Jerusalem Post writer Tom Gross is a wanker of the first order (bugmenot required). He seems to be implying that if you say the Nazi death camps killed a lot of gypsies, that makes you a Holocaust denier.
"The Guardian also couldn’t resist greatly exaggerating the numbers of Roma (Gypsies) who died in the camps. (Perhaps the paper isn’t aware that inflating the number of Roma and homosexuals killed by the Nazis, in order to try to de-emphasize the Jewish centrality of the Holocaust, is now a favorite trick of revisionist historians.)"
I’ve read the Guardian’s coverage around Holocaust Memorial Day. It appears to have no data at all concerning Roma deaths. It does say "(Roma, communists and gays also suffered and died in the camps)", and "Six million Jews died in the Nazi camps, along with millions of others, including Roma gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents of the Nazis, homosexuals, beggars, alcoholics and mentally ill and disabled people".
Independent stats suggest that 500,000-1.5 million Roma died in the Holocaust (absolute numbers are hard to come by since the prewar Roma population was fairly definitionally rather hard to count). If I were a gypsy, I’d be strongly inclined to punch Mr Gross in the head.
They said that at the official commemoration too. They also remembered the non-Jews who died there. Aside from the idiocy of taking that as outrageously offensive to Jews, there’s an extra level of idiocy in picking the Guardian for something said by Polish and Jewish representatives in the very ceremony that was televised worldwide. What a wanker indeed. The wingnuts just can’t let slip any occasion for silly polemics, then they preach about respecting the memory of those who died. Bleh.
There’s a program on BBC2 tonight about how the deaf were victimised/sterliised/murdered in Nazi Germany. I’ll bet you a week’s wages there will be a post on an anti-Beeb hate site within the week that explains how programs like that have an agenda to dilute Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. Bollocks of course – if you watched any channel other than the Beeb (and radio stations), you wouldn’t have known there was a recent Auschwitz anniversary at all.
Anti semitism is wrong and so is abuse of any ethnic group. The writer was prbaly anti gypsy, and wanted to try and supress any crtic or gypsies. In my area there are loads of scum bags who hate gypsies and i am sure they would want to supres the persecution of gypsies.