The Auschwitz Letters (HnetFox1)

[H-Net
Humanities & Social Sciences
OnLine]

---

US
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
<[email protected]>

Author: John
P Fox

December 29, 1998

Robert
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

[H-Net
Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine] Send comments and questions to H-Net
Webstaff Copyright
© 1995-98, H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences
OnLine Click Here for an Internet
Citation Guide.

---

Auschwitz
Index
| current
AR-Online

To
Order Books
| Auschwitz
Index |
Irving
Index |
Irving
Page |
Irving
Book-List
| Action
Report
| Other
FP Authors

Buchladen
| Auschwitz
| Irving-Verzeichnis
| -Hauptseite
| -Bücher
| Action
Report
| Weitere
FP-Autoren©Focal
Point 1998 write to David Irving