vitimas não judias do holocausto

Overlooked Millions: Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust

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Karen Silverstrim, MA Candidate University of Central Arkansas

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The genocidal policies of the Nazis resulted in the deaths of about as many Polish Gentiles as Polish Jews, thus making them co-victims in a Forgotten Holocaust. This Holocaust has been largely ignored because historians who have written on the subject of the Holocaust have chosen to interpret the tragedy in exclusivistic terms--namely, as the most tragic period in the history of the Jewish Diaspora. To them, the Holocaust was unique to the Jews, and they therefore have had little or nothing to say about the nine million Gentiles, including three million Poles, who also perished in the greatest tragedy the world has ever known. Little wonder that many people who experienced these events share the feeling of Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, who anxious when the meaning of the word Holocaust undergoes gradual modifications, so that the word begins to belong to the history of the Jews exclusively, as if among the victims there were not also millions of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and prisoners of other nationalities. -- Richard C. Lukas, preface to The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944

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In the American consciousness the Holocaust has become synonymous with Jewish history. Historical literature of the Holocaust has focused on the six million Jewish victims to the exclusion of the sixteen to twenty million Gentile victims. How is it possible to define an historic event based on the lives of six million Jewish people and not acknowledge the millions more Gentile lives that were also lost? It is understandable that the historiography of the Holocaust emphasizes the Jewish people since they were the single most persecuted group by the Nazis, but why have they become the only focus? There were thousands of victims during the Holocaust. Many victims survived and many did not. The victims described here are those who died during the Holocaust or immediately after as a direct result of mistreatment during the Holocaust. Victims of the Holocaust are those groups of people targeted for immediate death by the Nazis and their accomplices, or treated in such a way so as to knowingly lead to their eventual deaths. Victims come from many countries throughout Europe and are not limited to strictly victims in Germany during World War II.

The Holocaust was more than a Jewish event. Records kept by the Germans prove they exterminated millions of Communists, Czechs, Greeks, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally and physically handicapped, Poles, resistance fighters, Russians, Serbs, Socialists, Spanish Republicans, trade unionists, Ukrainians, Yugoslavians, prisoners of war of many nations, and still others whose identity may never be recognized.(1) Their victims, according to one survivor of four different

concentration camps, "were of some thirty nationalities, from Nepalese to Andorrans, and of a variety of racial and linguistic stocks ranging from Basques to Buriats and from Ladinos to Lapps".(2) When people were not immediately exterminated, they were sent to work and/or concentration camps. There the prisoners were divided into six penal categories and given patches on their clothing for identification purposes. Ordinary criminals were assigned green; political prisoners wore red; black was worn by asocials (slackers, prostitutes, procurers, etc.); homosexuals wore pink; conscientious objectors wore purple, and the Jewish people wore yellow.(3)

Humankind has always formed groups according to kinship, religion, nation, or other identity. Those not of the recognized group were outsiders, who became targets during times of upheaval. When the Nazis victimized the Jewish people, blaming them for Germany's loss during World War I and for the economic crisis during the 1930s, this was not new. The Jewish people had been outsiders in one form or another throughout the Christian world since the crucifixion of Christ. Two aspects of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, however, differed from any history had seen. The Nazis mobilized the resources of the state to single out the Jews to a degree which was unprecedented.(4) Unlike other instances of Jewish persecution, however, this anti-Semitism was something more; it also included other people not connected to the Jews. Policies and practices designed to exterminate one group of people (the Jews) were also employed to eliminate other people based on their race, religion, politics, health, or sexual orientation. The Nazis' extermination program was like a large fishing net which swept across the land, snaring people of many backgrounds.

Elie Wiesel, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, has said, "while not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims," so careful handling of the definition of the Holocaust is important. No one can deny that Jewish people were the primary targets of the Nazis, nor should one belittle their suffering. But neither should the millions of other victims of the Nazis be forgotten. The same respect and remembrance afforded the Jewish victims should be extended to include the non-Jewish victims as well.

The Nazis sought to annihilate all Jews and all enemies of the state. Every Jew was to be wiped out, but not necessarily every Russian, Serb, or Yugoslavian. That millions of non-Jews were also killed demonstrates the determination and magnitude of the Nazi extermination program to eliminate anyone who could even remotely be considered an enemy of the state. Current estimates based on documents from Nazi war records, and official government documents of various countries, place the death toll of people murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust as conservatively over 15 million non-combatant people.(5) One official source estimates the number killed at 26 million.(6) However, "with the mass graves on the eastern front, exact figures will never be known".(7)

These figures represent a common denominator between Jews and Gentiles -- total lives lost. The "six million" figure used for Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust includes deaths attributable to starvation, beatings, street executions, concentration camp deaths, overwork, and relocations, to name just a few of the categories. Nazis targeted Jews for complete extermination and used whatever means were necessary and available. Many non-Jewish victims also died in concentration camps by gassing, lethal experiments, starvation, overwork, or beatings, but a greater number perished because of the aggressive tactics of the Nazis in rounding up their victims and in street assassinations.

The death toll reported in Table 1 is of civilian lives lost unless otherwise noted. The Nazis deliberately killed these people who were undesirable to the Nazi vision of an Aryan state. Jews were the most intensely targeted victims, but the common denominator for all victims was death.As is obvious from Table 1, no single group of people suffered as devastating a loss as did the Jewish people. Ukrainian deaths, however, ranged from five and a half million to seven million. The Ukrainian deaths represent an area of conflict for people determining who were victims of the Holocaust and whose deaths should be counted as Holocaust-related. The Ukrainian and Russian people were at various times during the war both victims and perpetrators. Should the vast majority of Ukrainian civilians killed by Nazis and Russians be discounted if some small group of Ukrainians turned perpetrator and killed Jews? Do Holocaust deaths only include people killed by the Nazis? Do Holocaust deaths only include those killed on German soil? Do Holocaust deaths only include deaths attributable to gassings in concentration camps?

Table 1 Estimates of Non-Combatant Lives Lost During the Holocaust

Ukrainians 5.5 - 7 million

Jews (of all countries) 6 million +Russian POWs 3.3 million +Russian Civilians 2 million +Poles 3 million +Yugoslavians 1.5 million +Gypsies 200,000 -

500,000Mentally/Physically Disabled 70,000-

250,000Homosexuals Tens of

thousandsSpanish Republicans Tens of

thousandsJehovah's Witnesses 2,500 - 5,000Boy and Girl Scouts, Clergy, Communists, Czechs, Deportees, Greeks, Political Prisoners, Other POWs, Resistance Fighters, Serbs, Socialists, Trade Unionists, Others

Unknown

Table assembled from figures quoted by Milton; Lukas 38-39, 232; Gilbert 824; Berenbaum 123; and Holocaust Internet information sites.