Vomit Comet Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 One thought I had though is that the Kurds suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein, We don't want that one to flare up right now, I'm afraid. and Armenians were persecuted too about 100 years ago (I think), but we have no one going after all those who were involved in all the atrocities in those acts. The last survivors are creeping up on 100 years old, and they were small children when it happened. Anyone old enough to have been in the Ottoman military at that time would be having their name in the Guinness World Book of Records right about now. Also, coincidentally enough, the Turks made the Kurds do most the dirty work with that one. Also, I was born and raised in L.A., which has more Armenians than Armenia does, so the Armenian Genocide came up a lot. System of a Down (they were from eastside Hollywood) would talk about it constantly. The biggest problem is that to this day, Turkey refuses to officially recognize that it happened. The Armenians and some of their allies have been pushing for a while to get just that far, so they've never had the leisure of being able to hunt down war criminals from the Ottoman Empire. The only way they would have been able to hunt anybody down would be to basically hire assassins and do it illegally. Also, on the internet you'll see a lot of "denial" sites maintained by Turkish nationalists that are pretty similar to the Holocaust Denial guys like David Irving. They'll go on and on about how the "Armos" are lying and how they were just trying to stick it to the Turks and bring about their downfall. Sounds all too familiar. The difference is that the Turkish denialists are more or less parroting the official line of the Turkish government. From what I understand, it's one of the things that keeps them out of the EU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitchu Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 All war crimes should be punished. Justice should be sought against all murderers of all stripes. I don't know what goes into a people's mindset which lets some horrendous violations and violators slide. I do know that with Jews the holocaust was the pinnacle of centuries of their being singled out for slaughter simply because they were Jews, and for the first time there was the chance, the willingness, the international conscience, the organizational ability, the monetary support and the few bright, dedicated and daring Hunters who would pursue justice. All these elements never came together as factors for any of the other shameful slaughters. But the Jews' mission of justice should not be brushed off as excessive or special or "chosen" as opposed to the other slaughters. Jews would have preferred never for the combination of precipitating factors to come together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest QuidEstCaritas? Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 The bastards should be hunted down, brought in, and executed. Participating in the mass murder of millions of people is a serious crime. Just my two cents anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitchu Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 I left out one factor in the list in my previous post, and it's a crucial one in distinguishing what the Jews were able to accomplish post-holocaust as opposed to what happened regarding the aftermath of several other slaughtered peoples mentioned in this thread. It's the factor of extensive written, photographed, "computerized" and filmed documentation... all of which facilitated the Hunt to take place at all. The Armenian genocide of 1915, for instance, was documented, certainly, but not with the scope and detail available to surviving Jews who wished to bring their persecutors to justice. The obsessive-compulsive meticulousness of the Nazi record-keeping helped with this. The treacherous support of IBM for Hitler's aims allowed a wealth of information to be gained, also. (IBM not only assisted in tracing lineage, assuring identification of "Jewish bloodlines," but also supplied the Nazis with the sickenly efficient tattooing method.) http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/articles/auschwitz.html The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number. In August 1943, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz. He was among a group of 400 inmates, mostly Jews. First, a doctor examined him briefly to determine his fitness for work. His physical information was noted on a medical record. Second, his full prisoner registration was completed with all personal details. Third, his name was checked against the indices of the Political Section to see if he would be subjected to special punishment. Finally, he was registered in the Labor Assignment Office and assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. The five-digit Hollerith number was part of a custom punch card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. The Polish timber merchant's punch card number would follow him from labor assignment to labor assignment as Hollerith systems tracked him and his availability for work, and reported the data to the central inmate file eventually kept at Department DII. Department DII of the SS Economics Administration in Oranienburg oversaw all camp slave labor assignments, utilizing elaborate IBM systems. Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant's same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed. Tattoos, however, quickly evolved at Auschwitz. Soon, they bore no further relation to Hollerith compatibility for one reason: the Hollerith number was designed to track a working inmate-not a dead one. Once the daily death rate at Auschwitz climbed, Hollerith-based numbering simply became outmoded. Soon, ad hoc numbering systems were inaugurated at Auschwitz. Various number ranges, often with letters attached, were assigned to prisoners in ascending sequence. Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed cruel experiments, tattooed his own distinct number series on "patients." Tattoo numbering schemes ultimately took on a chaotic incongruity all its own as an internal Auschwitz-specific identification system. However, Hollerith numbers remained the chief method Berlin employed to centrally identify and track prisoners at Auschwitz. For example, in late 1943, some 6,500 healthy, working Jews were ordered to the gas chamber by the SS. But their murder was delayed for two days as the Political Section meticulously checked each of their numbers against the Section's own card index. The Section was under orders to temporarily reprieve any Jews with traces of Aryan parentage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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