Jews and Germans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"There is a tradition among the radical German left to side with the Palestinians. "

I'm the PP who wrote that. That "radical German left" isn't what I would call "parts of German society". When I say radical I mean radical, i.e. a tiny minority of politically extreme people. I was specifically referring to the members and sympathizers of the terrorist group RAF in the 70s. That ideology is pretty much extinct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"There is a tradition among the radical German left to side with the Palestinians. "

I'm the PP who wrote that. That "radical German left" isn't what I would call "parts of German society". When I say radical I mean radical, i.e. a tiny minority of politically extreme people. I was specifically referring to the members and sympathizers of the terrorist group RAF in the 70s. That ideology is pretty much extinct.

PP here again. I should also add that this radical German left, as far as I know, did not use their sympathy for the Palestinian cause to excuse the Holocaust, which is what PP claimed "parts of German society" do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

All true. I am not claiming that the near-annilihation of native Indians would not be a crime, far from it. I am only claiming that it is different from the "final solution" and the holocaust.

How so? How is it different?

One is carefully planned and diligently executed mass-murder. The other is not.

How do you know that?

There was no a Wannsee conference where the mass execution of all native Americans was decided, together with a plan on how to achieve this. There were no killing camps where all native Americans were shipped and then gassed. The near-annilihation of native Americans played out over centuries, the holocaust witin 3 years.

Calling a crime a crime is one thing. Considering all crimes the same and of the same moral dimension is another.

holocaust was not just jews, you do know that
There were killing camps for native Americans, they were not shipped because they were made to walk

just a question of how popular the victims happen to be

So maybe you can point me to the equivalent of Auschwitz (or Treblinka, or Sobibor) on US soil.

The Trail of Tears

Measuring it by method (industrialized camps in the 20th centruy as opposed to less industrial methods in the 19th century), rather than intent and effect is focusing on the least important aspect of the crimes. In Poland, 90%+ of the Jewish population was killed. In the US, 90%+ of the Native American population was killed. I don't see a difference regardless of the methods used.

Germans had the ability to use primitive, analog computers (Hollerith machines, which run punchcard databases); the US didn't have those. On the other hand, the US had lots of open space to shove NA people and let them starve.

This is an insane argument, anyway. We are arguing about whether the US's genocide against NA was morally better than German genocide against Jews. Um... no. Genocide is genocide. Once you hit that line, there is no quibbling about better or worse. Nobody wins the Oppression Olympics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"There is a tradition among the radical German left to side with the Palestinians. "

I'm the PP who wrote that. That "radical German left" isn't what I would call "parts of German society". When I say radical I mean radical, i.e. a tiny minority of politically extreme people. I was specifically referring to the members and sympathizers of the terrorist group RAF in the 70s. That ideology is pretty much extinct.

PP here again. I should also add that this radical German left, as far as I know, did not use their sympathy for the Palestinian cause to excuse the Holocaust, which is what PP claimed "parts of German society" do.

are they called radical because they support Palestinians?

[Anonymous]

Hilter wrote that the war between the "cowboys and Indians" was a war to eliminate the Natives from North America. He grew up hearing stories about those wars and identified with the white Americans. In the end, the result was OK to him, not great. The USA still had too many Jews, blacks and other types. Germany, in his mind, could do better.

[Anonymous]

I don't get blaming Germans born after the war. My dad was actually born during the war and my grandfather fought for the German army. He didn't actually fight until about 1945 as he was exempted from fighting until then because of his job, which was town baker. That does not mean he was a Nazi, as a male he was required to fight. That's pretty much all my dad will talk about and really doesn't know much more since his dad died in the war. He has a huge sense of shame about Germany's actions but does not feel personally responsible, nor should he.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"There is a tradition among the radical German left to side with the Palestinians. "

I'm the PP who wrote that. That "radical German left" isn't what I would call "parts of German society". When I say radical I mean radical, i.e. a tiny minority of politically extreme people. I was specifically referring to the members and sympathizers of the terrorist group RAF in the 70s. That ideology is pretty much extinct.

PP here again. I should also add that this radical German left, as far as I know, did not use their sympathy for the Palestinian cause to excuse the Holocaust, which is what PP claimed "parts of German society" do.

are they called radical because they support Palestinians?

Of course not. Maybe you should google Rote Armee Fraktion, and you'll know why they were called radical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't get blaming Germans born after the war. My dad was actually born during the war and my grandfather fought for the German army. He didn't actually fight until about 1945 as he was exempted from fighting until then because of his job, which was town baker. That does not mean he was a Nazi, as a male he was required to fight. That's pretty much all my dad will talk about and really doesn't know much more since his dad died in the war. He has a huge sense of shame about Germany's actions but does not feel personally responsible, nor should he.

But is it not your responsibility to explore your family from that standpoint?
Are you not interested in what went on in your family?
In my family we know details of those who were persecuted and what they did about it. And how they died.
There might be some heroes in your family....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't get blaming Germans born after the war. My dad was actually born during the war and my grandfather fought for the German army. He didn't actually fight until about 1945 as he was exempted from fighting until then because of his job, which was town baker. That does not mean he was a Nazi, as a male he was required to fight. That's pretty much all my dad will talk about and really doesn't know much more since his dad died in the war. He has a huge sense of shame about Germany's actions but does not feel personally responsible, nor should he.

But is it not your responsibility to explore your family from that standpoint?
Are you not interested in what went on in your family?
In my family we know details of those who were persecuted and what they did about it. And how they died.
There might be some heroes in your family....

Not the PP, but why should it be anyone's responsibility to explore their family history? Some people are interested in family history, others aren't. I don't see it as a responsibility to know everything about your grandparents' lives.

[Anonymous]

It's a bit far-fetched, but consider the analogy of Peta's view of scientists who experiment on animals or those of us who eat them -- we are engaged in a holocaust against animals. Or the "pro-life" view of those of us who sanction abortion -- holocaust!

I personally do not consider a cow or a two-month fetus to be a human being, so I don't see it in those terms. But the Germans were conditioned by their government to consider Jews, Rom, etc to be inferior races, just as white Americans considered the NA they killed or the AA they enslaved to be less human than whites.

Please don't take this as justification of the holocaust, the clearing of our continent, slavery, or even abortion or meat-eating. All I am trying to say is that most of us are capable of assuming a frame of mind that justifies what we have to (or want to) do. Therefore, while we should not forget the sins of the past (lest we repeat them), we should have some understanding of those who committed them and certainly not continue blaming their progeny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So maybe you can point me to the equivalent of Auschwitz (or Treblinka, or Sobibor) on US soil.

The Trail of Tears

A cruel relocation exercise that paid little respect for peoples' well-being and lifes isn't the same as intentional mass-murder.

Measuring it by method (industrialized camps in the 20th centruy as opposed to less industrial methods in the 19th century), rather than intent and effect is focusing on the least important aspect of the crimes. In Poland, 90%+ of the Jewish population was killed. In the US, 90%+ of the Native American population was killed. I don't see a difference regardless of the methods used.

Except that one occurred over a span of three years and the other over three centuries. And that the majority of "killed" Native Americans died from disease and not murder.

Germans had the ability to use primitive, analog computers (Hollerith machines, which run punchcard databases); the US didn't have those.

So your hypothesis is that the US governent would have sent all native Americans it could gotten hold of to gass chambers had it had the technological capacity for this? Rather stiff.

This is an insane argument, anyway. We are arguing about whether the US's genocide against NA was morally better than German genocide against Jews.

The insanity emerges from your claim of moral equivalence. A crime is a crime, but this does not mean all crimes are the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't get blaming Germans born after the war. My dad was actually born during the war and my grandfather fought for the German army. He didn't actually fight until about 1945 as he was exempted from fighting until then because of his job, which was town baker. That does not mean he was a Nazi, as a male he was required to fight. That's pretty much all my dad will talk about and really doesn't know much more since his dad died in the war. He has a huge sense of shame about Germany's actions but does not feel personally responsible, nor should he.

But is it not your responsibility to explore your family from that standpoint?
Are you not interested in what went on in your family?
In my family we know details of those who were persecuted and what they did about it. And how they died.
There might be some heroes in your family....

Not PP. The issue for my generation is often that our parents were children at the time, and when our grandparents were still alie we were too young to grasp the full concept and ask the right questions.

This said, I am also very careful when it comes judging my grandparents' generation. They had to cope with extreme circumstances that I can not only not really imagine, I am also not sure how I would act if exposed to them. It's nice to grow and live up in a free, decent country, many people don't have that luxury.

[Anonymous]

My family is now Christian, but was historically Jewish when my ancestors lived in Germany. Most emigrated before 1900.

[Anonymous]

I haven't read all 19 pages of this thread. Will say that my father was a German Jew. Fled to Belgium and then to the United States as the Nazis invaded Europe. Three of his uncles were murdered, seemingly randomly, by the SS while on a train to Berlin. Several other relatives in camps who died. Family business and property taken by the Nazis. Misery all around.

Do I blame all Germans? No. But there wa a generation of Germans and other Europeans who were alive and complicit in the extermination of millions of Jews and others who did not conform to Nazi rule. It's hard to get past that, regardless of what was at stake for them. Sorry, but you watched your neighbors carted off to camps, saw them slaughtered in the streets, revealed their hiding places, informed the Nazis of their locations, etc. I don't have a lot of faith in a society who watched as that unfolded and did nothing, for the most part (though there were notable exceptions and heroic acts).

So yes, I'm very skeptical of that older generation of Germans.

[Anonymous]

Except that one occurred over a span of three years and the other over three centuries. And that the majority of "killed" Native Americans died from disease and not murder. !!!!??

You need a better history book