Posted on 02/01/2010 2:44:43 AM PST by lizol
Holocaust scholars slam EU for backing Nazi-Communist comparison
By Cnaan Liphshiz
WARSAW - Leading Holocaust researchers have criticized European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek ahead of his speech at Auschwitz Tuesday, for endorsing the equalization of the Nazi genocide with Communist brutal oppression.
Some scholars call this growing trend "the gravest threat to preserving the memory of the Holocaust," suggesting it serves to exculpate populations complicit in the extermination of their Jewish minorities. "It is inconceivable that the ceremony at Auschwitz will feature an address by a parliament president who entertains initiatives meant to efface and obfuscate the Holocaust," said Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's director for international relations. Samuels was referring to a recent speech by Buzek - a former Polish prime minister - in which he lauded members of the European Parliament for "recognizing that the mass deportations, murders and enslavements committed ... by Stalinism and Nazism fall into the category of war crimes and crimes against humanity."
In April, more than 400 members of the European Parliament voted in favor of naming August 23 "European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism," as suggested in the controversial 2008 Prague Declaration, at the end of an international forum on commemoration. Advertisement
Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israel office, said Buzek's statement was part of efforts to "create a historical and intellectual infrastructure to undermine and eventually cancel the current status of the Shoah as a unique case of genocide."
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
I believe the difference to the left is that murdering because of ethnicity is so much worse than murdering because of class. I beleive this twist was given to us by both the Hollywood (Jewish left) focus in the sixties and the euroweeenies focus from the 50’s forward. Both groups endorse “smiley” socialism and can’t bring themselves to grapple with the inherent evil that socialism brings with it. They prefer to steal from their neighbors and expect their neighbors to thank them for stealing from them. You see this mental disconnect displayed daily with the Dem left today. Funny, but the American left feels if you punish the majority for the benefit of the minority you are doing “good” works. Basically, the left wishes to re-write history to identify Hitler as evil with Stalin/Mao as a little evil, but progressive. They cannot square this circle, so they ignore it, and practice what they say is evil. The duplicity of the left is stunning.
“Genocide” versus “brutal oppression”.
These researchers are disingenuous.
I believe the numbers killed by commies in the Soviet Union was considerably higher than that killed by the Nazis. Even greater human carnage in China.
What's with this anyway? Are these "researchers" communist mass murder deniers?
I know the figures are only approximate, but some 3 million Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust. At least an equal number, 3 million Polish Christians, were killed by the murdering Nazis and Communists - Katyn being the monumental atrocity by the Communists.
Throughout Europe the Communists killed greater numbers than the Nazis, and the Wiesenthal group is doing a disservice to history by minimizing, in any way, the significance of the Communist slaughter.
Jerzy Buzek is an honorable man who is simply calling attention to reality.
What we really need to study is why and how Communism got a cultural pass.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yes...It is puzzling.
I believe that it has to do with those who hate Christian morality. If the atheist elite who control the media and the arts can paint Hitler as a Christian it smears and demeans Christianity.
One more thing:
The elites in the media and arts believe in Communism. It is still a viable social order. It failed ( in their opinion) because the wrong people implemented it. If they were in charge of the world, of course the results would be different.
Translated: "Communists and Nazis are equally evil."
If that's what you said, then I am in complete agreement with you.
I wonder how many “scholars” don’t like this comparison because it disses communism?
It would have been smarter to keep these separate. The Holocaust would get its due as a unique phenomenon so the communist horrors could long last be highlighted in full.
It got a pass because most of the mass murders ordered by by Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, et al, occurred long after communism was already a popular brand with America's "intellectual" elite. Even by the '40s, communists and their sympathizers were well-imbedded in the State Department and in major media outlets (including TIME Magazine and the New York Times) here in the United States.
Acknowledging communist atrocities as they became revealed during the '50s to the '70s would have simply been too embarrassing for these people. The mass murders of millions made communism look bad, you see. Couldn't have that.
FRegards,
LH
Precisely.
Plus, this comparison is not fair to the memories of heroes like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Alger Hiss.
And a lot of leftists actually do acknowledge Communism’s death toll, but rationalize it with “You have to break some eggs to get an omelette.”
The “Scholars” should tell that to the many Poles murdered [along with Polish Jews], by the first Einsatzgruppen in 1939, to the Soviet POWs the SS first tried Zyklon ‘B’ on, to the citizens of Ouradur sur Glane, Lidice, Prague,etc, to the Italians [including Jews] murdered in the Ardeantine Caves near Rome.
German extermination was not limited to Jews. Concededly, they were the focal point of Hitler’s racial obsession, and were uniquely marked out for death. But Poles, Slavs, eastern Rom, and lots of others were also killed; among them 20,000,000 [approx.] Soviet civilians.
Hitler made Stalin great.
Let me tell you, as a guy from Eastern Europe.
Even right now, today- if I have to choose between Hitler and Stalin, I wouldnt opt for Hitler.
Stalin was bastard, but Germans were such beasts that maniac Osama looks like boy-scout.
I must admit, I find the idea—so often repeated—that the Holocaust was purely a Jewish tragedy, highly offensive and even racist. Yes the Jewish people were higher on the list than others...but given the chance, Hitler would have (finished) wiping out the Slavic peoples—along with anyone else not deemed “Aryan” enough.
There were 6 million of the 20 million civilians purposely killed in the Nazi Holocaust—and another (over) 30 MILLION killed by Soviets.......and they ALL should be remembered.
The push by many Jewish groups to make the Holocaust only a Jewish sorrow, feeds anti-Semites worst instincts.
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