Talk:Holocaust

Holocaust

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"Polish camps"

A reader has e-mailed to object to the use of this phrase here and suggest an alternative such as "Nazi camps". John Stephenson (talk) 18:56, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

"Polish" just means "in Poland". "Nazi" doesn't mean that. Ro Thorpe (talk) 22:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Another question is just what's meant by Poland in this context. In 1939 Hitler and Stalin carved the country up. Parts of the German slice were fully incorporated into the Reich, others formed something called the General Government of Poland. After the war, Stalin kept his slice, and Poland was compensated with a large slice of Germany. We need a wording that makes clear the locations. I'm inclined to agree with the emailer that the wording is inappropriate, as it could be read as suggesting that Poland or the Poles were involved. Some indeed collaborated (there was even at least one massacre of Jews even after the war was over), others risked their lives to save Jews. Peter Jackson (talk) 11:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Lede edit

This is my first edit on CZ although I have been editing elsewhere for over 10 years. I have modified the lede for number of reasons: 1) the Jews were targeted not because they were “subhuman”, you could almost say that they were deemed to be a danger to the Reich because Nazis saw them as super human. 2) I think that it is safe to say most historians and scholars of the period (anyway the major historians) use the term Holocaust to define the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis rather than as a blanket term for all Nazi mass murders. This is explained succinctly in a recent article by Deborah Lipstadt in the Atlantic. ( It is so clear that I am tempted to use it in the entry even though it is not an academic peer reviewed article—she is after all a highly respected historian of the evnts) * Lipstadt, Deborah (2017-01-30). How the Trump Administration Is Engaging in 'Softcore' Holocaust Denial. Retrieved on 2017-02-13. 3) I have listed examples of other Nazi mass murders to show that referring to Jews in the definition does not imply neglect of other victims of Nazi mass murders. 4) Finally, the terms Shoah and Holocaust are completely interchangable. I know of no historian which uses them to distinguish between the killing of Jews only and others. (I realize that I have a little learning curve on the references to negotiate...)--Joel McClellan (talk) 15:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

That article looks a bit tendentious to me. One of the President's daughters became a Jew, married a Jew, who's one of his close advisors, and presented him with three Jewish grandchildren. He seems quite happy with this, and has said so. Any implicit suggestion of anti-Semitism seems quite absurd and might naturally be suspected of being just another stick to beat him with.

As to what historians generally mean by the term, I'm not an expert on that, but I think people who were more or less experts contributed to the article. Peter Jackson (talk) 10:31, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Agree with you that Lipstadt piece is probably too tendentious for here. Actually, I was attracted to it not for its accusations of denialism (although she is one of the more important historians working on that issue--you might remember her testimony at the David Irving trial where Richard Evans also testified) it was because of her clear statement that affirming the Holocaust as the mass murder of Europe's Jews does not mean downplaying the suffering of other groups murdered by the Nazis. I have added two references supporting the statement about "major historians". There are plenty more I could put but thought that it would create too much clutter. --Joel McClellan (talk) 19:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)