What do you think of holocaust survivors who became vegetarians because...?
Because the way they were treated is identical to the way animals are treated at slaughterhouses? If you have not had the opportunity to read Eternal Treblinka, I highly recommend it as Holocaust survivors draw the parallels between the way they were treated, such as being stuffed into overcrowded cattle carts and kept in pig pens before they could be transported, to the way animals are treated. The human slaughter houses for Jews and other people were mirrored from their animal slaughterhouse counter parts. For example,Although the purpose of the German killing centers was the extermination of human beings, they operated in the larger context of society's exploitation and slaughter of animals, which to some extent they mirrored. The Germans did not stop slaughtering animals when they took up slaughtering people. Auschwitz, which its commandant Rudolf Hoss called "the largest human slaughterhouse that history had ever known," had its own slaughterhouse and butcher's shop. The other death camps likewise kept their personnel well supplied with animal flesh. Sobibor had a cow shed, pigpen, and hen house, which were next to the entrance to the tube that took Jews to the gas chambers, while Treblinka had a stable, pigpen, and hen house located near the camp barracks of the Ukrainian auxiliaries. Hitler also showed little sympathy for the vegetarian cause in Germany. When he came to power in 1933, he banned all the vegetarian societies in Germany, arrested their leaders, and shut down the main vegetarian magazine published in Frankfurt. Nazi persecution forced German vegetarians, a tiny minority in a nation of omnivores, either to flee the country or go underground. The German pacifist and vegetarian, Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, fled to Paris and then to Italy where the Gestapo arrested him and sent him to the Dauchau concentration camp (see Chapter 8). During the war Germany banned all vegetarian organizations in the territories it occupied, even though vegetarian diets would have helped alleviate wartime food shortages. When I was young, a man came to my school who was a holocaust survivor and he also noted that he was a vegetarian because he remembers the names he was called by Nazi officers, and the way he was treated like a piece of garbage and he saw the Nazi officers mirrored in the way we treat animals. So, most people will ignore the question and simply comment,"How dare you!?" but in reality, the similarities are to predominant to ignore. Who could possibly look a holocaust survivor in the face and say,"How dare you compare the horrors you have suffered to animals."? I'm interested to know every ones answers and I'll leave you with a quote, "Our grandchildren will ask us one day: Where were you during the Holocaust of the animals? What did you do against these horrifying crimes? We won't be able to offer the same excuse for the second time, that we didn't know." -Dr. Helmut Kaplan Deer Hunter: I am not the one that stated the comparison, I am simply providing you with the information that Holocaust survivors have stated the comparison themselves. One holocaust survivor (The name doesn't come to me, my book is not at hand) claims that the fact that many still consumed meat when they escaped the death camps means that they learned nothing, that it was all in vain, and that we are doomed to repeat ourselves again. Dion J: You are avoiding the question. And I apologize for the racist remark that Fireball made to you; that is absolutely uncalled for. Statickema: Nothing within your answer remotely applies to my question. Where within my question do I wish that Jewish people were slaughtered "humanely"? I wish they were not slaughtered at all, I wish the same for animals, but that was not my question. Once again, you have avoided the question itself and left an unrelated statement in place of a logical answer. 2 Deer Hunter: I reported her as well. There is no need for comments like that , especially on a question like this which relates to such a sensitive subject. She is absolutely despicable. statickema 2: If by "we" you mean you and I, then yes we probably do treat our animals better than Hitler treated the victims of the Holocaust. If by "we" you mean society as a whole and the meat industry, then you are gravely mistaken. If parallels were being drawn over seventy years ago to our treatment of animals and the holocaust victims, imagine how much worse it is today with the invention of factory farms.
