There has been only one Shoah (Holocaust) in the history of mankind

ed note–as we say here often, one cannot understand the state of the world today without understanding the nature of Jewish power, and one cannot understand the nature of Jewish power until one understands the nature of Jewish thinking.

And, as with all things, this requires going back to the beginning, back to that ‘prime mover’ that set the whole ball a-rolling. As it pertains to the world today and how Jewish power is the product of Jewish thinking, the ‘spark’ that began the inferno that now threatens to engulf the entirety of God’s green earth is manifested in 2 portions of the ‘holy of holies’ as far as ‘Jewish literature’ is concerned, to wit–

‘And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all peoples of the earth be blessed…Genesis 12:3

‘When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are to possess and casts out the many peoples living there, you shall then slaughter them all and utterly destroy them…You shall save nothing alive that breathes…You shall make no agreements with them nor show them any mercy. You shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people unto the LORD thy God and He has chosen you to be a special people above all others upon the face of the earth…”–Book of Deuteronomy

And while it is true that there are many, many other passages within said ‘literature’ that contribute greatly towards Jewish thinking that is then manifested in Jewish power, it is these 2 passages in particular that ‘set the stage’ for everything else, in that they represent the notion of self-worship, self-adulation, and unbridled narcissism, which–once it works its way into the bone marrow of a person or a group of people, then becomes a green light for every conceivable act of depravity, criminality, and aberrant behavior, a ‘condition’ which Jesus Himself addressed the last few days of his life when he cursed the Pharisees saying–

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are…You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity…In the same way, you appear to be righteous on the outside, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.…’

Remember, to a self-worshipping person/people, no one else counts. Only their suffering, their pain, and inconvenience matters, and even if it is nothing more than a stubbed toe. Gentiles don’t count, because–as the rabbis teach, they are ‘mere donkeys in human form,’ created by Yahweh to make the lives of Jews better. In the Judaic paradigm, it could be a million Gentiles, 6 million, a billion or all 7 billion of them slaughtered like sheep, but comparatively, it doesn’t even begin to add up to ‘one Jewish fingernail’, and for proof that indeed this is the case, one need look no further than what is taking place in the world right now, where every life hangs in the balance over one tiny, seemingly insignificant group of people who have forced the entire world to focus their energy, time, resources, and attention on maintaining their needs and ceding to their demands.

Bat-Zion Susskind-Sacks, Times of Israel

As Jews in Yisrael prepare to commemorate the Shoah, AKA the “Holocaust,” I keep pondering about a very sad trend that we are witnessing. It is the growing disparagement of this most horrific chapter in human history, the one perpetrated against the Jews.

My sentiments were seconded by a person who is an expert on the subject, Amir Ben Dror. Amir conducted a tour and workshop, which I attended along with other teachers, in Yerushalayim recently. I spoke to him last night. This article is the product of that conversation.

Amir and I wish to make one point very clear lest some of the readers here may take offence with our stance. We are not proud that our Jewish people were the target of such heinous crimes as committed by the Nazis and their collaborators. We do, however, believe that the growing number of groups religious, ethnic and other, who adopt the term “Holocaust” in order to describe crimes carried out against them, is unmerited and somewhat disrespectful towards the facts.

Of course Amir and I are aware that millions of others who suffered and died unjustly in the hands of tyrants and butchers carry deep scars as a result of them. Such actions, though, might have been categorized as genocides but they cannot be called a “Holocaust” or “Shoah.”

The term “Holocaust,” according to Lucy S. Dawidowicz (The War Against The Jews), “is the term that Jews themselves have chosen to describe their fate during World War II. ……its etymological substratum interposes a specifically Jewish interpretation. The word derives from the Greek holokauston, the Septuagint’s translation for the Hebrew Olah, literally ‘what is brought up,’ rendered in English as ‘an offering made by fire unto the Lord,’ ‘burnt offering,’ or ‘whole burnt offering.’”

Why then was the word “Holocaust” selected to describe what was done to the Jews? According to Amir, it is precisely because of its unique nature. It was not just “another” genocide in the timeline of history, past present and future.

According to Amir, other genocides, the Armenian, (1915-1918), the Tutsi-Hutu in Rwanda in 1994 or the attempt to bring about genocide in Bosnia (1992-1995) to name a few, all occurred as a result of a conflict, political, religious or other. Not the Holocaust! The Holocaust, he claims, was carried out on the Jews for the mere fact that they were born. In Germany, where the Holocaust started and in Europe where it resumed, the Jews were in conflict with no one. They were never a threat to anyone. Hence there was a need to create a new term to describe such systematic massive killings which stemmed from pure, sheer hatred.

Personally, I am not in favor of the choice of term. The reason is twofold. The first is that I do not see the Jewish victims of the Nazi killing machine as a “sacrifice”, or a “burnt offering.” Sacrifice for what? Burnt offering for what? I am still searching for the answer.

Secondly, as before, I keep wondering why we, Jews, need to choose Hellenistic/heathen terms to describe what is unique to us only. For me, therefore, there is only one word to describe that ghastly episode in my people’s history. It is the Hebrew word “Shoah.”

It captures the pain, the suffering, the stories and the essence of the very distinctive nature of the event.

Finally, Amir and I realize that one cannot discuss the Shoah and not mention those who saved Jews during that gruesome period, The Righteous Gentiles to whose memory a whole section is dedicated at Yad Vashem. We fear that like the term “Holocaust”, the use of “Righteous Gentile,” is being denigrated and overused nowadays. To earn the title “Righteous Gentile,” Amir asserts, “one has to fulfill three conditions. The first, one has to save Jews. The second, one has to risk his or her own life or the lives of their relatives in order to save Jews. Finally,” he adds, “One has to act against one’s own interests.”

We are grateful to all of them and will continue to express a hope that no one will ever again have to be put to the task.