It is with amazement and sadness I read the posts of Prof. R. and Dr. F. As a Holocaust Survivor and a survivor of Stalin's terror, I can assure you that there is more than a quantum difference in the violence, terror, inhumanity, indifference, breakdown of morality and failure of religion. My reasoning is as follows:

HOLOCAUSTST, GENOCIDE AND POLITICAL TERROR.
During the Genocides or Stalin's political mass terror, life retained semblance of normalcy, and upon removal of the violence, life returned to painful normalcy. After the Holocaust life did not return to normalcy, because there was no life left. The overwhelming majority of the victims were dead.

In the Ghetto of Rohatyn, in March of 1942, the Nazi Raiders, killed 3400 Jews, about 40%. Two months later life returned to a semblance of normalcy: new couples formed, people gossiped, the stains of blood were removed, people returned to food smuggling, etc. This happened during the early, Genocide phase, of the Holocaust. Two years later, out of 10,000 Jews, 9,900 were killed. Life did not return to normalcy, life ceased to exists. Exact description one can find in my site

Another difference between Genocides and the Holocaust is the rate of survival. Stalin killed 10 million people out of 230 million (4.3%), out of 800 million of Chines Mao killed 10 million (1.25%). Pol Pot killed about 11% of Cambodians. The Moslem in Serbia faced genocide, but today life returned to normalcy. In most Jewish communities especially in Eastern Europe, had a the survival rate below 5%. Those communities disappeared forever and ever. I believe that it is morally wrong not to recognize those fundamental differences.

HOLOCAUST CHILDREN.
The litmus test of any civilization is the way it treats its children. One million of Jewish children were gassed, burned alive, stabbed or starved to death. In no other genocides were the children targeted for destruction. How many Polish, French, or Ukrainian children were gassed? None. To forget the fate of the Jewish children that went up in flame - is immoral.

HOLOCAUST UNIVERSALISM
Genocides are caused by tribal or religious hatred, or political terror like in Russia or China, and are localized in one country. The Holocaust happened in many countries and Hitler's success was due primarily to the universal anti-Semitism, corroding the Western civilization. anti-Semitism was the universal glue.

The Holocaust is also an Universal tragedy. All the perpetrators were Christian or they arose from Christian culture. The Bystanders, who stood by and did nothing to save Jews, were also Christians.

DEMOCRACY AND DEICIDE. Rudy R. wrote:
The more absolute the power, the more likely the mass murder or genocide. Democratic regimes rarely murder their own citizENS......The answer, backed up by diverse case studies and quantitative analyses, is to promote democracy. The more democratic a regime (note that this is a continuum), the more secure people are in their lives--regardless of who and what they are.

I agree that Genocides can't happen in democratic states, but let me remind Prof. R. that the Weimar Republic was a democratic state and the Reichstag was a democratic institutions. They were both subverted by Hitler, in a blink of the eye. Democracies are built on fragile foundations. How long will Russia of today remain democratic? Hitler subverted the Weimar Republic with his anti-Semitic rhetoric, that is based on the age all dogma of Deicide. The conflicts between the Serbs, Croatians and the Moslems are fueled by religious differences. Shouldn't we examine our religious dogmas and beliefs, that caused so much violence and inflicted so much pain throughout history?

HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTATION
Dr John P Fox wrote:
It appears to me that Tom Kramer, like so many others, has been induced into believing that the Nazi genocide of the Jews ("the Holocaust") is somehow a "unique" case, only or mainly because of the overwhelming amount of documentary evidence ....

Undoubtedly, if all the same kind of policy and eye-witness documentation were to be made available in the same quantities and of the same quality for most of the other cases of genocide in the twentieth century, rapidly it would be seen how fatuous is all this talk of a "unique Holocaust."

When I watched the movie "Shindler's List" I realized that the picture conveys only 10% of the virtual reality of the Holocaust. I believe that the neither the printed word nor the electronic or celluloid images can convey the real pain, sufferings, irrationality, brutality of the Holocaust. To deny the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust is laughable.

CONCLUSIONS
Our civilization is a violent civilization, nevertheless the violence was always random, seldom directed against children and women. This changed with the Holocaust, a new precedence was created, a quantum jump.

kimel@systec.com