposedly shows Europe at the height of Nazi domination in (late?) 1942 (when the Holocaust had really kicked into gear) but the borders are very crudely drawn, and is filled with loads of mistakes. To name just one thing, Italy never annexed that large a part of France. Compare with this correct one. A that is being used for showing the Führer Headquarters has the same problem, it just shows less of it.--Morgan Hauser (talk) 14:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

"Serbs" (propaganda)


Large numbers of Serb civilians died in WWII, but NOT as result of the Holocaust but rather just Ustasha policy of the completely insane "chaotic terror" (USHMM). Serbia was a Nazi puppet state complete with the Serbisches SS-Freiwilligen Korps, the notorious self-proclaimed Serbian Gestapo and such (not to mention the Chetnik turncoat collaborators). The Ustasha were the Croat-fascists of the Croat Nazi puppet state, they murdered a lot of Serbs and non-Serbs alike, and the Serb-fascist collaborators slaughtered a lot of people too, but nothing of this was ordered by the Germans but by their own "authorities" - they just hated each other's guts (the Chetniks also slaughtered the Muslims), plus political killings. There were (of course) also deaths due to the anti-partisan operations (against the Yugoslav Partisan movement, at first also against the Chetniks before they changed the sides), which was also not part of the Holocaust - but of WWII (a rather brutal war, you know).

The Serbs were simply not targeted in the Holocaust, they were never in German plans of extermination and for example the Serb ethnic minority in Germany were treated as 100% "Aryan" Germans by the Nazis (and in 1945 many were murdered by the invading Soviets as such). Plus the fact the Serbs even had their own "independent" state, and as I said, there was even the multi-thousand strong Serbian (ethnic Serbs of Serbia) volunteer Waffen-SS formation. Otherwise, you may add just any civilian/POW who died in all the territories under German occupation regardless of circumstances as a "victim of the Holocaust", which I guess would be pretty stupid, no?

USHMM article on WWII in Yugoslavia explains the situation further, even as not mentioning the 1945 Yugoslav massacres of Germans, Austrians, Italians and other minorities, but ending with this very true sentence: "In the vicious propaganda supporting the violence in Yugoslavia in the 1990s were numerous references to events in the former Yugoslavia during the Holocaust era." --94.246.150.68 (talk) 23:49, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd welcome a discussion that would lead to cosnensus on a Wikipedia policy on that matter. --94.246.150.68 (talk) 01:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

What a great discussion. --94.246.150.68 (talk) 14:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Try proposing an actual change to the article text, along the lines of "In section 'Such-and-such', instead of saying 'ABC' it should say 'XYZ', because ...", and be prepared to argue your case if people defend the status quo.
 * Analysis of historical events, as you've done above, doesn't let people know exactly what you want done with an article. That's a dis-incentive to jumping in and responding to you.
 * Another dis-incentive is the fact that you're discussing the politics and history of the Balkans. Personally I wouldn't touch that topic area with a barge-pole because of the angry, partisan edit-warring it can provoke. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  14:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I propose to entirely eliminate the false idea of "the Serbs" being the victims of the Holocaust from the text of this article. Not only they were not targeted by the Nazi extermination policies, but they were considered to be fully "Aryan" citizens of the Reich, they had "their own" (puppet) country with autonomous (fascist) administration and a lot of armed collaborationist formations (not unlike the Vichy French state - or the Croat NDH for that matter), they even had their own (Serb by ethnicity and name) Waffen-SS legion (also not unlike the French - and the Croats, except no one is saying the French and the Croats were victims of the Holocaust somehow).

The local Serbs were victims of the Ustasha (Croat fascist) genocide in Croatia and Bosnia, which was as unrelated to the Holocaust and Nazism in general as for example the genocide of the local Poles by the Ukrainian nationalists in 1943. A good summary of what happened is the following: "So far as the Great Croat chauvinists are concerned, one of their defining moments came in May 1941, when the Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic, newly installed at the head of the Nazi-puppet ‘Independent State of Croatia’, signed a treaty that ceded without struggle a large part of the Croatian coast to Fascist Italy. He then proceeded to try to divert the popular anger of the outraged Croatian public away from the Italians and against the apparently defenceless Serb civilian population of the Croatian puppet state – only to find that his anti-Serb genocidal campaign generated a popular resistance, among Serbs and others, that his sorry armed forces were incapable of suppressing, leading him to ever-greater acts of grovelling dependency on his German and Italian masters. Pavelic and his fellow leading Ustasha murderers fled the country in 1945, leaving the remnants of the puppet Croatian army and the civilians who had remained loyal to it to bear the brunt of Partisan retaliation." It was completely unrelated to any policies by Berlin. --94.246.150.68 (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * You probably should check the policy on neutrality first - words like 'chauvinist', 'grovelling' and 'sorry' are not suitably encyclopedic, IMHO. You'll also need reliable sources, and blogs don't count I'm afraid. All substantive points should be sourced from academic historians, and where respectable historians disagree, there should be a fair representation of the different (sensible, non-fringe) views - see WP:WEIGHT. If you are new to wikipedia editing, checking the policies is a must. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  16:50, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's all besides the point really. The point is "a reign of chaotic terror so extensive that the policy lost them control of the Croat and Bosnia countryside" that was unleashed by the Ustasha regime towards the Serb minority in 1941-42 (killing over 300,000 people) was an unrelated genocide. --94.246.150.68 (talk) 17:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Just jews?
Weren't there blacks, gays and others murdered in the holocaust? The first paragraph is very misleading, as it makes out that only jews were killed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sk8r2000 (talk • contribs) 10:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)


 * See above ("Serbs" claim), and no, all "blacks, gays and others" were not being "murdered in the holocaust" as a matter of policy. --94.246.150.68 (talk) 14:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Diden`t the Jews create Hitler, and provoke their own Holocaust? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.254.60.41 (talk) 22:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've seen this lead paragraph disputed and reworked many, many times over the last three years. It has been decided many times to put the non-Jewish victim POV into the second paragraph.  No need to rehash this again.  Alatari (talk) 20:14, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Commentary at 241,159 bytes
This article is just above 241,000 bytes. It is really too long, and needs to be split. I notice that this has been brought up on the talk page before (checking the archives). Way back in January 2010, the article went to 190,589. That was already way too long. Steve Quinn (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * To split it would require a dedicated expert that would continue to come back and maintain it, too. Too bad someone can't be drafted to do the job.Jimhoward72 (talk) 11:34, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The Holocaust is being defined too narrowly
Its been said here but apparently it needs to be said again, the Holocaust was not just of the Jews. The article even mentions a good word to use if you just want to talk about Jewish victims, the Shoah. The holocaust involved the Roma as well as the Jews, the Hitler regime explicitly stated their desire to eliminate the Roma people, they also explicitly stated plans to purge people with birth defects or handicaps and homosexuals, I don't see how it can possibly be said these victims are secondary to Jews are their lives worth less and their deaths less significant?. Plans were also made to kill a third of Russians, Poles and other Slavs, which includes Serbians, make a third slaves and forcibly convert the most Aryan looking ones to be Germans. That is a genocide, according to the Wikipedia article on WW2 16 percent of Poles were killed about 14 percent of Soviets were killed with half of those being civilian casualties. In regards to the comments on Serbia. In a disgusting piece of revisionist history it seems this article is suggesting Serbs are Nazi allies. It was Yugoslavia, but mainly the Serbians, who decided to stand up to the Nazis on their march east when Romania Bulgaria and Hungary allied with Germany In the Jasenovic concentration camp Nazi Croatians killed 750,000 people they killed much of the Roma and Jewish population of the time, but the majority of the victims of that camp were Serbs. Serbs also made up about 80 percent of the Partisans fighters. Nazis are not all German Croatian Nazis are no less Nazis and their is no reason to separate their actions from the rest of the Holocaust.

I am aware that I am not citing all my sources and I never edit Wikipedia articles but this one is a travesty as someone of Roma descent. To this day the media and civil society in general tends to be quick to respond with condemnation to Anti Semetic comments largely because people are aware of the horror of what happened in the Holocaust. Negative comments and actions towards Roma are usually tolerated. Perhaps that would be different if the Roma were given equal mention in the history of the Holocaust —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.16.209.239 (talk) 09:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Spam filtering Holocaust sites
The site holocaustresearchproject.org was spam blaklisted in 2006. The request on Meta is available here. I am considering asking for delisting, but before that I want to start a discussion on the usefulness of the site.

The original request was made by User:JzG after some mild spamming with the following motivation "A ludicrously inaccurate site of no conceivable encyclopaedic value," with a link to a blog posting at holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com.

Studying the blog I found out the following:


 * In 2002 a group of Holocaust scholars and amateurs started something called ARC for Aktion Reinhard Camps, with a web site at deathcamps.org
 * In 2006 a feud broke out between members over the authenticity of some contributed primary source material. See On the demise of deathcamps.org: how fakes and arrogance killed a great undertaking. The feud ends with all members also contributing to the Axis History Forum being ousted.
 * The old deathcamps.org site is "archived" (deathcamps.org/Archived.html) and the remaining members – now renamed to "Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team" (H.E.A.R.T) – starting a new site at holocaustresearchproject.org
 * The ousted AHF members set up a blog at Holocaust Controversies with a sister blog named CODOH Watch. The focus of CODOH Watch seems to be equally divided between Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) and H.E.A.R.T
 * The competing groups continue with personal attacks – with some of the stuff best described as anal (no need to read this). The other side calls them a hate blog team
 * In the end everyone seems to get banned.

All this is far too complicated to make out who are the good guys and who the bad guys. The site itself however seems useful. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 11:32, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

deathcamps.org
I noticed that deathcamps.org is also blacklisted – and checked the history. The blacklisting in 2007 resulted from and intellectual property dispute between deathcamps.org and death-camps.org (now defunct). See Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist. Most of the original argumentation is now moot, as the mirror site death-camps.org no longer exists. The remaining argument against deathcamps.org seems to be, that the Holocaust Controversies blog claims that some of the primary sources presented at the site are not genuine.

Here is what what I have found of the previous discussion. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 21:40, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive219 – 24 March 2007
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Recurring requests
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2006-12 – 24 November 2006
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2008-02 – 8 February 2008
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2008-07 – 24 July 2008
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2008-11 – 5 November 2008
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Recurring requests
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007-04 – 30 March 2007
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007-05 – 18 May 2007
 * Meta:User talk:Pathoschild/Archives/2007-07 – 19 May 2007
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007-07 – 7 July 2007
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007-12 – 7 December 2007
 * Meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2008-03 – 19 March 2008
 * Meta:User:COIBot/LinkReports/deathcamps.org


 * I think the summary is simply "advocates of both sites became sufficiently annoying that we just shut the door." --jpgordon:==( o ) 22:39, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see what reason there is to whitelist them. Is there something undisputedly reliable there that we can't get anywhere else?  Is there a specific reason to whitelist them NOW, or to confirm the blacklist NOW?  If not, why not just wait until there is a reason?  Smallbones (talk) 23:19, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Without going through the (extensive) history, I seem to remember that animosity between the two factions spilled over onto many wiki 'see also' sections, with links being added, edited and deleted as part of their squabble.
 * Rather than have that all stirred up again, is there a good reason to un-spam-list them? Do they have info necessary to an article that is not available elsewhere? I doubt it, but if that is the case I'd recommend taking them off the spam list.
 * Bearing in mind the extent of the Holocaust literature, I'd be very surprised if there was something on ARC (which was a good site, IIRC) that couldn't be found elsewhere. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  23:43, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I am sure the material can be found in books or at least in archives. The question is do we have an abundance of equal or better web sites? The reason I came across the sites is this: www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/bingel.html As an exercise, could you find the same material somewhere else on the web, or at least make a claim that what is presented by H.E.A.R.T. is crap. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I have not yet proposed that we whitelist or un-blacklist them. So far I am simply asking if the sites are valuable, and if the claims about being "unreliable" have any merit. Besides, being unreliable or even being simply wrong is not grounds for blacklisting. We do not blacklist Holocaust denial sites. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:00, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, we just don't allow them as sources or links in any articles other than those explicitly about Holocaust denial. --jpgordon:==( o ) 01:17, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Is HEART a Holocaust denier site? I've used it a couple of times, though each time I've had to go to Meta and ask for an exception for the particular URL. Here's ( http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/essays&editorials/index.html) something on the site from Matthew Feldman, an historian at the University of Northampton. The reason I know his name is he's an anti-LaRouche, anti-fascist activist. I can't imagine him posting knowingly on an HD site. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 18:02, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * SV, I'm fairly certain that neither HEART nor the two death camps sites are Holocaust denier sites. I believe the only reason they were blacklisted had to do with the fact that their intellectual property dispute was spilling over onto Wikipedia and driving a lot of edit-warring here. If memory serves, this resulted in them being examined rather closely and editors decided that they couldn't verify what kind of editorial control or fact-checking there was at any of the sites and they were all blacklisted. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:55, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I first ran into this issue when I was editing the Kurt Gerstein page as the only English translation of the Gerstein Report that I could find was at: deathcamps.org/belzec/gerstein.html. At first if I remember right I had to get some kind of permission to link to it on the WP Gerstein Report page. It is still there and seems to present no problem.(I must take this back since just now I guickly pasted in the whole link above and this edit was blocked.  It seems to be a good idea to lift that block.)Joel Mc (talk) 09:30, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Just wondering what the status of this is, as discussion seems to have petered out. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 19:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Death[-]camps was very definitely a case of Mercutio's curse, prompted by an extensive edit war across multiple projects and including complaints to OTRS (2007042710008903, 2007041310015789, 2007031910009401). The holocaustresearchproject blog was blacklisted because of link spamming, apparently by the blog owner - and it seems to be a blatant attempt to circumvent the blacklisting put in place because the two sides were unable to resist the temptation to pursue their external intellectual property dispute via Wikipedia. In both cases the links are more trouble than they are worth, IMO. Let sleeping dogs lie. Guy (Help!) 12:37, 23 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've asked again on Meta that this site be removed from the spam blacklist so we can use it as a source, or at least add it to further reading sections. The discussion is here if anyone would like to comment. Cheers, SlimVirgin  TALK |  CONTRIBS 18:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Numbers
The article states as fact that Nazi Germany conducted a "programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination", and that "two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust were killed". Both statements are historically disputed (and I don't mean by Holocaust deniers). It is not accepted fact that the Holocaust was a systematic programme - officially it wasn't, and evidence that it was officially approved campaign is inconclusive. That uncertainty should be noted. The numbers who died included many (probably the majority) who died rather than were deliberately killed. The distinction is not purely semantic. So it should be noted that there were 6 million (if we accept that number, which is another debate) who died of disease and starvation etc, or were deliberately massacred in concentration camps and elsewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnC (talk • contribs) 08:21, 19 February 2011
 * You'll need reliable sources if you want the article edited to reflect this view. Here's a hint: you won't find any. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Dissociation from Germany
This is one way in which this article can be improved: In general, this article needs to be dissociated from the idea that the nation of Germany or "Germans" were solely responsible for the Holocaust. This is not simply a matter of terminology, it is a misrepresentation in the meaning of the terms. Suggesting or implying that Germany is the sole perpretrator is about as accurate as suggesting or implying that people of Jewish faith were the only people who were systematically murdered during the Second World War. People of many nations - under the control and supervision of the Third Reich - including Austrians and Czechs, were part of the Nazi party, part of the SS, and part of the Einsatzgruppen or the death camps, and as such they were directly involved in the broader sense of the Holocaust.Hoops gza (talk) 17:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * We have an entire article on that issue: Responsibility for the Holocaust. --jpgordon:==( o ) 22:15, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 63.104.174.146, 11 March 2011
Please correct the spelling of the cited author's name from "Issacs" to "Isaacs" in the photo caption at the end of the section "Death squads (1941–1943)":

63.104.174.146 (talk) 20:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Done --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Remember to add to the edit semi-protected after accepting/declining requests. —  Gƒoley  Four  — 04:56, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikilinks to people who have biographies on Wikipedia
I am working on clearing up wikipedia pages that have been tagged as being orphan articles (with insufficient wikilinks to them from other pages), as part of the Wikiproject Orphanage: You can help! project. I have just come across the following writer (born 1954) on The Holocaust: Gardy Ruder (who also has a page on the French Wikipedia site). In the course of trying to find potential links, I have also found the chemist Inge Auerbacher (who also has a page on the German Wikipedia site), and perhaps ought to be referenced on the List of Holocaust survivors page. One of the points about wanting to make as many wikilinks as possible to these two pages is that it makes them easier to find, and be read, by the reader, and therefore makes these people's contributions more widely known. Can I leave it to an editor more expert than I to consider these two biography pages, and to make any links that seem appropriate. Thanks in advance. TheAMmollusc (talk) 12:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I added Inge Auerbacher at List_of_Holocaust_survivors. Although she is listed as a chemist at Inge Auerbacher, I did not list her as a scientist because I could not find trace of scientific work from her, and all her published work is autobiographical (even her co-authored book about streptomycin is an autobiography of its (co)discoverer Albert Schatz with over half the pages dedicated to Auerbacher's own autobiography). About Gardy Ruder, I am not sure what to do, as Bibliography of The Holocaust does not contain a section for works by descendants of Holocaust victims. Hopefully someone else can help with that case.Truth or consequences-2 (talk) 18:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

persecution
Is the persecution considered part of the Holocaust by historians? If so, it should be added in the lede before "genocide". Actually, I kind of think it would be a good idea to have it there regardless of what historian consensus is because it's educational, it says, "hey, look people, there's this huge fundamental step that must occur before genocide starts".Hoops gza (talk) 19:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

premeditated
In general, this article, as well as all articles related to the Holocaust, particularly those on the concentration camps and Einsatzgruppen would be improved by putting across to the reader more clearly and in no uncertain terms how premeditated and calculating these actions were.Hoops gza (talk) 12:23, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I think those points come through in the text; however, as with many articles they could use tweaking. With that said, we don't want the lede (or lead as the English say) cluttered or add in surplus to the main points given when they are stated in the paragraphs of the article or articles in question. BTW-I believe there should be a listing of the "Concentration Camp Commandants", much like there is a listing of the "Commandants of extermination camps" (death camps). Thoughts, Hoops gza? Kierzek (talk) 19:07, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

It is definitely possible to do, but it will make the list considerably longer (probably at least double the major perpetrator list) because there were some 40 concentration camps. That was one of the reasons that I had not done the concentration camp commandants already. It might be best to move the list to a new page. However, I am not sure that the list is really encyclopedic enough (discrete and non point-of-view enough) to warrant having its own page. Another reason I did not add the concentration camp commandants already was because in terms of direct responsibility for deaths I believe that those camp commanders - those which were not at the six death camps - were not responsible for as many as anyone else listed, less than the Einsatzgruppen even. The only exceptions to that death toll idea are Clauberg and Schurmann, but they are very much outliers due to the ways in which they absolutized the perverse "superior Aryan race ideology" (they were holders of medical degrees and performed human medical experiments on children and pregnant woman, etc., just like Mengele). So that's why the CCCs aren't on the list thusfar.

I am planning to expand the list, code it better, to include a clear mugshot photo of each perpetrator, and the circumstances of his death (since virtually all of these Nazis died between 1945-1950, easily see which ones were legally punished).Hoops gza (talk) 04:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)