Six million Jews

[broncofan]

Dahlia I'll write this as a friendly post on a couple of ideas in this thread. The old testament was written well over 2000 years ago. What the bloodlines are of every group of Jews from the Sephardic to the Mizrachi to the Ashkhenazi is not clear even after genetic studies...except to say that modern Jewish people probably have admixture from many ethnic groups.

There have been a number of genetic studies that have identified alleles in ashkenazi Jews that would indicate their origins are mostly from West Asia (Palestine). But yet there are some people who claim they are comprised of mostly by central Asian Khazar converts. Others still believe that there were a small number of Khazars who converted into a much larger group. I imagine there is no ethnic group that has been entirely insular for two thousand years and that includes Jews.

The word anti-semite was never used as a literal word because there has never been a prejudice that has targeted people broadly on the basis of semitic background. For instance, when the prejudice is against semites based on their practice of Islam, the word used is Islamophobia. If it's against Arabs who are not Muslim, it might be anti-Arab racism.

The word anti-semite was a pseudo-scientific attempt to form a racial/ethnic basis for disliking Jewish people so that converting from Judaism to some other religion would not purge the taint of that person's Jewishness. It ended up sticking and being used as the word for Jew-hatred. There are dozens of words that are misnomers, but are nevertheless used because they've been adopted by speakers of that language. So we're not really talking about bibilical facts as much as we're talking about language.

I read (on the endlessly informative wikipedia) that there are some scholars who like to use the unhyphenated word antisemitism in order to indicate that it is not a prejudice based on opposition to semitism. So that might be a nice compromise position.

I also want to note that the theory presented in the youtube video is not coherent for a variety of reasons. First, the articles were written by many people in the decades leading up to the Holocaust. The implication is that many Jewish people communicated with one another and decided to say there were a series of atrocities against Jews where six million people died. This would require meetings between people across decades and continents to plant the figure into the annals of history. But there is actual documentary evidence of the WWII atrocities committed against Jews.

The pictures of the bodies piled high. The testimony from death camp guards about a thousand people being stuffed into a gas chamber and scratching and clawing over a twenty minute period until they stopped moving. The people with tattoos used to designate them as concentration camp inmates. The thousands of people who lost entire sides of their families. The documentary evidence is overwhelming, including logistical information about people being transported to camps from various European countries.

Finally if a group of Jews were planting casualty numbers into newspapers why wouldn't they mix up the number to hide their malfeasance? Why would they consistently use six million as a fabricated number instead of altering the figures (heck they could have decided upon a higher number)? People engaging in bad behavior typically make efforts to conceal what they've done.

[trish]

One of your remarks, Dahlia, inspired the following digression. I don’t want to sidetrack us too much. Take it for what it’s worth.

Why do Holy books need to be rewritten anyway? What's the evil intention in any of that practice?

Why rewrite the Bible? Many of the writings now found in the Bible were first written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Many of the new followers of Christianity in the late Roman Empire couldn’t read Hebrew or Aramaic. So Constantine convened an enormous assembly of scholars to translate the ancient Aramaic into Greek. At convention there was much discussion as to which “books” and which stories should make it into the “official” version of The Bible as well as which translations were correct and which misleading. We do not have a literal copy of the Bible as God beamed it into the heads of the prophets. Nor do we have the literal words of the original disciples. We have translations of stories that have been handed down the generations by mouth and eventually found their way onto paper now lost to the ages.

The King James Bible is one of the earlier efforts to translate it into English that is readily available today. A lot of modern English readers find it to be a bramble of awkward and archaic forms. So every decade new scholars attempt new translations, some from the surviving Hebrew and Aramaic texts, some from the early Greek translations like Constantine’s, some use a combination of earlier sources.

In part, the drive for newer translations comes from the evolution of modern usage. Modern readers often misinterpret ancient text because they are not familiar with usages that were contemporary with the writing. Have you ever tried to read Canterbury Tales in Chaucer’s original Middle English? Or Beowulf in Old English? If you have, then you understand the service modern translators provide. But one has to realize that good translations are not one-to-one correspondences. A good translation is a faithful retelling in the words of the translator with solemn guidance from the original text.

Books I recommend: 1) Seamus Heaney’s enthralling translation of Beowulf.
2) Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos.

[Dahlia Babe Ailhad]

Hi Broncofan, trish (and fred),

Interesting.
(Oh and to bronco, thanks for deciding to be nice.
Being nice is like weight-lifting in that the more you do it, the easier it gets).

I read your words, and yet, i am scratching my head (because it's itchy).

Dahlia ...What the bloodlines are of every group of Jews from the Sephardic to the Mizrachi to the Ashkhenazi is not clear even after genetic studies...except to say that modern Jewish people probably have admixture from many ethnic groups.

First, i would be quite interested in reading especially trish's views, and with a slightly lesser-degree of interest to read fred's comments (if he has anything decent to add that is. I welcome it) on this part of your comments.

There have been a number of genetic studies that have identified alleles in ashkenazi Jews that would indicate their origins are mostly from West Asia (Palestine). But yet there are some people who claim they are comprised of mostly by central Asian Khazar converts. Others still believe that there were a small number of Khazars who converted into a much larger group.

Second, i thought Khazaria was in Europe, not in Middle East Palestine.

I imagine there is no ethnic group that has been entirely insular for two thousand years and that includes Jews.

I would suggest Chinese people who are even more strict about interracial marriages than Jewish people are.




--------------------------------------------
In my early teens, i read a book called, Treblinka, which was about that death camp in Poland.
I saw all the photos of the dead bodies piled in heaps, and read the personal accounts of prisoners who managed to survive.
I do not need to be reminded of the atrocities of the Holocaust. I never once said that i denied it happened. So i'll kindly ask that you stop insinuating that i have denied it ever happened.

In my early 20s, i had a Polish friend whose mom had numbers tatooed on her forearm and she told me what happened. So, i know it happened, i've read about it, and watched countless documentaries, went to see and Schindler's List. I've listened to some of Hitler's speeches from those days (on youtube).

The posting of the first link (with the newspapers) was posted because somewhere in one of those papers (the one either just before or just as the war started) there was a mention of the word, "Holocaust".
So i was wondering how there could have been two Holocausts when all we really hear about was the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis.
So that is why i posted it. I didn't know there was a first Holocaust if the first one could really be called a Holocaust as there were no death camps until Hitler started.
I was aware of European Jewish people in Russia being forced out of villages and so forth but never knew that to be a "Holocaust".
And i only knew of the Russian Jewish people because of a favorite movie of mine called, Fiddler on the Roof. I saw no death camps or mass murders in that movie, and that's not to say they should have shown anything like that in a rather lighthearted comedy/drama musical.

I googled "Holocaust", and 1915 Russia was never mentioned.

I googled Russian Holocaust and i skimmed over the article looking for any connection to the information presented in the newspaper articles in the first link, and there is no connection to mass murders and death camps in Russia.
It states that there were a lot of Jewish people being forced to leave their homes, villages and so forth, beatings, ostracisation and so forth but no "mass murders" which could be called "a Holocaust". I am not denying the Russian Jewish people were treated badly, at all.
The google Russian Holocaust article starts to mention Holocaust when referring to the WW2 death camps, not in Russian villages. So this is why posted the video, merely to ask "what's going on?"

I've merely skimmed over the webpage trish posted, when she accused the guy in the video of "cherry picking his articles".
However i didn't see anything mentioned about Russian mass murders which could be called a Russian Holocaust in trish's linked webpage.
The first part of the google article on Russian Holocaust mentions pretty much what was happening in The Fiddler on the Roof - what i mentioned above in the bold font.

So my question still remains, kind of, unanswered as to why 6 million Jews were mentioned followed by the pre-war use of the word Holocaust in the newspaper article.
Asking this question is not being antisemitic and i am not trying to be disrespectful. I am just curious and trying to figure things out.

Trish, i had a quick look on youtube for the Beowulf story, and i will check it out. However, at present, i am not sure how Anglo-Saxons relates to the topic of the thread. Perhaps that will unfold within the story, somehow.
I appreciate the suggestion.
And i want to thank you for toning down of the complexity of your text - much thanks for that effort.

Okay, again i am off to the pool. I swim so much that i think i feel fins growing in.

I'll should be back after dinner providing i don't get wacked by a car on the snowy streets after a snowfall last night and even right now, while i ride my bike for the 20 minute bicycle ride to the indoor pool.

Thanks for reading and for your comments.
Babe,
xoxo

[broncofan]

My understanding is that the Khazars are central Asian. They are not from Palestine. I said there is a lot of disagreement about the genealogy of Ashkenazi Jews. There have been some genetic studies that have found Ashkenazi Jews did not have significant admixture from Khazars. However, there are others who disagree...it's a controversy I'm not all that interested in but I did read a genetic study about Ashkenazi Jewish origins that seemed to undermine the Khazar hypothesis. I'm always surprised to read articles that present the Khazar hypothesis as though it's a certainty when it has been undermined by several genetic studies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkena...enetic_origins

There were several series of pogroms in Russia in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The pogroms in Russia would not properly be referred to as a Holocaust (Holocaust is a proper noun referring to a single event and not a word that denotes genocide more generally). Without having the entire articles in front of me I could not tell you very much about their context. The Holocaust took place between 1942 and 1945. There were casualties that resulted from the series of pogroms, though I don't know how many.

[broncofan]

This is definitely my last post in this thread unless it's resurrected in several months. I won't respond otherwise. I just want to say I think you're disingenuous when you claim you don't know where the youtube video was heading and what it was suggesting. You also made comments in the memorial thread that I thought were a bit disrespectful, however you think you meant them. That's just my view...you may not think it's nice but that's my view.

I'll also say that most people when they find they've said things that are false, about people sock-puppeting them or reporting their thread are willing to apologize instead of always acting like the aggrieved party. I will also note that a lot of people will assume when a bunch of people disagree with them and few if any agree that they might re-evaluate their actions.

[Dahlia Babe Ailhad]

Hi Broncafan,

I can fully understand your frustration with me, as i dig deep into subjects when i am trying to figure things out.

I was very sympathetic about what happened in the Holocaust, and i expressed that sentiment in the Liberation of Auschwitz Memorial thread.
My problem is i am, perhaps, a bit too genuine for some people.

All religions aside, i think maybe now you might be able to understand why my own siblings can't deal with me for very long. I used to tick them off with many of my observations.

I am really sorry to lose you in this discussion because you were becoming so polite, (unless you were just pretending to be which i doubt).

I have no idea why you would say if this thread is "resurrected in several months" to say that that's when you will post again in it. By then, you will be so out of the loop, that i feel you would only come back with more antisemitic comments about me merely out of more frustration caused by your lack of willingness to discuss. As you wish.

Even in that last link you posted of the Khazars, look, sweety, there is a map which shows where Khazaria is located. And it's close to Poland - not Palestine.
I would only assume that your family has more Polish roots than Palestinian roots.

My mentioning the Amerindians and African slaves in the Memorial thread was by no means disrespectful in my delivery. However, maybe, you might like to choose to say i was VERY disrespectful in even bringing that up.
We are not in an all Jewish community, here, it's an open forum for discussion.
I cannot merely close my eyes and just go along with things and be a hypocrite to my own thoughts and perceptions of common facts and knowledge that other races were slaughtered in the hundreds of millions.
I did not say that i care less for the loss of Jewish people in the Holocaust.
I just pointed out that there have been other races who suffered larger amounts of people who were horribly slaughtered. Each slaughter was different, not one was more atrocious than the other. All slaughters are horrible.
I can't understand why the Holocaust gets all this attention for the loss of 6 million.
And i am certainly not suggesting that because "only" 6 million were slaughtered that the hundreds of millions of other people from other races slaughtered should trump the Holocaust in Europe.
I think there should be a memorial day for all the slaughtered people because THESE parts of human history SHOULD NEVER be forgotten.
What is good for one group should be good for the others. You really misunderstand me.
I love and cry for all people - not just ONE group.
I really do feel sympathy for the people who have lost loved ones to the Nazis. It was a horrible part of human history which should never be forgotten.
However, the African Negros are part of the lineage of Jewish people, and i think the Amerindians, as well. The Twelve Tribes were scattered all over the globe.
Trish's breast avatar is dark skinned and so is the image of those beautiful eyes in her profile. How could i only feel sympathy for the European part of the Jewish people in an event which killed other races other than European Jewish people. Not only white Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. The Nazis were all over the globe at that time.

I am not wearing blinders around my eyes causing me to only see in one direction like horses are made to wear.
I am for fairness for all people.

I am beginning to believe that you only look for fault in me in order to...uhmm...not consider me worthy of your time.
That is a pity, i think. I think we could learn from each other. But you seem to want me to learn only from you - and that can not happen, that is not fair to discredit my opinions only because i have an inquisitive mind which tries to see things from all angles.

I hope you come back soon with an open mind. I know none of this stuff really interests you, you have even admitted it. But don't, later on, post hateful comments when things don't go your way, either.
If you have nothing nice to say about a topic or discussion in progress, don't post comments only to incite hatred.

If you want to go away from this thread stomping your feet and slamming the door, do it. But i can't be dictated to when so many facts are available with the click of a button.

Don't be angry, please, i like you more when you are being an open minded gentleman, i know it's hard sometimes.

Go look at the last video i've posted in my Beer Commercial thread, it's totally heart warming. I think you have a heart, right? I can warm it.

Trish has been a real sweetheart in this thread. I like her kind of class.
She is intelligent with knowledge as well as her behavior.

Anyway. i want to go listen to the Beowulf book-reading (part one).
Someone commented (in youtube) that the audio-reading leaves out the best parts of the actual book. Maybe if the audio-book interests me enough, i will get the book.

Babe
xoxo (xo here's an extra kiss and hug for you, bronco.) I know you will wipe off my kiss with your hand but i will only say you rubbed it in.

[trish]

I won’t venture to give an opinion on the genealogy of the Jewish people, except to say science has pretty much given up the view that view that modern human beings can be meaningfully divided into biological subcategories or races. In ordinary language we recognize that there are groups of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, cultural, social and religious experience (although not all four factors need be present for acceptance into the group). We generally think of these groupings as ethnicities. There are over fifty five ethnicities in mainland China and ten spoken languages. Westerners who tend to clump all these peoples into one grouping might be misled in thinking the “Chinese people are ... strict about interracial marriages...” My guess would be that there is considerable genetic variation among the “Chinese people” just as there is among those who identify ethnically and religiously with the Jewish tradition. Sammy Davis Jr. was welcomed into the Jewish community. ‘Nuff said.

Trish, i had a quick look on youtube for the Beowulf story, and i will check it out. However, at present, i am not sure how Anglo-Saxons relates to the topic of the thread.

I did indicate that whole post was a digression responding to your query about why people rewrite the holy books. It’s partly because languages change so radically over the years that their original forms can no longer be easily understood. Try reading a little bit of Beowulf in the original Old English. It can’t be done. Try reading different modern translations of the tale and you can appreciate by how different they are from each other and how each translation contributes in its own important way to our understanding of the original work. Though this is a digression to the topic of this thread it is somewhat relevant to the word “antisemitism.” It is not an ancient word. It is relatively modern word which was coined to mean exactly what it means today, which is not the interpretation you suggest but the one nearly everybody else (including the individual who coined the term) means by it.

The posting of the first link (with the newspapers) was posted because somewhere in one of those papers (the one either just before or just as the war started) there was a mention of the word, "Holocaust".

Of the ten newspaper articles cited in the YouTube video I recall quite a few of them claiming the six million Jews were being persecuted (not the same as executed). As I recall, in Judaism, a “holocaust” is a sacrifice which is burnt on the alter.” When driven from their homes it might be expected their sacrifice was occasionally referred to metaphorically by some writers as a holocaust. No one today would use the word that way for fear of trivializing a word that now refers to Hitler’s attempt to actually exterminate the Jews of Europe by gas, guns and fire.

In regards to your post in the memorial thread, I have to say it struck me as rudely inappropriate. I downthumbed you -sorry- but I felt it was out of place to derail a thread devoted to a somber topic. Starting a new thread on the persecution Native Americans and the systematic extermination of many tribes would’ve been (and still would be) appropriate.

[trish]

Let me follow that last post, after a night’s sleep, with an extension of the following paragraph and a question or two.

...
Of the ten newspaper articles cited in the YouTube video I recall quite a few of them claiming the six million Jews were being persecuted (not the same as executed). As I recall, in Judaism, a “holocaust” is a sacrifice which is burnt on the alter.” When driven from their homes it might be expected their sacrifice was occasionally referred to metaphorically by some writers as a holocaust. No one today would use the word that way for fear of trivializing a word that now refers to Hitler’s attempt to actually exterminate the Jews of Europe by gas, guns and fire....

Of course I mean this as only one possible explanation for how the word “holocaust” might have occurred in one of ten newspaper articles. (Which one was it by the way? I haven’t the heart to listen to the video again to find out which one.) Another possibility is that a post WWII time-traveler went back to preWWII America and wrote an article in a New York paper in a vane attempt to restrain the Nazis and stop the Holocaust. The time-traveler could only make the trip once and only had time to publish one or two articles. Another possible scenario is that Jehova Himself revealed the future to the article's writer.

One can only choose the among the hypotheses that are available. I usually go for the simplest one that isn’t ruled out by the facts. I would like to add your hypothesis, Dahlia, to the mix, but we haven’t heard it yet. Why is there preWWII newspaper article that mentions the word “holocaust” and why is there only one such article? Why are there ten preWWII newspaper articles that mention “six million Jews” and why are there only ten? To repeat myself

My question to you is: Even if there were twenty articles or two hundred, or a thousand...what do you think it proves? What to you expect to learn? Is there something you already believe that you want debunked or confirmed?

[martin48]

Just an old memo but says a lot

[Dahlia Babe Ailhad]

I never denied the Holocaust happened Martin.