Do all Jews presume that the Holocaust was culminated or is it only a certain percentage of Jews?

Question

I personally do not believe that the Holocaust was culminated but an isolated incident. I think that to suggest that the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany was a continuation of the persecution of Jews in Medieval Europe is a major quantom leap.

However are individual Jews taught from birth that the Holocaust would still have happened to them even if there had been a large population of other ethnic minorities residing in Germany after the Great War who were in prominent positions as Adolf Hitler saw it?

***NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS PLEASE***

Answer 1

BCMR's analysis is correct - although Raul Hilberg's 'The Destruction of the European Jews' is a much better book than the one by Dawidowowicz.

Answer 2

It was and it was not a continuation.



I have never heard of the question in the second paragraph.

Answer 3

The major quantum leap is completely yours, jumping from the middle ages to the 20th century... while ignoring all pogroms and persecutions between the 17th up to the 19th century.



We should speak of a temporary culmination of course, since history forever goes round in the same golden cirkels...



We ain't seen nothing yet.

Answer 4

So, are you seriously trying to argue that the Holocaust, which was the result of extreme anti-semitic views of the Nazis and their collaborators, should not be examined within the larger historical framework of antisemitism that preceded that era?



There is a book called The War Against the Jews which examines this.

Among other things, it traces roots of German antisemitism to the late 19th century and before.



I will grant one thing. The antisemitism of the Medieval Times was different than the Nazi era. That was primarily based on religion while the later was based on race.

If anything, the distinction highlights the ability of antisemitism to redefine itself. (i.e. "the old hatred in a new form")



Update:

You said something I didn't say. You said: "If everyone in Germany was "anti-Jewish"..." I never made that argument. Nor will I make that argument. Nor does my argument depend on that assumption.

Rather, I pointed out that antisemitism did exist in Germany and Europe before the Nazi era. I didn't say every German was antisemitic. I didn't say most were. But the conditions that led to the Nazis eventually gaining power and implementing antisemitic policies did NOT happen in a vacuum.



Thus, do you not think that it would be at least logical from a academic point of view to at least consider the idea that there MAY be a connection? Lucy Davidowitz (the historian who wrote The War Against the Jews) thought so.

Answer 5

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.Israel and the Jews will stop any harm coming to the Jewish people.

Answer 6

What the heck does it matter whether the holocaust was an isolated incident, or a continuation of some sinister medieval plot???? I'm not a jew or a muslim....I have no quarrel with either of them. It does, however, make my ******* stomache sick to think of all the death and destruction caused by people in the name of "god" throughout the ages. Christians, too. Unprovable mythologies being the rationale for doing harm to your fellow man. You're all fucked in the head.

Answer 7

Batizzak to you too.



Culmination or not, I believe like Jews do, it happened it will not happen again.



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Answer 8

I think you're being silly now.



What difference does it make whether the Holocaust would have happened if there were other ethnic minorities in Germany? The fact is that there was no other large ethnic minorities in Germany apart from the Jews, and they were the main target of genocide. Lol seriously, who the hell sits there wondering what would have happened if there were more Indians in Germany at the time, thinking that will somehow make what happened in history better or make them feel less victimized by the Nazis.

Answer 9

That assumes Hitler alone hated Jews. For the Holocaust to even happen... for the Nuremberg laws to be accepted 10 years before... the hate had to already existed widespread, for him to harness.



It did. The "Protocol of the Elders" was used heavily by Nazis, & it's a preceding hate-incitement.



Before that, the Dreyfuss Affair stirred up such intense antisemitism in late 1800s, that it drove Hertzl to create the idea of harnessing the modern movement to nationalism (from empires) to form a Jewish country to make Jews safe.



Leaping back to Middle Ages, Martin Luther "The Jews and their Lies" describes burning them in fire, genociding, and Holocausting them.

http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/documents/luther-jews.htm



Every action of the Nazis except the direct goal of mass killing without escape... had been implemented at Jews many, many times:



> Ghettos, by the Church

> Marked by yellow cloth - originally under Muslim rule. Later Church required yellow hats.

> Restrictions on jobs & proper citizenship.

> Attacks & mob or government let humiliations & killings, had a name already, pogrom.





The Holocaust shocked people. So it was studied, for why. The answer did NOT come back that racism happens & Jews happened (at 1/2 a percent of Germans) to be targeted. It came back, that the hate had a long deep root, with many unique elements, & that it would take long hard work to remove it.



Here's an OFFICIAL CATHOLIC perspective on it. He is speaking as a formal representative of the Church. Notice how he references it as an old hate, with roots in -misused (inaccurate)- Christian theology. And all the history events that led up to the Holocaust.

http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/church/persecution/ (there are several links on that page)

http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/church/persecution/summary.html



He summarizes

"Was there a direct line from the anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, as some have alleged? Probably not. The line was indirect, beginning around 150CE with gentile misreadings of the bitter intra-Jewish polemic contained in those writings. The theological anti-Judaism of the Church fathers, repeated endlessly in medieval and Renaissance-Reformation preaching, was the far greater culprit. It was the continuing rationale for the indefensible Christian conduct of the Middle Ages onward that was xenophobic and angry at Jewish resistance to absorption into the cultural mainstream. But because the Church’s preaching and its catechizing had long shaped the popular mind, a new phenomenon was able to come to birth: modern anti-Semitism."





Asker's comment: "Jews taught from birth that the Holocaust would still have happened to them"



Jews aren't taught that the Holocaust "would have happened." Period. There's no ownership of this as some expected event. However, it happened. Jews are taught, when age appropriate, why grandpa acts so odd sometimes & can't be soothed. And why grandma has a tattoo & cries when you ask about her mama.



Most importantly, the Jewish focus is on how to stop it in the future & how to live our lives, not on the past. So please stop bringing up Jews & victim past. That's -your- focus. We only care about what happens from here on out in the future.







@For Asker's comments



Your comment about not recognizing Hitler until they had a need, has nothing to do with whether there was widespread hate. People recognize politicians for many reasons. Hate flares into actions when general situation is bad.



You completely missed my point if the histories. You say the hate was merely at whatever minority was handy in 1930s. I point out how entrenched it was before then specifically at Jews... with even the Catholic Church pointing out it's roots in Christian theology. (Faulty) but not some random minority, but a specific group (Jews) for specific reasons (religious history & later secular additions).



I point out that genocide was the single new element to the Holocaust (matches to what you say), but that all the hate elements & even actions already existed - there had been mass murders of Jews before. The difference was Jews could escape before, by leaving Judaism. Also Lutherians did pay attention to Martin's book. Google for this - the Lutherian Church has made a formal apology to the Jewish community for doing that in their history.



"If they had not promulgated the Protocols they would have found another anti-Jewish myth to use as propaganda against them"

Exactly - that shows your original premise is inaccurate. "They would have found another anti-Jewish myth." They weren't conveniently picking randomly whatever was right in their faces around them. They went after Jews because of a long history of existence specific antiJewish animosity throughout Europe. If not from Protocols, then some other (of many sources) would have done.

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