Sam Harris

During a recent visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, OH I found something that initially gave me hope. It is interesting that a federal installation is hosting a Holocaust display although this is well outside of the mission of the U.S. Air Force and the NMUSAF. I hoped that the tremendous sacrifices of all the civilians from various nations who lost their lives in the genocides of the 20th Century would be so honored with their own large and elaborate displays. In World War II alone there were eleven million Soviet civilians who lost their lives. Many of them starved to death in their bombed out cities which had been turned into veritable death camps while under siege by German troops. There are also the sixteen million Chinese civilians who died during the same conflict. Many of these people were tortured and massacred in operations such as the Rape of Nanking. My hope turned to dismay as I continued my tour of this Air Force installations museum. It appears that the U.S. Air Force suffers from a serious case of bigotry. The lives of six million Jewish people warrant an entire display whereas the deaths of eleven million Soviet people and sixteen million Chinese people who died under equally appalling conditions does not even receive a whisper. With losses two and three times larger it would seem that one would expect a display of equal size at a minimum. In reality adequately telling the story of the Soviet and Chinese losses would require displays much larger than the Holocaust display.

Where too are the displays near the World War I gallery? The total deaths for that conflict reached sixteen million. There were over two million civilian deaths from the Ottoman Empire and one and a half million civilian deaths in Russia alone. The U.S. Air Force further neglected the thirty to forty million civilians killed by our Cold War adversary the Soviets. In the same gallery there is no display for the forty million civilians killed by our other major Cold War adversary the Chinese.  What of the two million Korean civilians and the two million Vietnamese civilians who lost their lives in those conflicts?

It is truly appalling and disgusting that the U.S. Air Force honors one ethnic group who lost six million people and ignores tens of millions of civilians who were slaughtered in equally heinous manners. What is driving this glaring and disgusting oversight? How did these other people not even receive a footnote? It is disturbing that the tens of millions who have been ignored are all from Asia which seems to indicate a not so subtle Xenophobia. A wiser and non-bigoted option would be to not have a display at all if all of those who suffered in like manner can not be remembered. As it stands the U.S. Air Force and by default the U.S. federal government have engaged in an action that is an unimaginably large statement of ethnic superiority.

So commemorating the largest and most comprehensive act of genocide of the 20th Century is “blatant bigotry” against the victims of all other genocides?  That’s retarded.  Your agenda is transparent, and while you’ve got a couple of people here fooled, most of us see you for exactly what you are.

Who’s fooled?

So many genocides to accomodate, and so little space and time.

It is truly appalling and disgusting that the U.S. Air Force honors one ethnic group who lost six million people and ignores tens of millions of civilians who were slaughtered in equally heinous manners. What is driving this glaring and disgusting oversight? How did these other people not even receive a footnote? It is disturbing that the tens of millions who have been ignored are all from Asia which seems to indicate a not so subtle Xenophobia. A wiser and non-bigoted option would be to not have a display at all if all of those who suffered in like manner can not be remembered. As it stands the U.S. Air Force and by default the U.S. federal government have engaged in an action that is an unimaginably large statement of ethnic superiority.

I fear that the problem is even worst than you state. The historical account of the deaths at the hands of the Nazis was 11 to 12 million. Yet if you ask the average person how many people died in the the Holocaust, the common answer is 5 to 6 million which is the estimated number of Jews who died. How can it be that there is such a disparity between the truth and the common answer? It is because Jews have distorted and hijacked the definition of the Holocaust to mean Jews only, as if the Jewish deaths were somehow more important than the other human deaths which constitute more than half the total. Yet Jews seem to enjoy accusing people of minimizing the Holocaust when they themselves endeavor to commit the grossest minimization possible. This seems to be done to promote the notion that Jews have been the most persecuted people throughout history and to invoke the corresponding sympathy. The whole distortion is tolerated out of a deference to the Jews in American society. Every time I tell someone that my Latvian uncle died it the Holocaust the usual response is - I didn’t know that you are Jewish. It’s getting old.

Stay Well
Wotansson

But if you go by percentage of an ethnic group decimated by WWII, the Jews “win” by a large margin.

From an individual perspective, any death is horrible, but from the perspective of an entire group, race, etc losing 10 millions out of 500 millions isn’t on the same scale as losing 6 millions out of 12 millions.

MH

MHunter - 12 June 2009 11:41 PM

But if you go by percentage of an ethnic group decimated by WWII, the Jews “win” by a large margin.

From an individual perspective, any death is horrible, but from the perspective of an entire group, race, etc losing 10 millions out of 500 millions isn’t on the same scale as losing 6 millions out of 12 millions.

MH

I don’t have the numbers handy but as I recall, the Slavs including Poles and other Slavic people were not that far behind in the count.

Wotansson

Wotansson - 12 June 2009 11:18 PM

Every time I tell someone that my Latvian uncle died it the Holocaust the usual response is - I didn’t know that you are Jewish. It’s getting old.

Every time I tell someone I had a relative die in the Holocaust my explanation is, “He fell from a guard tower.”

Skipshot - 16 June 2009 06:49 PM

Wotansson - 12 June 2009 11:18 PM

Every time I tell someone that my Latvian uncle died it the Holocaust the usual response is - I didn’t know that you are Jewish. It’s getting old.

Every time I tell someone I had a relative die in the Holocaust my explanation is, “He fell from a guard tower.”

Get some help Skippy

Cooper - 10 June 2009 05:10 PM

During a recent visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, OH I found something that initially gave me hope. It is interesting that a federal installation is hosting a Holocaust display although this is well outside of the mission of the U.S. Air Force and the NMUSAF.

“I’ll be back.”

Did you notice if the career of Wehrner Von Braun was part of the display?  This Nazi was a key figure in the development of the V2 rocket, or ‘flying bomb’.  On several occassions he visited the underground factory where slave labor, Jews, Poles, and others, was used to manufacture the V2s.  He saw the unspeakable conditions of those forced to work on his devices - the exhaustion, starvation, sickness, executions.  More people died making these things than were killed when they were launched toward London, Paris, Antwerp etc.

After the war Von Braun was spirited off to the U.S. to become a kind of folk hero - ‘father of the U.S. space program’ etc.  I saw him many times on TV, maybe even on Ed Sullivan’s show right after Elvis or the Beatles. He spoke with the same accent as the Terminator, explaining his wizardry and love of rockets.

Holocaust memorials need to go out of their way to remind us that the human brain is the same now as it was in the 1900’s.
Otherwise, “I’ll be back.”

unsmoked - 20 June 2009 07:54 PM

Cooper - 10 June 2009 05:10 PM

During a recent visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, OH I found something that initially gave me hope. It is interesting that a federal installation is hosting a Holocaust display although this is well outside of the mission of the U.S. Air Force and the NMUSAF.

“I’ll be back.”

Did you notice if the career of Wehrner Von Braun was part of the display?  This Nazi was a key figure in the development of the V2 rocket, or ‘flying bomb’.  On several occassions he visited the underground factory where slave labor, Jews, Poles, and others, was used to manufacture the V2s.  He saw the unspeakable conditions of those forced to work on his devices - the exhaustion, starvation, sickness, executions.  More people died making these things than were killed when they were launched toward London, Paris, Antwerp etc.

After the war Von Braun was spirited off to the U.S. to become a kind of folk hero - ‘father of the U.S. space program’ etc.  I saw him many times on TV, maybe even on Ed Sullivan’s show right after Elvis or the Beatles. He spoke with the same accent as the Terminator, explaining his wizardry and love of rockets.

Holocaust memorials need to go out of their way to remind us that the human brain is the same now as it was in the 1900’s.
Otherwise, “I’ll be back.”

He might have well been tried as a war criminal except for one fact - we found him useful. He is not the only one, just the most famous.

Stay Well
Wotansson