My Sunday Thought for 042317: Holocaust Remembrance - The Forgotten Victims

Serbs and Gypsies being marched to concentration camps

Please Note:

I will be reposting this each Sunday until April 23, 2017

(Holocaust Remembrance Day)

The impetus for this post comes from my good friend "Gypsy" who is a muse for most of my PTSD posts as well as others. This one was based on a message she sent me, which I edited for clarity and have paraphrased, here:

“I may have a topic for your writings concerning the perpetually offended. Someone on Facebook said they were proud to be from Jewish descent because the Jewish Holocaust was the worst genocide in history. I simply said, many historians would tell you that it was not only the Jewish people who were in the Holocaust, there were also LGBT, Gypsies, Germans, and you name it. I was then informed I was a liar because if that was the case it wouldn’t be called the Jewish Holocaust… Some people forget my family were Romanian gypsies on my father’s side, and were sitting in the same camps as my step mothers that were Jewish and going through it all together in unity. [I] had no desire to have a pissing contest with a stranger on who was beaten worse before I was even born... I instantly thought to wonder what Tony would think if he saw this conversation with the whole BLM and white power, and all this crap of race hating going on in this day and age… I have sent this person your blog before [you write the post] so maybe they will read it and learn something.”

Gypsy knows the League of the Perpetually Offended hold a place dear to my heart, and closer to the damned than most, bless their poor misguided souls. Perpetual offense is the prodigal child of ignorance, and the person she was talking to seems to fit this category, though we must remember it is not our place to judge. Yeah, right.

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

-- Elie Wiesel

The Nazis were insane, yet disavowed recognition of their own insanity because they were, well, insane.  It would make perfect sense they would be in denial as they embarked on the Reich's mission of sociopathic ethnic cleansing, genocide, and enslavement of the world's population which didn't meet the guidelines which the Nazis, themselves didn't even meet.   Considering our current knowledge of the human genome, and the fact that we now know there is no such thing as a 'pure Aryan race,' the Nazis would have been hard pressed, today, not to find most of their own ranks behind the wire with the rest of their ill-defined broken and genetically 'impure' of humanity, their own insane sociopathic mental illness notwithstanding.  Theirs was to be a true hell on earth for the non-Aryan allowed to survive, and this is more to the point of Gypsy's conversation.  All non-Aryan people were to be judged and utilized as found appropriate by the Third Reich.

"Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself." 

-- Elie Wiesel

Around 11 million people died during the Holocaust.  The numbers differ slightly depending on which list you trust, but along with the 6 million Jews sent to the camps for extermination and/or slave labor, 5 million of the total, the non-Jews, were also victims of the Nazi 'internment' camps.  Five million more victims whose only crime in life was being homosexual, Slavic, gypsy, mentally ill, autistic savant, handicapped or crippled, sympathetic Christian clergy, trade unionist, Jehovah's Witness, communist, anyone found harboring anyone on this, yet to be, all inclusive list of Nazi defined undesirables, and anyone found to be resisting the Reich to include Germans.  It was a Jewish Holocaust only in the sense that Jews were the largest minority specifically targeted, prior to the eventual ass whipping visited upon them by the Allied forces and their Russian Axis partner (who saw the writing on the wall and rebelled against them on the Western Front).  In reality, if Nazi Germany were to have won, all minorities would eventually have made the list, including the populations of all those countries which sided with them, their Axis partners in these crimes against humanity.  No one was immune from extermination.

To the point of this post, for a person of Jewish heritage to disrespect the deaths of the other, non-Jewish, Holocaust victims simply because their numbers may be insignificant in comparison, would be to deny their "duty," as Elie Wiesel put it, "to bear witness for the dead and for the living."  This for Mr. Wiesel was a matter of doing that which is right, "He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory."  Most important to this is the thought of remembrance, "To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."  I don't think he meant we should only remember the Jews which died. 

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.

-- Elie Wiesel

I will be repeating this post each Sunday until April 23, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Like Mr. Wiesel, I too believe in the remembrance of history, especially those events of horrific nature to mankind. I also believe one must learn history, for themselves, not just what they are spoon-fed by educators who have forgotten how to teach and what is important to teach, nor from the media which seeks to assist in the re-writing of history or the telling of news with questionable reliability on the truth.

"Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself."

-- Elie Wiesel

I will continue to post this as my part in the education of those who seek to learn, and for those I include several websites, below, in which to open their minds to reality and yet other sites chock full of interesting tidbits. Note that contrary to the title of the last website on the list, during WWII the death toll of those non-Jews killed by Nazis was significantly more than 5 million (although I would expect nothing less from the Huffington Post than to mislead readers in an article's title).  I have corrected their misleading title by adding a clarification in brackets.  

Warning: Some of the photos and information included on the following sites can be quite disturbing.  Time to parent up!  I recommend reviewing all sites and photos prior to sharing with youth.

1. The Forgotten 5 Million Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust
2. Holocaust - Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims
3. Five Million Forgotten - Non Jewish Victims of the Shoah
4. The Holocaust's Forgotten Victims: The 5 Million Non-Jewish People Killed by the Nazis [in the extermination camps]

Editor's Note 

(re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card) 

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so. This is also why, occasionally, I will present an "opinion" just to stir an emotional pot. Where it may sound like I agree with the statements made, I'm more interested in getting others to consider another viewpoint. 

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth. After over twenty years with military intelligence, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we learn from the experience, and what we do afterward.

Pastor Tony spent 23 years with United States Air Force Intelligence as a planner, analyst, briefer, instructor, and senior manager. He spent 17 years, following his service career, working with an Institutional Review Board helping to protect the rights of human subjects in pharmaceutical research.  Ordained 1n 2013 as an "interfaith" minister, he founded the Congregation for Religious Tolerance in response to intolerance shown by Christians toward peaceful Islam. As the weapon for his war on intolerance he chose the pen, to wage battle in the guise of the Congregation's official, online, blog, "The Path," of which he is both author and editor. "The Path" offers a vehicle for commentary and guidance concerning one's own personal, spiritual, path toward peace and the final destination for us all. He currently resides in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where he volunteers as lead chaplain, and Chaplain Liaison, at a regional medical center.