Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
We will Never Forget the six million who perished as Jews. But remember that only one Jewish grandparent made you a “Jew” to Hitler, so many Christians and Christian converts died as Jews. Even being married to someone classified as a “Jew” could be a death sentence.
We also risk forgetting the other five million who died for being gay, a gypsy, a political minority, or other “undesirables.” We shouldn’t forget the “righteous Gentiles” who risked their lives (or lost them) to save Hitler’s intended victims. Or all the others who died because of one man’s personal madness: in the countries he invaded, the militaries he faced, the German population, and anyone else who stood in his way.
Never Forget.
Though I should add that there is a debate about to what extent it was one man's madness, and to what extent it was the way the entire society was set up (in large part by that one man, of course, but not entirely).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism
All the study of haShoah, and of who did the killings, and most importantly of why, (from Hannah Arendt's the Banality of Evil to Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men to Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands), I feel like should lead us to think about how easily such a thing could happen again, and not just to the Jews, but to many other groups as well. Never Forget must be twinned with Never Again.
אמן.
>Even being married to someone classified as a "Jew" could be a >death sentence.
Kochava, these people died as Jews. (Never ming that some of them are not Jewish to you.) Putting it in quotes is offensive here.
But remember that only one Jewish grandparent made you a "Jew" to Hitler, so many Christians and Christian converts died as Jews
It was not about religion,it was about ethnicity…
Normally I have a strict policy to not bite at trolling statements. But you caught me on a bad day, I suppose.
Your comment is stupid. Really stupid. This has nothing to do with MY definition of Jew. It has to do with Hitler's definition of a Jew. (And note that Hitler's definition did NOT include spouses, but they often got thrown in as "Jew-lovers" if they chose not to leave the spouse, making your choice of quote even stupider.) In fact, maybe we should all always write "Jew" with quotes when talking about defining who is and isn't a Jew because there are at least four different "methods" I know of classifying people with Jewish affiliations by the various movements.
Further, NO movement in Judaism recognizes a spouse as a "Jew" automatically. No group says having children with a Jew makes you a Jew. No one says having sex with a Jew makes you a Jew. No one says loving a Jew makes you a Jew. Not humanistic, not reconstructionist, not reform, not conservative, and not orthodox. In fact, NONE of those groups would recognize someone as a "Jew" if they had "simply" one "Jewish" paternal grandparent with neither parent affiliating as Jewish.
Further, many of these people who died as "Jews" had purposely cut all ties with Judaism (or had those ties cut for them by parents) and were very devout Christians, atheists, or whatever. I suppose I get to "outfrum" even the extreme chareidim by not classifying those people as "Jews" for this discussion. For instance, the newly-Sainted Edith Stein was a Catholic convert who became a nun but died in Auschwitz anyway because she was a "Jew."
Maybe it's useful to note that I wrote this comment not with "Jews" in mind, but to point out to my "non-Jewish" friends and acquaintances that the Holocaust is NOT "just a Jewish thing." Everyone should care about the Holocaust because it has lessons for everyone and affected everyone. Not just "Jews" died. I'm tired of hearing about "the six million" (and who knows how many of that number were misclassified as Jews under the statute-had no Jewish family- or churchgoing people who would have glad spit on "the Jews" in the street in Germany before the Gestapo came calling). So no, it wasn't six million. It was ELEVEN MILLION.
Again, stupid comment intended solely to start a fight and be all uppity that you're so much more enlightened than me, the judgmental jerkwad. Well, you got a fight, anonymous dumb commenter person thing. Yeah.
Does this mean your blogging break is over??
Nope. This was just a rant that overcomes me yearly, and it was unusually well-received on Facebook today, so I decided to use all my methods of influence to spread my "message."
I may blog here and there in the future, but I don't expect to do it regularly, and I have no plans to continue growing the readership. For instance, I turned down a couple of opportunities I was given to promote the blog. I think it has reached its peak, and I'm comfortable with letting the blog slide into a comfortable old age. Safely locked inside a nursing home.
Thank you! You frequently give words to my thoughts. In everything today were people said 6 million I wanted to explode (also one of those days). The figure of 6 million has also made me frustrated with the infighting amongst the different movements. Everyone is so quick to cite the 6 million figure- but how many would question those individuals Jewishness today? I have been around the three major movements in this process and have heard comments in every one. " Oh those crazy Orthodox aren't part of MY people" "Well you know their Reform so there not really Jewish" As an outsider who until two years ago thought my Conservative friend was a Republican Jew- I was really appalled at the animosity. Maybe the lesson we should learn is to stop all the fighting. Hate begets hate. That may be opening up a can of worms…but it's one of those days.
Thank you for your blog though. It really has helped.
To be pedantic, the child of a non-practicing Jewish mother and non-Jewish father who is not raised as a Jew would be considered Jewish according to traditional Halacha (I believe the Conservatives would agree with the Orthodox on this), but would not be considered Jewish by the Reform movement without "appropriate and timely public and formal acts of identification with the Jewish faith and people". Irony of ironies…
Not that this matters to your point.
See, for example, http://data.ccarnet.org/cgi-bin/respdisp.pl?file=38&year=carr
The "who is a Jew" question really doesn't matter here, in my opinion. The irony of all the shouts of "Never Forget the 6 Million!" is that it negates the memory of another FIVE MILLION HUMAN BEINGS. The Jewish community has created such an obsession with "the six million" that most people in America today think only 6 million people died! This is the most sickening irony I've ever seen.
So the uncertainty of how many of the 6 million were "Jews" or affiliated Jewishly emphasizes how incredibly arbitrary the 6 million number is to begin with, making the use of it to negate the other 5 million EVEN MORE offensive and horrifying.
>The Jewish community has created such an obsession with "the six >million" that most people in America today think only 6 million people died!
Oh those Jews… 6 million of their relatives died, gased to death, shot, burnt alive, entire families from little kids and 80year olds, shtetls of Eastern Europe forever disappearing off the map…and those Jews are obsessing and obsessing…
Seriously, Kochava, you are confusing HaShoah and second world war. Of course not just 6 million people died in the second world war! I think 60 (six zero) million people died in the war, a good percentage of them were civilians, certainly more than 5 million Some countries lost over 10% of their population (Serbia, Poland, Chechoslovakia, USSR), Jews and non Jews included…Why do some Americans not know about it? I dont know… Historically illiterate?
-Amonym 4:23
Kochava, you misunderstood the original comment… It is not about the spouses, it is about the 1/2 or 1/4 Jewish folks who died as Jews… Referring to the them as "Jews" in quotes I find offensive to their memory.
Hitler considered a Jew someone with at least 3 Jewish grandparents… 1/2 and 1/4 were classified as "mishlinge" of various degree. They died as Jews, lets honor their memory as Jews…
I am not sure what the definitions of various movements have to do with it. It was about elimination of an ethnic group, not a religious community.
> For instance, the newly-Sainted Edith Stein was a Catholic convert > who became a nun but died in Auschwitz anyway because she was > a "Jew."
She was Jewish by ethnicity, catholic by religion. Dont know how she self-identified.
Agreed. Completely. The added kvetching about infighting was a tangent my mind frequently goes off on.
I cringe when I think of what happened at the Holocaust, it was beyond hell.
the best short film i have seen that gets into the survivor's mind was just posted by aish:
http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Shoah_A_Short_Film.html
My heart was with the survivors not just on Yom HaShoah, but every day. Their place in heaven is a place that very few people are worthy of.
Lurking Noahide's significant other
Well said Kochava, especially the last comments. Taz.
"Oh those Jews… 6 million of their relatives died, gased to death, shot, burnt alive, entire families from little kids and 80year olds, shtetls of Eastern Europe forever disappearing off the map…and those Jews are obsessing and obsessing…"
And another 5 million people were "ethnically cleansed" in the same way, in the same camps, thrown into the same mass graves, or shot in the same way in front of their own homes. For example, the entire gypsy population was almost obliterated, much closer to extinction than the Jews because they had little population outside of affected Europe. This is not "confusing" these deaths with the wider WWII conflict. Approximately 60 million people died in WWII. As I said above, "We also risk forgetting the other five million who died for being gay, a gypsy, a political minority, or other 'undesirables.' " The other groups, such as the Righteous Gentiles, the populations of the invaded countries, etc, were above and beyond the five million number, which is why I listed them separately.
I did not misunderstand your comment. You wrote your comment poorly by choosing quotes poorly. There is a difference. And I stand by my response as being responsive to what you've written here.
Good points.
Just because Hitler said Jews are solely an ethnicity, I should adopt the same way of speaking about it? Jews aren't an ethnicity. The convert, the child of a convert, and the grandchild of a convert died exactly like any other "Jew" did (though sometimes they had a better chance of hiding "Jewish ancestry"). Ethnicity was the argument, the "dirty genes," but it wasn't the whole of it.
Judaism has never been solely an ethnicity, just as it is not solely a religion.
My understanding (and naturally I'm biased in addition to being relatively ignorant) is that none of the other Nazi genocides demonstrated the same forethought and motivation; i.e., they were closer to being crimes of opportunity (we're here, we can, we should, lets) rather than being the rationale (or at least _a_ rationale) behind certain military or political actions.
From what I have read, it seems that the Nazis were more opportunistic than strategic in targeting say, dissident Jehovah's Witnesses or the few blacks that were in Europe at the time, but I wouldn't say the same of the disabled, and and especially not the Romani.Taz
While there might not have been so much hatred campaigns, rounding up all gypsies and putting them on trains and sending them to concentration and death camps is not much different from how Jews were treated. It does not take anything out of the hatred for Jews to mention that others were systematically eliminated. Let's not forget that Nazis had a whole pyramidal hierarchy of races and below the "pure" Germans/Aryans were many peoples. Jews were not alone at the bottom.
Good post as well as the retort. I think however that there is one instance where a paternal grandparent is recognized, namely the Law of Return. This means that in Israel we have many (hundreds of thousands) of people that are not halachically Jewish but are living in Israel under that Law. Unfortunately the Rabbinate makes their conversions nearly impossible, creating numerous problems. There is a movement now run by Rav Amsalem, see: http://amshalem.org/en/?page_id=29 . I recently heard him speak, I was very touched but what he had to say especially when he referred to those young men and women who as soldiers were willing to die for Israel, yet are now having an almost impossible time converting. He asked what more do they have to do to show that they are bound to the Jewish people? He has written a sefer entitled "Zera Yisrael" which teaches us that these people are descendants of Jews and we have an obligation to convert them. I would prefer not having this posted, if you would like to reply, please do so via email stejacobs@gmail.com. Kol Tuv, Steve Jacobs
Why in the world do you have ads on your blog proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord??!!?!?!
I have zero control over the ads. That is advertising that Google thinks is relevant to you, based on your prior internet usage.
Just jumping in to corroborate that this is how Ad Sense works, since the implied accusation in the original comment is so serious. Google tracks your browsing history and feeds you semi-customized ads based on your personal interests, even if these have nothing in common with the site you are currently viewing. Since Google's advertising profit is generated per click, not per view, they have a lot to gain from tailoring that advertising and maximizing the chance that any given individual will click on an ad. For example, all of the ads I can see on the blog are for mail-order coffee and financing options for college students (yikes, Google knows me.)
Well said!
PS> Actually in many European languages there are 2 words for a Jew: one meaning "ethnically Jewish" (of any religion) , another meaning "adherent of Judaism" (of any ethnicity).
On one hand, agree. On the other – how many converts do you think were there in the 30s-40s in Europe? And converts in a shtetl were even rarer – extremely, extremely rare. Another thing – if they were not an ethnicity (i.e not visually identifiable) why do you think they could not just run away? Converts were relatively common in the Roman Empire in the beginning of the first millemium BCE, they are common in the US now, but like i said, very uncommon in Europe in the second millenium BCE pretty much until relatively recently.