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My position is quite simple. To consider the deaths of all Hitler's victims as part of the "Holcaust" and then to accuse Jews and Israelis of "Holocaust denial" is a loaded, anti-Semitic phrase that doesn't belong here on FR.

I apologize for my lack of historical knowledge about the Gypsies. I had read that while some Gypsies (who are "Aryans," btw), were persecuted others were left alone.

The Jews are the center of history. This is an objective fact. Only Jewish history begins with the creation of the world. And among the nations only Israel is eternal. These are facts I had no role in creating. I merely acknowledge them.

"I apologize for my lack of historical knowledge about the Gypsies. I had read that while some Gypsies (who are "Aryans," btw), were persecuted others were left alone."

I followed some links Alamogirl sent me from this website www.holocaust-history.org (a great one for study)

My position is quite simple. To consider the deaths of all Hitler's victims as part of the "Holcaust" and then to accuse Jews and Israelis of "Holocaust denial" is a loaded, anti-Semitic phrase that doesn't belong here on FR.

Yes, semantics and words can make a difference. We can't accuse Jews who do acknowledge the genocide by the Nazis in any way of holocaust denial -- at worse, if they have not heard of the genocide of the gypsies, we can say they haven't heard of it. The deaths of Hitler's targetted victims were genocide against the gypsies and genocide against Slavs, just like it was genocide against Jews. All despicable acts and which we should never fail to condemn

I apologize for my lack of historical knowledge about the Gypsies. I had read that while some Gypsies (who are "Aryans," btw), were persecuted others were left alone.

That's not completely true -- the gypsies have been reviled by Europeans for most of their history (and still face persecution in parts of Eastern Europe until recently).

The Jews are the center of history. This is an objective fact. Only Jewish history begins with the creation of the world. And among the nations only Israel is eternal. These are facts I had no role in creating. I merely acknowledge them.

Thank you for taking this point objectively and purely from a historical point of view. All religions begin with the creation of the world (except perhaps Jainism which doesn't consider the world as ever being created). The history of the Jewish "people" in the sense of the "Israelites" starts from the time when the Hebrews left Egypt (c. 1200 BC) -- prior to that they were a single family unit from Abraham's time. The Israelite people survived as one joint entity until the Assyrian disperal of the Northern tribes. From that point on you have the Judaen people's history or the history of the 'Jews' in the narrow sense.

Even the histories of Greece, Canaan, Sumer, etc. begin with the creation of the world

"Among the nations, only Israel is eternal" -- Israel IS eternal, no doubt, but the "only" nation? No, that's disputed -- China and India and Japan would dispute that statement very strongly. The history of the first two predate the Exodus. Also, there were nations that survived for millenia -- like the Egyptians from 3100 BC (when Upper and Lower Egypt were united by Pharaoh Narmer/Menes) until 31 BC when it was incorporated into Rome, like the city of Jericho that dates back to 9000 BC, like the civilisation of Sumer that dates back to the same time and continued for millenia, even after conquest by the Akkadians (Semitics) in 2000 BC, Sumerian language, culture and religion survived.

If you take Song dynasty culture, language and ethnicity, then Zhonggua (China) too has survived for millenia. If you take Bharat as a unified entity, then India has survived for millenia.

I just dispute, dispassionately, the statement that Jewish history is "central" to world history -- it is a very important component of and very key to the root of European, Middle-Eastern and North American history while impacting the rest of the world, but it is not the CENTER of all history -- there is no one civ that I believe is the be-all center, there are many that are in the center (Jewish history being one of the central ones).