summing up McVay's answers re Dora as a Holocaust locale

[Doug Millison]

I previously posted my emails to and from Ken McVay of The Nizkor 
Project, separately. Here I pull together the questions I asked him 
and his answers. You can read about McVay at The Nizkor Project web 
site, http://www.nizkor.org/. McVay is director of The Nizkor 
Project; you can read more about him at 
http://veritas.nizkor.org/~kmcvay/.

Briefly, McVay said he would consider the Dora inmates to be victims 
of the Holocaust, and he expressed surprise that anybody would even 
"raise the issue."  On the larger question of who is to be considered 
a Holocaust victim, McVay said that he has heard some Orthodox Jews 
say that only Jews should be considered victims, that he had heard 
other Jews use Shoah to designate the Jewish experience and the 
Holocaust to designate other innocent victims deliberately targeted 
by the Nazis. He said that he thinks that "most folks" now include 
non-Jewish victims when they refer to the Holocaust.

McVay's statements support the sources I've consulted in the past few 
days -- dictionary definitions, encyclopedia entries, Neufeld's book 
The Rocket and the Reich, voluminous material at the Anti-Defamation 
League web site, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site, and the 
About.com Holocaust web site (and many sites linked from the 
About.com site) -- that discuss the Holocaust as an historical event 
that is understood to include both Jewish and non-Jewish victims.

Here's the sequence of questions and answers:

I asked Ken McVay, an expert suggested by davemarc, if the deaths at 
Dora -- and more generally, the Dora camp itself -- could be 
considered an aspect of the Holocaust.

McVay replied:
"I would certainly consider these people victims of the Holocaust. To
me, that term addresses the death of 12 million people.

"...I note that on the few occasions of which I am aware where purveyors of
anti-Semitic propaganda have endeavoured to justify their materials in
court on the facts and the merits, they have been singularly unsuccessful..."
    (http://www2.ca.nizkor.org/hweb/people/s/scully-olga/reason.html)

McVay amplified this answer in a subsequent email:

"In my mind, the Holocaust comprised the deliberate targeting of
innocents, as opposed, for instance, to collaterial victims of bombings
or ship sinkings, etc.

"The largest groups of Holocaust victims were the European Jews,
followed by about (if memory serves, but don't quote me) 3 million
Soviet POWs.

"Slave labourers were systematically worked to death. At Monowitz, their
diet was about 320 calories a day, which sounds pretty deliberate to
me.

"Many of the victims who were sent to Dora were arrested as "racial
inferiors" and sent to Auschwitz first... I would find it strange if
one were to insist that such a person would be a Holocaust victim if he
was sent to Auschwitz, but not if he then went to Dora.

"I am amazed that anyone would even raise the issue.

In my reply to that, I asked McVay:

"It sounds as if you might agree that the Holocaust is now generally 
understood to include Jews and other minorities, slave labourers, 
Soviet POWs, etc.  Is that the case? Or would you disagree that this 
is a commonly accepted view of the Holocaust?"

McVay replied:
"I have no idea what is "commonly accepted" or not. I have heard some
Orthodox Jews insist that only Jewish victims should be included, while
others in the Jewish community I've spoken to use the term Shoah to
refer to the Jewish experience and Holocaust to refer to the deliberate
targeting of innocents."

In that same email I asked McVay:
"Some narrow definitions of the Holocaust would include only Jewish 
victims, although many dictionaries now define Holocaust to include 
Jews and other minorities. I've seen material on the ADL Web site 
that suggests they consider the slave labourers to be part of the 
Holocaust, too."

McVay replied:
I don't think there will ever be a "common" understanding, but I do
think that most folks now include non-Jewish victims.




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