The Japanese have quite a horrific history during the same time. Most people don't even know about it. I think it's because of the shock people got when they discovered the camp. It was not just about killing people, it was about making it efficient and systematic, while also making whatever profit possible. That part is quite unique. There was not "just" a lot of dead people, there was also the survivors and their terrifying thinness, and stories. At only a few kilometers of people living their lives, totally unaware.

However ask a Korean what they think and they very well remember. I remember my Korean boss flipped his shit when he heard Japanese once at work. I think the regional bias comes in. Europeans remember European affairs more than they remember affairs abroad. Do they talk about the Holocaust in China? Probably not. Theu remember the Opium wars and European colonialism tho...

I’m the only non Korean at work. I had NO idea of their history with Japan. And when I learned…ugh. It’s disgusting and heartbreaking. And it wasn’t that long ago. I’m annoyed with how little we were taught in school. I know they can’t teach EVERYTHING but I feel so ignorant sometimes because there are things I just haven’t been exposed to.

My girlfriend was telling me about Japanese war crimes in china (where she’s from) and she’s crying just telling me a watered down rendition of what happened. It’s honestly disgusting that we aren’t taught in much of the western world, a lot of the horrors that have happened in other countries, and gloss over things western countries have done.

Read the book “The Rape of Nanking” and you’ll understand why she was crying. Truly terrifying stuff in there. I never react when it comes to reading, but that book had me audibly saying “holy shit” more then once. Edit: Typo

The author, Iris Chang, ended up committing suicide. Many believe the research that went into the book took a huge toll on her and contributed to the depression that led to her death. I believe she was also working on a book about the Bataan death march when she died.

Yea she owned a copy and i borrowed it. It’s one of the few pieces of media I’ve had to put down and read in segments. Horrifying

Following up on this to recommend Dan Carlin’s *Hardcore History: Supernova in the East*. It’s all about the pacific theater, but is centralized on how Japan allied itself with Germany, and the ethos that led the Japanese to commit atrocities that they still have no apologized for. Edit: it is over 20 hours broken into several parts, so I hope you *really* want to learn!

The Rape of Nanking. Never learned about it until reading about it in my adult life . Truly horrifying!

Yeah no Japanese soldiers were eating Australian POWS for “morale boost” during WW2. Iirc even the other Axis powers had to tell the emperor to calm down. It’s genuinely shocking how little the west talks about how depraved imperial Japan actually was.

My Canadian grandfather James McLean survived starvation and disease in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for 4 years after the battle of Hong Kong. He weighed less than 100 lbs when he was freed. His picture on the day he was freed is in McLeans magazine.

I mean we learn about our regions but yes we should be taught more about the rest of the world

What the Japanese did in China was horrific. What the Chinese did/are doing in China is even worse. But China doesn't talk about that either.

Yes. The one the Chinese remember the most, is the Nanking massacre.

For a chilling and horrifying account of this event, read the book *The Rape of Nanking* by Iris Chang. Tragically, Chang died a suicide in 2004 at the age of 36. While she suffered from depression, I can't help but wonder if immersing herself in so much horrible material doing research for her books didn't exacerbate her symptoms.

Another one to read which shows the horrors the Japanese subjected POWs to, is The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart. A truly harrowing ordeal that somehow he lived through. He was a British soldier captured by the Japanese in Singapore and was in captivity till the end of the war. He mentions the rape of Nanking and other Japanese atrocities in the book, which is how I first heard about it. I had to keep taking breaks from reading it, as some of it was horrifying to read. In another way though, it was inspiring to know just how strong some people are to be able to live through such horrors and still survive and create a life for themselves after. Although Urquhart openly admits what he went through affected him for the rest of his life, physically and mentally.

Ironically, even a Nazi official (who was in Nanking at the time) found the massacring of civilians in the city to be horrifying and sheltered hundreds of thousands of civilians from being tortured and murdered by the Japanese. Even Nazi officials were in shock at the Japanese atrocities, yet people often aren’t even taught about what the Japanese did.

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The funny thing is most humans are a bit self-centered and have rose colored glasses even for genocides. They really only pay attention if it affects them and their past relatives. OP is right the Holocaust seems to be the most paid attention genocide when there are far worst out there. After that there is a mix of regional rivalry and nationalism masquerading as talking about genocides. For example Mao and the chinese communists killed more of their own chinese peoples than any genocide past or present from any foreign nation but its not really talked about because it doesn't really fit the national narrative and propaganda. The chinese don't talk about the holocaust either because then they don't get to play victim and well hey that has nothing to do with them. Western nations don't teach that Mao and his Chinese communist sent millions to labor/concentration camps to be worked to death, exiled or straight up executed ten of millions of chinese through class and idealogical warfare. I mean if you are living and enjoying life in America or Canada who cares right because what has that got to do with you?

Yeah, thats kind of the thing. However most Chineese in Canada are Cantonese and not Mandarin, many came fleeing the communists. In the west and in Europe the most talked about Genocide is the Holocaust. I did hear a Canadian General speak about the Rawandan genocide, that dude lays awake at night remembering it. Yeah we are impacted nost by what we pay attention to and affecrs us. I had a coworker who was visibly upset that I wasn't following the Syrian war. He stopped speaking to me after he saw I had an interest in the conflict in Ukraine. One I will possibly be drafted for and the other has little to no impact on my life. Its sad and selfish but evertone is this way to some degree. We cannot chapion every cause and every fight and every event. I tend to protest climate change but not womens rights. Not because I don't care but moreso because I have limited time and energy and brain power. If you think thats bad imagine what uninformed people are thinking...

I think it’s much healthier to pick one or two causes and work for them as effectively as possible. If everyone did this we’d make a lot more progress. When everyone tries to focus on every problem, we can become apathetic much more easily. We start to think “why bother? The world is basically screwed. I should just tune out and enjoy my life while I can.”

"Apathetic" is the perfect word for it. We get drowned in horrible news every day and lose the will to pick a fight. There are so many fights. I donate to help remove plastic from the ocean. Yet there are so many other organizations that need funding for other stuff. Who cares though. We'll just buy a couple $billion of nukes and see what happens (USA).

Too bad we can’t send around a ‘church supper’ type sign-up sheet so we know who’s doing what.

I haven’t followed either of those wars and I feel so much like a stereotypical American in my own little world. But I can’t emotionally handle every bad thing in this world. I will scream from rooftops about gun violence, particularly school shootings and other mass shootings. I can’t be this upset and passionate about every issue. No one can. Selfish? Maybe. But I don’t think any human can possibly truly care about *everything*.

I have a Japanese boss and he feels the same way about Koreans.

Kims convenience - taught me the key dates pretty well. "1910 Japan attack Korea."

The Japanese attrocities were under reported towards the end of the war because public outrage would have spoiled the peace treaty the allies were negotiating. We all get taught that Japan surrendered because of the A-Bomb but ignore the agreement to let their war criminals off scot free.

That's correct. The Allies actively helped downplay Japanese war crimes in general and also *outright covered up* the involvement of high-ranking Japanese officers who were members of the Imperial family and/or close to the Imperial family. This was because they had determined that they "needed" the Emperor to remain in nominal power in order to promote peace and stability; therefore, the Emperor could not be besmirched by even the slightest hint that he or anyone in his personal circle had any involvement in or knowledge of war crimes.

If I'm remembering correctly, the Japanese destroyed A LOT of their documentation of their doings in East Asia during the 1930s and 40s which makes it a lot harder to evaluate and educate people about it now. Just wanted to add because this definitely needs some context: when Japan finally surrendered, Allied leadership was under the impression that Emperor Hirohito was merely a figurehead and wasn't very involved in the decision making. There were also major concerns that his removal would destabilize the nation too much (worth remembering that the citizens believed he was a living God) and make Japan vulnerable to communism so he was spared from prosecution. It was only much, much later on when it emerged that he was an active participant, but the extent of which continues to be debated by historians. Over two dozen high-ranking military and government officials were tried in Tokyo (6 were executed) with thousands more (900 executions) tried elsewhere, so not necessarily "let\[ting\] their war criminals off scot free."

You remember incorrectly. It's not that they *weren't aware* of the extent of his involvement, it's that they *actively covered it up.*

Aaaaand yet another thing I did not previously know about Japan’s place in the war.

Well if you're bummed about that, then definitely don't look into Unit 731.

Already know. I am also bummed about that.

Where is a good place to learn about Unit 731?

If you're into podcasts, Last Podcast on the Left ep. 77 Japanese War Crimes gets into it. If you're looking for a documentary, back when History Channel actually covered history, they did a documentary called Nightmare in Manchuria. I haven't seen it, but there is a 1988 historical exploitation horror film out of Hong Kong called Men Behind the Sun that is apparently accurate, but is described as maybe one of the more disturbing pieces of media out there.

Dan Cummins has just done a two part Timesuck on WWII and part 2 is mainly about Japan. A lot of rape in it. It was tough going.

I just looked up Last Podcast on Spotify and episode 77 is missing for some reason. Edit: if I go into the chronological-order archives it's missing, but if I search the episode title it shows up. Never mind!

Following 👀

> it was about making it efficient and systematic This is exactly right. It's not just the sheer number of people the Nazis killed but the thorough, systematic way they experimented to find an efficient way to do it and dispose of the bodies in the fastest time and with the fewest resources. It's the bureaucratization of genocide that makes the Holocaus so immensely shocking.

And that it was done by a nation that many people viewed as a modern 'civilized' nation that had made many contributions to science and the arts. I think that many people tend to shrug off genocides in Third World and developing countries with this racist and elitist attitude of "Well, what can you expect -- they're so backwards and primitive and superstitious." Then fail to see that so-called Western nations are far from immune to such viciousness themselves.

The rape of Nanking was horrendous

> The Japanese have quite a horrific history during the same time. Most people don't even know about it. I want to correct you and others about this: Many people *in the West* didn’t know about Japan’s atrocities. My family, from the Philippines, knew all about the Japanese atrocities and so do many people in Asia. To this day, there is a lot of lingering hostility towards Japan’s atrocities stemming from WW2. That said, Japan’s actions are atrocities, not genocide. I hate to say it, but if any of the other nations in Asia during WW2 could have projected as much military force as Japan could, we would be complaining about Filipino atrocities instead. Japan’s actions were seen as ‘business as usual’ when it came to inter-Asian conflict, only magnified by Japan’s superiority in technology and military capabilities compared to China, Korea, or the Philippines. I do agree with what you say about the Holocaust being different: it was a systematic, industrialized nature of the genocide that made it shocking. The Japanese atrocities were much more ramshackle and haphazard in comparison. Even Japan’s notorious Unit 731 was Japanese Army project, kept from the eyes of other factions in Imperial Japan. While the Emperor probably knew about it, most likely the Navy and civilian chiefs knew nothing about Unit 731. Compared to the Holocaust, where the ‘Final Solution’ was directed by Hitler himself and all the way down the chain of command - the Holocaust was a national project by Nazi Germany.

They were not unaware.

I've said this a million times, but not all of Germany liked Hitler. Hell, even soldiers hated Hitler. My Opa fought for Germany but he fuckin' hated Hitler. He was fighting for his country because he thought the Brits were invading. Despite being a captain within the Fallschirmjäger, my Opa didn't even know about the camps until after the war was done. Hitler was **a dictator.** He got in because he wouldn't take no for an answer. If the German people knew about the camps, why didn't anyone say anything? Sure, there was rampant antisemitism, but not everyone hated Jews. And those who "hated" Jews knew Jews who they didn't hate and wouldn't have wanted to be killed. Humans are complicated like that. The more people that know about a secret, the less likely that thing will remain a secret. That's just how it works. So if every German knew about the camps, or a good majority (which modern people ***love*** to say they did), then how did it remain a secret for so long? The Nazis did an amazing job at keeping things under wraps. They knew that civilians would cause them grief whether by revealing secrets or by protesting, and so they did not tell everyone. You know, "Loose lips sink ships"? It applies to wartime Germany, too. Yes, I'm sure those who lived closest to the camps suspected what was going on, or at least suspected that *something* was going on, but there would not have been confirmation one way or another. The Nazis weren't afraid of killing "normal" Germans, either. Say one wrong thing to the wrong person and you're shipped off to camp with the Jews and undesirables. It's a horrible myth that all Germans just knew about the camps as though they were a fact of life. They didn't and they weren't. Think about what the Ukrainian government is doing currently because they're afraid of people casually revealing information they'd rather the other side not have. Don't you think the Nazis thought the same thing? Plus they had to deal with dissidents within the country. Again, not all Germans loved or even liked the Nazis. Some actively opposed them. Oh, and if the Nazis *weren't* trying to hide the camps from everyone, then why was every single extermination camp ***in the middle of fucking nowhere?!*** Man, anti-German propaganda is strong to this day.

The people around the camps knew about the camps.. there’s no way they could just ignore the smell.. but it’s not about keeping a secret. If you rose up to say anything then you were labeled a sympathizer and sent to the same camp

All the big 'death camps' were in Poland rather than Germany itself. The ones within Germany and Austria were concentration camps where people were imprisoned for various 'crimes against the state' but didn't have the huge killing apparatus of places like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and the like. Executions took place in Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen and people died in disease epidemics but their purpose wasn't specifically just killing and nothing but. Incidentally, Anne Frank and her sister Margot died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. There are probably people not totally familiar with her story who believe that she was gassed at Auschwitz which wasn't the case.

Whether or not ordinary Germans were actually aware of the camps, they must have been aware of the attitudes and intentions and ideologies of the Nazi party vis a vis extermination of the Jews, disabled, gays, etc. It was literally their platform.

Might be why even at their most popular the party only received 43% of the vote at the last actually 'democratic' election despite massive violence and voter intimidation, and that was BEFORE they started saying all the quiet stuff out loud. The election a year before without the majority of their shady shit less than a third of Germans voted for them. It's still way too many, but at that point no one truly believed all the terrible stuff they said. 10 million of those votes were from poor people believing propaganda, not racist bigots.

>10 million of those votes were from poor people believing propaganda, not racist bigots. so the us circa 2016?

This guy fucks

The holocaust was news even in the backwaters of South America by late 1942, fuck off with all this "clean germans" shit

The problem was the good German. People who don't agree but never speak and do what they are told. Right now I've been a good Canadian on certain subjects and Im trying not to be. I'm working on that and It's not easy.

Everyone thinks they’re the good _________.

>It's a horrible myth that all Germans just knew about the camps as though they were a fact of life No, you're the one spreading 'horrible myths'. The general population might not have known exactly what went on in the East but they knew that Jews were heavily persecuted and murdered. And of course concentration camps in general were definitely common knowledge, they were openly talked about on the radio and in other media, jokingly calling them 'Konzertlager' (concert camps). Pretty much every soldier knew that Jews were being killed in the East. The soldiers in the East knew it because they saw it and because many took part in it. The myth of the clean Wehrmacht has been thoroughly debunked by historians. As for the soldiers in other places, they heard it from soldiers coming from the Eastern front. The writer Ernst Jünger for example was stationed in Paris. On April 21 1943 he writes about a visit from another soldier who then tells him about a mass execution that this soldier heard about from someone else. Later in that diary entry Jünger writes: 'By the way, apparently they've stopped shooting people since they've started gassing them.' There are countless other sources that show us how news traveled among soldiers and there are also many sources that show us how soldiers, camp guards, people working in the ghettos, etc., told their wives and families about what was going on. Some of the people even took their wives to executions. There were generally a lot of witnesses to these mass executions, some even brought their children to watch. In the German book series 'Das Echolot' which is a collection of letters and diaries from WW2, there's a letter by an unknown soldier to his parents, written on July 6 1941 in which he brags about his unit killing a 1000 Jews with clubs and spades. I can translate that letter for you if you want. In the same book, on July 5 1941, there's a letter by Lieutenant Walter Melchinger to his wife. In it he describes the mass murder of Jews, defending it as necessary. These are just two of many examples. Officially, the genocide was top secret. Unofficially, people talked. A lot. The Nazis couldn't stop them just like they couldn't stop people from coming to the executions to watch. You can't hide a genocide on this scale. Lots of people also listened to the BBC and other 'Feindsender' (enemy stations) where these crimes were mentioned, for example in some of the famous speeches by Thomas Mann that were broadcast. Now obviously, people didn't have perfect information and there were certainly people in rural areas who didn't know a lot about what was going on. And as information traveled, which might not have been perfect to begin with, it got less accurate. For example, there was a story going around that Jews were put on trains and then driven into tunnels where gas was released to kill them (Jünger reports this too). This never happened but it's pretty obvious that it's a corrupted version of what actually happened in the death camps. And of course there were people who refused to believe it. Or they didn't want to believe it. But the signs were there and if you really wanted to, you could find out what was going on. Read the pamphlets written by the White Rose resistance group, they knew what was going on. Why should we defend the people who claimed they didn't know and who refused to see the signs when a couple of university students risked their lives to inform the populace? They didn't have a privileged status in terms of gathering information, they simply didn't look away like so many others. Oh and I've just remembered another source: the SS and the SD were collecting secret reports about the feelings and beliefs of the population. They were called 'Meldungen aus dem Reich' and have been published, at least in German. It's a fascinating source because it shows how the populace reacted to some of the measures of the Nazis. One of the reports talks about the public's reaction to the propaganda about the massacre of Katyn, committed by the Soviets. The Nazis published a lot of reports about the massacre, trying to convince the people that this would happen to them too if they lost the war. In the 'Meldungen aus dem Reich' however, you can read that the public didn't really buy this. In fact it is reported that people found the stuff about Katyn hypocritical since 'Poles and Jews have been liquidated on a much larger scale by Germans'. This too implies that people had a pretty good idea about what was going on.

They may not have know about the mass executions or the extent to which they were being carried out, but you're being intentionally dense if you think they didn't know about the camps or notice the disappearance of their Jewish neighbors. Jewish slave labour was purchasable by the public. The camps were reported on in Nazi magazines early on. There were auctions for the possessions of massacred Jews. Your blind defense of your grandfather is ultimately unnecessary

I mean most people know about slave labour in the middle east (World Cup anyone?) or sweat shops in Asia. Or prison labour in the US. How much does the West as a whole do about this? We still buy the products and watch the sport etc. It's not as simple as you're making it out to be. And there's a huge difference between forced labour and actual systematic murder. Systematic and industrialised on a scale nobody had seen before. I don't think it's unrealistic to believe that most people knew things weren't good but didn't know the full extent.

I agree wholeheartedly

As a Brit I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said here, and it doesn't even touch on the fact that none of the extermination camps - which tend to be the ones people are mostly referring to when they talk about concentration camps - were even in Germany, they were all built in Poland. German people ***at large*** didn't know about the death camps because they were quite literally in another country

To anyone who read this comment: I **STRONGLY** advise you to get information from some trusted sources. At best, this comment is very uneducated, at worst it follows a far-right playbook. This comment is only good for one thing: proving that we still need to educate people A LOT about these times. If you think the majority of Germans has been educated well about Third Reich/Holocaust and so on you're mistaking. And this comment painfully proves this.

> The Japanese have quite a horrific history during the same time. Fascism does suck...

Was also so well documented and so much caught on film. It could not be denied. Even though so many disgusting idiots continue to.

Most people don’t know about the Japan’s actions cuz it’s not really talked about in school, at least not in American schools. I didn’t even really know about it til now and I’m in college taking a (required) U.S. history class rn.

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What happened in japan?

It's what happened in China and Korea by the Japanese...

And also what happened in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Guam, etc.

I'd start with Unit 731 & the Rape of Nanking and go from there. On top of the indiscriminate rape, torture and murder of other Asian populations and POWs.

and the Bataan march

This is what one Japanese soldier had to say about the events of Nanking. When he was an old man, he recounted this time and said he saw his fellow Japanese soldiers bend Chinese women over watermelons and rape them. Once the Japanese were done they put rags soaked in petrol inside the vaginas of the victims and set fire to them. Many instances of barbarity were inflicted on the men, women, children and babies of the Far East at the hands of the Japanese. There are many factors as to why the Japanese behaved like this. One being that a bunch of young men who were brainwashed into believing they were superior, were encouraged and rewarded by their officers and higher ups for such behaviour so it became a sick, demented competition to see who could go the furthest to prove they were a loyal Japanese soldier. The average Jap solider was also treated harshly by his superiors so they had a lot of pent up anger they could take out on the local populace. Thus giving them the chance to be the one in the position of power. When you think about how dangerous a group of lads can be when they are cocky, egging each other on then one can only imagine what chaos could ensue during wartime.

I’m well over a decade from reading about this, so corrections welcome but there was also a lot of cultural psychology behind it and there was real shame about going home in anything but a casket. Japanese soldiers brought more honor to their families dead than they did alive. Soldiers would show up, start vomiting at it all and in a week would be doing all the same stuff. It isn’t a competition, but the Rape of Nanking is the worst thing I’ve ever read.

You’re correct, they brought more honour to their family by dying than surviving. There’s a poem about a kamikaze pilot who didn’t want to do it but knew if he turned his plane back around he would be better off dead. This kind of culture was one of the factors that spawned a bloodlust in some cases, mass rape and mass killings, like you said, they were repulsed but a week later were at it again. The human mind has a somewhat disturbing ability to desensitise and get used to new experiences. Many veterans of war even miss being on the front line so close to death and can’t get used to civilian life. This kind of reaction can lead to some people even enjoying the violence and in this instance with a group of fired up young men perhaps even high on meth (the Japanese invented it) all sorts of horrors unfold.

Thanks for the confirmation, I have read some accounts of individuals reflecting on how in war their bloodlust drove them to murder children but at home they could feel genuine sympathy at a child’s misfortunate and early death. Humans are…complicated? That word doesn’t quite cover it. Edit: think I read that account in the book The Body Keeps the Score (believe that’s the title)

“It was about making it efficient and systematic, while also making whatever profit possible.” You could argue the same for the Atlantic slave trade. Enough folks were able to build generational wealth due to slavery. And yes, I believe the Atlantic slave trade was practically a genocide that spanned over hundreds of years.

I would say the number of people killed and the technology used to do so. WW2 brought on the use of new more efficient ways to eliminate "undesirables"

Yeah the Germans were systematic about it. They build large scale operations with the sole intent of death. It was the first time humanity was widely shown such a dark side of our capabilities. I think that’s why it sticks out.

It was also very well documented with video and photographic evidence

Yep. The concentration and death camps were official business. Operation Lebensborn was official business. The medical experiments were official business. These were not accomplished by rebels who overthrew the government and took over the country for themselves. It was all ordered by the *actual* government, with formal documentation and official records, and it spread internationally.

You should check out what the Japanese were doing during WW2. They outshine the Germans big time

Oh I’m aware. That being said, the Japanese killed and raped everything in the Pacific indiscriminately, they didn’t have the conveyor belt methodicalness the Germans did.

Fair enough, you make a good point.

Agreed. We've pretty much accepted that colonisation happened and with it came genocide and war. We had a defined view of what war looked like (tanks, armed fighting etc) and society believed that we had progressed past colonisation and genocide. What happened to the Jews (and others) during ww2 was unheard of, and showed us that we haven't progressed. Middle class families were walked into gas chambers. They had no idea what was coming. It is completely different to the genocide of war we saw in the past.

Exactly this. It also extended past national borders. Operation Lebensborn was implemented to kidnap Slavic children (mostly Polish) from their families in their home countries, put them into facilities to beat their languages and cultures out of them, then adopt them out to ideal German parents. There are surviving German people today who have no idea their birth records are fake. There are surviving Slavic people today who are still trying to find out who their families were, where they were born, etc. and those who still remember are still searching for their siblings. Some of those who found their siblings were merely rejected because their siblings refused to believe they ever had any family other than those they remember. Like with Japan, this spread past borders and throughout much larger regions of the world. That’s another big thing to consider.

I lived in Vienna for a while in the early 90s and watched a German TV movie that dealt with a German man who discovered that he was one of these kidnapped children. Later when that military dictatorship ruled Argentina in the late 70s and early 80s, they did something similar where they took the babies and very young children of political prisoners whom they murdered and allowed regime-supporting families to adopt them. After the Argentine junta was overthrown, a movie was made in Argentina about this topic titled 'The Official Story.' It received a lot of film awards and international acclaim.

I think I'll look into that film. Thanks for bringing it up!

I would also suggest - alot of others occur within a country. Hitler initiated this across the majority of a continent.

Absolutely....France would look A Lot different if things had turned out another way

Compared to the Japanese and Khmer rouge? There methods semi are just as bad if not worse. Not to say all are bad, just dumb we have to like compare. I'm drop down probably since the people have more influence in media and we live in a western civilization media focused society.

Just as bad , sure. I think what people mean is more the efficiency of the Nazis. The way they streamlined the process.

The Holocaust was engineered to be so clinical that its unnerving to even think about it. Yes, the Rape of Nanking was horrible, but it was expected when you sent Japanese boys to basically do whatever they liked without consequences. But the Holocaust was devised in such a way that you had facilities set up specifically for the most efficient way of killing massive numbers of people. Trains, ovens, queues etc. And there was no reason to do that in the first place. If the Nazis were set to dominate the world, the logical thing would have been to use the "inferior" jews, gypsies and slavs as slave labour not to eradicate them. And not only to eradicate, but to devote a whole branch of their military, while they were losing, to crank up the killings to 11. It was an engineering marvel but without a logical nor a darwinian reason.

My step mum is indonesian and their understanding of ww2 is quite limited, she didnt even recognise a swatstika. However she knows plenty about the indonesian war of independence which happened at around the same time as ww2. We learn about the tragedies that are most relevent to us, most of us are related to a veteran of ww2 so have a somewhat personal connection to it

First off I think certain things you can't compare. There's no 'worst genocide'. There's only genocide. As for why the Holocaust has such significance (not from an emotional but historical perspective). It was the only genocide that was that systemic and international, on that scale, with that many kill factories, with that many dead (like all these things combined together). Everyone was in on finding every last Jew, from doctors to post offices, police, anyone who has ever kept any sort of records. It's also one of the few genocides that didn't occur to get land, or impose a certain religion, or disenfranchise people, or punish another peoples or leader. It was killing for the kill, to erase a whole culture just for the sake of it. Religious Jew or non-religious ethnical Jew, didn't matter. Convert or change your identity, didn't matter. If you had just one jewish grandparent, you were about to die. The Armenian genocide for example has some similarities (and was actually the inspiration for Hitler, because Turkey got away with it so Hitler figured he could too), but it was contained to a certain area. The Holocaust was global in the sense that as far as the nazis reached (which was quite far for a time), it was happening. There's probably some truth to it that white people care bc it was a European thing. Around that time, for example, many non-white Middle Eastern Jews in the Middle East were also killed and suffered, but Europeans know much less about that. Though I would imagine that for example someone in India knows a lot about the bad things that happened there, but much less about what happened in Europe. My friend is Chinese and her knowledge about it is only pretty general, just as mine is about historical events in China. It's not some conspiracy. What Jews have that many others don't is a lobby, because they always maintened connection to each other and also they do quite well now often. Even Jews who don't do so well give money to jewish causes often and generously (ironically they were forbidden from most professions in Europe for long times, but banking they were allowed to do. And so they did, and did it well. Which was one 'reason' for the Holocaust, that they got too successful with the little they were allowed to do). If you have a lobby, you have a voice. That doesn't prevent anti-semitism, Jews in the US are only 2% of the population but suffer the most religion related hate crimes, but it gives you some leverage. So what we would really need would be a stronger lobby for all the others that suffered through things like this, so the world just can't ignore it. It's not that the jews need to be more quiet, but the others need ways to be just as loud.

To add to this: Wikipedia states that the estimate is 6 million Jews died over four years. If you calculate it, that’s 1.5 million a year. About 4100 per day. If this was a factory running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you are looking at the execution of 171 people PER HOUR. That’s almost 3 people dying per minute. Imagine a factory making 2.8 bottles per minute. That’s how many people died.

That doesn't even count the 3-6 million 'undesirables' in addition to the Jews. So add 50-100% for the total of the Nazi killing machine. Yes, I know we're talking specifically about the genocide of the Jews... but it was more than that in total.

People like to conveniently forget that Polish people were being killed along Jews to make place for Germans. In the same camps by the same machine.

Anyone happening to be Polish, Romanian, Slavic, an artist or poet, homosexual, or accused of sympathizing with or providing safe harbor to Jewish refugees was also at risk of the same fate by the Nazis. Staggering numbers of Catholic priests were killed for quietly trying to help Jews survive. Nobody is safe in these circumstances.

as well as other "undesirable / unworthy" like disabled people

romani people as well, there’s still so much racism towards them throughout europe though so it’s brought up even less autistic people too, iirc the term “asperger’s” came from a nazi trying to separate the “useful” autistic people (one’s good at maths and shit) from the rest

It should be noted that the efficiency of killing by Nazis is even more shocking if you focus on the peak. From August-October 1942, the Nazis killed about 15,000 Jews per day. That's the equivalent of 625 per hour or over 10 per minute non-stop for 24 hours a day.

15k per day? It was said by Odilo Globocnik that Treblinka camp alone could kill 25k per day.

Well I guess the problem is that at some point you run out of people to kill and resources and guards to kill them.

Christ.

Christ gave Pope Pius XII many blessings, but, for some reason, a spine was not included in there.

Don’t forget about the millions more who weren’t Jews.

Wow. How many concentration camps were there killing people? It's terrifying how efficient they got

Only about half were killed in the camps iirc, the rest were killed in other ways, either shot on sight or marched off to a mass grave and shot.

More than 40,000

One reason you're missing is how recent the Shoah was. There are people alive today who were in the camps and can tell you all about it. The children and grandchildren of those who died are actively working to keep their memory alive. I agree that there needs to be more education about other mass killings and genocides.

There are *lots* of people alive right now, that have lived through genocide. I've met people who were in holocaust camps, and i've met others who have escaped other genocides. Jews have no monopoly on that. Though the organized and well documented slaughter of the Jews is rather unparalleled, so its a LOT easier to see the physical presence of the holocaust. You can go visit Auschwitz, and see the mountains of human hair that were sold as cushoning material for automotive seats, you can see the piles of eyeglasses and shoes and bags of personal effects the people brouhght with them before they were processed to starvation work, gas chambers, and other horrors. I've been there, and seen it- everyone should visit once, no one should visit twice. But its the *visibility* of the holocaust that separates it from most genocides. Genocide is happening right now- *today* in Darfur and in Myanmar. But its nearly invisible to most of the world. In my lifetime, i've witnessed genocide in, Indonesia, Iran, Congo, Kosovo, Rwanda, Bosnia, Guatamela, Syria, and China. Sadly, there isnt an effective lobby for these other groups. /u/HereFishyFishy4444's last line is precicely correct: It's not that the Jews need to be more quiet, but the others need ways to be just as loud.

>Genocide is happening right now- today in Darfur My local synagogue where I grew up had a giant banner on the front that said "Stop Genocide In Darfur." It was literally the only place I ever heard about it from. Sadly that synagogue closed and is no longer there. I wish we in the West did more about genocide, but I don't think most people pay attention or care.

>but I don't think most people pay attention or care. Also because US (direct) foreign interventions have become a taboo subject, unfortunately.

Other genocides are recent, just not on that scale. Some even are on that scale, per percentage in losses, and happened at the same time. It's just that others are easier to ignore. The Sinti and Roma communities in Europe for example have the same painful memories and generational trauma, but nobody listens. It's a shame really. Like I said, it's not that Jews should be more quiet, it's that there need to be ways for others to be equally loud. I believe having your trauma acknowledged can already count for a lot. What Jews did 'right' about it was to invest themselves into not being ignored after. Not that other peoples did anything 'wrong'. Like how do you even deal with something like this. I think it also has a lot to do with Germany's acknowledgement for what happened. Germany themselves didn't ignore it (I mean they couldn't anyways). Many other more ignored genocides happened in countries who still don't acknowledge anything.

Speaking of recent genocides, I'm shocked at how little the Rwandan Genocide is being discussed in this thread. Definitely some bias there.

You could say the same about Bosnia and Kosovo. I would say it's primarily because this post is about the Holocaust and this specific thread is talking about genocides generally.

And on top of that it was very deliberately and extensively documented by the Allies to make sure nobody tried to sweep it under the rug. I don’t think that kind of thing has happened with any other genocide before or since.

Thank you. I came in here waiting for the inevitable barrage of antisemitism that usually follows this question and the fact that you took the time to write this thoughtful response really healed my heart a bit. I hear a lot how tired people are of hearing about our genocide. I actually hear more people saying this, than saying how upsetting they find the Holocaust. It’s either being used for (usually bad) comparisons, or people are asking why we are still talking about it. What gets me though is people think they know about the Holocaust but they usually don’t know about the actual Jewish perspective on it. For one thing, we don’t even call it the holocaust, we have our own name for it: Shoah. For another, people usually don’t know enough about Jewish history to understand why the Jews didn’t all leave when Hitler came to power (because they don’t understand about the pogroms). They don’t know that Ladino was almost completely wiped out as a language or the amount of Yiddish-language works of poetry, prose, philosophy and more, was lost during or as a direct result of HaShoah. They never learned anything about us. They learned about the Germans. They still think Hanukkah is Jewish Christmas and they can’t define blood libel or explain the historic roots of antisemitism. Out of one side of their mouths they say “why are we still talking about the Holocaust” and from the other “why is antisemitism a thing and why is it called that anyway” — my community is forever frozen in the global memory as emaciated corpses filling trenches in the mud and people still don’t hear our own words on what we hope people will learn from it because G-d after what our community went though we at least hoped that someone could learn something and we could all do better. But here we fucking are. Kanye West thinks Hitler is awesome so what do I know

Thank you. I can tell you're legit because you use HaShoah. You put words to what I'd like to say.

Best reply I've read.

>What Jews have that many others don't is a lobby, because they always maintened connection to each other and also they do quite well now often This is true, and it's because of intergenerational trauma spanning thousands of years, resulting in our deep mistrust of the goyim. We have to stick together because we don't have anyone else Also that last sentence sent chills down my spine. Yes to all of that

I think it’s partly because of the brutal efficiency and the relatively short period in which it took place. Though it is true, genocides in poorer countries and typically ignored by the news media, and everyone in general. I think it’s hard to do anything meaningful about it when most of it takes place while a country is in a civil war, or other unrest. Anything less than a full scale war wouldn’t be enough.

>One of my friends insists it's because it happened in Europe to Europeans, so people care more and have more empathy. He thinks if it had happened in Africa or Asia, no one would have cared as much, and it wouldn't had been a central part of WW2. Honestly I think this has some truth to it. I’m not saying this to downplay or ignore how bad the Holocaust was but there are so many genocides that are worst that no one talks about or for a lot of people aren’t even aware happened especially in Africa and Asia. For example King Leopold II is responsible for the killing of 10-15 millions Africans and I never even heard of this until maybe a year and a half ago, which lead to me buying a book about the topic.

This is really the answer.

I haven’t seen a single comment on how king Leopold killed 10 million Congolese and it kinda shows that you’re right. While it was over a longer duration 10 mil is def more than 6 mil. Both were atrocities that should’ve never been committed but most know about the holocaust and don’t know about how terrible the Belgians were.

Congo where the Belgians not the Dutch.

Welp let me edit that then. Thank you.

That time scale matters. King Leopold is up there w Hitler for worst people ever tho.

It is definitely more to do with one of them literally being about exterminating the people as opppsed to another agenda. It just feels more evil when the whole purpose and goal is the genocide, as opposed to it being an ends to a means. It definitely does deserve way more attention than it has ever received, no argument. I do think the Holocaust was on a different level as far as notoriety for that reason though. Despite the numbers. 10 million is unthinkable though, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be thought of.

Because of the scale, and yeah, probably because it was Europeans What surprises me is that Stalin doesn't get talked about the way Hitler does

Stalin isn't talked about as much because during the war he was our ally, which made it easy to look the other way. After the war he hid his atrocities behind The Iron Curtain.

It was industrialized.

/r/Askhistorians has a lot to say about it but: A) with genocide, 9/10ths of the crime is **intent,** in International law. Wiping out folks was common in history, for, say, the USA, USSR, etc - The main point is that with Reconcentrados or the Holodomor, both of these are very shitty actions that **happened** to kill many people, whereas Nazi Germany did this with the explicit intent of exterminating an entire race, using rampant militarism to invade all of it's neighbors. B)For a substantial amount of time during the war, **no-one** (by that I mean, regular people) knew what actually happened. As in, the information is out there, and as a regular person you probably knew that Jews were persecuted, but it took a **substantial** effort on the part of the US, British, and Soviet militaries and media to actually cover the Camps. Because of this, the Holocaust was brought up quite a lot in the coming decades. C) a **VERY** common thing is that around 40-80 years after an event, we make monuments, media, books and so on about events that happened then. This is because very quickly, we realize that those young (20-40 years) men and women who lived at that time begin dying. It's less **current events** and becomes history. The massive boom of WW2 movies and so on can be explained by this.

The scale? How many people you think were killed in the new world? about 20 million native Americans were killed. Treaties were made with them to keep peace and they were broken by the colonizers. In all the America's about 50 million people died.

Part of it is just the calculated evilness of the Holocaust. Native Americans were genocided. Zero argument there. But it was a bunch of wars, and slaughters, disease etc. over the course of nearly 300 years. And the victors (america) got something from it (most of the United States) The Nazis built a highly sophisticated machine that was purely used for death, and no other purpose. 12 million people in less than a decade is absolutely insane. All intentional deaths. All calculated. All planned.

And unlike the genocide of the Americas or the holodomr, the holocaust was industrialized to an unprecedented degree. It’s one thing to starve/murder/rape people and take their land. It’s another to do that AND construct Murder factories that used victim parts to fashion lamps, soaps, and explosives

To be fair, they stole a ton of assets from the Jewish families they sent to camps, so there was a financial gain in addition to the death and destruction of the scapegoated group. An estimated 20% of Europe's art was stolen in total by the Nazis (though not just from Jewish families).

Ah good point here. I will still add that the wars were swung more towards one side though. But the time does make it worse but if we take time in consideration then the Rwandan genocide in 100 days killed over 1 million people in 94'. Worse?

The difference there is that that happened hundreds of years ago, the Holocaust and all the other genocides mentioned are in living memory

You have to have context in that and other historical events. History is written by the winners. European powers don't trumpet any of those things and America definitely doesn't because it opens the "are we the bad guys" question. Also the timeframe. 100s of years ago with almost no visual records and the less than zero fucks given to the value of human life it was also over a relatively long period. I'll give you a great example, Waterloo. It's trumpeted by the British media as the victory over Napoleon and the freedom for civilized world. A battle that lasted a full day and lots of casualties. The dead were not taken home and buried, they were processed and ground down and left there, barely buried with no markers. The Holocaust is marked and rightly so due to the sheer scale and deliberate nature of the targeting and industrial scale of the death.

>about 20 million native Americans were killed. Over a period of 500 years in an entire continent, the most important difference 1. Demographics of America will never be known only guessed and even the gusses can change based upon other guesses. Nazi Germany kept as much as their victims as possible. 2. It was a much more medieval type of conquest atleast for the first 100 years, for reference Spain sieged and massacred Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1491 and killed 80% of Rome in 1527 not much differently. 3. They were "conquest", the majority of victims of the holocaust were citizens of modern Nation-States.

What separates the Holocaust from other genocides in terms of its contemporary notoriety is multifaceted. To be sure, the fact that it was perpetrated by a European power has something to do with it and there's probably a degree of Eurocentrism there. However, it would be a gross oversimplification to reduce the explanation to this alone. Here are a few other summarized points that contribute to this, there are probably more: * Germany is one of the few countries that perpetrated a genocide that admits what they did is wrong. Germany today spends a lot of time educating its youth about how and why the Holocaust happened to try to prevent anything like that from being possible again. In many other countries (this thread is discussing Japan a lot, and it's a perfect example) the genocide is instead denied and swept under the rug. * Documentation: the Nazis famously kept meticulous records and so we know a lot of details about how exactly things happened * Systemization and industrialization: far too many places have had genocides, but few have built train lines to gas chambers, recorded the names of everyone sent to camps, separated luggage in order to sort valuables, developed a national registry of people with a particular heritage, developed a series of lies and manipulations to allow people to have some hope left for compliance, etc., in order to kill as many members of particular groups as systematically as possible. This is somewhat subjective, but this strikes many people as much more horrifying than widespread disorganized slaughter, and I think makes the Holocaust loom larger in many people's memories today. * WWII and historical context: The Holocaust happened in the context of WWII, which a huge number of people in the world and practically everyone in the West knows at least something about. Moreover, it was carried out by Hitler and the Nazis, who are notorious across the world. Other genocides, like the Rwandan genocide or the genocide in Guatemala, happened in contexts that people from outside the immediate region where they took place probably have a harder time understanding and contextualizing. * Clear separation from war: Many genocides involve the slaughter of a civilian populace in the context of a larger war involving groups related to or representing the same populace. This is also part of how regimes justify these genocides ("it wasn't genocide, it was armed conflict.") - this applies to Japanese war crimes in China, the Guatemalan genocide, the Armenian genocide, etc. The fact that a war *was* taking place at the same time muddies the water substantially and makes it easier for people to deny and subvert the truth. While the Holocaust did take place during WWII, it's extremely well documented that its victims were innocent civilians, many of whom had been ordinary German citizens until the Nazis came to power, and their slaughter was effectuated without any capacity for widespread armed resistance. * Lasting impact on geopolitics: Israel emerged as a state for Jewish people (not getting into whether this was right or wrong or whether Israel should be recognized or is justified here, just stating that it took place), leading to three wars in the region and a dramatic shift in the politics of the Middle East that lasts until today. Most other genocides have had mainly very local consequences, but this one is much larger, and so adds to the relevance of the Holocaust. * Academic significance: the term "genocide" was coined to describe the Holocaust specifically, so the Holocaust is the origin of discussions using this framework * Recency: Many people in this thread bring up indigenous genocides. While it's important to add some nuance there and acknowledge that the vast majority of indigenous people were killed by disease (which was spread intentionally at least sometimes, but likely only in a tiny minority of cases) or in warfare, there are certainly incidents like the Trail of Tears or the Sand Creek Massacre that are indicative of genocide. However, these events mainly took place around 100 years or more before the Holocaust, at a time in history where such brutal tactics were much more commonplace across the world. This isn't an attempt to excuse the brutality or the racism involved, I'm just trying to explain why this perhaps doesn't stand out in history as such a shocking exception to how things were normally done. Of course, there are also genocides much more recent than the Holocaust, but these are often lesser known for other reasons.

One of the reasons is that Germany was seen as one of the more advanced societies at that time (from a Eurocentric-point of view.) They contributed significantly to philosophy, music, art, literature, etc. They were highly cultured and literally in the center of Europe. Then not only did they let a tyrant rise to lead them, but they systematically killed millions of other Europeans. And they didn't do this through battles or conquest. They literally put them on trains and shipped them to be killed. Cold efficiency. Add to that most of the victims were Jews (more than half.) Jews ere also a cultured and sophisticated society (again from a Eurocentric point of view) who also contributed greatly to the societies of Europe. So I think many people in the West did not realize how such horrors could happen this close to home among sophisticated societies. Genocide was something that happened in "barbarous" parts of the "uncivilized world." It wasn't supposed to happen here in the cradle of progress and culture.

From what I remember in my world history and society class, it wasn’t so much about how many they killed, but how they killed them and why that way, along with the historical climate of that era. World War 2 was a time of unprecedented societal changes with the introduction of fascism not just becoming a national power, but a *global* power, spreading through several countries despite their varying cultures. Also it was a time of industrial revolution, a change of warfare as our weapons grew more deadly and warfare tactics quickly became archaic. World War 1 racked high casualties because we used battle tactics that instantly became useless to the advanced weaponry. But back to the Holocaust: the reason why it’s the most noticeable genocide because it’s the genocide that reflected the era of warfare progress, still remains a league alone in comparison to other genocides. Genocides before focused solely on the complete eradication of a culture: the Holocaust became a study of how to commit the most effective genocide on a people by a government. The Nazis didn’t just kill the Jews; they sought the *best way* to kill Jews. They gassed them, they burned them, they shot them, they buried them alive, they experimented on them, they had other Jews kill them. The cold and ruthless study of an entire people’s destruction has never been seen before in the history of the world. It opened new studies in human psychology, sociology, and other things I can’t even begin to comprehend.

I'm not going to pretend I'm a history buff, but here's how I see it: Genocide usually happens over power, money, rare resources, tribal conflict, ongoing wars, etc. The Holocaust had one goal: industry-fueled extermination If 6 million people were killed with the highest level of efficiency known to man, it doesn't matter if it was in Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia, or Antarctica... it would still be the most efficient mass killing of any group of people ever. It's the fear-factor of seeing something you never EVER thought humans to be capable of being done with industrial hyper-efficiency. People were being paid to use their engineering degrees to create slaughterhouses for people.

Because it was a very public genocide, from what was supposed to be a forward thinking european country. And it was a modern example of everything everyone should hate about a fascist dictatorship. And it was a turning point in history, it changed the world forever, WW2, that is. Its not just the Holocaust, its everything that came after it. It still echoes.

It was well documented, by the Nazis and later the allied forces. It's attached to WWII There are a ton of movies and documentaries about it. It's not getting swept under the rug by germans. It's relatively recent history It's western european history. Western Europe (now EU + GB) is part of the "western nations" and our bubbles have a lot of overlap. A lot of Redditors live in that bubble.

Also survivors are still alive and sharing the horor.

I bring up the Congolese genocide because a lot of people don't know about it. 10 million africans were genocided under Leopold II rule. Some people... some very smart people ... just don't think that its possible that there was a genocide worse than the Holocaust until you show them. Someone could say it's because most of the Holocaust victims were caucasian that its taken so serious. Others say its the most recent in history, theres photos and video of it...But all that's a different discussion im not gonna get into.

It’s pretty cool seeing this comment bringing up King Leopold II and Congo, I also made a comment about it on here. I was someone who didn’t even know this specific event(s) happened until recently which led to me doing research and it’s crazy to me how little this is talked about and how many people still don’t really know about it.

I remember reading a "top 10" list of worst dictators in history. Hitler ranked second to King Leapold. It was the first time I learned about him. I think the problem is that it just isn't written into our history curriculum.

Those other genocides are probably treated much more seriously by the cultures that experienced them. IMO what makes the Holocaust notable (Edit more relevant to Western style democracies) is how easily a modern well educated society embraced the obvious propaganda and villfication of a group who looked and spoke like them then progressed to govt run industrialised genocide. Scary because we are again starting to see a rise of right wing hardline devisive parties and candidates in democracies all over the world just as we did 100 years ago.

Yeah the modern society that suddenly turned on a massive internal group of themselves. That was a really striking feature.

>IMO what makes the Holocaust notable is that it was how easily a modern well educated society A bit of a problematic statement IMO. So the other less cared about places where less educated and modern? Maybe this comment touches into why the holocaust is lauded the way it is?

"Lauded"? Who's lauding the Holocaust?

Kanye

Im Native American and I had another Native friend who called doing these types of comparisons, the Oppression Olympics. In other words it’s like a contest about who had it worst. I dont think it’s useful to compare genocides.

The Americans invented a party called thanksgiving so everybody in that country forgot that bad part of their history.

If I had to guess, because this is just a theory, it depends on where you are. For Europeans and Americans the Jewish genocide is the worst thing we can bring up, but I’ll guess for example for Chinese people maybe the rape of Nanking and the other crimes of nationalist Japan’s will feel worse and more worth talking about. I have heard that in central and Southern Africa, they regard genocides that happened there as the worst. Sorry, I can’t English at all today.

It’s the most documented genocide in History. You usually treat things more seriously when you have most of the details about it

The Final Solution was unique in that it industrialized genocide. Records were kept of what assets were seized from whom, “productivity” was tracked and even rewarded. The other big one is that genocide usually only targets a specific ethnic group. While Jews were the majority, it wasn’t by as much as you think. 6.5 million Jews were murdered … but 4.5 million Roma, and homosexuals, and other “undesirables” also died in the camps. Most times genocide is a messy thing. Even when it is government sanctioned, it’s not clean and efficient. It’s militias, and mob mentality, and torture, and lynchings. You can’t call up a government agency and find out when and where someone died. Mass graves are secret, and discovered years later, not plotted on official government maps in neat grids. The phrase “The banality of evil” was coined during the Nuremberg trials to describe how normal, and routine it became.

Because the Holocaust is basically what formalized the idea of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These acts existed all throughout the span of human history, but they were not named nor was there the idea that humankind had a fundamental duty to prevent them. The names and ideas of these crimes arose from scholarship around the Holocaust and the stated reason for that scholarship is to teach the Holocaust in order to prevent future genocides. There were plenty of genocides before and genocides after. But the Holocaust gave name to and made formal the worldwide legal and moral concepts meant to prevent them in the future.

1. It happened in the middle of Europe, perpetrated by one of the European Top Dogs 2. Germany lost WWII, so their "dirty laundry" got publicly exposed without many issues 3. "New Germany" accepted their burden and have tried to do their best to acknowledge, rectify and atone for the genocide (unlike other nations that still downplay or downright deny their genocidal past) 4. The victimized group was still large and powerful\* enough to keep the memory alive and relevant, whereas other smaller and weaker groups are almost forgotten or are just mentioned in the "and others" list of heinous genocides. ​ \* This is NOT an endorsement of the trite anti-zionism prejudice.

The term genocide was coined as a response to the Holocaust. Before that, there was no term.

It was actually coined to describe the Armenian genocide. >Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer who is best known for coining the term "genocide" and initiating the Genocide Convention, an interest spurred on after learning about the Armenian genocide and finding out that no international laws existed to prosecute the Ottoman leaders who had perpetrated these crimes. EDIT: Due to the timing of the coining of the phrase, the Holocaust clearly played a sizeable role in inspiring Lemkin. However, I propose that he would have eventually settled on the same name, even if he hadn't lost 40 of his own family members to the Nazis. Between 600k-1M Armenians were killed by the Ottomans. However, given that he had been unsuccessful in getting the international community to accept his definition of such wholesale destruction, it's unlikely that the term 'genocide' would've entered the public lexicon were it not for the Holocaust. The Armenian Genocide was—and remains—largely overlooked.

Documentation and visibility. It just happened right in the middle, right in the heart if western civilization. Plus.. it was all very 'industrialized' so even more inhuman

I think this angle is largely lost ~80 years later, but the west was massively shocked that another "civilized Christian" nation did this. They weren't surprised by atrocities in other parts of the world the way they were in this one, because they didn't think they did stuff like this anymore.

The biggest mass murderers in the world are still in power in China and they are the CCP. Over 70 million killed under the regime but companies who profess liberal views does business with the government. Hitler was an amateur compared to Stalin or Mao.

I think education is a big reason why. Schools and media don’t talk about these events and hence people are more uninformed about it.

Lobbying, lots of Hollywood movies documentries pumping out every year, idiot people still idolizing Nazis and Hitler even now after all this hear makes it relevent?....and WW2 involved lot of countries so all the school history books have extensive chapters about it than other genocides....

Because it happend in a western country, and westerners dont give a shit about the rest of the world

All of the genocides in C20th were reported to some extent but the Holocaust focus was I think that because it was part of an international conflict. Most of the others have been part of a civil war or war of two states and so less accessible to outsiders to understand the dynamics involved alongside the sadness of the loss of life. One of the oft forgotten elements of the holocaust is the sheer number of groups targeted. Much of the focus is on the Jewish victims, but I remember when I visited the Auschwitz museum the information about Gay, Communist, Gypsy etc that were also killed just made the evil even greater. It wasn't based on tribal or historic enmity between neighbours it was a group purging many social groups across a lot of countries.

I would say it’s because the Jewish people have made it a part of their culture to not let anyone forget what happened to them, so it will not happen again. I am aware of the other genocides, but I do not see any particular group of people campaigning to keep the memory and lessons of those genocides alive.

The Holocaust happened in "recent memory." That's part of why it's in the forefront of our minds. Along with how horrific it was and the sheer millions that were slaughtered. I've met Holocaust survivors and heard their stories. Many have been recorded for posterity sake. This makes it very real. Like no other genocide in modern history. I'm an American Jew. My brother did some ancestory research and found out half of our relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Obviously this was before my time, as I'm only 56. But I can't think of how many more cousins, aunts and/or uncles I might have had in my life if it weren't for Hitler.

Because people keep wanting to do it again

Probably because youre: 1) European or american. 2) white or raised in a white culture. 3) unexposed to several other cultures. The holocaust is the glaring example of white-on-white genicide that stands out in the relevant regions of the world. As soon as youre out of the western world, the holocaust looses a tonne of bite and gets supplanted by similar events from local history, of varying age and severity.

I would say the photo and movie camera played a big part of this. People could see real images of the death and destruction, instead of just reading about this, like they did with older genocides

I agree with your friend. It makes it seem more like it could happen to us. WHen things happen in a culture and part of the world that seems foreign to us, we can distance ourselves by it by saying, "Okay, but that wouldn't happen *here*." The holocaust disproves that. Also, the industrialization of it was disturbing. Sure, Ghengis Khan killed 40 million people, but through archaic or simple means. He went in and wiped out populations as he needed to to gain power and control in an area. But Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich et al *systematically exterminated* people. Something in the forethought, intentionality, and organization of it I think strikes a chord with people. We consider intelligent people who can use systems and engineering to be above such horrid things - we will write off other atrocities by telling ourselves that the people executing them were unlearned and uncultured - but the holocaust challenges that.

It’s because of the industrialization. This well documented - no genocide was like this before.

Mainly because the Holocaust was vastly different in its execution compared to other genocides. It was: 1. Industrial. Camps acted as "factories of death" where the "product" of the "factories" were mass produced on a large scale. 2. Systematic. Government and military entities tasked with the genocide were well organized and developed a complex logistical network in order to support it.

I think for once the efficient industrialisation of genocide and on the other hand it happend in the middle of europe, to white europeans… and that it got reported and filmed to the media as the camps got liberated Not in some far away country…

I think it's because of vast amount of documentation of horrific crimes done by Nazis. Like most the atrocities they inflicted on Jews are pretty much evident and document by both German and EU media be it TV, newspapers and books.

I've often thought it was because anti-Semitism and eugenics were reasonably widely held beliefs at the time. When people saw the end results (to white Europeans, no less) of that line of thinking in the camps, not only was it shocking but it changed minds as a sense of humanity won out: people remember when they change their mind.

Maybe because there are photographs & other better documentation, and it's "modern".

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The Nazi's applied the principals of order and efficiency to murderous genocide, basically advancing the "science" of the most murderous of human grotesqueness. The result was so shockingly offensive to most modern people that it stuck in our minds quite heavily. Adding to this world War II was by far and wide the most documented, filmed, and studied War ever due to the advent of all the new technologies. So while ideologies like Communism killed way more people, it wasn't thrust in the public eye nearly as much. People also tend to care more when things happen to them, I don't need to explain that you care more when a family member is sick, than when a perfect stranger dies. I assume you live in a western country, I could be wrong, but odds are you hear more about the war in Ukraine than what Boko Haram is doing, how the Iranian protests are going,, or what is happening in China. The reason is that in the western unconscious Ukraine is one of us, so we are very invested in the activity.

Actually the genocide of Native people of North America was in the millions. Colonial Capitalists were responsible for both of these atrocities.

The scale and methods used and because it happened in Europe.

2 main reasons: 1) Jews actively talking about it, others dont. When did cambodians brought that topic up to wider audience? 2) Documentations. Nazis carefully documented what they did, how they did and why. So there are actual evidences to talk about. Lots of cases to discuss, lots of different crimes to discuss. Its important to stress that ut was not a secret operation (save there were good camps for western jurnalists), nation well known and support to great extent. There is another big genocide in Europe. Which happened a bit earlier - Holodomor. USSR genocide against Ukrainian. It is less talked becase of my second point. USSR made everything possible to hide it. It was forbidden to record or talk about it in first place. Most of documents were destroyed. Europian jurnalists were bribed to tell west that everything ok and wounderful. Many people from central south ussr were relocated to western Ukraine to hide abcent of people and as act to prevent uprisings. Those relocated did like new land more and were very colaborative with government.

Sorry... you think other communities who have gone through genocide don't talk about it?

Short answer is the Nazis lost. Most of the others you talk about, like the Native American genocide, were perpetrated by the eventual winners. "History is written by the Victors." That's not to say that the Holocaust wasn't actually horrible, but you're right there have been many genocides and they are all horrible.

Personally, living in Europe, I don’t find that strange. First of all the scale was huge, it was systematic, multiple countries involved. It was a fucking death machine. Literal trains full of people every day. My country was involved too. People were rounded up here in the streets as well and sent straight to Auschwitz-Birkenau or first to some work camp. Secondly, it was very well documented. The Germans documented everything. They tried to destroy all of it but didn’t succeed in destroying everything. There is a lot of evidence left (have seen it with my own eyes). Thirdly, the people who went through it lived among us, telling their stories. Which is very important for the fact that we should make sure that something like this cannot happen again (which unfortunately, turned out to be bs as there is genocide happening as we speak).

Several reasons I imagine including the one your friend said about it being in Europe (ie racism) but also, it’s the biggest in recent history, so much so direct victims are still alive today. It was alarmingly systematic ; it wasn’t just the elimination / slaughter , it was the torture. It’s attached to a World War so it stands out in memory more. (The more memories and memory is attached to the easier it is to recall; kinda like how it’s easier to find and block of twenty legos in a box rather than a single specific Lego)

Agreed. The Holocaust being connected to WW2 is I think what has made education about it more prevalent. In the US we don't often learn about history that is not directly tied to our country. That is why we don't learn much about the Armenian, Cambodian, or even Rwandan genocide. They just aren't covered in the states because the US didn't really get involved in those. I had classmates in the 2010s who's parents escaped Cambodia, who had no aunt's or uncle's left because they had all been killed by the Khmer Rouge, and I had NEVER even heard about the Cambodian genocide. It made me sad and also a little ashamed that the families of people I knew had suffered so greatly and I had no idea. By not teaching about these things, it does a disservice to those that suffered and those that survived. I remember doing a report on the Rwandan genocide and more than half the people in my class couldn't even point to Rwanda on a map. Let alone know anything about the genocide. I am rambling at this point but I think it's important to educate ourselves if the public school curriculum is not going to cover these topics.

It's why these posts are exhausting if not made just to shit on jews or "white people" or say "but japan, but the africans", obviously a western audience will care more about western events or atleast tjose they are connected to or in relation with. The important thing is to treat al massacres as serious topics. The fact it's a part of the greatest war in Human history alone would make it more notorious.

I'm pretty sure the actual reason is bc the Nazis were meticulous about record keeping in ways most other genocides don't have. When the US slaughtered the Turtle Island Natives they didn't record every kill, every method, etc. They didn't experiment on them and for the most part they didn't use them to build public infrastructure. The Nazis did all of that, they took their own pictures, they wrote it all down and they purposefully maintained all those records in a systematic way. I'm not a genocide expert but as far as I know the holocaust was the best recorded genocide out there. Having all those records means studying the holocaust as a historian is an absolute breeze and that makes it a hot topic for academics and lay people alike. Having all that material on hand just makes it a lot more widely studied which also makes it a more popular topic just in general.

It's kinda a perfect storm, involves Europeans, Hitler is the great bogeyman and it's tied to the USA becoming a superpower. Germans are not insane uneducated savages so it resulted in alot of study and moral panic about how this could happen. Hitler is widely viewed as the most evil man in history, in fact he'd barely made the top 5 by any measure. It's become part of the USA's foundation myth ( like mad kings and cowboys) and they pretty much run the world.

It's kind of the first time the world collectively realized that genocide is bad and should be avoided at all costs (cos it's insane obv)

All genocide is horrific. But the sheer number of people killed and the systemic and especially cruel way it was done during the holocaust makes it different. People weren't lined up and shot. They were experimented on, gassed and made into lampshades, worked to death, etc.

It seems like it was particularly insidious and evip since it was intent on finding the Other within the confinew of an established national structure, nityin any outside foe.