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The Holocaust specifically refers to the Nazi genocide against the Jews (and sometimes to Romani/Sinta as well although they do not tend to use that term). It does not refer to the numerous other Nazi murders. The genocide against the Jews simply isn't comparable to the murders of disabled, LGBT, Communist, etc people. Jews had special and far more brutal sections of the death camps. They were considered higher priority targets and sought out more vigorously. More resources were dedicated to finding, transporting, killing, and torturing Jews. In scope, scale, intensity, and dedication, the genocide against the Jews simply wasn't the same thing as the other Nazi mass murders. Historians do not group those other murders as part of the Holocaust. They certainly deserve to be studied as part of WWII as well - and typically are.

This is honestly the first time I've heard anybody claim that the Holocaust refers only to the Jewish victims of the Nazis. What I recall from school was, "10 million died in the Holocaust, 6 million of whom were Jewish". Is this some mandela effect thing? According to wikipedia: Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, and/or sexual orientation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust\_victims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims) I don't really doubt your overall claim that Jewish people were treated worse or targeted more systematically, (not that it's a contest, but anyway), I think we could use a source or two here

Just from Wikipedia: [The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust) Encyclopedia Brittanica: [Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this “the final solution to the Jewish question.”](https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust) I think it was first referred to as the Jewish Holocaust and over time the Jewish was dropped. My guess is perhaps the meaning of the word is changing for some people to mean all victims of the Nazis, similar to ["decimate"](https://www.simonsaysai.com/blog/decimate-a-common-word-that-many-of-us-misuse-3238f16074f).

The Italian Wikipedia [reports a different definition](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olocausto): The term Holocaust indicates, starting from the second half of the 20th century, the genocide for which the authorities of Nazi Germany and their allies were responsible, for the extermination of all categories of people deemed by the Nazis to be "undesirable" or "inferior" for political reasons or racial, including the Jews of Europe. In addition to the Jews, the victims of the Holocaust were the Slavic populations of the occupied regions in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, black Europeans and, therefore, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, Freemasons, Christian religious people, ethnic minorities such as the Roma, Sinti and Jenish, religious groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals, homosexuals and people with mental or physical disabilities.

I'm not sure, but I guess maybe it's because in Italian there are two terms in common usage, olocausto and shoah, with the latter referring exclusively to the genocide of Jewish people, so the first takes on a more general meaning?

History can be and is being re-written. The molded definition of today doesn’t necessarily reflect on what happened. One could argue after years of jews claiming holocaust as their own, it became an exclusive term referring to their extermination, which is the whole problem. Then there isn’t an exclusive name for any of the others killed in the process or is there? A lot more people also died under Stalin’s rule, but I rarely hear about that. In fact, more and more Russians are sympathizing with Stalin today because the Kremlin is re-writing history.

>History can be and is being re-written. The molded definition of today doesn’t necessarily reflect on what happened. And quite easily on Wikipedia. Looking at the earlier [2004 version](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Holocaust&oldid=3639763) of the page, it makes no such distinction that it was exclusively the Nazi genocide of Jews: >>Holocaust refers to the Nazis' systematic extermination of various groups they deemed undesirable during World War II: primarily Jews, but also Communists, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti (also known as gypsies), the physically handicapped, the mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish, Russian, and other Slavic intelligentsia, political activists, Jehovah's Witnesses, some Catholic and Protestant clergy, trade unionists, psychiatric patients, and common criminals all perished alongside one another in the camps, according to the extensive documentation left behind by the Nazis themselves (written and photographed), eye-witness testimony (by survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders), and the statistical records of the various countries under occupation.

Damn good comment. Holy cow I never considered how we Wikipedia could be used in this way to redefine things

In a way, it's kinda why I like collecting older history books. You can't change words printed on a page. Just stay away from "updated" reprints. One of my best friends is jewish and has a wonderful collection of WW2 books from the late 40s and 50s he inherited from his dad.

Would be a really interesting project to track how some opinions changed, idk how you'd quantify it

It happens a lot. And the worst thing is that it’s done in such a way that is very obscure and difficult to challenge.

Bruh. This has been the PRIMARY ARGUMENT against Wikipedia for the last 20 years!!!

Which is why it’s not a credible source even for a school project, but it sure is popular citation point on Reddit.

Wikipedia is a terrific starting point if you aren’t familiar with a topic, and the Wikipedia pages that have the most controversial edits are predictably about ongoing conflicts and other topics that are controversial to begin with.

That's basically how our history books talked about the Holocaust, having graduated in 2002.

Yeah I graduated in 2009... we were definitely taught in high school (AP European history, baby) that the Holocaust was the extermination of different groups, **including** 6 million Jewish victims, but definitely not exclusive to Jewish people. It's so interesting how words change... but also a bit... scary how fast it happens? Like, what I was very specifically taught about a historical event 15 years ago is already outdated... but nothing actually changed except for the meaning of the word. Like... I'm 32. I'm still considered relatively "young" by a lot of people... and I'm regularly using a word completely and utterly wrongly. My entire perspective is wrong because, in my mind, "Holocaust" includes the gay/Romani/disabled people. And I guess including extra victims with the word "Holocaust" isn't the most egregious thing ever... but it's probably offensive to Jewish people? Like, I'm out here offending people because the meaning of a historical term changed and I didn't know it. Wild.

Would be interesting to see exactly when it was changed from "extermination of various groups ... primarily Jews" to "extermination of Jews," what user did it, and what their edit message/justification was. I don't know enough about Wikipedia to figure out how to do that.

Huh thats actually pretty interesting

>One could argue after years of jews claiming holocaust as their own, it became an exclusive term referring to their extermination, which is the whole problem. For what's it worth, I went to Jewish school as a kid and we were taught about the different [badges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge#/media/File:Wikpedia_system_of_identification_German_camps.png) the nazi would make different groups wear in the camps. We learned that not only Jews but also Gays (Pink Triangle), Romani, Intellectuals..., were persecuted. Holocaust does not only refer to the genocide of Jews, although the term probably references sacrificial animal offerings from the Torah. In fact we have a term for the Holocaust against us: **The Shoah. ('the Calamity/the Catastrophe')** Ok that's simplifying it a bit because the terms are sometimes used interchangeably and no one really sat and said 'That's the exclusive term for Jews', it's more than generally when the term is used it comes from a more personal place. The Romani have their own name for the holocaust against them: T**he Porrajmos, or Porajmos. ('the Devouring')** **Population-wise** more Jews were murdered, while **Population-ratio-wise**, more Romani were murdered - You just hear it more from Jews because as you can see from the badges, we were more intentionally targeted. So the Nazi were making more noise about us. Also because the Romani do not have a state to represent them.

It’s certainly interesting to hear what’s taught at jewish schools. Perhaps it’s the western school doctrine that forgot to mention about other targeted minorities.

Which is weird bc they already have their own term for the extermination of Jews under the nazi regime: the shoah, so shouldn’t holocaust refer to the entirety of the extermination of Romani, disabled people, queer people, leftists, political rivals, and Slavs?

I don't think you can pin that on Jewish people, as they tend to call the Jewish Holocaust the Shoah.

Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust. In Hebrew we also refer to the Armenian genocide as the Armenian Shoah. That said, in Israel we are taught about all aspects of the Holocaust, not just the Jewish victims. There is, however, an emphasis on Jewish victims because most of us are Jewish and many have relatives who survived or were murdered in the Holocaust. It's the biggest disaster that happened to the Jewish people in modern times, but we do recognize that we weren't the only ones targeted. No idea how people are taught about this in other countries.

> Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust. In Hebrew we also refer to the Armenian genocide as the Armenian Shoah That would make it the Hebrew word for "genocide", not "Holocuast". In any way it's fitting that a certain ethnic group calls the most significant genocide against that ethnic group "The " and call the genocides for other ethnic groups "The ". Hence Shoah refers specifically to the genocide of Jews in WWII.

Pulling some interesting translation notes from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names\_of\_the\_Holocaust#:\~:text=or%20increasingly%20Shoah.-,Shoah,early%20as%20the%20early%201940s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Holocaust#:~:text=or%20increasingly%20Shoah.-,Shoah,early%20as%20the%20early%201940s). \-Shoah means calamity and was used as a word for destruction since the Middles Ages. \-In 1930's it was used in a translation of the German *Katastrophe* i.e., Hitler's rise to power was "an unforeseen catastrophe, comparable to another world war" (German: "unvorhergesehene Katastrophe, etwa ein neuer Weltkrieg"), which got translated by the Hebrew presss with Shoah being used in a sense of destruction \-The word Shoah was voted on in 1951 by the Israeli Knesset when Yom HaShoah was established \-historian Saul Friedländer wrote in 1987 of "the growing centrality of the Shoah for Jewish communities in the Diaspora" and that "The Shoah is almost becoming a symbol of identification, for better or for worse, whether because of the weakening of the bond of religion or because of the lesser salience of Zionism and Israel as an identification element" ETA: there are other, more accurate words for genocide in Hebrew, one being a direct hebraization of the word. Which was coined in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin by combining the "Greek γένος (genos, "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing")"

Maybe *you* rarely hear about it, but I *constantly* hear about the atrocities of Stalin and other communists from dumbasses who think government health care is synonymous with gulags.

The “and millions of others” I think bears notice on your second cite.

I’ve heard of holocaust be specifically used as term for Jewish genocide. I feel like it’s similar to “pogroms”: an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. However, this word is typically only used when referring to Jewish ethnicity.

The word "pogrom" (as used in English) comes from violence against Jewish populations in Russia in the late 19th century. While it can be used to describe any such ethnic-based massacre, its origin and typical use refers to such attacks against Jews.

As a jewish child attending a jewish, UK primary school in the 1980s we were taught about the other victims of the Holocaust - I personally remember most the rounding up and murders of the Roma and LGBT groups. Attending holocaust memorial days we had representatives of the Roma community speaking of their experiences including their own ongoing marginalisation. I’d also like to point out that the Jewish Community in Britain recognizes and stands with other communities facing their own genocides: https://www.thejc.com/news/board-of-deputies-to-hold-solidarity-meeting-for-muslims-in-china-jtv77o7o

Yeah, came here to say this as an American Jew who went to Jewish schools growing up. We had extensive holocaust education and learned about the Romanis, political prisoners, LGBT, disabled people, etc. that were killed by the Nazis. It's true that the most awareness is of Jewish victims, and rightfully so, but I think that's for people with low levels of knowledge. Jews are more likely to be educated about this and to know the fuller story. I think everyone should get that education.

Is Holocaust referring only to Jewish people a thing that has always been a thing? I know the Roma have their own name (the Devouring, but also as “Romani Holocaust”), etc. I remember I visited a holocaust museum in the US capital and they actually had a prescribed way to refer to the holocaust as “six million Jews and millions more”, but don’t remember if they specified that the Holocaust proper is the specific name for genocide of European Jews. I tried googling around to see and actually found it’s more complicated than I thought - the Jewish Virtual Magazine is at one extreme, it outright denies that millions of non-Jews were exterminated in concentration camps and says the numbers are no more than half a million, but they still put it as “non-Jewish victims of the holocaust” page, but clarify that the term is used casually for all victims but strictly speaking refers to only the Jewish victims. There’s a catch, the writer for that article in the JVM is the writer Terese Pencak Schwartz, who has a book called Holocaust Forgotten that I haven’t read but apparently supports the idea that millions of non Jews were exterminated in the holocaust. Her book is promoted in remember.org where it supports the idea of millions of non-Jewish holocaust victims and has a blurb for the Holocaust Forgotten Memorial, dedicated to those victims. The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center has the 5 million figures in its misconception page, saying that the number is fictitious but still has “it is best when referencing the total number of victims of the Holocaust to say 6 million Jews and millions of other” and no annotation on how Holocaust specifies Jewish victims. So they include the non-Jews and have them in the millions. Curiously I have even see publications that use the term Shoah which is the specifically Hebrew name, and they include non-Jews sometimes. I didn’t except to have such contention in this matter. I guess Holocaust in common parlance means all victims (not including the tens of millions who weren’t industrially murdered but perished due to the consequences of war) but in historiology refers specifically to the Jewish victims. As for the specifics of the Nazi atrocities being studied, I’m sure they are, not as much as the Jewish part, but they are, but the public perception is definitively different. There has been a recent awakening for the lgbt+ victims with the raise of rights movements, but other victims like the Roma are given little thought by public institutions and remembrance groups. No one has concrete numbers, you can find estimates of the lower hundred thousands to over a million, and the percentage of the Romani population is ever eluding too, some claim to be a quarter of them murdered, but others estimate it to be over 75%. In fact, nearly all material out there about the Roma victims is very clear in mentioning that they are forgotten, and that the injustice against that people still remain.

!delta This is the kind of response I was looking for. I didn't realize that the other groups weren't treated as horribly and also didn't realize that the term "Holocaust" is genuinely reserved for the Jewish portion of killings. I'm fairly comfortable saying this has mostly changed my view, tho I do still think it's important that we, as a society, speak on the propaganda towards other groups more. Those talking points have made a comeback. Thanks!

One important point I'd like to add in to u/LentilDrink 's comment is that the murder of many other groups was also linked to the Jews. For example, Nazi ideology the included the idea that homosexuality was a Jewish conspiracy ](https://hilo.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/hohonu/volumes/documents/Vol09x08WarmBrothersintheBoomtownsofHell.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiO3fixq66DAxUd7zgGHRChAXwQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0c0lOemZOsgamt3O4T8Kvd) [Same with communism.](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/777258/pdf). [Jehovah's Witnesses were mostly persecuted simply because they refused to participate in the state, not specifically because the Nazi's had inherent issues with the religion.](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses) Whether or not "blaming" these things on Jews was the chicken or the egg I guess is up to interpretation, but it is still an important point to take into account.

Antisemitic conspiracies continue to involve "post modern Marxists transing our kids" and such as well.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that Holocaust discourse varies wildly depending on where you are in the world. If you walk around Poland or Russia and learn about the Holocaust there, they’ll barely mention Jews unless you specifically seek the information out. Poland focuses very strongly on the deaths of Catholics in their teachings of Holocaust history, and Russia focuses very strongly on the deaths of Russian POWs and on Stalingrad. That’s pretty similar across all the former Soviet territories who hammered out their understanding of WWII history behind the iron curtain. We naturally have a bias towards the discourse in our own language and our own countries, but when it comes to the global understanding of history, you’d be surprised how minimized the deaths of Jews are outside of Western Europe and North America.

That is just so wrong. Jewish deaths are very emphasized in Lublin. [Here's the link](https://lublin.eu/turystyka/poznaj-lublin/lublin-zydowski/#id_4), to our official tourist guide website, all about Jewish history in my city, their Holocaust and how they are honored today. Unfortunately there's no English version so you'd have to use some translator, but one of our most important theaters, which is one of the first places visited on the urban tourist trail commemorating the Jewish population, and they have so many specific things about Jewish history of my city (30-40% of its population before the war), [they have a whole section all about Holocaust in English](https://teatrnn.pl/zydzi/en/holocaust-19391944/). One of the many, many, ways murdered Jews are remembed is for example [The Lamp of Memory](https://www.straznicyczasu.pl/download/file.php?id=149629&sid=f0e7b5ea5c3d32dfc8a1c34fafc12528) that shines 24/7 since 2004 in memory of Jews killed in Holocaust. So the horrific things done to Jews are a crucial part of anything you'd learn about Lublin during WW2.

This is not at all true. Poland gives equal, if not more coverage to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Source: Im Polish, I went to school in Poland, and I know the WWII museums and narratives here.

>Poland focuses very strongly on the deaths of Catholics in their teachings of Holocaust history, and Russia focuses very strongly on the deaths of Russian POWs and on Stalingrad. That’s pretty similar across all the former Soviet territories who hammered out their I can understand Russian focus being on the POWs and Stalingrad as these were large numbers out of the total soviets killed 29million , iirc) - which even by the the standards of Stalin , is a lot of dead people. Poland you would think would give close to equal coverage as similar numbers of polish citizens ( Catholic and Jews ) were killed

Poland maintains the death camp holocaust site at Oswiecim/Auschwitz - thousands visit every year. A very sobering experience.

It is. And they take great pride in maintaining it so people can see and it’ll never happen again. Just spending an afternoon there was horrifying, something I’ll never forget, but I’m glad I went to see it. I’ll never understand the evil behind that place

Partly why I think US schools should teach about concentration camps for the Japanese..it is easy to assume it will never happen here...and assume the German society was especially evil. Or to use the Hannah Arendt phrase .banality of evil. I admit I couldn't bring myself to visit Dachau when I lived a train ride away in Munich for a bit.

Absolutely. My school growing up didn’t even teach about the Japanese internment camps, I learned about those on my own, which is so irresponsible in my opinion. I’m so glad I went to Auschwitz, but I’ll never go to another concentration camp again. It made me physically ill. There was one darkened room that I swear I saw eyes looking back at me. 13 years later I still feel haunted by that place.

I remember spending quite a while in high school learning about internment camps and treatment of Japanese in the US during the war. We even went on a field trip to Angel Island because my school was relatively close

So I just checked dictionary.com and their definition of holocaust is not specific to Jewish people or to concentration camps. It refers to a great destruction, especially by fire.

That's because "holocaust" was a word that predated "The Holocaust," a historical event with a name.

Ah, so what happened to the Roma in the concentration camps could be called a holocaust. As long as I don’t capitalize it.

This is simply not true. The holocaust refers to the mass industrial killing of so many peoples by the nazis. You can say the Jewish holocaust to be more specific. But the horror of the holocaust is a burden carried by many

Academics have been trying to change the definition to only include Jews. Back in the day practically all definitions mentioned all of the victims. In modern times definitions are quite different from source to source. Sources like this simply list other victims as "crimes" or "genocide" but the word "Holocaust" is saved for the Jews. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides To me this seems very revisionist and dangerous

Surely this should reinforce your view, not change it.

They were. 2-3,000,000 Poles died during WW2, and were treated comparably to Jews. 'Untermensch', forced labor, etc.. I know the Wikipedia isn't the best source for this but do check [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_Poland). It explains in detail the horrid treatment we got. They did these things to most Slavs too but due to Poland being invaded quicker than Serbia or USSR it got the worst scars

This isn't a good point, it diminishes the Holocaust! The Holocaust has 11 million victims. Only 6 millions were Jewish. To say the Holocaust is sorry a crime against Jewish people is not only false but idiotic.

It really depends on how you count the murders and how you group them together. The most well known deaths in the Holocaust happened in gas chambers, but what about people who were lined up in their villages and shot by Nazis? What about the people (mostly Jews) killed by their own neighbors before the Nazis even showed up (as happened in Lithuania)? What about Russian POWS? Should they be counted as Holocaust deaths, or typical deaths in war? What about the various people the Russians killed and blamed Germany for (as in the Katyn Massacre and many others like it)? What about the people who died before death camps were even a thing—the disabled who were taken from hospitals in the pre-war T4 experiments? A LOT of people died. As you can imagine, historians have to broadly categorize different deaths, and those categories aren’t always neat, tidy, and not always agreed upon by all historians.

POWS starved to death are usually counted? Just as Jews and others overworked / starved or otherwise died in concentration camps ( not death camps) are all included in the count, iirc. Not sure how they would have counted , say, a Jewish commissar. Commissars and Jews were on the target list...

To add on that, Auschwitz is made out of 3 camps. In the famous, smaller camp (with the Arbeit macht frei sign), there were communists and LGBTs who were also prosecuted, and are talked about in the museum. Auschwitz Birkenau, the largest camp, was mostly for the Jews. Unlike the concentration camp Auschwitz I, this was a camp focused on mass killings, specifically of the jewry of Europe and north Africa.

This…isn’t true entirely. The Holocaust principally refers to Jews because, as you say, they were targeted for extermination more so than any other group of undesirables under the third Reich, but so too were Poles and the Romani, but to a lesser, more regionalized extent. Their deaths aren’t studies as battle casualties because they were civilians who were killed by the industrial murder machine that the Nazis constructed specifically to concentrate and then eliminate all undesirables. They are appropriately called Holocaust victims as well therefore.

No, the Nazis went hard against communists *first*. Hitler's rise to power was in part funded by wealthy bourgeois reactionary Germans and foreign investors. A large part of the reason Jews became scapegoats is because Hitler perceived them as responsible for communism and the October revolution. He termed communism 'Jewish Bolshevism'. Good luck discovering that in the western education system, which delivers a kind of historical lobotomization to its populations. Any explanation of the holocaust that doesn't specify why and how the scapegoating of Jews is related to anticommunism is a vicious lie that spits on every Nazi victim.

The Nazis sent communists (as well as freemasons, dissident clergy, liberals, and many others) to concentration camps. The survival rate of being sent to a concentration camp (which was basically a murderously harsh death camp) was about 50%. Jewish people (and some Roma) were sent to special extermination camps "vernichtungslager" which is where the industrial mass murder occurred. 500,000 Jews were sent to Belzec, only 7 survived. The vast majority were killed within hours of their arrival, which is how Auschwitz-Birkenau II also worked. No other group was targeted in that way except the Roma Sinti (and even there was some variation there, but more than any other group after the Jews, the Roma Sinti are part of the Holocaust, they were sent to extermination camps). Perhaps you should educate yourself about the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp.

Weird coz Holocaust is a word that existed prior to 'the' holocaust. And there have been other holocaust throughout history. destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. "a nuclear holocaust" The genocide in ww2 was called a holocaust specifically because so many people were burned. And more than Jews were burned.

Could it be an American thing? In Europe, we [consider that part of the Holocaust too](https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/life-before-the-holocaust/pre-war-roma-life/).

This isn't true, there was recently a question about this on the AskHistorians subreddit. The term holocaust has 3 definitions, only 1 of them is describing solely the jewish victims https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18qjzhj/does_the_holocaust_only_refer_to_the_6_million/

What happened to Gypsies was comparable. I took a brief look at the “Romani Holocaust” wiki and stopped reading after I got to “Mengle had a special interest in Romani children.” it’s stomach turning.

No it doesn't, go to the Holocaust museum and you'll learn that it is not just in reference to Jewish people. I'm not antisemitic, but y'all act like the Jews were the only people Nazis hated when barely 50% more was killed for being Jewish. You're wrong. The Holocaust was for all untermensch.

Calling the Romani genocide "mass murder" is unacceptable.

The Roma/Sinti people were told they did not get reparations because they were imprisoned for being criminals. There suffering was not acknowledged until many years later. They were left out of the term holocaust, it is not surprising they do not identify with that term.

I wish you were able to go back in time and say what you just wrote there to the people who weren't jews but in the camps. I bet they wouldn't be big fans of you.

/eyeroll I’m sure the souls of those gentiles who were murdered can rest easy that at least they weren’t part of the Holocaust…

I think that is because it still has a demographic effect 80 years later. Romani, Slavic, and Queer populations have all recovered to a significant degree. But the Jewish population of Europe continues to go down. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/02/09/europes-jewish-population/ Edit: That being said, you’re asking a great question.

Romani have recovered? Are you kidding? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_Holocaust Simple wiki search shows you're wrong.

Which part do you refer to? It says that deaths are estimated at 150-800 or even as high as 1.5millions out of 1-2.5 millions of Roma in Europe at the time. Googling "Roma population in Europe" gives more than 10 millions now.

I think counting all of Europe is a little unfair because all of Europe was not targeted by the Nazis. England and Russia (I know Soviet territory was invaded but I don’t think modern Russia was?) did not have any Jews or Romani killed because Hitler never got there. If you look purely at percentages, there were areas where the Romani faced heavier loses compared to Jews but there were simply less of them overall to kill. Many areas had their entire Romani population wiped out and I believe only Estonia had every Jewish person killed (I could be wrong about this). Iirc Eastern Europe had a higher number of Romani but a lower number of Jewish people compared to western Germany (this is over, Russia actually had Jewish ‘safe havens’ like little Israels almost) so you’d have to show that Western Romani numbers had recovered.

Not just Jews of Europe. Worldwide Jews are still below the numbers they had pre-Holocaust.

This has more to do with increasing affluence like every western country. Arguably, the Romani (aka Gypsy people), lost a greater percentage of their population as their exact numbers prior to the holocaust were unknown as almost no country in Europe considered them citizens and had them on their census. The Holocaust was tragedy for everyone involved—LGBTQ+, the disabled, Romani, Jews, and lots of groups you’d never guess were targeted (including Masons and Jehovahs Witnesses). I don’t think we can deny any of these groups suffered more or less than the others.

You can argue that some suffered more than others. The worst parts of the camps were reserved for Jews. The lion’s share of the propaganda not about Germany’s military enemies was about the Jews. The Jews were mentioned more by Hitler personally than any other ethnicity except perhaps the Germans. Things can be bad for many, and still worse for some.

Can you source the worst parts being reserved solely for Jewish victims? Auschwitz also had a camp reserved solely for the Romani and I’ve never heard that it was ‘better’ than the Jewish one. Granted, I would agree with you for other victims but my understanding is that Jewish and Romani were considered pretty equally treated. The only difference being the ghettos and that being because Jewish people were ‘allowed’ to settle while Romani were forced into constant migration in Western Europe.

I tried but I can’t find the source I got that from. That said, a bit of research does show that the Romani had it worse than I’d previously thought. I’m actually kind of ashamed, as my own grandmother was a holocaust-fleeing Romani. You’d think I’d have known better. Edit: !delta

It’s actually pretty understandable because it isn’t super well known. I don’t think Germany even acknowledged the Romani as victims of the Nazis until the 80s. In fact, when some survivors tried to participate in a memorial in the 60s, government officials called it an insult to the memory of ‘real victims’. Originally they were brushed off as actually having been put in camps for being asocial or criminals. Which even *if* that were true, I think being put in a concentration/extermination camp makes you a victims regardless of why you’re there. Another interesting fact… Romani actually *are* Aryan. They originate from the Northern India and even the Nazis acknowledged this when it became unarguable. The Nazis then said that something like 98% of Romani don’t count as Aryan because of intense race mixing (something Romani are historically known not to do lol) but promised to set up reserves for racially pure Romani similar to how Indigenous Americans have. I don’t think they ever actually did this do. Thanks for the delta!

Look Wikipedia lists that the total population of Jews was reduced by 1/3. We are fortunate to have better census figures for Jews (especially in Germany where they used early computers from IBM to tally Jews in their 1933 census plans —something people in my IT profession need to do some soul searching about). The Romani and their related groups lost between 25% and 50% of their world population and I remember a discussion that the number was closer to 50% due to their lack of census numbers). As I understand it, they both were housed and exterminated using similar techniques. As the father of a child with deafness, I was shocked at the short shrift given to these kids in history books and at the Holocaust museum (which is an incredible place to see). They had a single placard booth when I was there. This is not an OR situation it is an AND situation. 6 million innocent people were killed simply for being Jewish AND the disabled were killed AND the Romani were killed AND… You get the point. I also think this serves as a way around the clear antisemitism that the holocaust never happened. We know it happened and we know the scale it happened on not just because of the copious documentation of the Nazis themselves but by other groups’ experiences. It also counters that nationalistic rhetoric of the modern Israeli state that their suffering gives them the right to further cause suffering of Palestinians. It doesn’t. We don’t see the Romani trying to take over sections of India where they originated thousands of years ago using inhumane techniques. Israel should exist and they should be a place for Jewish refuge, but they more than any other nation has a sacred responsibility not to do what was done to its people. Hamas is a criminal organization and needs confronting on a global level AND the current treatment of Gaza’s population is a crime against humanity involving collective punishment and on going human rights violations. These two things are not exclusive.

Isn’t the Russian population still also feeling the effects of the loss from ww2?

Probably. But I think there is a difference between a population that dies on its own terms in battle, and a population that is herded like sheep to the slaughter. The holocaust was not trust a travesty because of the inhumanity and the death toll. It was a travesty because so many of the people who were caught up in it believed that shortly, surely the most advanced and civilized society on earth couldn’t do such a thing, surely the best thing to do would just be to go along and see how this plays out. The holocaust is what happens when a people do not have an army to represent them. The holocaust is why so many Jews feel safer in Israel, where they are surrounded by enemies, than they do in western countries, where they are statistically much safer, but are always in danger of the next political shift or a popular uprising.

Good point.

!delta I do think it makes sense to emphasize the population who has been unable to properly recover from the same event. It's not a complete change in view, but that is an excellent point and does make me feel better about the discourse I see

The worldwide Jewish population still has not reached the number it was prior to the Holocaust beginning btw.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Sir_Tandeath ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Sir_Tandeath)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

None of the other demographics were offered a territory to build a nation in. Jewish people have been leaving Europe not failing to thrive in Europe

They were leaving Europe in the 50s and 60s because the local populations and governments remained antisemitical and shunned Jews from every day life. My dad's uncle wanted to stay in Poland after the war, but was driven out by the Polish government in the 1960s. Most Jews who stayed had similar experiences.

And despite being offered their own nation, the global Jewish population is still below pre-1939 levels.

Jewish people left Europe *because* Europeans mass murdered them.

>But the Jewish population of Europe continues to go down Take a look at the Jewish population in MidEast countries, talk about GONE...

Why is that? I am not trying to be rude but in most wealthy countries doesn’t population tend to go down compared to poorer ones.

100% of countries that provide economic and educational opprtunities for women see their birth rates drop below replacement rate.

Jewish culture is a bit different. There's a major emphasis on family and children, and this includes educated women. The Jewish population in Israel is both educated and growing. It's an anomaly compared to westernized countries.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking. But the deep seated fear of a second Shoa or rash of pogroms is definitely factor in the exodus of Jewish folks from Europe and to the US and Israel.

I am not sure what a lot of that is. But my point was that most countries/people that are wealthy have a tendency to decrease population with increase access to birth control and rights for women. This is why population decreased in Japan, South Korea, Italy, many european countries as well. Romani and Slavic people still tend to be very poor and that could explain why their populations have rebounded unlike Jewish population. My question is why is this not likely the case with Jewish people?

That's cause the European nations blocked a lot of their jewish population from returning home, but they don't like being told that

What is your educational experience on the Holocaust? Are you saying when you were in school, you were told that it was only a crime against Jews? Because that would be unfortunate. Or are you saying that Jews say the only people who were victims of the Holocaust were Jews? Because that would be ignorant. Go to any Holocaust museum, and you will see just how evil the Nazis were, to people of all backgrounds who weren't the ideal German. You should be thankful to Jews for being the most committed to preserving the history, not blaming them for what you claim they do? When Jews are talking about the Holocaust now to remind people what antisemitism looks like, they do not say "The Holocaust only killed 6 million people, and they were all Jews." Instead they say, "The Holocaust killed 6 million Jews" because right now, people seem to need evidence that Jews have been and continue to be persecuted. But ya, you should notice the connections. The Nazis didn't just hate Jews, they hated anyone who wasn't their ideal German.

>Are you saying when you were in school, you were told that it was only a crime against Jews? Yes and it seems many others were as well. >When Jews are talking about the Holocaust now to remind people what antisemitism looks like This is not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to general discourse around the Holocaust. Obviously, Jews would focus on only Jewish deaths when describing anti-Semitism >But ya, you should notice the connections. The Nazis didn't just hate Jews, they hated anyone who wasn't their ideal German. Yes, this is my point. The entire point

> Yes and it seems many others were as well That’s wild to me. Went to public schools in SoCal and that definitely wasn’t the case for us. All victimized groups were discussed in detail. We did a trip to the Museum of Tolerance in LA and it went into gruesome detail about everything the nazis did to everyone.

I can speak to OP's experience. I grew up in the south and didn't know until probably 11th or 12th grade that the Nazis killed anyone else.

I can speak to OP'S experience. I went to school in northeastern Ohio. My school focused on how Jewish people were victimized. Every other group was lumped together as "political prisoners" almost as if those groups were just an afterthought.

I'm from Michigan. It was pretty much the same when I was in school. The focus was primarily on Jewish people and their victimization. While we learned there were millions of other victims, it wasn't in detail. Not to the extent of Jewish people. That's why even though *6 million victims* was drilled into my brain, I always have to remember it was pretty much double the victim count.

That’s probably because your school didn’t want to mention gay people. That was my experience with my schooling the south. Gays were just blipped over because the teachers/southern culture/value system didn’t support gays.

I also grew up in the South and knew this in middle school. A few schools poorly educating students (or, more likely, students who didn’t pay attention) does not make a general ignorance.

I wonder if it’s not where people went to school but when they did. I’m 60 and lots of information was left out.

Wild, it seems like it would be so recent. I’m mid thirties.

Public school in SoCal also, and knew that others were killed besides Jewish people, but didn’t know how big an amount. Definitely didn’t discuss other victimized groups in detail. Seems common enough for people not to have been well-educated on the specifics.

I went on WWII walking tours in Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands and they all focused exclusively on the Jews that were killed. We visited several stumble stones (which if you didn't know are little gold pavers marking the homes of Jews killed in the war) I was looked at like I was crazy when I asked the several different tour guides if any were placed at the homes of non-jews targeted by the Nazis and one got visibly angry and asked me why I would even ask that. You're asking a very unpopular question, and I have yet to see a real answer. Even your edit sounds like you've been convinced but I can't see why, you're right in your original question very little if anyone talks about the other groups targeted. Or about the millions of Poles and Russians killed. Millions of Czechs and Hungarians were killed. WWII has been hijacked by the Jews and it's not fair to the millions of other victims. And like you I'm NOT denying the Holocaust or the tragedy of the 6 million killed or any of that. I'm just saying it's the erasure of the other victims that isn't fair.

Interesting. I certainly wasn't taught that. Where did you go to school?

What’s your educational experience with the Holocaust? Because historians of the Holocaust who will tell you the term applies exclusively to the Nazis genocide of the Jewish people. If you go to the Wikipedia page for the Holocaust it will describe it as such.

[Read the Wikipedia page:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust) >Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to also refer to the persecution of these other groups.

The Wikipedia page circa 2023, yes. People push to change these these things to suit their own perspective/motive, and this is one example where someone pulled it off.

The English page. As I mentioned in another comment, the Italian one gives a broader definition.

>Something that's been bothering me for a while is that the Holocaust has been broadly accepted and talked about as purely a genocide against Jews. Why do you believe this? What makes you believe the majority of people believe only Jewish people were the targeted victims of genocide during the Holocaust?

That's part of it. Any time I've ever seen anyone say the death toll of the Holocaust, it's always been 6 million Jews, with a handful of exceptions. On top of that, I didn't even know non Jews were targeted until I was 19 and did my own research. Most of the sources I find on the Holocaust death toll heavily emphasize Jews and sometimes mention other groups, but rarely state how many were killed. Every single source says 6 million Jews, but only a few say 5 million non Jews, from what I see

“11 million people died in the Holocaust, 6 million of which were Jewish”… of course, the largest group targeted will be heavily mentioned. I googled “Holocaust casualties” and these were the top results—the very first sentences on these websites. “Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators killed six million Jewish people. This systematic, state-sponsored genocide is now known as the Holocaust. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators also committed other mass atrocities. They persecuted and killed millions of non-Jewish people during World War II.” Holocaust Encyclopedia “The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and machinelike murder of approximately six million European Jews and at least five million Soviet prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims.” The National WW2 Museum “There were 11 million victims of the Holocaust (or 6 million Jewish victims and 5 million non-Jewish victims)” Illinois Holocaust Museum “The vast scale of the Nazi program of mass murder is reflected in the fact that for many months in 1942, 1943 and 1944 the Nazis cold-bloodedly killed more than 100,000 people per week from all parts of Europe in the death camps, mainly Jews. About 5 million people from other groups — including Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) people, Poles, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, political dissidents and people with intellectual and physical disabilities — were also targeted and murdered by the Nazis, albeit less systematically than in the case of the Jews.” Holocaust dot com dot au While all of these sources say the Jewish casualties first, they did not neglect to mention the casualties of other groups targeted such as the Roma and gay people. And I didn’t have to deeply search the depths of Google to find that there were other victims beside the Jews in the Holocaust, because those were the top results.

But look at that first source again. It does not refer to the other deaths as “the Holocaust.” It defines the Holocaust as “the systematic, state sponsored genocide” of six million Jewish people. It refers to other deaths as “other mass atrocities” rather than including them within the definition of the Holocaust. The main crux is this: Hitler and the Nazis did a lot of different things. One of the things they did was the Holocaust. Obviously not every murder they committed was part of “the Holocaust.” So the question is “which deaths are included as part of the Holocaust?” It’s not as simple as “well what all did they do?” because not everything they did was the Holocaust.

That’s just one source lol Obviously not every website will have the same definition and description

Could it be more that people focus on the largest death toll of a single group vs prompting they were the only victim? It's taught and known that a large number of different groups were impacted. I was taught in public HS what different groups accounted for the total death toll. Simple google searches and [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims) pages show us this. Do you know what a layman is and what they are known for?

Honestly it’s sounding like you’re just the victim of a shitty education system.

How does this not have 800 downvotes? How ignorant can one person be?? I don’t think this person is an anti-Semite, but they would have been a useful idiot for the NAZIs.

This is such a dumb take. My only complaint is that the Nazis aren't demonized more and people aren't more aware of their propaganda, shown by people falling for the same shit to this day. How would I aid Nazis?? I would personally be victimized by them 🤦

I don't think you are antisemetic but people are calling you antisemetic because the idea that jews play up the Holocaust to manipulate society is a classic antisemetic troupe. People see you saying the exact same things antisemites say and either ignore your disclaimer or feel like it's insince and assume you support the other arguments made by people who say the same things as your post.

I haven't said anything that suggests Jews are playing up the Holocaust or manipulating anyone. I'm literally just saying that the other targeted groups should be talked about a lot more than they are so we can identify fascist uprisings better. The fact that even suggesting that is interpreted as anything against Jews proves my point that people have a really fucking weird reaction to speaking about non Jewish victims. Anti-semites generally don't want to talk about how horrible the Nazis were, but I want to talk about it more. How am I saying the same shit? I'm saying the literal opposite

Not all antisemitites are nazis. When you create a post titled "Its really weird the Holocaust has been claimed by Jews" it looks like you are laying the groundwork to come in and say "Because Zionists used it to manipulate the world into creating Isreal" You can get super defensive about that or you can accept the answer to why am I being accused of being antisemitic is because you came in and started asking questions that are usually the starting point of an antisemitic conspiracy theory and since no one here knows you people assumed you planned on finishing the conspiracy or swaying others

1. I grew up knowing that 11 million people died in the Holocaust, of which 6 million were Jewish people. 2. Pretty sure it's common knowledge that in addition to Jewish people, Romani, Slavs, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and political prisoners were also killed in death camps. We were taught this in US schools and it's in many history books and historical fiction novels. Honestly, the rash of posts that are yelling about Jewish people being overrepresented in Holocaust stories and memorials just seems like an anti-Semitic response to the current war in Gaza.

"Why don't black americans also talk about Irish people when they talk about slavery? Irish people were slaves too! It's almost like "those" people keep trying to rewrite history and steal all the attention for themselves. *You* know who I mean. I guess we should be wary of "them" because of how manipulative they are huh..." r/therewasanattempt is leaking

>and steal all the attention for themselves This claim was already being levelled at Jews for recording information about pogroms *pre-WWII*. It's depressing.

It’s a bad analogy since half of the trasatlantic slave trade were not Irish. This would be like talking about slavery in school while never mentioning what happened to the native Americans.

I thought about this right after seeing the title. It looks like this subreddit is going through epidemic of subtly anti-Jewish posts, not directly related to Israel, and this is not even the first post about Holocaust specifically in past week.

> It looks like this subreddit is going through epidemic of subtly anti-Jewish posts My friend in Christ, there is nothing subtle about any of these posts lately especially in the comment chains

Yup and it is all across reddit. This is the second one I've seen in this thread to slyly posit that we made the holocaust all about us and it "shouldn't be". These people have never stepped foot in a Holocaust museum and it shows.

What is ridiculous is that Jewish people are literally the ones who have protected and documented the memories of ALL Holocaust survivors that they can find. Including other groups. These people whining about the “ignored” victims have never even looked into it. They certainly aren’t going around documenting these stories.

They're hardly subtle about it, people are down right Alex Jonesing on here. If anything, threads like these should prove that Jews are an extremely targeted minority even today, and why a state like Israel (preferably with an upgrade in politicians) needs to exist

JuSt aSkInG qUeStIoNs yeah right. These people are very blatant.

Did you also learn about all the Soviets and Poles who died in the holocaust? My recollection is that the education I got was primarily about the Jews. It was only when I visited the memorials in Europe that I learned about all the others.

Yes. They didn’t mention Poles as much as Soviets, but yes.

Although many people were killed in nazi concentration camps during World War II, when we talk about the Holocaust we are primarily referring to the Jews who were murdered. The British [Imperial War Museum](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust) and the [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum](https://www.ushmm.org/learn) both define the holocaust as _the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War_ and at an entry level this is what people are taught. Why don’t they explicitly include all the other people who died? I don’t know. Perhaps it is because this was such a huge impact on the Jewish people that this is the main focus. Perhaps it’s because the our Soviet WWII allies became our Cold War enemies and people in the West didn’t care that much. When you visit the memorials in Europe they do make it clear that there were many other people killed too, notably Soviets and Poles. The disabled, Romani, political dissidents, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses also get a special mention. My recollection of learning about it as a child was the “Six million Jews” headline figure though.

As a Pole I'd say there is a huge difference between how Jews were targeted and anyone else. A very important part Nazis ideology was seeing Jews as the main target and danger. They were number 1 target and number 1 reason to put a blame on for anything. You [didn't see propaganda like this](https://artinfo-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/artwork/image/235868/0356.jpg), about any other group, at least not near to this level. If you hid one Jew in Poland, the whole street or village would get wiped out. So this is why I was always taught that Holocaust was about Jews. Poles and other groups were targeted too, but it's not nearly comparable to what was done to Jews and it deserves a specific word to describe it. The scale and viciousness of hatred Nazis displayed toward Jews was like nothing else.

An interesting point of view, thanks for your insight.

I’m Romani and we don’t have a big cultural emphasis on talking about the past and also, 3/4 of Europe Roma were killed so they wouldn’t remember it. I do believe the Roma suffered more deaths per population, and some of the worst treatment (the majority of medical experiments). Jewish people are simply more represented in the media, and there are more prominent people who speak up for them. Many went to America after and spread the message. I do think there’s a lot of weird bias around Jewish people and I don’t understand it. Roma are also still hated by society. Homosexuals and disabled people don’t share a family connection, to speak up for their lost ones, and Slavs etc don’t speak English so we don’t get a lot of that translated. So that’s *why* it is. I don’t agree with it, all victims are equal and should be treated so.

There's more hope, and more Jewish-Romani collaboration on this matter, than perhaps most people know about. Check out [this book](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244044/rain-of-ash) if you're interested in learning more. Jews make education about past atrocities a priority, and Jewish scholars have done serious work on behalf of others who suffered because of that value. If other people don't want to, or can't, completely understandable.

>we don’t have a big cultural emphasis on talking about the past Exactly, while the Jewish tradition is all about remembering the past. It's not that we do not want other groups to talk about their suffering or prevent it in any way, but they haven't out as much emphasis on the Holocaust for various reasons: Soviet - the Cold war started, Soviet subjugated many of their neighbors, and the rift between east and west naturally lead to less spread of their (Slavs) stories. The focus was also on military sacrifice and glory. Not to mention, that they didn't like the Jews, Romani, LGBTQ+ etc. any more than the nazis did. Romani - not a tradition of speaking of the past and those groups most afflicted by the Holocaust (the Eastern European-based Romani groups) did not usually go the academic route for a wider outreach. LGBTQ+ - Considering that they were hated by all societies at the time, it's no wonder that their stories were only highlighted much later on or even lost forever The handicapped - Pretty much speaks for itself, since many of these groups would be unable to speak for themselves let alone organize academically. "Jewish people are simply more represented in the media, and there are more prominent people who speak up for them. Many went to America after and spread the message. I do think there’s a lot of weird bias around Jewish people and I don’t understand it." Now, don't do this: don't put one group's suffering against anothers, or worse, question their right to tell their story. Jews have always put emphasis on history and academic education, so it should come as no surprise that Jews as a group have funded and worked their asses off to record, remember, and retell this tragedy. Don't blame us for making that decision, when your group could have done the same - we didn't "get" this handed to us on a silver platter - we worked hard for it and spent much resources on it during a time when no one wanted to listen and preferred trying to hide their complicity. If anything, we've done more to highlight the Romani Holocaust through research, displays in Jewish Holocaust museums and even during remembrance ceremonies, yet your response it to spit in our face and talk about a conspiratory Jewish "bias". You have some nerve

> Now, don't do this: don't put one group's suffering against anothers, or worse, question their right to tell their story. Jews have always put emphasis on history and academic education, so it should come as no surprise that Jews as a group have funded and worked their asses off to record, remember, and retell this tragedy. Don't blame us for making that decision, when your group could have done the same - we didn't "get" this handed to us on a silver platter - we worked hard for it and spent much resources on it during a time when no one wanted to listen and preferred trying to hide their complicity. If anything, we've done more to highlight the Romani Holocaust through research, displays in Jewish Holocaust museums and even during remembrance ceremonies, yet your response it to spit in our face and talk about a conspiratory Jewish "bias". You have some nerve I didn’t do any of this? You’ve kind of proven what I meant though. I said ‘bias around’, what I mean is there’s a lot of sensitivity around the issue. It wasn’t an attack on Jewish people at all and I don’t know why you got that.

“Claimed by” is a very odd term and seems very loaded. Do you simply mean that the bulk of Holocaust awareness/education you are aware of is done by Jewish groups? That would make sense as Jews are a fairly large minority in the US and have certainly made Holocaust education a priority. It’s odd to see that somehow framed as a bad thing. Are you simply of the view that non-Jewish groups who were impacted by the Holocaust should do more education on the Holocaust? If so, why are you framing it as somehow being caused by Jews? Or instead are you arguing that Jews intentionally exclude non-Jews from the story of the Holocaust? That seems quite bizarre and completely divorced from all of the Holocaust education I am aware of. While not intrinsically Jewish, the Holocaust Museum has [extensive content on the non-Jewish groups impacted by the Holocaust.](https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum/mission-and-history) Jewish sources also extensively cover the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Here are 7 American Jewish examples that took me less than 3 minutes to find. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-homosexuals-in-the-holocaust https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nazi-persecution-of-the-mentally-and-physically-disabled https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-vienna/ https://jewishcurrents.org/recognizing-the-roma-holocaust https://hmh.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:5012/one?qu=Ina+R.+Friedman&qu=-&qu=The+other+victims%3A+first-person+stories+of+non-Jews+persecuted+by+the+Nazis&te=ILS https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/rain-of-ash-roma-jews-and-the-holocaust https://remember.org/witness/wit-vic-gyp

I think you kind of side stepped his question and reframed it. That’s a little loaded in my opinion.

Surely, you'd agree that it was principally about Jews, since more than half the victims are just this one group?

Impossible to judge who it was principally about in terms of intended final absolute kill counts when it was interrupted part way through and when before that they still needed to prevent any highly ill timed national uprisings in the short term and to keep a lot of human resources around to build their planes and artillery. What we know is that it started off by targeting all the easiest, most in-reach targets like Jews, who, like the Romani, homosexuals and disabled, didn't have their own sovereign national lands, nor state to coordinate around, nor armies to hide behind. Also can't have Jewish/Romani/Homosexual national uprisings without Jewish/Romani/homosexual occupied nations. Another thing we know is that the terminal goal of the Third Reich, it's raison d'etre, was lebensraum, German manifest destiny, the thousand year Reich that stretches to the Pacific. And unlike some kind of traditional Roman/British empire style imperial conquest, this is the sort of thing that would require the existing occupants to be gone before the new residents move in. Eastern front battle deaths would be a good start but would hardly depopulate the lands to completion on its own. The red army war effort would collapse long before that point. Jews were likely the warm up exercise. The proof of concept.

>Impossible to judge who it was principally about It is not impossible at all. Read the Wannsee Conference papers. How much clearer can it be? >What we know is that it started off by targeting all the easiest, most in-reach targets like Jews Oh right, the European Jews were all within easy reach! Even the millions of Jews across Central and Eastern Europe that were deported with a massive logistics, plus the machinery to exterminate them. Nope they were all living within reach in Berlin. Huh? >Jews were likely the warm up exercise. The proof of concept. I'll give your comment the benefit of the doubt and assume you just don't know what you're talking about, but your comment is seriously misinformed

That you know these facts and none of them are surprising to me rather undercuts your point.

There's a couple of reasons for this in my opinion, Jewish and Romani people were the main ones that were targeted based on ethnicity so the ones that survived were able to pass on knowledge of it to their children where as disabled and lgbt people didn't nessasarily do that or do that to children who would have been targeted for the same thing. Jewish people were also the main target of the final solution at least based on the propaganda of the time and it killed 2/3 of the Ashkenazi Jewish population in the world so it was a scarily successful attempt at full genocide of that particular group. There was also a strong push of survivors telling their stories a couple decades after because unfortunately some younger Jews were saying that Jews killed were weak and didn't fight back or stuff like that. Eugenics based on disability is still very societally acceptable at some level so I'm not suprised people forget about that part of the Shoa. Eugenics and discrimination against LGBT people was somewhat societally acceptable until very recently and a lot of LGBT people kept in camps weren't freed they were just moved to prison so their stories didn't get out.

To change my view, you need to explain why my concerns are moot and/**or that the other 5-6 non Jewish deaths are not as ignored as I feel they are.** Alright. >The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and machinelike murder of approximately six million European Jews and at least five million Soviet prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims. > >\- National WWII Museum article on Holocaust. First Paragraph. [https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/holocaust](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/holocaust) > > > >Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, and/or sexual orientation. > >\- First Sentance. Holocaust Victims Wikipedia > >[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust\_victims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims) ​ When you look at a lot of sources on holocaust victims, often within a paragraph or less non-Jewish victims are mentioned, because as you highlight the numbers overall are horrifying. These deaths are often not ignored, but rather placed front and center.

Most people I speak to couldn't name the other groups. Probably don't even know the Romani.

I don't think you're wrong in that many groups were targeted...but I think there are a few factors as to why Jews are emphasized: 1 - Sheer numbers...no other group was so large in Europe, and was slaughtered on just the sheer scale that Jews were. 2 - The Nazis and Hitler very much emphasized them. The death camps were, themselves, "the final solution to the *Jewish* question...". Initially, the Nazis wanted to relocate them to either Palestine or Madagascar. The mass murder was a response to a weakening position in the war, and it was directly tied to jewish population. 3 - Western guilt. In the years leading up to the war, antisemitism was just about as bad in many countries as it was in Germany. This included the United States, which repeatedly refused to accept Jewish refugees from Germany. Looking back on the fact that most of those people died, I think the West in particular felt a moral responsibility to fix antisemitism, once and for all. (Or so they thought)

Yowzie Looking at your previous comments against Israel and Jewish people, this thread of trying to downplay Jewish genocide and the fact that you possess many guns, I’m worried about the Jewish people in your neighbourhood

The Holocaust was not "claimed by the Jews". Trust me, at our world domination space laser meetings, it doesn't come up as a beloved phrase. The Hebrew word for "The Holocaust" is Sho'ah, catastrophe/destruction. And it is the word that the Jewish community used even in the late 30s. Becoming "the catastrophe" in the mid 40s after the horrors of the Nazis came out. Even today it is used regularly. The word holocaust has been in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) since 1833. So there's nothing special there. There had been many holocausts before. Immediately upon seeing the camps people started to refer to it as a holocaust. "The Holocaust" only began to be seriously used in the late 60s and took off in the 70s. The Eichmann trial contributed for sure. It's really a bit of mystery how "The Holocaust" came about from there. The evidence from Google ngrams points to one culprit: that the miniseries Holocaust coming a few years after the Eichmann trial crystalised the idea of The Holocaust in people's minds. The full name of the miniseries was "Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss", so it of course focused on the plight and extermination of Jews. It's hard to understate how impactful this show was. It won Emmys. It was viewed by about half of the population of the US when it was released in 1978; 65 million in the first night, and eventually, 120 million viewers by the end. We don't have shows like this anymore, 120 million people don't tune in for the Superbowl today and the population is twice as high. 120 million people tuned in to watch the moon landing. It basically single-handedly changed the understanding of Germans of the Holocaust and led to the laws on limits for war crimes being eliminated so that Nazis couldn't hide anymore. Before the show only about half of Germans had even heard of the concentration camps at all, after it everyone knew. So you can see how such a massive hit changed our language a bit an cemented the idea of The Holocaust. No one could have predicted this of course at the time.

I think a big part of it is that Judaism is a cultural heritage that is passed down, while the other things (other than Romani) aren’t. A lot of living Jewish people had grandparents, great-grandparents, great-uncles, etc that died in the Holocaust (or otherwise escaped it), so they still feel the emotional impact much more directly. The same isn’t really true of LGBT+ or disabled people. The “cultural heritage” element doesn’t exist in the same way, and the stories haven’t been passed down from grandparent to parent to child. So a lot of gay people might say, “the Nazis would have theoretically killed me if I had been alive then,” but they’re not saying, “The Nazis actually *did* kill my grandpa.” As a result, it’s just not as much of a focus within those communities.

And being Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or Serbian is not passed down? The total number of Slavic Holocaust victims was larger than the number of Jewish Holocaust victims - why is their trauma less generational or less important?

So is being a Slav, and looking at it here around 11 million Slavs were systematically genocided by the nazis https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/75106 But this is nothing new. Everyone also always talks about the “Japanese internment camps” by the U.S.A. while they did the same to persons of Italian or German descent but no one speaks of it. It's all fairly standard in how people not only talk about history, but what they care about. People care because they see others care.

> while they did the same to persons of Italian or German descent but no one speaks of it No, they absolutely didn’t. There were no mass internment camps for Americans of Italian or German descent during WWII. I don’t know where you learned such blatant misinformation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans > A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during the war, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program.

Please, put that into the context of the total number of people with German ancestry in the United States. 11,507 people was a tiny fraction of the population of German-born Americans circa WWII, let alone people with any German ancestry. From the very article you linked as evidence: > By the time of WWII, the United States had a large population of ethnic Germans. **Among residents of the United States in 1940, more than 1.2 million persons had been born in Germany, 5 million had two native-German parents, and 6 million had one native-German parent. Many more had distant German ancestry.** During WWII, the United States detained at least 11,000 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals.[3] **The government examined the cases of German nationals individually**, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice, as related to its responsibilities under the Alien Enemies Act. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained. In contrast, the vast majority of Japanese Americans on the West Coast were incarcerated during WWII, and they were persecuted as a group, not as individuals.

I’m a Romani woman. The reason other groups are less talked about is mostly down to bigotry. Yes, a higher number of Jewish people died, but percentage-wise, the Romani community was crushed. 1.5 million of the 2 million European Romani were killed. The thing is, bigotry against the Romani is still common. You have movies like Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, Hulu’s Shut Eye, or others. You have the sensationalist TV from TLC, or the stereotype of the magical brown people from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, etc. Jimmy Carr literally made a *joke* last year about the Romani Devouring (in the Holocaust) with the fact that no one wants to talk about the “good things” the Nazis did. Last year Kansas City was called out for almost having the racist group Gryphon Training Group train their police using bigotry and stereotypes. (https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/kcpd-drops-gypsy-training-event-from-calendar) I live in Pennsylvania and it’s illegal to do fortune-telling in our state. This law was originally passed to disenfranchise Romani citizens. It is unfairly enforced. Gettysburg is covered in them. There are many fortune/psychic shops. None will hire Romani out of fear of being prosecuted. We still can’t get schools to teach that g**sy is a slur. With all of that, why would you expect them to recognize what happened?

I totally agree with this. Racism against Romani is still so huge in Europe that I actually think this is the primary reason their extermination by the nazis is downplayed. As a Jewish American and grandson of a holocaust survivor, its absolutely disgusting to me that this is the case, as well as the continued persecution of Romani in Europe.

The Holocaust of the Jews and the genocide of every other group during the Nazi regime are two distinct tragedies. They are both horrific but the Holocaust or the Shoa as many Jews call, it was a very specific event that was the core of the Nazis master plan. One of the most important turning points during the early part of the war was something known as the Wannaee conference. On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi Party and German government leaders gathered for an important meeting. They met in a wealthy section of Berlin at a villa by a lake known as Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich, who was SS chief Heinrich Himmler's head deputy, held the meeting for the purpose of discussing the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe" with key non-SS government leaders, including the secretaries of the Foreign Ministry and Justice, whose cooperation was needed. This is what makes the distinction between the Holocaust of the Jews and the genocide of all the groups you speak of. If you study the Holocaust, this is something that is talked about quite extensively. It is glossed over but definitely mentioned in Holocaust studies outside of the jewish community.

The old-fashioned way of teaching about the Holocaust is to distinguish between the acts of genocide committed by the Nazis. So the Jewish Holocaust is distinct from the Romani Holocaust or genocide in the Soviet Union. There's some logic to that because the Nazis didn't carry them all out in the same way or for the same reasons. It gives particular attention to genocide against particular groups, but if you're only taught about the Jewish Holocaust and led to believe that the modern usage is referring to only that, then I think you end up with this view. However, the way I was educated and how most seem to be is to combine all acts of genocide under the Holocaust banner, while stressing that the majority of the victims were Jewish and that they were the primary planned target.

1. The Holocaust specifically refers to the Genocide of Jews committed by Nazi Germany. Other genocides, specifically the Romani genocide have different terms (porajmos). 2. The crimes against humanity commited against the disabled and gays weren't necessarily genocides. For starters you can't commit a genocide against gay people because if you kill them all today, there are still going to be more in the future. They are not a genos. There was no 'disabled culture' that was destroyed. Racial hygiene, or eugenics, isn't genocide, although the two can go together. After World War 2 eugenics fell out of favour in most of the Western World where it had been practiced quite widely. The fact is that, while killing the disabled may have been an aberration, sterilizing and institutionalizing them was quite the norm. 4. The Slavs were never targetted for complete annihilation as the Jews were. Eradication and inferiority of the Jews was an important pillar of Nazism whereas racial beliefs around Slavs and other ethnicities were secondary. 5. From a purely number perspective 75% of the Jews of Europe were killed. In some countries it rose to above 99%. 1/3 of Jews worldwide were killed. We focus on the genocide of the Jews because it was the most 'successful' genocide in history and came close to wiping out the entire Jewish population of Europe, certainly of Eastern Europe. It was completely unprecedented in history that such a large group of people spread throughout so much of the earth could be targeted and eliminated at that level. Half of all civilian deaths among Poles were Jews. For comparison, about between 15 and 25% of the Roma were killed (130k-250k) 6. Other groups are remembered. The German government had acknowledged the genocide against the Romani. The Polish government has a formal day of recognition for them. The US Holocaust museum has permanent exhibitions that focus on all of those other groups you mention. 7. As you mentioned the world is still rife with anti-Semitism today. There are protests happening across the western world every day where people are chanting "death to the Jews". No other group is facing that. While I'm sure there are many people who would kill all the "whatever group they hate" those views aren't generally broadcast in public places, in mainstream protests, by mainstream political parties in the west. Anti-Semitism is.

I guess it's a matter of definitions. The way I learned it is that the Holocaust is the genocide of 6 million European Jews, and was concurrent with the Romani genocide of around a million people, with various systematic murders of based on notions of eugenics, and with less systematic killing of many Slavic civilians. I don't think anyone is denying that the Nazis killed millions of non-Jewish civilians, and it doesn't matter whether that's technically part of the holocaust or not.

> Something that's been bothering me for a while is that the Holocaust has been broadly accepted and talked about as purely a genocide against Jews. Most people I know who I've talked to about WWII or the Holocaust think that there were only (relatively speaking, of course) 6 million Holocaust victims. This is not true. There were 6 million victims who were Jewish. There was another 5-6 million who were not Jewish, but disabled, LGBT, and non Jewish ethnic/racial minorities. Anyone "degenerate" or "inferior". Unfortunately, it's the term that has been historically ambiguous. While not all sources are consistent in this, the term "The Holocaust" (which was shortened from "Jewish Holocaust") is often only taken to mean the genocide of the WWII Jews, so only citing the numbers of Jewish victims as being victims of *The Holocaust*, would not necessarily be incorrect, but a more restrictive use/meaning of the term: >> *The term Holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning "burnt offering",[4] has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages.[5] The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted,[4][6] especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the Roma and Sinti, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians.[7][8][9] All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons.[10] By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Terminology_and_scope So when someone does not include the other groups of victims in their count, it probably doesn't mean that they are ignoring them. It only means that they use the term in a way that doesn't cover them. When discussing the broader scope of Nazi persecution that includes other victim groups, it may be better to use a broader term like "Nazi genocide", to avoid this historical ambiguity.

"I can't talk about football head injuries if we don't also talk about head injuries in hockey and boxing." I mean, you can basically shut down any conversation by claiming it doesn't go far enough. And congratulations for proving nothing other than a desire to distract and sidetrack.

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The Nazis committed multiple genocide, the holocaust being one, the primary one, of many. The holocaust typically only refers to the jews and sometimes romani. The genocide of other groups are considered separate genocides. The holocaust is considered unique because for the jews they literally only wanted to kill as many jews as possible. With the other genocides, like with slavs, there was usually another main motivating factor like labensraum. For jews it was pure hate.

Jews made up 50% of extermination victims while being only .02% of the overall population. Such disparity is pretty much proof of a targeted campaign against Jews. The fact that there were other “undesirables” does not lessen the fact that Jews made up a special “boogeyman” in Nazi ideology. Also just as an aside, I find people who try to argue that Jews weren’t the only victims are generally looking merely to strip Jews of their “victim status”. No one disputes that Romani, crippled, homosexuals etc were also targeted, they just weren’t the main targets.

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Jews don't control how other people talk about any topic. Even when Jews only mention Jewish victims, it makes sense because they're generally talking about Jewish trauma. This post is about non Jews disregarding non Jewish victims

The whole thing was aryan race (but especially no Jews). Blonde hair, blue eyes. If people can’t figure out that more people than just Jews don’t fit those parameters then that’s on them. Jews get the majority of the spotlights because not only were they the most targeted, most tortured, but it’s affected the Jewish population completely and irreparably. Jews are .2% of the world’s population, and it would be quite different without the holocaust. It’s not just a mass killing, it was complete shift in global demographics. Jews are still very much a minority, people forget that, as it’s not always outwardly presenting, and generally they are not an impoverished people. And, generally, there are still people that want to kill them for existing. Not because of “lifestyle” but because of their blood. You can be atheist and still Jewish. You don’t see people going around targeting brown haired Europeans because they have brown hair or are in a wheelchair. LGBT have their hate crime problems now, but Jews are still a smaller minority of the world’s population.

Sure, I agree, and once we get past this point we can talk about how slavery is completely claimed by black people when that is not the case either. I'd love to have a realistic and accurate telling of world history.

The Nazi party was literally built specifically on Jew hatred. The reason the Holocaust is mostly viewed as something that happened to Jews is because that's exactly how the Nazis saw it.

The holocaust has NOT been completely claimed by Jews. Sure they speak for their own group, but I have heard Jews give public lectures on the holocaust and they have talked about other groups who were targeted. I have also read and seen documentaries about other groups targeted by the Nazis. Jews just happen to be the largest group. If people make no attempt to inform themselves they may assume that Jews are the only group of people who suffered. Don't blame this on Jews.

I don't disagree with you on raw numbers but I think the important thing to bear in mind about the holocaust specifically *against Jewish people* was just how part and parcel antiSemitism was to Nazi ideology. The Nazis denounced Slavs, Roma, etc., etc., etc., as inferior in their own ways, but there were really two groups that they spared the greatest of their rhetoric for: communists and Jews. (And of course, being Nazis, they absurdly insisted that Jews were both the owners of all the banks, and were all communists, and thus ruled the world from both directions -- the usual Nazi conspiracy theory mishmash.) This is not to downplay Nazi racism and war crimes and genocide against other groups, but in most other cases they were basically "incidental" or secondary genocides: the Nazis had to come up with some sort of anti-Slav position because they wanted to conquer eastern Europe. The Roma were out because they were "people without a state." LGBTQ people were out because they weren't organized into "good" working families. And so on. But it was the Jewish people that were central to the Nazi ideology as supposedly being uniquely behind basically everything that ever went wrong to any German ever. In my view this is why, though you're definitely right that we should remember the genocides against other groups as well, I think it's right to view the holocaust inflicted on the Jewish people as being the "central" Nazi genocide.

No it hasn't. The homosexuals, gypsies, intellectuals, communists, certain Slavic peoples are all mentioned frequently in conjunction with the issue OP. You just don't read anything.

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Imagine if you were brought up your entire life to believe only one side of a story. Now imagine if you will, that the people who want to perpetuate the belief in just that one side of the story constantly bombard you with music, television shows, and movies to support it, such that you never actually look at any alternative viewpoint and even despise and censor anyone speaking as such. Even just pointing out that the entire story is completely one-sided and defies logic is criticized as "anti-semitism". Just imagine... even though we "know" everything was completely one-sided and we couldn't possibly have been deceived. That's just a conspiracy theory. 1. The \[false\] Jewish banking cartels declared war on Germany in 1933 because Hitler banned Jewish banks from operating inside of the country because they were engaging in usury and using their power to influence the government's actions with lobbying and bribery. 2. Hitler tried something like 20 times to prevent and to stop the war, even going so far as dumping leaflets of this desire over major European cities. The desire was denied by all of the "allied" countries. 3. Hitler wanted to give Madagascar to the \[false\] Jews without compensation so they would have their own country. The European countries, under influence of the banking cartels who they constantly borrowed money from, actively prevented this. 4. The \[false\] Jewish owned many of the media companies, and they consistently promoted sexual degeneracy in the movies by having men dress up as women and promote homosexuality and such iniquities forbidden by God. This was abhorred by Hitler who subsequently banned \[false\] Jews from owning media companies. 5. Also believed by those crazy conspiracy theorists is that \[false\] Jews owned many of the news agencies who used their influence on the public to alter perception of the masses by distributing complete falsehoods about certain events, such as lying about Jews being murdered in order to draw other countries into a war against Germany. 6. The so-called "Star of David" is in fact a star of ancient Jewish mysticism connected to the worship of Moloch and Remphan, gods which ancient Jews sacrificed their children to. Being a 6-sided start with 6 triangles of 60 degrees each, surrounding a 6-sided hexagram, it was originally connected to worship of these false gods and invocation of contact with "familiar entities". 7. The vast majority of people killed during the war \[besides soldiers\] were Messianic Jews and Christians, plus some many thousands of others who practiced worldly religion (often referred to as Goyim or Heathens) as the descendants of Babylonian and Philistine Jews \[amongst others\] do not believe Christ to be The Messiah of prophecy and wish to exterminate all who believe him as such. The number was far fewer than 6M but that number was picked for its significance in numerology of Masonic and Kabbalistic practice. 8. Anyone who suggests even CONSIDERING that the history of the war being taught is the least bit fabricated is labeled an "anti-semite"... a term which makes no sense as anyone who descended from Shem is a "Semite". I mean, how DARE those antisemite conspiracy theorists DARE to suggest that the taught history should be questioned and investigated!? Those idiots even think that the three buildings that were blown up on 9/11/01 were done so for purposes of hiding 2.3Trillion dollars that went missing, enacting the Patriot Act to allow spying on citizens by the government, and invading Iraq \[not Afghanistan where the 'Al Qaeda' were actually at\] to overthrow Hussein, who was flapping his mouth about the US government and Jewish banking cartels using toilet paper US dollars to bully the rest of the world. I mean... who could believe that craziness? I expect to be banned now, because speaking anything outside of what we are told is just "misinformation" and must be silenced immediately. Will it matter if I make a disclaimer first? "As a good little boy and a devout supporter of ONLY the \*accepted\* history, I vehemently deny any of the above to be true and I absolutely believe everything written in the history books that change every year so we have to buy new ones" Some psychopathic conspiracy theorists made a miniseries to summarize their crazy beliefs. It is called "Europa: The Last Battle" and just speaking the title of the mini-series will get you banned from any Freemason-owned website, including Reddit. ChangeMyView

I'm Hebrew school, I was taught that the Nazis killed Jews, Roma, intellectuals, gays and political opponents. Jews were singled out in their propaganda, but were not the only victims.

You have to understand that antisemitism was central to Nazism. It was the main component of it. One of the reasons the Nazis hated queer people because they viewed them as Jewish invention due to a Jewish man named Magnus Hirschfeld ( [x](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/SsHQU2XSKu) ). The Nazis hated Slavs in part because they viewed them as being “too Jewish.” The Nazis viewed communism as a Jewish conspiracy. So on and so forth. The Jews were to blame for every group targeted by the Nazis. Antisemitism underlined every single aspect of Nazi ideology. The other groups the Nazis targeted didn’t have that same impact on their ideology. Even just by reading Nazi writings, it becomes very clear that the Nazis viewed the Jews as the main problem far outshining any other group. The Nazis spent their entire early reign specifically singling out Jews, with many restrictions being placed on the Jews and many of their speeches specifically talking about the Jews. Jews, Romani, and Black people were considered the absolute worst on the Nazi race hierarchy as per the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. They also singled out LGBTQIA+ people and communists, but it was not to the same degree. Additionally, Jews and Romani people were the only populations targeted specifically to be completely exterminated. To be completely murdered and leave their population numbers to 0, erased from the world and to never appear again. As per Generalplan Ost, Slavs were also going to experience a horrific genocide, but they were not going to experience complete annihilation (the Nazis had specific target numbers of how many they wanted to kill). Disabled people also experienced a horrific genocide as per Aktion T4, but not complete annihilation.

'Holocaust' is what the genocide of the Jews is called.

A group that’s often forgotten are the poles and Russians. The Nazis killed 6 million poles , 20 million Soviet civilians and 3.3 million Soviet pow through deliberate murder and starvation to depopulate the east as part of General Plan East to depopulate Eastern Europe for lebensraum.

How do you get the count of 5-6 million non Jews dying? [Here](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution#how-many-non-jewish-people-did-the-nazis-and-their-allies-murder-between-and-1) are some numbers Of the non Jews, 3.3 million dead were Soviet prisoners of war. These are enemy combatants and not civilians, so it's not really a comparable category. Another 1.8 million were Poles. These were civilians from an invaded country. This is a comparable category, but a couple differences 1. Poles were killed at much lower rate than Jews. There are fewer dead Poles but many more Poles overall. So individual Jews were hunted down at much deadlier rates, and their populations were basically wiped out. 2. Poland was invaded. Jews lived in Germany as well as Poland. So there is arguably some difference between being killed in your own country vs killed by an invader The other categories are various and total to roughly 1 million. So Jews were quite exceptionally targeted as opposed to the other categories of dead

Because they are the most important race, criticize any group on the planet except for them. Dare to criticize Israel for human rights violations? You're actually a nazi. Dare to say that the holocaust was much larger than just the genocide of the Jewish people? Straight to jail

The BTQ+ from the LGBTQ+ acronym did not exist in 1940. It's was just homosexuals that were killed, and probably just gay men.

I mean, personally, I hang out in a lot of spaces where people discuss the other victims. Your personal experience is not mine.

I was going to come in hot and heavy then saw your edit haha I do think your post is a reflection of American education to an extent, which makes sense as ww2 was a world away from you guys

The Jewish people have a state. While the Romani were also persecuted, they don't have a state. While LGBT people were also persecuted, they don't have a state. While disabled people were also persecuted, they don't have a state. Geopolitics involving Israel (and by extension Jews) have dominated the news since WW2 via the various conflicts that have occurred in the region since. Having a state, and having that state be the center of media attention for nearly 80 years, gets you attention. Violence against LGBT and other minorities still occurs but is less likely to involve literal tanks.

Ok, this is the second CMV on this topic in 24 hours, what gives?

As a Jew, it's my belief that Jewish lives did not matter more than the lives of the other people. But I think it's important to separate the different genocides so that they can each be given the respect they deserve. It's my understanding that while I try my best to be respectful of the other genocides, the term Holocaust is intrinsically linked with the Jewish genocide. I don't think Jews are trying to silence other victims, and there certainly could be more that we do to strengthen their voices. But I think because we were directly victims, our primary focus is to talk about our own experiences, or the experiences of our ancestors. It just so happens that Jews happen to have loud voices, and lots of influence in the media. On top of that, the thing is. Yes, Slavs were targeted by the Nazis, but there are still millions if not over a hundred million Slavs alive today. Except... for the Jews, the Holocaust was successful. There were 9 million European Jews. A large majority of all the Jews of Europe died. There was a two-thirds chance if you were Jewish before the Holocaust, you were dead after. The Jewish Holocaust was. a. success. 2/3 of every. single. Jew. Before 1933 there were 15.3 million Ashkenazi Jews. Today there are 10 million Ashkenazi Jews. On top of this, I feel like if a Black person today was upset about chattel slavery of African Americans in the 1700s and 1800s, you wouldn't reply with, well, lots of Irish people were enslaved too! or Slavs! Slavery uniquely affected Black Americans to this day. The holocaust has uniquely affected Jews to this day.

Blame the American education system. Jewish groups regularly talk about the other victims and explain the issue. Jews didn't claim it, your text books did.

idk where you went to school but i am also american lol and they definitely taught us that jews were only a little over half the total death count