Remember all when speaking of holocaust

When we speak of holocaust in history we should, to be accurate, use the plural. I refer to the new memorial in Des Moines.

The Armenian Holocaust (1915) accounted for more than a million deaths. Timothy Snyder's recent book, “Bloodlands,” reveals that the two decades (1930s and 1950s) were the most murderous in European history with a minimum of 14 million killed or deliberately starved to death. Nor does this 14 million include those killed in combat. Nine-tenths of casualties were from ethnic coups, 700,000 Ukrainians were starved to death by the Soviets; Poles, Latvians and Kulacs endured their own holocausts and the Romany, when their population is compared to that of the Jews, actually lost more of their people, killed by the Nazis.

But when the American Memorial to the Holocaust was built, Jewish organizations decided to make no reference to this lest they “lose political capital.” Of that 14 million lost,

3 percent were Jews. Hence, the importance of inclusion, to be fair, of all groups who succumbed.

Such horrendous events always give rise to myths over time, including those which have attached to the Jewish holocaust. This in no way reduces the horror of such events. The examples of man's depravity to his fellow men must be guarded against and remembered.

Wilhelmine Bennett

Iowa City