Clever. So you focus on the deaths of people. In that sense, one death is the same as any other, whether it is from war, disease, natural disaster, etc. Since death is death there is nothing more to be said about it, except lament and forget.
We are talking about deaths intentionally caused for no legitimate reason by murderous regimes,....and I think you know that.
The Holocaust was unique from previous persecutions in any number of ways. Previous persecutions were carried out by governments and entities that had no idea of the rule of law or citizens' rights.
Armenian genocide, 1914 - 1918 by the Ottoman Turks. Manipulated famine to cause deaths 1919 - 1923 by Lenin's Communist government. Ukraine genocide 1932 - 1933: 7 million dead by Stalin's Russain government. Japanese war crimes in the China/Burma theater, 1933 - 1945: millions dead. Do you SERIOUSLY contend that the governments responsible "had no idea of the rule of law or citizen's rights"?
The Jews of Germany theoretically were protected by the Weimar Constitution, a system of parliamentary laws and courts of justice.
The Ukranians were "theoretically" protected by the Soviet Constitution - the Armenians by the Ottoman constituion. It didn't help any more than Germany's did.
Prior persecutions were conducted by essentially barbarians without the ideas and outlooks of the Enlightenment.
...so your position is the Enlightenment "skipped" Turkey, Russia, and Japan?
The Holocaust was perpetrated by people who saw themselves, rightly, as the most advanced civilization that had ever existed,...
I've dealt with that canard in this thread already. One of the most advanced, perhaps. I seem to recall the airplane, motion picture, electric power, electric light bulb, telephone, vacuum tube, radio, television, phonograph, radar, proximity fuse, semi-automatic and automatic weapons, liquid fueled rocket, tank, aircraft carrier, synthetic rubber, synthetic silk, the atomic bomb, air conditioning, digital computer, etc. being invented in other countries...
advanced technologically,...
They were certainly nothing to sneeze at in that regard - but they were hardly in a league of their own.
legally,....
I would submit their very LACK of advencement "legally" is what lead to their doom. Great Britain and the United States had FAR more effective legal and political institutions in place.
artistically,...
Again, nothing to sneeze at, but nothing that the French, Italians, and (on a good day) the Russians couldn't match.
and morally.
...got some evidence for that assertion?
Previous persecutions were the result of religious agitation. In Germany many "Jews" died who were in fact practicing Catholics or Protestants but had a Jewish ancestor.
Its fairly well established that RACE, not religion, was the basis for the Nazi genocide. A twisted example of where the dark trail of eugenics can lead.
In previous persecutions, Jews could save their lives by converting to Islam (c'v) or, worse, Christianity.
Again, the Nazi theories were RACE, rather than RELIGION, based.
Why do you consider forced conversion to Islam to be preferable to forced conversion to Christianity?
In Germany there was no such out. In previous persecutions, the Jewish community could sometimes stave off violence by offering big bribes. In Germany there was, with one small exception, no such out. In previous persecutions Jews could leave the country and escape persecution. After a certain point Germany would not let them escape. Previous persecutions were local events, the Holocaust was part of a grand plan to wipe out the entire Jewish people.
What you say is true. What you leave out is it was also a "grand plan" to wipe out Slavs, Gypsies, Armenians, Poles, eventualy anyone who got in the way of "Greater Germany".
So when you lump the Holocaust in with Cambodia or Darfur or Bosnia or any number of other tragic slaughters you gain no insight into the event. It simply blurs together with so many others that no lesson or insight is possible.
That is one way of regarding the matter, and I can't fault you for holding to it. My counter postion is that by looking at the Jweish Holocaust ALONG WITH the manifold other tragedies, some common elements are manifest, and that by doing so, one might actually PREVENT a re-occurance. The common factors to almost all of these incidents are as follows:
A aggressive, violent, young government born out of warfare or revolution, and configured as a socialist oligarchy with a (paranoid) "strong man" leader.
A national belief that the "rest of the world is against us".
Economic turmoil with either natural or man-made (agriculteral reform...land reform) (or both) crop disruption, and runaway inflation or currency reform.
Racial, tribal, or religious strife, with one group singled out as "causing" or "profiting" from the current situation.
Blaming that minority group for "conspiring with enemies of the State".
Strong security apparatus, to not only carry out the extermination, but prevent leaking of the news to the outside.
A military unwilling or unable to function as a check on the government.
Corrupt or ineffective courts and legislatures.
A distracted international community and/or weak, corrupt, and ineffective organs of international governance (League of Nations, U.N.).
Its my hope that by looking at what the Jewish Holocaust has in common with other such recent examples of man's inhumanity to man that we can be alert to the conditions that spawn it, and take early action if need be to prevent it. Perhaps I am just a dreamer. I would like the term "Never again" to apply not only to the Jewish people, but to all people.