Russian War deaths vs Jewish deaths

It seems the previous thread was closed, so I will post my observations here and hopefully begin a new conversation on why the Jewish Holocaust is more well known.

I have recently read a book by Rysyard Kapuscinski, a Polish reporter who wrote about many wars, conflicts and genocides. The book I read is called Imperium, and it is about his travels to the Soviet Union and other eastern bloc countries, and later, to the CIS.

Towards the end of the book, he gives estimates on the Soviet death toll since Lenin, including the two wars. The figures are, on the low end, 54 million, and on the high end, 110 million. These people were killed due to wars, famine resulting from the transition to collective farming, deportations and conditions at work camps in Sibera, and political and intellegentsia purges.

I believe the original poster of the thread missed his own point when he said that 60 million Russians were killed due to the war. The truth is that many more people through out history have been killed by their own governments. But this begs the question, why are people so horrified over the plight of the Jewish people, and seemingly ignore the deaths of countless more Russians.

The simple answer is information, and exposure. It has nothing to do with Zionist conspiracy or propaganda. The simple truth is that we were able to learn the facts about the Jewish Genocide, where as the death toll and extermination of Russians would not come to light for many years later. In fact, it seems that the OP was even un aware of the famine of the early 1930s that Stalin caused in the Ukraine, which killed at least 10 million people there, else he would have mentioned it. The power structure in the Soviet Union allowed them to keep millions of deaths from the rest of the world, and it is similar to how you can ask somone from China about how Mao killed 30 million of his own people, and they will call you a liar. Freedom is information, and information more often than not REQUIRES freedom.

Personally, I think that every culture teaches history differently, depending on how close or far away they were to it. In highschool, we had to read the Diary of Anne Frank. Ask any person in the US who Anne Frank was, and they can tell you.

I sometimes work in a little Polish town called Oswiecim. It is a pretty village, with some rather imposing concrete fences left over from the war. Ask any Polish person there who is not a tour guide at the nearby camps who Anne Frank was, and they couldnt tell you. But they can name many famous poles who helped to save Jews.

Anyway, in short, my point is that terrible things happened under the banner of Communisum, and they should also be remembered. But if you look closer and consider the flow of information, and the perspective of people, it rules out a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy to make the holocaust popular.

Please feel free to debate.

there is a thread DIRECTLY NEXT to this one in the other column that says something like 6 million jews vs 30 million russian deaths WW2,

sowwwweyy

reply to post by Gwampo


And it is closed. Thanks for trolling.

reply to post by Gwampo

there is a thread DIRECTLY NEXT to this one in the other column that says something like 6 million jews vs 30 million russian deaths WW2,

and that thread is locked pending review, as the op stated in his first line

SOWWY

All I will say is that the best society are information free societies.


When information is repressed, atrocities like the holocaust, and 50 million russian deaths, Happen.

reply to post by steppenwolf86


Thanks for posting this up, too bad it didn't make it into the other thread as your information would help shed light on the subject.

Like I said in the other thread, we learned nothing about any of the other people killed during ww2, we only studied the Jewish holocaust as it was the course laid out in the textbook. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I myself only learned of these other events afterwards on my own time in my own studies.

Which is the key point I tried to make, to understand history we must have a full view of it, not parts. Millions of non jews were killed by the Germans too, merely a footnote in my textbook.

If we wish to learn from the past we must explore it.

THAT said, talking about the Jewish Holocaust doesn't belittle the other events at all. As such, talking about these other events, regardless of what some users and mods think here, does nothing to belittle the Jewish Holocaust and is in no way antisemitic.

Sadly, some use it as pretext to spew their vile hatred, though I suspect some of them do this specifically to get the thread shut down as some of the rhetoric spewed here I have a hard time believing is real.

I am hopeful that this thread will turn out better than the last one.

I don't understand why some members will take a thread like this and use it as an opportunity to post bigoted statements. That's not welcome here.

Believe it or not, it IS possible to have this discussion without hate speech.

I believe our membership is capable of that.

Nazis believed Communism was created by Jews and the slaughter of Russians was seen as an extension of the murder of Jews. The Holocaust depicts a certain manner of killing...not in military battle, as the Jews had no military, but by flipping through a census book and targeting Jews to decimate their populations and turn their culture into rubble. The Holocaust does not play down the importance of the deaths in other cultures, but refers to a special case type of genocide in which the victim had no military defense nor did they attack.

This is pretty basic history-textbook stuff, its astonishing to see that it's already widely forgotten after only two Generations.

reply to post by Djarums

Believe it or not, it IS possible to have this discussion without hate speech. I believe our membership is capable of that.

I believe it, and I also believe that if we have any hopes of keeping this a clean discussion, the mods will be getting plenty of alerts.

That said, go spew your antisemitism elsewhere, this is a discussion about the Russian Deaths versus the Jewish Deaths and an examination of the differences, similarities, and the fact that not many people know much about these events compared to the Jewish holocaust.

reply to post by Skyfloating

This is pretty basic history-textbook stuff, its astonishing to see that it's already widely forgotten after only two Generations.

what's astonishing to me is the lengths people are willing to go to avoid any discussion of any deaths in ww2 that weren't jews. no one is belittling the holocaust, merely putting it into perspective.

The truth doesn't fear investigation, keep that in mind.

Originally posted by phishyblankwaters

what's astonishing to me is the lengths people are willing to go to avoid any discussion of any deaths in ww2 that weren't jews. no one is belittling the holocaust, merely putting it into perspective.

The truth doesn't fear investigation, keep that in mind.

I don't really know what you're on about. I learned WWII in school where we studied the deaths of all countries. A brief glance into Wikipedia reveals all Casualties of WWII, by country. Every decent history book mentions them.
No conspiracy here.

Yes and as an observation from the other thread I noticed a poster state that proportionally more Jews died than Russians.....as if to justify why Russian deaths are not remembered as much as the Jews.

Well I would just like to counter that and Proportionally an equal if not more numbers of Gypsies died during the war, so the point made by said poster is moot.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Well, for that matter, no one really raises a fuss about the killing of gypsies by the nazis.

edit+ Ken beat me to it lol

I only learned of the huge number of "other" deaths on my own, outside of school. In school we were only taught about the Holocaust. I graduated high school in 1995. So this information about the Russian deaths was certainly known by then. It's either a case of schools using old textbooks, or the textbooks and curriculum not being updated.

There are also many many MANY other holocausts and genocides around the world through out history. Yet we don't learn about those either? Why is that? I'm honestly curious. Why is the holocaust so important yet others not so much? Why are there no museums regarding the millions of Russian deaths?

I'm sure I'll be called an anti-Semite for asking these questions. And that's fine. Sticks and stones. I'm generally curious though. I have my own opinions why but I'll keep them to myself so as to learn of others opinions.

Originally posted by DerekJR321
I only learned of the huge number of "other" deaths on my own, outside of school. In school we were only taught about the Holocaust. I graduated high school in 1995. So this information about the Russian deaths was certainly known by then. It's either a case of schools using old textbooks, or the textbooks and curriculum not being updated.

There are also many many MANY other holocausts and genocides around the world through out history. Yet we don't learn about those either? Why is that? I'm honestly curious. Why is the holocaust so important yet others not so much? Why are there no museums regarding the millions of Russian deaths?

I'm sure I'll be called an anti-Semite for asking these questions. And that's fine. Sticks and stones. I'm generally curious though. I have my own opinions why but I'll keep them to myself so as to learn of others opinions.

Just found this www.ukrainianmuseum.org...

What is the perspective?

Various countries took the census figures in their [i[own countries, and systematically attempted to eradicate a goodly percentage of that population simply because they were different in one way or another...whether Jews or another group.

The Russian deaths, though horrific, were caused by a war. It's a crime that both happened. I'd never dream of saying otherwise. Many millions died that need not have done...simply to feed the megalomania of a group of men who, for lack of any other means, needed an enemy to further their aims.

reply to post by seagull


I meant the perspective of the reviewing culture, the perspective of the culture that is teaching the future generation about the past. Case in point, my reference to Anne Frank.

Also, you must have misread my post, as I was mainly talking about the same type of selective killing as carried out by the various Soviet regimes.

This is an interesting topic and I didn't get a chance to post my opinion in the other thread.
Firstly as OP (and others) point out other peoples have suffered genocide, including the country I am living in, as a citizen of Serbia. In WW2 the nazis and Croatian fascists brutally slaughtered at least 100,000 Serbs in war and concentration camps etc.

However, there is another point to make here. The Jews (in that time) are not nation specific, they were scattered throughout Europe. The German assualt on jewery had nothing to do with the policy of a government and was persued against Jews in every single country in which the Germans invaded or installed puppets. This was brutal and pathological. For certain the nazis stated that Slavs (Russians, Serbs etc) were an inferior race to the Germans, but Jews were first in line for liquidation. The Jews then, with no state, had nobody to protect them and many people following WW2 felt guilty that they were unable to help as Jews were removed from their society. This feeling of guilt influenced the writing of textbooks as well as helped with the foundation of Israel.

To put this 'excuse' to one side there is one other better example than Jewish / Russian suffering. It is the numbers of Jews exterminated compared to the number of Gypsies exterminated.
Firstly neither the Gyspies of Europe or the Jews had a state - as I pointed out already so the comparison is good.

But the most important point of all is that although both sufferered genocide, most people don't even know that the Gypsies of Europe suffered genocide. In fact nobody is sure how many Gypsies perished in WW2 although some statistics suggest 500,000 people.

Whilst we should all consider why it is that everybody knows about the holocaust, we should also consider why it is that NOBODY knows about the holocaust against the Gypsies.

WW2 was a brutal conflict that caused massive deaths on all sides. One aspect I don't hear about very often is the treatment of German POW's by Eisenhower.

Eisenhower's massacre

I can't find the link I'm looking for so I will add it later on in a different post when I'm near a PC.