From this Jewish perspective, it appears that Mr. Greenblatt, the ADL honcho, is trying to obfuscate the issue raised by Dr. Ben Carson. Of course, Greenblatt is correct to say that Nazism and anti-Semitism were the major causes of the Holocaust. But it is foolish to deny Carson's claim in its entirety. All Carson is saying that greater availability of guns to the German population as a whole, and to the German Jews in particular, might have significantly mitigated the Holocaust death toll. It would have made the perverse Nazi enterprise significantly more difficult for the Nazis, and would have had somewhat of a deterrent effect on them. Once word got around Nazi circles that Jews were resisting arrests and deportations with guns, the Nazis would have been a lot more deliberate in their heinous activities. Bullies get scared when their targets have the capability of killing them.
I'm not aware of the status of gun control in other European countries which the Nazis conquered, but my guess is that Jews were, for the most part, forbidden to own firearms there as well, even before the Nazi invasions. I know that the armed resistance by Jews in the famous Warsaw Ghetto uprising was done with a small number of weapons given to them by non-Jewish Polish resistance fighters.
The ADL is dying, having half the support it did a decade ago.
Carson’s point is accurate, as attested to by Holocaust survivors I have known expressing the same sentiments.
It is also true that the Christian neighbors, Nazis or not, of Jews in Europe would never have allowed pre-war widespread gun ownership and proficiency in their use by the Jews among them.
Some needed history. that I must admit to being unaware of.
Thank you
Of course gun control didn’t CAUSE the Holocaust - that is an absurd statement that was obviously intended only to change the focus of this debate, rather than directly answer Dr. Carson.
But just as obviously, gun control was necessary prerequisite to herding millions of people on to cattle cars, etc. Armed people don’t meekly submit like that - a FACT that Hitler understood, which is why he had his evil minions disarm as much of his various target victims as possible.
Great. What Ben Carson said is exactly what every Jew with any knowledge of these things has said for decades. But he’s attacked. This is getting ridiculous and my respect for Dr. Carson and my hopes that he does well have gone up.
Forget Greenblatt. He’s supposed to be a lightweight version of Abe Foxman (the longtime head of ADL) who became a joke in name and action.
In the late 1930’s, the Nazis forbade any Jews from owning firearms, and if caught they were sent to Dachau which was a political prisoner camp at that time.
In my book “Remembrances of the Holocaust: From Then Till Now” 1995, Agudas Achim Congregation Men’s Club publication, I had Holocaust survivors and family members of those who lived in Germany write their own stories.
One told of how his father or uncle, who had hidden a rifle in the floorboards of his store, finally turned it over to the authorities because of the harshness of these new policies against Jews owners firearms.
“The Great Fear” had settled in on Jews in Germany and Austria (where a late friend of mine was beaten weekly by Himmler’s SS men), and the whole Jewish population became cowered and disarmed.
Whether they could have mounted any type of significant defense against the Gestapo/SS, I don’t know but I doubt it at that late date.
I do know that another late friend of mine, Stefan Korbonski, one of the leaders of the Polish Free Army, risked his life getting arms and food into the Warsaw Ghetto, for which he was awarded Israeli’s highest honor, the Yad Vashem medal. That was awarded to non-Jews who aided Jews during the Holocaust.
And the ghetto put up such a fight that the Germans had to call in reinforcements to finally take it after weeks of fighting.
That fight remains the proudest moment of Jewish organized resistance to the Nazis during WW2, along with a major revolt in the Sobibor concentration camp, and the Jewish partisans fighting in the woods of Poland and Russia.
Jewish liberals have no guts, PERIOD, and little sense of history. IF they did, they wouldn’t sound like idiots such as Foxman and Greenblatt.
Some of us know history, have actually fought against evil (in many ways), and know what happens when you don’t oppose it.
Iran with the nukes is just the latest but most recent threat to Jews, Christians and freedom to come out of the Middle East (ISIS being a regional threat right now but expanding throughout Asia Minor and Africa).
Jewish fools don’t speak for us and never will. Unfortunately, the fools and the blind outnumber the seeing sane.
We have our work cut out for us, but we will not fail.
Carson was right. Nuremberg laws contained major gun control measures, requiring registration of all guns, and confiscation of guns owned by Jews and other undesirables, forbidding future ownership.
The Holocaust didn’t begin immediately after Hitler came to power. It was a gradual, slippery slope. Gun control in Germany was part of its genesis. Gun control in the occupied countries was a given, though more difficult to enforce since there was no central registry of gun owners.
Personally, I’m getting fed up with all this “outcry” every time someone mentions the Holocaust. It seems these so-called “leaders” are determined to avoid any rational discussion unless it’s a one-sided monologue on the left.