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What's the difference.

Between over 100,000 dead Iraqis and six million dead Jews?

Where do you draw the line?  Does the sentence "What's the difference between three thousand dead New Yorkers and millions of dead Native Americans" strike you as a reasonable statement? If not then again I ask, where should the line be drawn?

You might also notice that I explicitly included the extermination of Native Americans as one of those cases where one can sensibly argue that they are comparable to the Shoah. At the same time the two events played out in a very different manner so one can compare and contrast away. For example, the Native Americans were subject to a centuries long persecution that was much more intense than that suffered by the European Jews prior to the Nazis. Another example - there was no concerted, all encompassing period of extermination of Native Americans comparable to what happened to the Jews in 1941-5.

(A couple commenters seem to have a problem with my use of the term 'Holocaust' in its common colloquial sense of the extermination of European Jews by the Nazis, perhaps a substitution of the term 'Shoah' will placate them)

by MarekNYC on Thu Jan 19th, 2006 at 05:10:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't think anyone is suggesting the circumstances in any genocide are identical, that they are not all unique in their own way.  Or that some occurred in far away places or a long long time ago.

That's hardly the point.

The point is that they are all legitimate, all horrid, and no one group of victims can, or should want to, claim some title of "worst genocide ever."  Although I imagine that many FEEL that their situation was worst.  And feeling that is ok; it is expected.  But asking others to feel that way too is NOT ok.

This shouldn't some kind of contest where the winner of the most exceptional genocide award gets the most exceptional treatment.  How offensive.  

It's history, it's life, it's about gaining understanding and receiving acknowledgement and allowing everyone's story to be told (er, not here on ET, of course.  Not enough room.  But you get the picture).


Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

by p------- on Thu Jan 19th, 2006 at 05:22:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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