Rex Kerr
1 min readFeb 18, 2022

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The Holocaust is well-studied because of its horrifying scope (in terms of both the number of people killed and the fraction of people killed of the targeted group) and because of its accessibility (West Germany transitioned rapidly to a liberal democracy interested in transparency about such things) and recency (1940 is not that long ago, and people were of sufficiently modern mindset that they were horrified). Even if the Jews had not been effective advocates for themselves (which they were), this would have rendered the Holocaust the best-studied example of genocide in the 20th century.

That the Jews tend to be called white (even though even Ashkenazi Jews still have a substantial Middle-Eastern genetic heritage) is not particularly relevant, as evidenced by the Armenian genocide receiving comparatively little attention despite them looking at least as white as a typical Ashkenazi Jew. (Or the Nazi genocide of ethnic Poles; the Poles were whiter.)

I don’t think the other genocides should be completely neglected — the Nazis, for instance, killed a lot of non-Jewish people and that absolutely shouldn’t be forgotten yet too often is — but the Holocaust has particular use as a teaching tool, so avoiding it is foolish or antisemitic, depending on one’s reasons for avoiding it. It is also foolish to say that the Holocaust isn’t about race, because to the people perpetrating it it certainly was, and race is a social construct (so you’d better pay attention to how it’s constructed by the people with the power to murder millions).

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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