The Holocaust Wasn’t Racist?
There’s been a fair amount written about the incredible lack of knowledge displayed by Whoopi Goldberg about The Holocaust. It’s been going on for about a year now, starting in late January, 2022. I’m not criticizing Whoopi Goldberg. I honestly think that she is caught up in crazy avoidance of education about The Holocaust that we see today in the US and the incredible emphasis on only one sort of racism and racist behavior at the same time. To the point where basically is saying that The Holocaust was a white on white thing, not a racist thing.
Naturally this hit me right in the FUD feels and I felt I had to respond. This definitely called for a whiskey, a cigar, and my trusty keyboard!
What’s the issue? A recap.
A brief recap, if you aren’t sure what this is all about. Whoopi Goldberg said, during a live segment of The View, that ““If you’re going to do this [Removing the graphic novel “Maus” from classrooms in a specific school district”], then let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race.” She then apologized for this, but not very well. And then last week, Goldberg defended what she said in January. Now that we are caught up, on to the reality of the Nazi’s, the Holocaust, racism, visually marking folks, and more that occurred in the Third Reich (as the Nazi’s referred to Germany from 1933 to 1945).
Side Note: I’m going to include extensive links to the history I talk about below. It appears to me that WW2, Nazism, The Holocaust are not taught well in our government education system anymore. The links are to help my readers that don’t have a strong background in the subject.
Categorization and Classification in Germany
Long before Hitler came to power, the Germans were tracking people by who their ancestors were and categorizing them by race, religion, gender, and much more. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, this was a key mechanism that enabled the persecution of the Jews. It wasn’t until 1941, though, that the Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, regardless of what part of Germany or conquered territories they were in. But, by then they had all been documented anyhow, many years before. This visible marking was more to make very clear that they were Jewish, and thus available for any sort of abuse, casual or planned, than anything else.
Jews Clearly Identified
The worst pogrom of the Nazi regime in the pre-war years was Kristallnacht. Contrary to Whoopi’s contention that Germans couldn’t tell if you were Jewish unless you were wearing a Yellow Star of David, the Germans knew precisely which people, homes, businesses, churches, etc were Jewish. And deliberately targeted them over and over again. Kristallnacht happened before any of the policies were implemented to create the Final Solution.
Everything Was Racial
In Hitler’s Germany, everything was racial. Every person was categorized as to what they were, how pure they were, and so on. Your race and religion was on your birth certificate, which was filed with the local municipal government. And then the National Socialist government investigated church, synagogue, parish, city, village, etc records. They amassed all the official and unofficial data possible about every person in Germany. That enabled the state and national governments to maintain records of racial categorization for everyone. The most common, because of Germany being in Central Europe, was German, Jewish, Romani (i.e. Gypsy) and then the countries of origin if you were not a native citizen of Germany.
But those were certainly not the only ones. Various types of Asian and African descent were categorized, as well. Weirdly, Arabs were on the “good” list and Jews were on the “evil” list. It is weird considering that in terms of ethnicity and genetics, they should be essentially the same. However, in the warped evil of Nazi racial theory, Arabs and Jews are not the same “race”.
Categorization and Visual Identification
Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Political Enemies (socialists, communists, liberal democrats, etc.), Criminals, Jehovah’s Witnesses (yes, they were a separate grouping), and Socially Unwanted all have different badges that they had to wear visibly. If they originated in a country other than Germany, then the country of origin was also on the badge.
Everything in National Socialist Germany was about race, politics, religion, and category of behavior. It determined your position in society and what privileges you had. No one had what we would call rights, because the State was supreme. If this sounds like how we categorize people in the US, well, it is an early form of what happened in Germany. And could certainly form the basis for such a system here.
The Bottom Line
In Germany, your skin color was far less important than your race/religion/politics/etc. Whoopi Goldberg would have been persecuted for her Jewish ancestor, if she has one (Whoopi Goldberg is her stage name), before her skin color. Which is not to say that skin color wasn’t a big deal, just that it was less serious than being Jewish or Gypsy, for example.
Side note: there is no option on the US census for “Jewish” because the US has never considered that a race. But the US government’s racial classifications are completely un-scientific and anti-freedom anyhow and should be done away with. And has nothing to do with National Socialist Germany and their policies, beliefs, etc.
