So, a friend I worked with for many years and I were conversing. Somehow the Holocaust came up in discussion, and she fervently tried to convince me that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy and killed no one, the Jews and others just died of disease. I was shocked. I am currently re-evaluting our relationship. I don't know if I can associate with someone so stupid.

That’s tough.
Long ago I realized that I couldn’t like anyone I didn’t respect.

I am having some difficult reassessments myself, and I hate the thought.

My father was in Patton's 3rd Army. Patton ordered all his troops to tour the concentration camps, and I think it was Eisenhower who foresaw denial of the Holocaust.

My father never talked about it, but he saw it. Personally, I think of Holocaust denial as a sign of severe mental illness.

find the black and white footage of the camps and the bulldozers pushing the corpes into mass graves!!!

I don't argue with insane people. Nothing will convince her, and that's okay. Whether we can still associate is another issue. I lost a number of relatives in the camps, and two of my relatives (no longer living) had the tattoos. My concern is mostly history. If we forget...

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
My concern is mostly history.

It is depressing to realize how many people are totally oblivious to the lessons of history.

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
So, a friend I worked with for many years and I were conversing. Somehow the Holocaust came up in discussion, and she fervently tried to convince me that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy and killed no one, the Jews and others just died of disease. I was shocked. I am currently re-evaluting our relationship. I don't know if I can associate with someone so stupid.

That is unbelievable and delusional!

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
find the black and white footage of the camps and the bulldozers pushing the corpes [sic] into mass graves!!!

I have, sorry..had, a friend who would talk shit about Jewish people. He is no longer a friend. Hitler and his army killed 2/3 of the entire Jewish population of Europe. Millions of deaths. Millions of souls. Anyone denying that would be history afaiac. I would definitely explain the purpose of the separation then I would never speak to her ever again. People like this need to learn, the hard way.

If you have to work with such people and can't avoid them altogether, at least keep your conversations strictly related to the task at hand.

When I was 12 my parents took me to Auschwitz. Growing up in Europe, I'd been to other camps before but never anything like that scale. The rooms full of hair, and shoes, and suitcases. The train tracks running right in the front gate at Birkenau, acres and acres of barracks, and the blown up gas chambers and crematoriums. Barracks 11 at Auschwitz main where they'd cram several people at a time into "standing cells" where there was no room to even sit down and leave them in there to suffocate. It was appalling, and I had nightmares for months.

At the time I was mad that they made me go. It literally terrified me. In hindsight I'm grateful that they took me there so I could see it for myself. That way if anybody ever tries to tell me that it didn't happen I can tell them to shove it right up their ass.

Fredward ^^^^^^ I am a firm believer that these type of people are destined to let events such as these repeat themselves...... Just like they are still deneying thing that are happening currently in our current time.. Highly suggest that you break ties with this person ASAP.. And if they ask why ..Then reply that they would not understand.............. drill sgt..

^^^
Yep.

"If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change, the devil changes you."

-Max California
8MM

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
.

They recorded it on video!

“If the average American is dumb, half the population is dumber”

Excuse my language but fuck her and all these people like her. Same thing with all these people that rant on about how PRESIDENT Trump is the new Hitler, how he's Russian asset, a traitor or any of the other bullshit they and the news media put out there. Same thing with all these actors or singers like De Niro or Bruce Springsteen. I USED to be a huge fan of them as well as others but every single movie or CD that they are in any connected to is gone from my house. I will not line their pockets with my money. How in the world, with all the visual evidence and the testimony from people that were there, can anyone say it didn't happen? My cousin married a Jewish man whose mother was in one of the camps. I saw the tattoo on her arm. Did she put it there herself? No, the nazis did. Sorry for the rant but people like this woman you are talking about nauseate me. They are a cancer on society. If it were me I would distance myself from her as fast as I could.

My wife's Armenian grandmother was shot by a German officer because "she looked like a Jew". The family was able to convince the German to have her taken to a hospital where she survived. She had been orphaned by the Turkish extermination of Armenians and sent to Rostov-on-Don to live with relatives.

Germany and some of the eastern European countries have laws against denying the Holocaust. I wouldn't make that kind of stupidity illegal, but I can understand the desire to do so.

There's more factual and physical basis for understanding this than there is that Genghis Khan existed, or that Ulysses Grant wasn't a teetotaler. If they cared, there are still survivors they could talk to.

If they don't believe footage, eyewitness testimony, survivors, physical evidence, captured documents, still-standing facilities that can be visited, confessions.... not sure what else one could throw at them that would be more substantial and get them over the hump.

I mean, yes there are philosophers that want you to even doubt that objective reality even exists, but these deniers don't seem to doubt that gravity exists, that they need to eat to live, that their cars won't go anywhere without gasoline.

Thus, IMO, it's got to be some mental deficiency.

So, yeah, I'm thinking the title of this thread should be 'my EX Friend is a Holocaust Denier'

I’d remove them from my life. We can agree to disagree on a great number of things. One or both of us can be wrong about any number of things. Denying the Holocaust is not one of those things.