Can someone explain to me how the holocaust was allowed to happen?

I always wondered why there seems to be such hatred towards jews. It has to be rooted in religion. It seems throughout history people had had problems with jews and their religious beliefs. Look at the Spanish Inquisition. The year Columbus set sail to accidentally discover America the jews were told to convert their religion, leave Spain or be killed.

Look: bad ideas-- what you call "brainwashing"-- have a long lifespan even when they are completely wrong.

At the time, everyone in Europe "knew" the jews, gypsies, gays, etc. were problems. They didn't fit in. They weren't like everyone else.

Since seeing these groups as "others" was already built into the society, it was fairly easy to isolate them from civil life-- and stop people from seeing them as human. When the people with the guns wanted to do something to "solve the problem," most of the population at least went passively along.

You can see similar strands in the US today. During the last election, a political candidate who claimed to be a Christian stood in front of a crowd at a debate and proposed killing illegal immigrants with land mines along the border. This was greeted with cheers.

The people in that audience weren't seeing illegal immigrants as human beings. They were seeing them as something other than human.

It ain't that hard to imagine.

As for this-- it is amazing what machine guns can do. Have a quick look at the military history of places like west Africa in the 1800's, where standing armies-- even those armed with single shot rifles-- were mowed down by troops weilding machine guns.

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

ha ha ha....thanks for the laugh you lunatic! Even if you were trolling, you would still be a lunatic, because who would spend so much time writing such absurd nonsense.

And these were some classics:

"There's more, but you get the point. " Yes, we DEFINITELY get the point, and it is: YOU ARE INSANE.

Another beaut: "once the German Jews gave up their firearms per gun control, it was all but over for them at that point". Yes, gun control is to blame for the Holocaust! LOL!

Atrocities are obviously less likely to happen when the targets can defend themselves (to some degree).

On that note,

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Obviously, part of the reason the holocaust took place was because the Jews were overpowered by the radical government and didn't get enough outside support (sympathizers, foreign aid, or whatever else) to protect them.

That's not to say people should or should have go(ne) around buying up bazookas and assault rifles and hiding in their bunkers, but to mock people who want to maintain their rights to own firearms is pretty stupid in a historical context.

Jefferson (among several others) had a whole lot of good quotes one could use to express the value of liberty... but one quote per post is probably enough for here.

People in the US and Europe still really hate Jews but have to give them rights because of the US Constitution and US victory in Europe.

Prior to WWII that was not the case. Jews had to live in the same areas as other minorities. Many who look like Gentiles and Euro-Asian (Russians and Turks) passed for white and Whitened their names.

San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc, had racial covenents banning sales of homes in Gentile sections of the city to Jews.

Prior to WWII, Italy, France, Russia, Romans, Greeks, Spaniards, British, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Russians, Poles, Mongols, Turks, etc. always kept Jews in racist ghettos with no rights atall.

Thus there is no mystery why the Holocaust occured in the 1930 and 1940s.

Today Arabs and Muslims are the Jews of prior to WWII.

After WWII the US and Europeans switched racist blame and scapegoating from the Jews to the Arabs/Muslims.

The US and Euopeans now slaughter Arabs/Muslims as if they were Jews.

Apigsheaven wrote:

I always wondered why there seems to be such hatred towards jews. It has to be rooted in religion. It seems throughout history people had had problems with jews and their religious beliefs. Look at the Spanish Inquisition. The year Columbus set sail to accidentally discover America the jews were told to convert their religion, leave Spain or be killed.

The persecution of Jews stems from envy toward Jewish achievement. It's the same reason people attack "the rich" today.

The U.S. knew what in 1939? Aushwitz didn't even exist then. Poland was a free country as of the voyage of the St. Louis.

troofiness wrote:

ryan foreman wrote:

How would bombers free Jews? We came to their aid. It was called WW2. Realistically there was nothing else the western allies could have done for Jews taken to Poland.

total horsesh!t

the US knew. They didn't care. They turned the St. Louis back in 1939. They knew as they were preparing to bomb Europe, invade etc. It was low on the priority list.

ryan foreman wrote:

The U.S. knew what in 1939? Aushwitz didn't even exist then. Poland was a free country as of the voyage of the St. Louis.

Jewish laws in Germany and Austria were already in place. Kristallnacht had already happened. Jews e.g. Einstein had been leaving Europe in droves. The Chinese embassy in Vienna was issuing thousands of visas to allow Jews to leave - you needed a visa to another country to be allowed to leave Germany.

This was happening in the open. The US knew about it. They did nothing, and 25% of those on the ship subsequently died in camps.

You have to be an incredible denier to believe that the passengers on the St. Louis were some sort of economic opportunists.

Holocausts and Mass Genocides are a common tactic of war. Before Germany was incinerating millions of Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies, Stalin had slaughtered millions in Russia, England had murdered 40 million in China, Afica, India, and Arabia, France had murdered 10 million in Africa, Japan had murdered 2 million in China and Southeast Asia. After WWII, Britain, Netherlands, Canada, France, US, russia, continued mass genocide in Asia and the Middle East. Africa, India, and Middle East defeated the British, US, and Europe in the 1950s. Asia defeated the US and Europe by 1975. But today there are still pockets of US and European active genocidal fronts in Palestine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. I don't think we will even see the last Holocaust in our lifetimes. Holocausts are a part of the human race.

Some of what you say is true, but it is not true that there were not people in the US (in particular Jews in the US) trying to convince our government and the World to stop Hitler. The anti-Hitler movement in the US started in the early1930's before the real slaughter of Jews and other "undesirables" even started. In fact, in 1931 or 32 a Jewish group staged a mock trial of Hitler at Madison SquareGarden that generated a lot of attention and formal diplomatic complaints from Germany. A large part of the problem, as you correctly point out is that at the time there was a lot of anti-semitism in the US even at very high levels within the government and the state department. One could argue that the US and much of the world did turn a blind eye to the conditions that ultimately lead to the slaughter of millions of Jews and that the root of the problem was rampant anti-semitism.

To the OP, Check out Erik Larson's book In the Garden of Beasts... It is a fairly accurate account of events leading up to Hitler taking power in Germany. It's told from the perspective of the US Ambassador to Germany (Dodd) in the early 30's. I think it might give you insight into the mindset of people in the US government, other Western governments, and people in Germany during the time.

Roosevelt not only knew about the German death camps, his family made a fortune through genocide in Asia.

Roosevelt's family were investors in the Opium Trade. The British murdered 10 million in China with Opium.

It wasn't only Roosevelt's family either. After the end of the US Civil War, the US joined Europe in the rape of Asia, which had started with the Catholic Church and Portugal's capture of Taiwan in 1550. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were major war criminals in the the Rape of Asia.

My name is Lance wrote:

ah the eloquent, classy voice of liberalism..

so when a supposed liberal (which you assume the poster was, no, it was not me) calls someone a "homo" or fag-ot, you mock them them for being not eloquent and not classy (implied by your obvious sarcasm), but when YOU do the EXACT SAME THING (and you do it ALLLLLLLL the time, it is your go-to insult), it's.....what, a reasonable taunt? A witty, intelligent reply? A fair attack??

Do you have any self-awareness whatsoever??

If it lacks eloquence and class to respond to someone who disagrees with you by calling them a homosexual in a particularly offensive way, then why do you do it all the time?? You seriously are a lunatic and don't even realize it.

At least this guy saying this to you probably did so because he KNOWS it's what you do (giving you a dose of your own damn medicine). That doesn't make it right, but at least there is a tad of reason behind that compared to you doing it simply out of your hate for gays, your desire to piss people off, and your pathetic, junior-high school level of discourse.

To say it a 3rd way: so basically you are admitting you lack class and eloquence?? See, maybe that poster DID have good reason to open your eyes to your own idiocy (and once again, no it wasn't me).

Fair enough. I'll take that as a nice backpedal from your previous post. So if the U.S. did nothing in 1939. What then do you think they were supposed to do in that year? You are right that the U.S. should have let in more Jews in the 1930s. However, the U.S. had let in about 2 million Jews from 1880 through the 1920s many of who were fleeing European antisemitism.

troofiness wrote:

ryan foreman wrote:

The U.S. knew what in 1939? Aushwitz didn't even exist then. Poland was a free country as of the voyage of the St. Louis.

Jewish laws in Germany and Austria were already in place. Kristallnacht had already happened. Jews e.g. Einstein had been leaving Europe in droves. The Chinese embassy in Vienna was issuing thousands of visas to allow Jews to leave - you needed a visa to another country to be allowed to leave Germany.

This was happening in the open. The US knew about it. They did nothing, and 25% of those on the ship subsequently died in camps.

You have to be an incredible denier to believe that the passengers on the St. Louis were some sort of economic opportunists.

when are you going to get home, safe and sound?

Anyone have some stats they can post about things such as: % of jews that were in europe before hitler rose to power to % after he rose? Or, % of jews in europe that died in camps? or any stats like that?

marijuologist wrote:

The persecution of Jews stems from envy toward Jewish achievement. It's the same reason people attack "the rich" today.

This is true in ways that you didn't expect.

Historically in Europe, Christians weren't allowed to lend money and Jews often weren't allowed to own land. This basically forced the Jews to exploit the market opportunity that was being given them-- they became the only money lenders and were able to charge excess profits because there was no meaningful competition.

As for people attacking "the rich" today-- I don't think that anyone begrudges entrepreneurs their money. They took the risk, they deserve to profit.

However, when the ratings agencies are effectively given a monopoly, are incompetent, and still get paid a king's ransom, people get angry. When banks are incompetent, make bad loans, but then given government handout which are used to pay bonuses, people get angry.

When there truly is an open market for financial services in this country, then people will stop begrudging the financial services industry their pay.

To be honest, those exact statistics would be really hard to find. If you want a rough estimate or whatever, the basic number thrown around is 6 million Jews with somewhere between 6 and 7 million other people (communists, Catholics, intellectuals, Romani, etc. Half of all Jews in Europe were killed, which equated to 1/3 of all Jews in the world. The Germans kept CRAZY records, and there are still tons of people who were never accounted for who simply disappeared. A good portion of my family on my fathers side was probably exterminated in Auschwitz. My family who left Eastern Europe between '37 and '39 looked for them and couldn't find any of them after the war. My grandfather personally witnessed his father arrested stark-naked in his home and bull-whipped and paraded around the city and labeled a dirty Jew, and I can tell it still pains him to this day.

It sounds cliche, sugar-coated, etc., but there is nothing you can do about the Holocaust today. But you can choose to be a good person and do the right thing in your everyday life. So if there is anything good that came of this tragedy, it is the importance of being tolerant of those around you.

Also thanks Brojos for deleting the Holocaust denial posts in this

My grandmas , mom side, sister was a victim, shot down by machine gun. Fortunately, my grandparents, moms side came to America just prior to ww2 and were to survive with family. It is unknown why such a systematic hatred could create such a devastation. It is such a sad part of being alive in this existence.

Mercutio wrote:

It sounds cliche, sugar-coated, etc., but there is nothing you can do about the Holocaust today. But you can choose to be a good person and do the right thing in your everyday life. So if there is anything good that came of this tragedy, it is the importance of being tolerant of those around you.

The importance of "tolerance" is the wrong lesson to glean from the holocaust. In fact, there are a great many things that we should be intolerant of (Christianity in America, Islamic totalitarianism abroad, Zionism, etc.). The holocaust happened for philosophical reasons (collectivism, mysticism, altruism), and if we don't learn the real lessons, we are going to collapse into dictatorship just as Germany did.

"Tolerance" includes respecting the rights and traditions of Jews and non-Jews. "Tolerance" includes total human rights for 20,000,000 Muslim Palestinians current held hostage and ending the United States military occupation of the ancient homeland of the Palestinian people. "Tolerance" requires Jews, Christians, Druze, Zorastrians, etc. have 100% human rights, safety, security, pursuit of happiness", and peace in a future new nation of Palestine under a Sunni majority.