Have you ever known a holocaust denier? How did you feel about them? (page 3)

LoveUniHateExams

I've never personally known one, but I can guess that they're deluded pricks.

There are some holocaust deniers in the US, probably one or two in the UK, some in Germany and Austria, and some in the Arab world.

Morons, the lot of them.

Vidiot

Esse Quam Videri - "Have you ever known a holocaust denier?"

If I did, I never knew it.

The ones I've heard of can't seem to hide their assholishness, though, and I tend to avoid assholes one they've manifested, so I suppose it's possible.

David_Jay

It's odd for me to meet or even hear of such people.

The language my family speaks around the house, our native tongue, is called Ladino. For those of you who don't know, Ladino was once the mostly widely-spoken Jewish language in the world during the 20th century...until the Shoah (the word we Jews use for the "Holocaust").

Once the Shoah ended, almost 100% of European speakers of Ladino were gone. The language of Sephardic Jews from the Spanish Inquisition era, it was a mixture of Spanish, Aramaic, and Hebrew. Hitler did away with all the European Sephardic Communities during the Shoah, and with it the speakers of Ladino. Being that most Sephardic Jews are darker skinned that Ashkenazi Jews (and the Ashkenazi's had Germanic blood), this may have been a reason why the Sephardic Jews of Europe went first.

I grew up in an area surrounded by Latinos, thinking I was one of them as a child. But I do remember being teased for my "weird Spanish" and even scolded by adults like teachers who would tell me that using my language with its unique words "was a sign of your bad breeding, so you need to stop using them and change your ways." It was not until I was an adult that a language specialist uncovered that my family and I spoke Ladino. Our family had come to the Americas after the Spanish Inquisition, and we brought our language with us and have been speaking it ever since.

The point is, the language is not all we discovered from these experts in Jewish humanities. We learned that we were once related to millions of people who once lived in Europe until the Shoah. Aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, countless cousins, all gone in about the period of a decade. I am directly related by Sephardic lines to over half of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In most cases all I have are photographs of people I will never meet, most of these photos hanging in museums.

If the Holocaust has not happened, my language would not be rare. Today it is estimated that around 100,000 native Ladino speakers remain, and despite recently efforts the language is dying and may soon be extinct. The communities where my European relatives once lived, many in Budapest, were emptied of Sephardic Jews. There are visible traces left, but little more.

The Holocaust is real. It did happen. Today I am somewhat isolated because of it. Most Jews you see in the Western world are Ashkenazi, and the customs and language (Yiddish) are theirs. Except in Israel, I am for the most part on my own when it comes to being a Sephardic Jew.

This is all due to something that Holocaust deniers have to lie to themselves about. The idea that I could claim 3,000,000 plus people as relatives, all who disappeared with their communities and language in about ten years is a horrible thought. Some can't face it. Some won't.

StephaneLaliberte

Though JWs are not "deniers", they put so little importance on two things that it is almost as though they are denying history.

1) other religions did the right thing in that period. They basically teach that they are the only religion that stood against Hitler. For instance, they openly condemn the catholics pointing to some prominant ones who were catholics and supporting the nazis. Yet, they ignore the millions of catholics who actually fought against the Germans and the millions who protected the jews. On the flip side, they don't mention that a third of them became "innactive" in that period and that only 1,500 actually died!

2) They don't seem to discuss the true nature of just how bad the world was in that period. After that war, and even today, they say that things are presently worst then ever before and that we need armagedon. Sure, things are not beautiful and there are still wars going on, but come on now... it no were near the 1940s.

To me, ignoring the good so many religious people did in that era and to say that today is worst then ever before, that is denial of what happened in WW2.

OrphanCrow

jwleaks: ... I did personally know Ilse Hess, wife of Rudolph Hess, Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler. She died in 1995 in Victoria, Australia, in my home town. She knew my grandmother, Oma, who also came to Australia after WW2. My Oma was the granddaughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians. Ilse's revelations to me about the JWs, aka Bible Students, were in complete contrast to Watchtower's own sanitised historical revisionism.

That is very interesting.Would you be able to expand on those contrasting revelations? Thanks

OUTLAW

Have you ever known a holocaust denier?

Yes..

How did you feel about them?

They weren`t very intelligent/educated about a lot of subjects..

So "Stupid" comes to mind..

prologos

David Jay, it is good to have you among us here, I hope your line lives on, and spreads, as was said here, the best revenge is a successful life.

Simon

I have never personally met one, they always seem to be incredibly racist or willfully ignorant and pushing their dogma for racist reasons, never for the desire to clarify history or discover truth ... they have decided on the truth and want to cherry pick "evidence" (whatever they call it).

I'd like to calmly explain to them why their denial is so insidious by punching them in the face and then denying it had happened.

jwleaks

jwleaks: ... I did personally know Ilse Hess, wife of Rudolph Hess, Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler. She died in 1995 in Victoria, Australia, in my home town. She knew my grandmother, Oma, who also came to Australia after WW2. My Oma was the granddaughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians. Ilse's revelations to me about the JWs, aka Bible Students, were in complete contrast to Watchtower's own sanitised historical revisionism.

That is very interesting.Would you be able to expand on those contrasting revelations? Thanks

Rudolph Hess, apart from being Deputy Führer to Hitler, was also the editor of Hitler's Mein Kampf which was written while they were both in prison.

According to Ilsa one the influences on Mein Kampf was a German translation of book in the prison library - Studies in the Scriptures volume 7, The Finished Mystery. At the time the writings of Rutherford and the Watchtower were very critical of jews and blacks.

Also, which is quite ironic, the jehovah's witnesses, or bible students as they were then known, went greatly ignored by the Nazi party during the lead up to and commencement of WW2. They were not singled out for persecution or attack. They were tolerated if not ignored. If you look up the early JW yearbooks you will find that the Watchtower Society courted Hitler and offered public support to the ideologies of the Nazi party prior to WW2 recognising they they shared a common ideology. Things changed when Hitler commenced building and land acquisition, including a watchtower owned building.

Watchtower Society president, JF Rutherford, launched a broadside attack on Hitler by rallying jehovah's witnesses around the world to send telegrams to Hitler threatening him and telling him that their god will destroy him.

When I discussed these events with Ilsa one afternoon she explained that no one in the Nazi party had any real idea who all these telegrams and threats were from or why they were arriving. However, Hess knew who they actually were. Rutherford and the Watchtower were simply a a noisy mosquito in the room waiting to be swatted. Had Rutherford kept his mouth shut and not meddled in the political affairs of this world things might have changed on the world stage.

Ilsa told me that both Rudolph Hess and Adolph Hitler eventually decided that the Watchtower, aka bible students, and Rutherford were trying to cause divisions on behalf of the US government. The irony at the time was that Hess was an avid reader of Rutherford's books. According to Ilsa her husband did not view the bible students as a threat or problem but Hitler did not like to be threatened. The bible students made the black list and eventually suffered, although not to the extent Watchtower has made out.

I asked Ilsa "if the bible students never threatened Hitler and the Nazi party, would that have changed history?" I got an answer. The telegrams were the straw that broke the camel's back and caused a deadly reaction.

In my opinion, Rutherford and the jehovah's witnesses around the world share the blame in stirring up trouble when none existed. I wonder how many lives were lost because the jehovah's witnesses meddled in politics. When Jesus was on earth he threatened no ruler with removal and always said his kingdom was no part of this world. Rutherford set up his kingdom as part of this world and seized the rulership for himself by having those on the board of directors of Watch Tower who did not support him removed. Then he out and secretly commissioned the writing of The Finished Mystery book and attributed it's origin to Christ. Stupid, stupid man.

Rutherford had Hitler threatened with removal, albeit by so-called divine action. Interestingly it was Rutherford himself who was removed first. He beat Hitler to the grave.

prologos

jwleaks" very interesting first hand details. and: was it not R. Hess that flew into great Britain to plead the Nazi's peace deal ? Do your sources have anything on that? was he trying to tap into the nazi-phile royals? . and I remember in the 1930s, people being beaten up for not saluting the Swastika flag, a typical jw stance, given their "no Superior Authorities to be honored" teaching.

Have you ever known a holocaust denier? How did you feel about them?

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