defining the Holocaust?

[Doug Millison]

rj (in pynchon-l-digest V2 #1449):
  "Certainly, the
prisoners at Dora were treated badly, and their piled bodies outside the
crematorium in GR is a chilling image. But this is explicitly *not* "the
Holocaust", which denotes "the genocidal murder of the Jews by the Nazis in
WW II".

In addition to Jews, the larger group of Holocaust victims is 
generally understood to include political dissenters, homosexuals, 
victims of medical experimentation,  "Gypsies" (the Roma people), and 
other groups of human beings that the Nazis considered undesireable. 
Neufeld speaks of the millions of Soviet prisoners left to die by the 
German Army as Holocaust victims, too.

Three readily available resources describe the Holocaust:

from:
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=Holocaust

hol·o·caust (hl-kôst, hl-)
     n.

1.Great or total destruction, especially by fire.

2.
a.Widespread destruction.
b.A great disaster.

3.
a.Holocaust. The genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazis 
during World War II:
"Israel emerged from the Holocaust and is defined in relation to that 
catastrophe" (Emanuel Litvinoff).

b.A massive slaughter: "an important document in the so-far sketchy 
annals of the Cambodian holocaust" (Rod Nordland).

4.A sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames.


from:
Holocaust" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
<http://www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=41717&sctn=1>
[Accessed 29 September 2000].

"Holocaust
Hebrew SHO'AH, or HURBAN, the 12 years (1933-45) of Nazi persecution
of Jews and other minorities, which was marked by increasing barbarity
as the territories under German rule expanded. The Holocaust climaxed
in the "final solution" (die Endlösung), the attempted extermination of
European Jewry. [....] As the German armies moved eastward, first 
into Poland and then into the Balkans and the Soviet Union, the 
resolution of the "Jewish question"
(die Judenfrage) was terrifyingly inaugurated by roving SS death squads
known as special task forces (Einsatzgruppen). Whole populations of
Jews (as well as many Gypsies and non-Jewish Slavs) of conquered
villages, towns, and cities were rounded up, shot, and buried locally in
mass graves. Another method of extermination consisted of herding
victims into enclosed trucks or vans into which exhaust fumes were
directed, killing the occupants on the ride to mass graves. [....] In 
addition to Jews, as many as 400,000 Gypsies perished in the 
Holocaust. "

See also http://www.ushmm.org/research/ for a list of topics 
addressed at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United 
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC (the first Web site 
that came up in a Google.com search), which includes "The Persecution 
of Homosexuals Under The Nazi Regime"

http://www.ushmm.org/dordates.html
"Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day that has been set aside for 
remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding Americans 
of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred and 
indifference reign. [....] The power of the Holocaust is that it 
demands we confront ourselves in the very ways we generally avoid - 
forcing a burden of understanding that should provoke dread - a tiny 
glimmer of inspiration as well, but primarily dread. Even as it tells 
the hideous and unprecedented story of what Nazis did to Jews and 
others, it also tells a tale of caution about what human beings did, 
and can do, to other human beings.
  It shines a pitiless light on bystanders as well as perpetrators and 
collaborators. It teaches us that indifference is not neutral; 
silence always aids the perpetrators. [....] "Whereas, the Holocaust 
was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of 
European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 
1945. Jews were the primary victims - six million were murdered; 
Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for 
destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. 
Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet 
prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered grievous 
oppression and death under Nazi tyranny."




-- 
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