From: Peter Gannushkin <shkin@shkin.com>
"Leaving aside how much people each of them killed I would still claim that there was nothing compared to the Holocaust and if we will remember it there will be nothing like that in the future I hope."
I ask this question seriously and don't mean to be confrontational or playing devil's advocate: Why does nothing compare to the Holocaust? Surely there have been other (attempted) genocides. I'm not so sure why first we have to rank historical atrocities and then accord the Holocaust top honors. Or why we must view Hitler as not only a historical figure but the embodiment of pure evil. Is what he did any more evil than the genocide of the Native Americans or the Armenians? Or the hundreds of years of trans-Atlantic slavery? These questions especially bother me because growing up Jewish I felt that Jewish identity (at least of the middle-class American variety) was largely defined negatively, around victimhood. I always got the impression that it was important to be a Jew because my grandparents had to leave Poland and Germany and it was my responsibility to repopulate the race. Or by not being observant I'd be betraying my family. I never felt too much of any real religious conviction and was sickened at how the basic ethical concerns of Judaism were never followed. Ben _________________________________________________________________ Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee when you click here. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963