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I agree that it is important which side is the aggressor and which is not. Why did it take you so long to point that out, while you have made a dozen posts already denying the moral distinction between civilian and soldier and between innocence and aggression? Don’t you see that condemning an aggressor on the level of whole nations means condemning targeting of non-combatants on the individual operational level, and on individual soldier behavior level, as well?

I would note that specifically in Eastern/Central Europe by the time the Holocaust started happening there, the Soviet Union and not Germany was the primary aggressor because they were rolling over countries other than USSR with the intention to subjugate them (1948 proved that). Further, in 1939 against Poland the aggression was mutual between Germany attacking from the West and the USSR from the East. The USSR was also the clear aggressor against the Balt republics and Finland in 1939. So exactly where the Holocaust happened, the moral equation was not at all clear between Germany and the USSR.

Now, I understand that the Holocaust was morally reprehensible because the Jews were singled out for ethnicity and not for any particular behavior: the combatants perished alongside non-combatants, while other nationalities were treated far less harshly and more-or-less according to their combatant status. But I am the one in general sticking to the moral principles in war. according to them non-combatants may not be attacked.

These are not “semantics”. That is a fundamental moral law, whether it is codified in treaties or not, and by now it is all codified in Geneva conventions. The moral law makes the distinction between combatant and non-combatant. It makes no distinction about which side was an aggressor as regards their treatment. That is wise because aggression and defense are often mixed, like they were mixed in Central/Eastern Europe. Aggression and defense matter in determining the guilt or innocence of the national leaders. Churchill and Roosevelt led a defensive war and Hitler led an aggressive war. That is why we generally celebrate their leadership in the war, and we consider Hitler a war criminal. But if Churchill and Roosevelt had decided to single out one group of people and exterminate it without regard to their combatant status, they would have been war criminals as far as their putative holocaust would have been concerned. Even if it happened in a defensive and just war.

So, while the destruction of cities in the allied Europe, destruction of cities in Germany or the USSR or the Holocaust differed in the amount of victims, the civilians who were targeted and perished there were killed in violation of the moral law of war.