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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 28-Jan-05
World figures marking Auschwitz liberation overemphasize Hitler's uniqueness

Web Log - January, 2005

World figures marking Auschwitz liberation overemphasize Hitler's uniqueness

The atrocities in the Holocaust were horrific almost beyond belief, but they were hardly unique.

Jewish leaders, Holocaust survivors and world political figures commemorated the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on January 27, 1945.

Heads of state, Jewish leaders, Nazi death camp survivors and a handful of their liberators gathered here on Thursday to commemorate the freeing of thousands of people from the Auschwitz-Birkenau site 60 years ago.

Most of the speakers described the Holocaust as uniquely evil, and Hitler as a unique monster, but there have been a number of genocides in the twentieth century -- the Turks of the Armenians in the 1910s, Stalin's Russia of the Ukrainians in the 1930s, Mao of his own people in the 1950s, the Cambodians in the 1970s, the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Rwanda in 1994. In this century, we've already had the Darfur genocide.

I think that Jewish leaders do themselves a disservice by insisting that the Holocaust was uniquely horrific or evil. By essentially denying the credibility of other genocide victims' stories, they only encourage and give indirect credibility to the Holocaust deniers.

One Jewish Holocaust survivor said how important it is to educate young people about the Holocaust, so that the world will never forget. "It's difficult for young people to distinguish between an Auschwitz and Rwanda," he said.

It's difficult for me, too. In the Holocaust, the Germans tried to exterminate the Jews by sending 1.5 million to their deaths in Auschwitz and other concentration camps over a four-year period. In Rwanda, one race mass-murdered, raped, and dismembered one million members of another race, all in at three-month period.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, no genocide is unique, genocide is commonplace, and genocide is neither good nor evil. It's as much a part of being human as sex is -- both are needed for "survival of the fittest" among different human societies, nations, ethnic groups and religions.

The world today is vastly over-populated. Poverty, homelessness and starvation are increasing around the world, because population grows significantly faster than the food supply. History has shown, over and over and over and over, that there is only one way to "correct" this problem, and it will be corrected in the next decade in the "clash of civilizations" world war. (28-Jan-05) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 28-Jan-05 World figures marking Auschwitz liberation overemphasize Hitler's uniqueness

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 28-Jan-05
World figures marking Auschwitz liberation overemphasize Hitler's uniqueness