Talk:Responsibility for the Holocaust

Tony Judt highlights...

"Historian Tony Judt highlights how denazification and the subsequent fear of retribution from the Allies likely obscured justice due to some of the perpetrators and camouflaged underlying societal truths.[49]"

- What does this mean?

-who are the perpetrators?, perpetrators of what?

-Shouldn't it be 'perpertrator's' , and then an accompanying 'owned' subject.

- I think this sentence needs to be thoroughly re-written, and cite examined.

This line currently makes no sense, is grammatically incorrect. I think it is not a quote, but rather a very poorly transcribed paraphrase. I think this line is incomprehensible and unintelligible.

Further -

If you then look at the paragraph which this sentence is contained:

During the years 1945 through 1949, polls indicated that a majority of Germans felt that Nazism was a "good idea, badly applied". In a poll conducted in the American German occupation zone, 37% replied that 'the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans'.[47][h] Sarah Ann Gordon in Hitler, Germans, and the Jewish Question notes that the surveys are very difficult to draw conclusions from as respondents were given only three options from which to choose: (1) Hitler was right in his treatment of the Jews, to which 0% agreed; (2) Hitler went too far in his treatment of the Jews, but something had to be done to keep them in bounds - 19% agreed; and (3) The actions against the Jews were in no way justified - 77% agreed. She also noted that another revealing example emerges from the question of whether an Aryan who marries a Jew should be condemned, a question to which 91% of the respondents answered "No". To the question: "All those who ordered the murder of civilians or participated in the murders should be made to stand trial", 94% responded "Yes".[48] Historian Tony Judt highlights how denazification and the subsequent fear of retribution from the Allies likely obscured justice due to some of the perpetrators and camouflaged underlying societal truths.[49]

You can see it is of no relevance to the paragraph. The paragraph is nested within:-

Responsibility for the holocaust ------> German people ------> polling of German people 1949 and potentially misleading results due to poorly designed surveys -------> closing sentence says justice was likely obscured due to not having 94 percent of participants prosecuted.

This is an entirely different topic itself, I would welcome anyone to create a paragraph detailing prosecution rates, and the subjectivity of participation and it's accompanying scenario'd statistics, to see the level/likelihood of prosecution occurring against a war criminal/participant during Nuremburg/post WW2 Germany. And then detailing possible factors that contributes to this miss-match or rather, the definition of "participant' that is best reflected from the prosecution rates.... etc.

This sentence should be removed, it's just so confusing and out of context to the paragraph.

Recent edits re: state actors

I believe that the editing disagreement was about the addition of the table titled "Holocaust victims of Nazi Germany and its allies" to the top of the section "Responsibility_for_the_Holocaust#Involved". This appears to be relevant information, but the context seems to be lacking. The section itself discusses multiple countries that are not mentioned in the table, so perhaps there's a way to integrate this material better. Note: I was pinged on my talk page, but I also watch this page and had some questions. -- K.e.coffman (talk) 02:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I share those concerns, and am also concerned about the use of flags which gives undue prominence to the table. I'm also concerned about the precision given in the percentages (out to hundredths of a percent). HOw are these figured? Given that the number of victims isn't precisely known, I'm afraid that the precision in these figures gives the impression of too much precision that isn't really possible. And another concern is the use of "percentages" - I can easily see that someone will start saying that "Wikipedia says that Germany is responsible for 94.2% of the Holocaust" ... which is ... wrong. Ealdgyth (talk) 17:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree completely that the role of Axis countries (which were certainly not extensions of Germany) should not be understated but imo the table does exactly that. For example it suggests that the Hungarian state had no responsibility for deportation/deaths after March 1944. I don't think reliable sources support that pov. In addition not just Romania but arguably Slovakia also implemented most or all of the "steps".

A more problematic issue is that I don't think RS support the attribution of all Holocaust deaths to one specific state actor. In many cases responsibility could be disputed and/or might fall to multiple parties including non state actors. (t · c) buidhe 18:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

For those of you who commented, I must confess agreement, which is why I reverted it initially -- after which the editor added it back. This was a good faith edit poorly executed and without considering the myriad contents of the page in the aggregate. Since I do not wish to appear to be engaged in an edit war, it would be more suitable for one of you (buidhe, Ealdgyth, K.e.coffman) to take necessary actions on this content. --Obenritter (talk) 19:48, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I am the one who added that table. I concede to its reversion now, after reading all of the above. However, I would like to say a few things.

I got those numbers by simply summing the values in the source table. That source not only details the victims within each country (p. 20) but also their status relative to Germany (pp. 260-261). I thus found it a waste to not use this source. The lump sum - to which those shares are calculated - turned out to be 6,212,215. I realize no source may ever truly be right about the full account, but so long as it is in the 6 million ballpark, I figure it is acceptable.

The state responsibility, I maintain, can only truly be divided between Germany and its 5 sovereign allies. These had and they demonstrated the power to say "no" to German deportation demands. Not so the clients/puppets. Yes, Slovakia and Croatia may have come up with means, they may be liable for the details of the Holocaust in their respective lands, but the root was not with them. If the ends ultimately came down to accepting or refusing Nazi demands, these two and others could only comply with the former. Romania, pre-occ Hungary, Bulgaria, pre-occ Italy and Finland had real control over the ends. They could refuse outright (Romania, Finland, Italy) or "close the tap" (Bulgaria) after deporting some. These 5 had real control at the source, the others did not. Thus, broadly speaking, Germany did cause 94% of the Holocaust. Transylvania1916 (talk) 15:25, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

That's WP:OR - no reliable source says that "Germany caused 94% of the Holocaust" nor divides up the responsiblity in such numbers as given in the table. Ealdgyth (talk) 16:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Since when is doing basic math with RS OR? Transylvania1916 (talk) 16:17, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Since it presents the information in a way that no other RS presents it. I agree with the others about the table. Levivich (talk) 18:40, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

That's dumb. If the RS gives two numbers, and I present one as a share of the other, I'm not adding anything original. It's like the usual rewording we do in order to make edits in the first place, but with numbers instead of words. Math with the data given by the RS ain't OR, that's just stupid. Transylvania1916 (talk) 19:16, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

"The RS gives two numbers, and I present one as a share of the other" isn't what that table did. Levivich (talk) 21:39, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I made a new section below and nobody replied. Not sure if anyone saw or not. Transylvania1916 (talk) 07:02, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

New findings

I'm quite glad this section is still here. I found a new RS which states things pretty clearly. It's a Cambridge University Press source. I will give the Google Books link to the page, but just in case you don't have access to that particular page, I will also quote it: "The number of Jews whose deaths were caused by representatives of countries other than Germany was relatively limited, although not negligible: at least 300,000 (5%) of the total. Romanian forces destroyed about 250,000". In other words, we could still remake that table, although it would be different: it would only include Jews that were killed (rather than "deported and/or killed", like the former one), and it would only have 2 countries: Germany and Romania, with a general "Other" row for the remaining 50,000. Keep in mind that we are not talking about the ethnicity of the perpetrator here, but about sovereign governments. I still believe firmly that such a table would be a valuable addition, we need to address state responsibility for the killings as well. Transylvania1916 (talk) 14:19, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Sooo... Can I add this or not? They say "take it to the talk page" but nobody is talking... Transylvania1916 (talk) 07:34, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't much like the word "negligible" in there; it's highly subjective. We don't need to characterize the contents of the table or tell people what the table shows; and I don't think it be in the article before Hitler. Perhaps it should be down below where we already talk about other states. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 15:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

It came with the RS, feel free to delete it. I also don't really object to placing the table further down in the section; I simply operated on the assumption that countries outrank individuals. Transylvania1916 (talk) 15:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm still not sure we need the tiny table when a single sentence, as an intro to the "Other states" section, would suffice. "Most Jewish deaths (roughly 95%) were caused by Germans and their representatives; Romanian forces were responsible for some 4%, and other states the remainder." Or something like that. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 15:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Personal choice I guess. I prefer tables because I find them more expressive than plain text. But I concede that it may be overkill in this case. Transylvania1916 (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

The manner in which these flags are presented not only obfuscates the level of participation (willing and unwilling) by members of the participating countries, it does not line up with the aggregate information cited throughout the text. It's like somebody is trying to whitewash the other countries, when the rest of the research herein makes it clear they were highly culpable. It is not acceptable and why it has been reverted, again. These are not "new findings" but a reinterpretation and only one historian at that. Worse, the many thousands of Jews freely handed over by occupied nations (France or the Netherlands for instance) cannot and will not ever exonerate them from responsibility.--Obenritter (talk) 18:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

... And again, I seem to be talking to the walls. The table wasn't about nations, it was about states. Poland - as a state - did not exist during the Holocaust. Neither did the Baltics. Slovakia deported, yes, but left the actual killing to the Germans. As did Bulgaria. This is what that table was: states that killed. Have I failed to make myself clear? Transylvania1916 (talk) 19:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure consensus is against you on this, just as it was when you first started posting that data. Not sure what your point ever was entirely, but it only makes it appear as though you want everything to focus on the Germans and not all the other participating parties (no matter the guise). The article focuses on "responsibility", which was reflected by the actions and measures towards Jews before—which facilitated its perpetration—and during the Holocaust. What you fail to understand here is that the Nazis may have been the driver, but the majority of scholars have come to see the tacit anti-Semitism prevalent across Europe as one of its facilitation mechanisms. Read the article in its entirety and stop just cherry-picking some segment you read and applying it wholeheartedly. Concerning "making yourself clear"-- the only thing "clear" here is your failure to understand the article's overarching contents. --Obenritter (talk) 10:45, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Again: talking to the walls. It's not the Nazis being the "driver", it's the Nazis doing the killing. It was about which states did the actual killing. It's a very simple concept, I don't know why I have to keep repeating myself. Transylvania1916 (talk) 07:50, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Obenritter that this chart does not belong - it's an oversimplification of things and lends undue weight to one aspect of the responsibility issue. Ealdgyth (talk) 11:37, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Undue weight to killing? Transylvania1916 (talk) 21:08, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

The whole article is about killing. The numbers are already all over the article. A table saying "look, the Nazis did most of it" adds little, and is reductive of the collaboration by other states, relatively small as it may be. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 22:19, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

plagiarism

@Obenritter, your revert note is the wiki-language equivalent of "nuh-uh" and I would appreciate a fuller explanation of your revert here. I am sorry to come out of the gate with some hostility, but my edit removed obvious plagiarism.

• The text you reverted back into the article is not properly attributed - who is this "One distinguished Lithuanian historian?" It's certainly not the author of the source cited, who is Laurence Rees, an English historian.
• The text is closely paraphrased to the original. I've included the original text for your review. It's nearly the same. "A distinguished Lithuanian historian has identified five motivational factors for those who participated in the killings. Revenge (against those who had allegedly helped the Soviets oppress the population), expiation (for those who wanted to show their loyalty to the Nazis after collaborating with the Soviets), anti-Semitism, opportunism (a desire to adapt swiftly to the new situation in Lithuania) and self-enrichment."

This is clear violation of Wikipedia:Plagiarism. I have linked the relevant section, and the text I removed is an example of No in-text attribution, no quotation marks, text closely paraphrased, inline citation only. This kind of text should be removed or dramatically re-edited. I am happy to reach a more agreeable edit than just removing the text, but if you want the text to stay as-is, I am going to insist that a third party review it.

The most charitable reading of this text is that it is plagiarism. However, I have read the source book, The Holocaust, A New History, I am an avid reader of Rees. The text in the article is horribly out of context to the point of - intentionally or not - engaging in soft holocaust denial. I will repeat what I said in the edit - the source text is using the list to describe a particularly heinous Lithuanian death squad member, Petras Zelionka. He is not using the list to describe all Lithuanian motivations, but as a springboard for discussion of various war criminals' motivations. He even adds a characteristic that the text in the article suspiciously omits: sadism. Here is the text, with the context the plagiarizing text in this article omits. From page 219 of The Holocaust, A New History:

Zelionka, for example, was a member of a Lithuanian unit that took part in the killings. He felt justified in murdering innocent Jewish civilians partly because he believed that Jews had tortured Lithuanians during the Soviet occupation of the country — ‘we were told what they have done, how they used to kill even the women.’ He also reveals that his comrades relished the chance to steal from the Jews. Straightforward avarice could be just as much a reason to commit murder as anything ideological.

A distinguished Lithuanian historian has identified five motivational factors for those who participated in the killings. Revenge (against those who had allegedly helped the Soviets oppress the population), expiation (for those who wanted to show their loyalty to the Nazis after collaborating with the Soviets), anti-Semitism, opportunism (a desire to adapt swiftly to the new situation in Lithuania) and self-enrichment. Having met Petras Zelionka, I believe he matches four of those criteria. Only ‘expiation’ is doubtful in his case.*”

An additional motivational factor, not mentioned in this list, was one almost certainly possessed by both Petras Zelionka and Hans Friedrich — sadism. Even long after the war was over — Zelionka was interviewed in 1996 and Friedrich eight years later — neither expressed any remorse for their actions, and they both talked about the killings as if they had gained some base, sadistic kick out of murdering in this intimate way. Friedrich, for example, says that the Jews ‘were extremely shocked, utterly frightened and petrified, and you could do what you wanted with them’,** and Zelionka that he felt a sense of ‘curiosity’ as he killed children — ‘you just pull the trigger, the shot is fired and that is it.”

Rees is incredibly cautious in his writing to avoid questions of collective national guilt for the collaborators of the Holocaust. He does not pontificate on "his countrymen" like the text in the article claims, chiefly because he is English, but also because he prefers to focus on the people he interviews. This alone is proof that the text is lying about what the source says. The ranking of the list is particularly problematic, as the ranking places "revenge against those who aided the Soviets" as the primary motivation. The source does not say this, because the base of this motivation is an allegation of the murderers, not a historical fact. Rees notes this, the text in the article does not. The text in this article implies that the motivations of the murderers were based in truth. With the ranking, the article states that the Holocaust in Lithuania was primarily based in correctly targeted revenge against the Soviets, with antisemitism as an afterthought. In reality, the primary motivation of those who perpetrated the Holocaust was hatred of Jews. Stating otherwise is soft Holocaust denial. Read the source cited, and it is clear what Rees meant is not reflected in the article's out of context copying of his work. He correctly identifies the antisemitism innate to Lithuanian revenge and collaboration in pages 206-207:

It wasn’t just the Soviet forces in general who were blamed for all this suffering, it was the Jews in particular. ‘Many Lithuanian Jews became the political leaders, joined the police, says Petras Zelionka, who later collaborated with the German killing squads, ‘and everyone was saying that in the security department people were mostly tortured by Jews. They used to put the screws on the head and tighten them, thus torturing the teachers and the professors. While the idea that under Soviet rule Lithuanian prisoners were ‘mostly tortured by Jews’ was ludicrous, there was some basis for the belief that Lithuanian Jews were predisposed to be sympathetic to the Soviets. Many Lithuanian Jews had been pleased when the Soviets arrived — they knew, for instance, that in the Soviet Union the Communists had removed a number of the restrictions that the Jews had endured during Tsarist times. But although some Lithuanian Jews did subsequently manage to gain positions in local government and the security forces, thousands of other Jews were deported to Siberia after they had refused to accept Soviet citizenship.’ So the Jewish experience in Lithuania at the hands of the Soviets was a decidedly mixed one. It was also the case, of course, that many non-Jewish Lithuanians had collaborated with the Soviet occupiers. As the German troops marched on to Lithuanian soil it became convenient for these collaborators to focus attention on the Jews. By blaming the Jews they hoped to divert attention from their own complicity with the Soviets. They thus sought to ‘cleanse themselves with Jewish blood’.’ Not for the first — or last — time in this history, the Jews were a convenient scapegoat.

From WP:FOLLOWSOURCE: "Take care not to go beyond what the sources express or to use them in ways inconsistent with the intention of the source, such as using material out of context." The text in the article is an expression inconsistent with the intent of the source. It is a grossly unrepresentative copying of the work cited. It does not take care to note that the motivations are based onallegations, not historical fact. It is plagiarism, and soft holocaust denial.

I urge you to let me either rework or remove the text from the article. Carlp941 (talk) 08:25, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Carlp941 First off, let me say I appreciate your enthusiasm and intention to maintain academic integrity on Wikipedia. In this instance, I think you are correct on a couple of points, the first of which the text should have started with Lawrence Rees cites a Lithuanian historian, who identified five variables motivating Lithuanian perpetrators. These include: V, W, X, Y, and Z. However, Rees adds that sadism must also be included given his interviews with unrepentant perpetrators. (Rees, page number). We can start the "included" list with antisemitism, since your inference that the numbers represented a "ranked order" could occur with other readers.

However, a couple of problematic matters with regards to your assertion that this entry is simply plagiarism. It may be bad form, but it is correctable, vice deletion. The fact that a some of the words are verbatim merits potential quotation marks, but since numbers were added to a list not directly quoting the text, while meaning was being retained (or at least intended) suggests sloppy work, not marginalization or malevolence. It's certainly bad faith to label the entry outright Holocaust denial. Rees's point here is that these two perpetrators were especially heinous but that there were a number of factors at work, at least according to a Lithuanian historian. "Countrymen" in the original entry referred specifically to the perpetrators, not all Lithuanians. Right before Rees cites the "unspecified" Lithuanian historian, he wrote (which you included), "avarice could be just as much a reason to commit murder as anything ideological" and then he adds the factors to which the other historian alluded. Hatred of Jews is just one of the many variables but you emphatically write, the primary motivation of those who perpetrated the Holocaust was hatred of Jews. There are simply no monolithic explanations when a host of causes motivated individual participants. Lots of research has been done on this matter, especially since Jews were so well integrated in many of the countries where the worst atrocities happened. It's enigmatic that so much European-wide violence occurred save a complex congruence of factors instigated largely by the Nazis. However, the page also makes it clear that other nations had their share of problems with their Jewish population and thus, guilt, when the violence began. That's why it has to be viewed under a panorama for the sake of accountability.

Unfortunately, you took the numbered list from the original entry to be representative of some hierarchical order, when it was just the 5 factors (in no specific rank order)...whereby you inferred somehow that one (1) meant 'most prevalent'. This is unfortunate, which is why you correlated it to Holocaust denial. As one of the primary authors of this page and a PhD historian with a secondary specialization in modern Germany and the Third Reich—who abhors any trivialization of the Shoah—rest assured, it was not intentional. Go ahead and rewrite the content (retaining its general intent as I suggest in my first paragraph here, if you agree) and cite accordingly.--Obenritter (talk) 18:11, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank a ton for your good faith response. I once again apologize for my initial hostility, and can see now it was definitely misplaced. As with most interpersonal conflict, a misinterpretation was at the root of it! And it was mine.

We could get into the weeds on soft holocaust denial - but I trust your expertise and will defer to it. I merely have a minor in your field. I'll make the changes! Carlp941 (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Additionally, thank you for your academic work! it is vital - both in and out of wikipedia. Carlp941 (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Excellent -- sorry if my initial revert-explanation was inadequate. Misunderstandings are usually surmountable with some reasonable civic discourse and Talk Page "good faith" which you obviously showed. Keep up the good work and stay encouraged!--Obenritter (talk) 18:45, 25 October 2023 (UTC)