Quote:
Originally posted by Hawkeye
I think it's funny how you keep arbitrarily narrowing the definition of "holocaust" until it only refers to the Jews.
The Armenians were definitely singled out for wholesale industrial slaughter. Just as the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's problems, the Turks blamed the Armenians for their problems and had them systematically rounded up and killed.
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"The Holocaust" is a name, one that refers specifically to the murder of Jews in WWII. That's simply the way it is, not my fault. The word holocaust, however, is applicable to many more events in history, including for instance the Armenian genocide.
I am not narrowing down anything. Here's the two factors which, combined, make the difference between the slaughter of the Jews and the other slaughters in history:
- the scale
- the organized, bureaucratic, industrialized nature of it all
That makes the Holocaust (as opposed to holocausts) an unprecedented event.
Systematically rounding up and killing people dates back thousands of years. However, the combination of the scale and the way it was done are different from anything else in history.