Is Kitty Hart-Moxon a plagiarist?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Seaburn,

Yup, ".....so-called "Holocaust" ".

The Nazis' extermination campaign against European Jews was not called "the Holocaust" at the time and is not called the "Holocaust" in Hebrew now (where it is the "Shoah", I believe.) It is a piece of post-war linguistic exceptionalism.

No other racial extermination campaign has its own word in English, as far as I am aware, so why should the "Holocaust"? (A rhetorical question, if you don't wish to engage with it).

For the same reason I am opposed to Holocaust Memorial days outside Israel and Germany. Although arguably the largest and most awful of genocides, the so-called "Holocaust" is not the only one. There might more profitably be Genocide Memorial Days everywhere, as this lets no victims be overlooked and no perpetrators off the hook.

I agree that the evidence of the Nazis' attempt to exterminate all European Jews is overwhelming. What happened is not in dispute by me.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Brumbar,

Thank you. There has been a certain amount of pussy footing around on this thread, but you have given an anawer I wanted to hear: "No, the book really doesn't contribute anything to understanding the "credibility" of the destruction of European Jewry during WWII. But it does make good, basic fodder for the idiots that question that "credibility"."

I would point out that the poster who raised this thread appears to have joined AHF specifically to do so as all his posts are on it, and that one of his supporters here has a long record of picking holes in received wisdom about Nazism generally, admittedly on occasion with some justification. This thread, although justified as an act of historical investigation, should perhaps also be viewed in the wider context of the war of attrition being waged against the received history of the Nazis' attempt to exterminate European Jews.

The critique of Kitty Hart-Moxon may be entirely justified on an individual level, but it alters the wider story of the so-called "Holocaust" not a jot. The same goes for the apparently plagiarized drawing by Simon Wiesenthal (See the AHF thread on "Simom Wiesenthal 1908-2005"). Whatever the personal failings of high-profile individuals such as them, threads such as this shouldn't be allowed to undermine the fact and order of magnitude of the Nazis' extermination campaign against European Jews.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Yuli]

Sid Guttridge:

Although arguably the largest and most awful of genocides, the so-called "Holocaust" is not the only one.

Truely and sadly the Holocaust is not the only genocide. But what would be the argument that it is not the largest and most awful of genocides?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Yuli,

In both absolute and proportional terms, there may be higher tolls. For example, nobody is quite sure how many Amerindians there were before Columbus landed, or to what degree Old World pathogens rather than genocide were responsible for mass deaths, but the initial numbers were certainly much higher than 12 million and the survival rate after two centuries was probably only about 10%. African slaves were introduced to the Americas precisely because there were soon too few Amerindioans left to do all the labour their colonizers demanded of them.

There are also numerous peoples and cultures that have disappeared in their entirety over the centuries.

So, I am content with the formulation that the so-called "Holocaust" was "arguably the largest and most awful of genocides".

Sadly, humanity being what it is, it is always possible to find more awful ways to kill people.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Sergey Romanov,

I did not ask for "final" conclusions. I asked for the conclusion.

All historical research is always, to a greater or lesser degree, "work in progress", so asking for a "final" conclusion would be futile.

I would be happy with a provisional, "current state of play" conclusion, if you would care to offer one.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Yuli]

I doubt that the conquerers of America have intentionally slaughterd more than 6 million Indians or that they had the intention to wipe out the entire race. Of course, epidemics have killed many more millions and still do nowadays, but I would not catagorize them as genocide. Also, you are talking about survival after two centuries, not after 4-5 years. These are not to be compared.

Regarding the issue of International Holocaust Memorial Day, one unique genocidal feature of the Holocaust is that its actuall perpetrators (architects, murderers, collaborators, informers) were not only Germans and Austrians, but came from numerous east and west European countries.

[history1]

[...] its actuall perpetrators (architects, murderers, collaborators, informers) were not only Germans and Austrians, but came from numerous east and west European countries.

And then are those people who state that certain Jewish groups like the Judenräte, ghetto police, Kapos in concentration camps, etc. also played a role in the Holocaust.
And what about countries like the USA and the UK who did worsen the situation for persecuted Jews though they knew about their fate/situation.

But this matter has nothing to do with the theme of the thread and is leading only away from it.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Yuli,

You can compare anything - i.e apples and oranges.

However, you cannot necessarily equate them - again i.e. apples and oranges.

There are problems with the mass deaths of the Amerindians. Firstly, we don't know within an order of magnitude how many there were originally. Secondly, we don't know know how many died in war, as the consequence of war, or due to post conflict exploitation as opposed to disease. Disease was almost certainly by far the biggest killer, but if the Amerindian population was originally at the higher end of estimates then there was plenty of scope for many millions to have died of the other causes as well.

The Spanish only came to appreciate the value of Amerindians once they began to run out of them for labour. As long as they thought they were in infinite supply, they exploited them ruthlessly. They treated the African slaves who largely replaced them rather better, because they had had to pay hard cash for them.

Every genocide is likely unique in its own way, but this doesn't, in my opinion, justify the exceptionalism implicit in the unthinking, exclusive use of the word "Holocaust" for just one of them.

What happened to European Jews at the hands of the Nazis was arguably the largest and most awful of genocides. 50% of the planet's Jews died. That seems quite bad enough to me!

Cheers,

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi history1,,

Yes, I am leading us off course.

I will pipe down for a while so that thread can get back on track.

Sid.

[wm]

No other racial extermination campaign has its own word in English, as far as I am aware, so why should the "Holocaust"? (A rhetorical question, if you don't wish to engage with it).

Holodomor

Regarding the issue of International Holocaust Memorial Day, one unique genocidal feature of the Holocaust is that its actuall perpetrators (architects, murderers, collaborators, informers) were not only Germans and Austrians, but came from numerous east and west European countries.

Pointless distinction, distorting the reality by forcing Manichaeistic vision of the world, advanced for political and ideological reasons.

Truely and sadly the Holocaust is not the only genocide. But what would be the argument that it is not the largest and most awful of genocides?

The largest was the Taiping Civil War, with its 50,000,000 victims, most of them civilians slaughtered or starved to death by the Qing imperial forces.

[wm]

A few more examples of the similarities in texts between the two works.

The first one is looks suspicious especially because the words reinforcements, battlefield were used - rarely used by women.

The rest was common knowledge: the bombing, the roll-call, the execution - it would be strange if she didn't mention them.

What is your source for this information? What year did Zywulska marry Leon?

It suppose it was in 1945 because at the beginning of 1946 their son was born, but I don't know that as fact.

It's from her own interview with a Polish historian, later published in Polish newspapers.
She denounced themselves for that "lavish lifestyle" saying it was inappropriate and wrong, although it seems mainly because of the numerous Public Security officers who frequented her parties. Those servants (in reality probably a housekeeping lady) weren't anything unusual even during the communist era.

[Yuli]

wm:

The largest was the Taiping Civil War, with its 50,000,000 victims, most of them civilians slaughtered or starved to death by the Qing imperial forces.

From Wikipedia: Taiping Rebellion or Civil War (other internet sources give similar estimates): "With no reliable census at the time, estimates are necessarily based on projections, but the most widely cited sources put the total number of deaths during the 15 years of the rebellion at about 20–30 million civilians and soldiers. Most of the deaths were attributed to plague and famine."

Of course, when we discuss wars in many cases the numbers of civilians slaughtered or starved to death or dying in epidemics is by far larger than 6 million.

I agree we are off track, so I will stop here.

[Sergey Romanov]

No other racial extermination campaign has its own word in English,

Porajmos?

as far as I am aware, so why should the "Holocaust"?

Why shouldn't it?

[Sergey Romanov]

I did not ask for "final" conclusions. I asked for the conclusion.

The difference being?

[Sergey Romanov]

No other racial extermination campaign has its own word in English, as far as I am aware, so why should the "Holocaust"? (A rhetorical question, if you don't wish to engage with it).

Holodomor

There is no historical consensus that this was a racial extermination campaign.