Holocaust

[Mitchell R Coffey]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rj <rjackson at mail.usyd.edu.au> at Internet
> Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 1999 11:55 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org at INTERNET
> Subject: RE: Holocaust
>
> Mitchell:
> >Holocaust scholars tend to include the genocide of the
> Gypsies.  The idea is
> >this.  Many groups were systematically targeted by the Germans and
> >their allies,
> >and murdered in the concentration camps. Yet, only in the
> case of the Gypsies
> >and Jews were groups targeted with the explicit aim of
> exterminating an ethnic
> >group.
> >
>
> They were intent on wiping out all "undesirables", ethnic and
> otherwise, in order to "cleanse" the Aryan race, weren't they? This
> included mental patients, the disabled (?), Slavs, homosexuals, as well as
Jews and
> Gypsies.

Also, Jehovah's Witnesses.  What I said above is what I believe Holocaust
scholars, as a whole, believe.  The notion is that only in the case of the Jews
and Gypsies did the Nazis believe their victims to be a distinct genetic "race"
and had the intention of systematically eliminating the group as a genetic
entity.   They were, of course, wrong about the genetic entity part.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with this formulation because it must always be
stated with a bodyguard of qualifications, to avoid buying into the Nazis'
dead-wrong take on biology.

[snip]

Mitchell Coffey