Holocaust: The Ignored Reality

[selfishgene]

Good summary of Soviet and Nazi planned exterminations :
By starving Soviet prisoners of war, shooting and gassing Jews, and shooting civilians in anti-partisan actions, German forces made Belarus the deadliest place in the world between 1941 and 1944. Half of the population of Soviet Belarus was either killed or forcibly displaced during World War

Comments

[madfilkentist]

That's a good, and very grim, article.

[ilcylic]

In the twenty-first century, we will face shortages of potable water, clean air, and affordable energy. Climate change may bring a renewed threat of hunger.

Thanks primarily to the political descendants of those who perpetrated the murders just previously discussed, the philosophical left.

Fucksticks.

[selfishgene]

WW1 and WW2 were the result of leftist zero-sum economic thinking too. Either Britain or Germany had to 'win'. The notion of free trade was rejected by both sides.
The sad part was that the success of Britain in the 19th century was due to free trade policies which were being discarded by the 20th century. The intellectual/political world was fully exposed to the ideas of free trade and human liberty. They even saw them succeed fantastically in practice. Yet those ideas were still rejected by corrupt special interests in each nation.

[madfilkentist]

WW1, yes. All sides were idiots in that. And the Versailles Treaty motivated hyperinflation and gave the Nazis something to rail against, thus paving the way for World War II. But once Hitler's government was firmly in power, I don't see anything Britain could have done to avoid war.

[hodja]

Very true. This is why I have very strong hopes on patrissimo's plans of seasteading in the Baltic Sea; it should give various people living there the experience that taking stuff from their neighbors or doing something at their expense is not the only way to get ahead. See my "essay" below.
I am going to put money and effort behind it, too.

Sigh

[hodja]

I must begin with a disclaimer: I am an East-European of Jewish origin, still living in Eastern Europe (Hungary). I am also a regular visitor to Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and Russia due to various family, friendship and business ties. I was born in Leningrad; my maternal grandparents are Jews from the Ukraine (Kiev and Odessa, in particular), who moved to Leningrad in the thirties and were caught up in the blockade of Leningrad from 1941. My granddad soldiered through the breaking of the blockade and the liberation of the Baltics with the Red Army. My other granddad was enslaved by the Nazis in Hungary and was weighting about 40 kilos (80 pounds), when the Red Army liberated the construction site where he was being worked to death

Who did the killings and why?

[hodja]

The simple reason for this geographic coincidence is that it was not "Germans" and "Russians" "with local auxiliaries" who murdered these "civilians"; most of the killing was done (or at least initiated) by these very "locals": neighbors rationalizing plain old greed with revenge for some previous injustice (including, of course, murder of family members). Sometimes it was actually genuine revenge. The Nazi and Soviet authorities simply took advantage of this greed for their own (very different, see below) purpose

Whence the "Final Solution"?

[hodja]

BEGIN INTRODUCTION

The first thing to understand about the Great East-European Human Meat Grinder is that while the majority of people (and even the majority of its victims) were innocent, practically everybody has family members (at least in their extended family) who are not. However, the way human brains are wired, people (including myself) tend to be a little(?) biased in favor of their family members, members of their ethnic group, etc. Most (unlike myself) do not make a conscious effort to recognize this bias and avoid it when recognized. Because of this, people in my generation typically do know fairly well who the victims in their family were, but do not even know if there were any perpetrators among their relatives. At best, "our" (whomever "us" happen to be) perpetrators are forgotten. At worst, they are portrayed as heroes

Conclusions

[hodja]

I strongly disagree with the premise of Jewish and Christian religions that since the Original Sin humans are born with knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). The hell we are!
It takes a lot of studying and hard thinking to learn to know good and evil. Standing up for good against evil never involves actively hating "the other tribe" and punishing "them" (whoever "they" might be).
What it does take, however, is forgiveness and avoiding of principles of collective responsibility. In particular, nobody should be held responsible for the crimes of their parents and relatives even if they somehow benefited from them directly or indirectly