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Movie-professor's rude reply to British Real
History-expert Dr John Fox
Reply-To: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust
<[email protected]>
Sender: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust
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Author: John
P Fox
December 29, 1998Robert
Michael and the Issue of "Jewish
Martyrdom"
What on
earth does Robert Michael mean by the totally
absurd statement in his discourse about the alleged
"martyrdom" of the Jews under the Nazis, "....How
about non-Jews murdered in the Holocaust?"
Are we
now to take it that all the other specially targeted
victims of Nazi racial and genocidal policies - at an
absolute minimum, 10-12 million of them, and that is
not including the countless tens and tens and tens of
millions of other innocents in Europe who lost their
lives as a consequence of Hitler's aggressive
actions - are now to be denied their individual
identity as victims but should, somehow, be subsumed
in the so-called "Jewish Holocaust"? In other words,
so it would appear, we are back to the old, old story:
that only Jewish deaths count, and everything but
everything connected with the Nazi Third Reich has to
be identified only with the term most closely
connected with the Nazi genocide of the Jews, "the
Holocaust".
Except
now, of course, that term's value is constantly being
devalued given its generalised application to
everything else concerning Jews and the Nazi Third
Reich, even from 30 January 1933. So absurd is this
position that it's closest comparison would be someone
writing on "The Great War: 1900-1918".
What
concerns me is that Robert Michael's position is
hardly an isolated one. Only yesterday did I write to
the Jewish Chronicle in London, rejecting out of hand
the arguments contained in an article by Norman
Lebrecht published on 25 December 1998, which
implied not only that the genocide of the Armenians,
the Cambodians, and the Tutsis did not take place but
what occurred were only "other massacres", and that
therefore the deaths of those millions of human beings
was virtually nothing by comparison with the fate
suffered by the Jewish victims of Nazism.
In
other words, only Jewish victims are the "true" human
beings because they were murdered by the Nazis - but
because the others mentioned by him were not, they
don't apparently, come into the same equation of human
value. I can see, then, that great "fun" will ensue
when I present my paper on why I feel we need,
absolutely, to abandon use of the term, "the
Holocaust", to the Oxford Conference on the Holocaust
in the year 2000, "Remembering for the Future, 2000" !
As to
Robert Michael's wider question of whether or not the
Jewish victims of "the Holocaust" should be considered
"martyrs", again, my teeth grated. They were not
religious martyrs who were killed because, for example
like those Protestant and Catholic believers in
16th-century England, they rejected the prevailing
State sanctioned forms of Christian worship. The Jews
murdered between 22 June 1941 and November 1944 were
just that, victims of a deliberate policy of
State-directed murder just for being who they were -
just as Slavs, Gypsies, and the others were likewise
deliberately targeted for who they were.
To make
anything more of such dastardly human actions and
behaviour, and especially to make such sickening
actions the centre-piece of a so-called "Holocaust
Oratorio", would be laughable if it were not so
utterly repugnant. In fact, Robert Michael's
utterances show the degree to which the use and abuse
of the term, "the Holocaust", has now got completely
out of hand.
Sincerely, Dr John P Fox.
Lecturer
in Jewish History and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies. University
College London.
John
Fox's opposition to uniqueness and to the
term
Author: Dr
Alexander Soifer
December 30, 1998
Reply-To: H-NET List for History of the Holocaust
<[email protected]> Sender: H-NET List for
History of the Holocaust
<[email protected]>
Lecturer
John P Fox makes up apriori absurd, shameless statements,
and then assigns them to Prof. Michael and others. Here
is a couple of examples of Fox's provocateur statements:
- only
Jewish deaths count
- only
Jewish victims are the "true" human beings because
they were murdered by the Nazis
And then
Dr. Fox utters and ultimate, terrible threat:
I can see, then, that great "fun" will ensue when I
present my paper on why I feel we need, absolutely,
to abandon use of the term, "the Holocaust", to the
Oxford Conference on the Holocaust in the year 2000,
"Remembering for the Future, 2000" !
Lecturer
Fox then enlightens us in one paragraph (caps added by me
for emphasis):
The Jews murdered between 22 June 1941 and November
1944 were
JUST THAT,
victims of a deliberate policy of State-directed
murder just for being who they were - just as Slavs,
Gypsies, and the others were likewise deliberately
targeted for who they were.
Well, Dr.
Fox: you asked us to critique your views, so that you can
reply in your book and here on the list. I hereby ask you
to prove that Slavs were targeted by the Germans for a
total extermination.
Hitler's
Germany attempted to wipe ALL European Jews off the face
of this earth. It was not "JUST
THAT,"
just murder as you make us believe. No: this was so
critical to Hitler, that when this interest of
distraction of the Jews clashed with the interests of the
WAR
(!), annihilation of Jews often took priority.
Debating
uniqueness of the Holocaust bothers me a great deal. All
historical events are unique. Those who argue that the
Holocaust is not unique, are insincere, in my opinion.
Moreover, I feel they pursue
a certain agenda,
repugnant to me.
Now a
couple of words regarding Dr. Fox's obsession with
extermination of . . . the term "Holocaust." What is in
the name, asks Fox's compatriot. What difference does it
make whether we call this tragedy the Shoah or the
Holocaust? Indeed, as Fox suggests, it would be
laughable if it were not so utterly repugnant because,
clearly, opposition to a word covers up "righteous"
anti-Jewish sentiment, if not agenda.
Sincerely, Dr Alexander
Soifer
Professor,
Mathematics, Art and Film History University of
Colorado, United States
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