Pope Benedict XVI is moving to revoke the excommunication of four bishops; one of which, British-born Bishop Richard Williamson, has recently said that "historical evidence" was against six million Jews dying in Nazi gas chambers.
The mainstream press is reporting it as 'the bishop who denies the Holocaust,' but the out of context quote is not misleading me to believe that there was no Holocaust based on the bishop's statement.
His statement may be interpreted in several ways. One of which is the debate over the presence of gas chambers; second, it may suggest that there was no 'deliberate' attempt to 'gas' Jews by the Nazis; and lastly, it may simply argue about the figure, six million. None of those interpretations should automatically be considered a denial of the Holocaust.
But as a learned bishop, surely he's not a nut. Or is he? And he is not alone. Remember Mel Gibson? Or his dad who never denied the Holocaust but only argued with the amount killed, by stating, 'there couldn't be six million Jews killed; they're all in Brooklyn.' The senior Gibson argued that many European Jews counted as Nazi victims were not in fact killed but rather fled.
I don't want to be labeled as an anti-Semite, but I've always drawn some parallels between the Holocaust and 'Genocide' of Armenians by the Turks.
Yes, there were many Armenian-Turks killed; some as a result of forced relocation/deportation, others of disease, and yet some others via killings and murders, mass or otherwise. Turks also have claims of the same against those same Armenian Turks. Both sides suffered great losses. But the 1.5 million figure has always been a question mark in my head, as has the actual 'deliberate' policy, followed by a campaign, of the then Turkish government to eradicate and wipe-out the Armenians, with clear intent.
Obviously, arguing about the quantity of the number of killed is not relevant to the validity of a 'Genocide' or a 'Holocaust.' Even one is one too many. But studying the reasons, effects, and facts should be explored at all costs. Was Hitler and Nazi Germany trying to eliminate the Jewish faith, or the Jewish ethnicity? That's just one of the questions not satisfactorily addressed.
What about the current Pope's ethnicity? Is the German holy man paying homage to his own nation's dark past? Are the reports of his own past of sympathizing with the Nazis a fabrication or a matter of concern? Did being a Nazi mean you were for the Holocaust and/or hate Jews? Have you watched Valkyrie?
But in any case, does this latest in a series of statements made by the higher-ups in the Vatican cause a rift between Catholics and those who are Jewish? And is it justified? Should we just simply believe in the Holocaust, and gas chambers, as well as the six million figure, in their totality, and not one or the other, without any debate and a historical basis, as the good bishop suggests, at the expense of being declared a heretic at best, or an anti-Semite at worst?
