[tptacek]

I'm not sure I understand the argument here. I agree: Polish Jews were Poles. It's possible we don't disagree at all.

If you ask me why, at least in the US, there's so much attention paid to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, then the answer I'll give is that the Germans killed far more Jews, but also did so more deliberately and carefully, thus supporting that narrative.

I didn't go to US public school --- I went to Catholic school --- but we were always taught about the other victims of the Holocaust. At 12 I'd have told you the Nazis targeted not just Jewish people but also "gypsies", gay people, and communists. We were, for instance, taught about Maximilian Kolbe, a name I remember principally from the story I was taught in grade school.

[6d6b73]

My problem with your previous comment is that you claim that polish losses were mostly to "genocidal military operations, such as large scale bombing of cities".

See, the thing is, since Polish Jews were part of the country, were scientists, doctors, blacksmiths, or just regular farmers they were also killed by these bombings, and other forms of killings. The other side of the equation is that these people who died in the concentration camps were mostly Polish citizens. They count towards "polish losses". It's unfair to separate people simply because of their religion, and make it look like being killed by Zyklon B is so much worse than being torn apart by a bomb.

It's just sad that we even have discussion on this and that some people still think that one for of killing is "better" or "worse" than the other (and I'm not saying that you think that, but other commenters in this whole thread did.)

[tptacek]

This is going to sound snarky but I don't mean it that way: I agree that it's unfair to separate people based on their religion, but I think you want to take that complaint up with the Third Reich. We've come to a point in the conversation where I felt the need to write the sentence "European Jews were deliberately, carefully, and systematically targeted by the Third Reich", which suggests to me that something has gone wrong either in our dialog or the thread.

[6d6b73]

"gone wrong either in our dialog or the thread." Possibly both :)

[tptacek]

You get what I'm saying, right? To feel a need to write that sentence is to suggest that the thought has somehow been rebutted or dismissed elsewhere.

[6d6b73]

Not really. See in the previous comment you wrote "European Jews were deliberately, carefully, and systematically targeted by the Third Reich" yet few sentences before that you wrote "I agree that it's unfair to separate people based on their religion".

What my problem with this whole discussion is that people keep talking about as Jews as a totally separate group from all of the victims. They don't talk about {Polish| Russian| French |Other } citizens being killed in extermination camps. Yes, a lot of them were ethnic Jews. But a lot of these ethnic Jews did not thing about themselves as Jews, as they were being shipped of by the trains to Auschwitz. They were in their minds Russians, French, even Germans. But for some reasons these people were "separated" by some people to show how much more their group suffered. And then they claim that other groups just died "because of bombings" or in "work camps" as if this was so much better way to die.

To me it's infuriating that we talk about just one specific group that died, while ignoring the rest. And even more infuriating is suggesting that these others that died don't count as much simply because there were fewer of them or they were not from the "right group".

[ashirusnw]

What tptakec is saying is that it's not the Jews that separated the e.g. assimilated Polish Jews as a category, but the Third Reich.

> But a lot of these ethnic Jews did not thing about themselves as Jews, as they were being shipped of by the trains to Auschwitz.

I don't know how you can say that especially bearing in mind the Nuremberg laws defined as someone with 3 or more Jewish grandparents. If you're that strongly Jewish by race, you're very unlikely not to have that as part of your core identity. And in any event, you're not addressing tptakec response to you with this.

> But for some reasons these people were "separated" by some people to show how much more their group suffered.

You may not have fully intended it, but that sentence comes across very poorly.

> To me it's infuriating that we talk about just one specific group that died, while ignoring the rest.

I don't know anyone that talks just about the Jews (you mean jews, right?) that died (were exterminated) and ignores the rest. It is an acknowledged fact that Jews suffered extermination disproportionate to any other race or nationality (90% of the 3 million Polish Jews, for instance). The only other group that's comparable when using the term Holocaust is the Romani (who's true numbers is still hard to hard estimate) who are mentioned (along with gays, the disabled etc.) in every reasonable discourse.

[dang]

Infuriation is the wrong energy to bring to HN threads, especially about explosive topics and especially not in a thread that's teetering on breaking into national and ethnic conflict all over again (if it hasn't already).

If there's one tiny thing we all can contribute to a discussion like this, it's not to let that happen.