reminder that simon wiesenthal purposely advocated for people to use the 11 million death toll for the holocaust because he knew that gentiles wouldn’t care if the victims were jewish.

in other words, the holocaust was mainly being used to describe the particularly jewish genocide at the time when wiesenthal started advocating for it not to be.

thus, “the holocaust” slowly went from describing the jewish genocide to an umbrella term for all nazi genocides, including generalplan ost, the porajmos, aktion t4.etc

in 1979, simon wiesenthal specifically told this to the washington post (including screenshot of the specific quote, and link to the article)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/04/01/the-hunters-remembrance/4ae9e55d-29d5-4cea-820e-db3b1f6a36b5/?p9w22b2p=b2p22p9w00098&no_nav=true&tid=a_classic-iphone

there is an article that specifically goes into detail about this, but to summarize: the 5 million gentiles number was carefully chosen and became included in the holocaust death toll specifically in order for gentiles to care about it. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.jta.org/2017/01/31/united-states/remember-the-11-million-why-an-inflated-victims-tally-irks-holocaust-historians/amp

NOTE: there is a portion within this article that i think minimizes the suffering of non-jewish groups targeted by the nazis.

the point of me making this thread is to discuss how the 11 million number was created for a specific reason, not this—this is gross and wrong.

essentially, there is no historical basis for an 11 million number for the holocaust because it was made up. there were actually more victims of the nazis than that, but the term “the holocaust” was reserved for the jewish genocide before this, rather than other nazi genocides.

the 11 million number was specifically chosen because 5 million gentiles is slightly less than the 6 million jewish victims, so that it would be enough for gentiles to care about it, but still had a slight emphasis on the jewish victims.

i am writing about this because it is very clear that simon wiesenthal’s idea has had a lot of influence. whenever i, a jewish person, specifically talk about the jewish genocide, someone says that i am erasing 5 million non-jewish victims.

it’s why the white house was effectively able to make a statement on holocaust remembrance day in 2017 that completely omitted references to both jewish and gentile groups targeted by the nazis and makes it seem as if these victims all went through the exact same genocide.

the fact of the matter is that they didn’t all go through the same genocide. the nazis had different plans and methods for each of the groups they were targeting. what happened to each group should be acknowledged separately for that reason.

but it must be understood why simon wiesenthal did this.

in my own experience, a lot of gentiles simply don’t care about jewish suffering—and i know this is a common experience amongst all marginalized groups, where the people outside of that group largely don’t care.

that particular phenomenon is why simon wiesenthal, a jewish shoah survivor, included 5 million gentiles in the death toll of the genocide that specifically referred to the jewish victims. he knew it would happen, they wouldn’t care about jews unless gentiles were included too.

because of all this, jewish people have started to use the term “the shoah” to specifically describe the jewish genocide.

gentiles, please let this word be reserved for the jewish genocide.

so gentiles, next time you see someone talk about the particular jewish genocide and you’re thinking of saying, “but what about the 5 million other victims,” i’m gonna just have to ask you to stop.