People don't like to discuss who was killed in the holocaust. People don't like to discuss the fact that a higher percentage of European Roma were killed than of Jews. So thorough was the extermination of the Roma people of Bohemia that the Bohemian Romani dialect went extinct. People don't like to discuss that the gas chambers were originally designed for and operated in mental hospitals as a way of getting rid of the most undesirable undesirables: the mentally ill. People don't like to discuss that gays, "social deviants", Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, Freemasons, and the disabled were all sent to the death camps.

When you include Soviet POWs, political dissidents, various Slavic peoples, and members of "non-Aryan" races and you include the Serbs kill by the Nazi-puppet regime in Croatia – Jewish deaths, while still numbering higher than any one other group, account for a third or less of the holocaust victims. 6 million is the most cited number of holocaust deaths and it is an horrific number on its own, but it only represents the number of Jews killed. The total number of holocaust victims will never be exactly known, detailed records simply don't exist. But when taking into account all the victims, that number is in the neighborhood of 18 to 20 million.

The crimes of the Nazis against the Jews should not be forgotten, nor should they be downplayed. However, the crimes of the Nazis were not only against Jews — they were crimes against humanity.

The holocaust did not begin with the Jews or gays or the Roma peoples or even the political dissidents. The holocaust began in the psychiatric institutions. The first gas chambers installed by the Nazis were in the "hospitals". The skills that would in later years be used against other groups were developed in those institutions. It was under the auspices of psychiatry that it began.

The politics of psychiatry are dangerous, and recent history shows the appetite for forced psychiatry has not abated. Mental patients are one of the most vulnerable groups. "Normal" people fear the mad. They feel they need to be protected from us. We need to be controlled. And of course - they always know best for us.

I've heard people who would cringe at the oppression of any other group casually declare "Why would I care about a bunch of crazy people?". When people take the attitude that something needs to be done to "help" the mentally ill, they usually take the NAMI/TAC approach of forced drugging/electroconvulsive therapy/imprisonment. These approaches are not really about helping the mad, only about shutting us up. The website of the NAMI affiliated Treatment Advocacy Center , which purports to be about helping mental patients, instead relies almost entirely on fearmongering — the evil crazy people are coming to kill your cops and throw you under a train. They must be controlled.

In my more optimistic moments I hope that "sane" people figure out that what is now done to us may effect them also. The realm of psychiatry is expanding, more and more of who were once considered "sane" are being given the label "insane". The expansion of who is insane is aimed at anyone who isn't happy and productive and non-questioning of the standard paradigm. No one is "safe" from being redefined, and if you find yourself in mourning for longer than two weeks when you most dear loved one dies, you may be joining the rest of crazies who may have at one time been called human.

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The printing of deeply offensive cartoons depicting Muhammad should be...

The printing of deeply offensive cartoons depicting the Holocaust should be...

The Catholic church is now claiming that Hitler plotted to kidnap Pope Pius XII. I don't believe it. Sure, if Hitler saw profit in it, I wouldn't put it past him. But the Pope was turning a blind eye to what the Nazis were doing. Hitler couldn't have asked for a more forgiving Pope. It's just a stunt by the church as they are close to making Pope Pius XII a saint, and they want to make it seem like he was against Hitler's atrocities. The Catholic church is embarrassed and is grasping at straws to justify it's behavior.