World War II, Shoah and Genocide
International Conference “The Holocaust: Remembrance and Lessons” 4 - 5 July 2006, Riga, Latvia Evening lecture at the Big Hall of Latvian University The Holocaust in its European Context Yehuda Bauer Allow me please, at the outset, to place the cart firmly before the horse, and set before you the justification for this paper, and in a sense, its conclusion. The Holocaust – Shoah – has to be seen in its various contexts. One context is that of Jewish history and civilisation, another is that of antisemitism, another is that of European and world history and civilisation. There are two other contexts, and they are very important: the context of World War II, and the context of genocide, and they are connected. Obviously, without the war, it is unlikely that there would have been a genocide of the Jews, and the war developments were decisive in the unfolding of the tragedy. Conversely, it is increasingly recognized today that while one has to understand the military, political, economic, and social elements as they developed during the period, the hard core, so to speak, of the World War, its centre in the sense of its overall cultural and civilisational impact, were the Nazi crimes, and first and foremost the genocide of the Jews which we call the Holocaust, or Shoah. The other context that I am discussing here is that of genocide – again, obviously, the Holocaust was a form of genocide. If so, the relationship between the Holocaust and other genocides or forms of genocide are crucial to the understanding of that particular tragedy, and of its specific and universal aspects.
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