Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

F. especially the Nazi- and the Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union
are responsible of murdering millions of people in an organized way;
whereas the holocaust ( the murder of millions of European Jews,
in close connection with it the murder of the Sinti and Roma carried
out by the Nazis – being the two cases in which the United
Nations officially speak of genocides) makes clear that the extinction
of human beings on the basis of so-called race was the raison
d’être of the German state; whereas, as far as crimes against humanity
and war crimes are concerned, the specific groups of victims,
events and locations both in the case of the Nazi- and the
Stalinist regime are too numerous to be able to avoid the danger of
neglect when making incomplete lists;
G. other regimes in Europe, mainly based on ultranationalist, antidemocratic,
anti-liberal and antisocialist ideologies are responsible
for suppression and mass murder as well, though the number of
victims and the degree of organisation of the Stalinist and Naziregimes
where on a much bigger scale;
H. the Stalinist and the Nazi-regimes were active accomplices, with
the Molotov-Ribbentrop-pact, of the division, the occupation and
suppression of Central and East European states while the Western
communist parties were ordered by the Comintern, as a power
instrument of Stalin, not to criticise the pact and stay neutral when
the Nazi-regime started World War II with the invasion of Poland
until the Nazis also invaded the Soviet Union;
I. European democracies had illusions and made false assessments
about the character and the goals of the Nazi-regime, thus giving
in at Munich 1938 which lead to the occupation of the Czechoslovak
Republic in 1938 and further preparations for war on the side
of the German Nazi-government.
J. in some countries occupied and suppressed both by the Nazis
and the Stalinists there had been authoritarian regimes immediately
before;
K. widespread anti-Semitic and racist ideologies, ultranationalist
attitudes in significant parts of the population lead to the involvement
in the Holocaust of sectors of the societies of the Nazioccupied
countries (in Western European countries through active
help by police forces to round up the domestic Jewish population
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Helmut Kuhne, Miguel Angel Martinez,
Justas Paleckis, Józef PiniorErich Fröschl