This is a rather nebulous and unclear point to make about the holocaust but one that needs be mentioned at least in passing. And that is the "allegoric" or "poetic" style of recounting an event. Specifically that there is a wide divergence between what western and eastern Europe consider a truthful recounting, even in court.

      What this means in practice is that the western "tell me about" is about the same as the eastern "tell me a story about." In both cases there is an expectation, the former closest to the Aristotelian facts and in the latter the closest story to the facts.

      Of course this is also the traditional method of communication that is decades out of style today in the east but it is centuries out of style in the west. But when people were telling stories of the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe it was the way to communicate.

      This is not to suggest that one could not get a factual account from the east or a story from the west. This is to point out the different means of communication and relative emphasis on factual and allegorical contributions to the recounting.

      And one more point before continuing. The western European approach was rather hard won from the world. And the Eastern Europe was not limited to the names geographers gave to the continents. That means that the Near East of Asia and Eastern Europe are simply variations of the same way of thinking.

      And I will point out that realizing there is more than one way to think is quite difficult. To help you realize this, consider how few "westerners" are committed to analytic thought and how many install beliefs over what they observe and learn. In the "east" the difference is in the quality, the best fit, for the allegory.

      If you think this is strange, let me give you something from ordinary life. If a person reports something very out of the ordinary such as a UFO or something like Bigfoot the first question or inference or whatever is that the person was drinking. Yet in fact there is zero, none, zilch, nada association of drinking with hallucinations. But it is a part of our culture to assume there is a connection even though we all know (at least those of us who drink know) there is no such association. Thus clearly false associations become common to our culture.

      That was a long build up. What it means is that eastern communication is meant to convey feelings not facts. And that it is an error to take such stories as facts or even related to facts. They are related to feelings.

      This kind of thinking has always been common. Consider the old stories of a great man's death, something miraculous would happen. The sun would come out at night or the stars would shine at noon. The intent was never a literal description but rather to convey the magnitude of the feelings of the writer or the importance of the event.

      Great conquests would be preceeded by a sign in the heavens. The birth of the great would be greeted by signs and wonders. These people communicated in terms of stories.

      With this we come to Eastern European stories of Nazi occupation. It felt terrible. Therefore stories conveying the feeling were told.

      Where a westerner might say, "It was as terrible as if they had shot my entire family," an easterner would say, "They shot my entire family," and mean the same event. You can see this in the occupation where the same troops, acting under the same orders and in the face of the same provocation are reported, to the western mind, to have acted entirely differently in the east and west.

      Where in the west we have retaliation against partisans, Aristotelian cause and effect, in the east the same people show up and commit unprovoked (causeless) attrocities. In the west they are portrayed as over-reacting or acting rashly while in the east they act out of personal malice, personal evil. In the west there was a system to their actions, in the east all was chaos, irrational acts that did not have to make sense to the western mind.

      What we fail to note in the west is that "they killed 8000 in a single night" is the same as "they killed 8 good people fighting for their country" in the west. The western tragedy of good people dying in a noble cause hurts. In the east that hurt is told as a story to convey the magnitude of that hurt.

      In like manner, killing the community leaders is retold and destroying the community. It is the same story when the leaders are from the traditional families and not elected. When a ghetto is said to be liquidated that means its leadership was removed.

      If you understand what I am getting at there is no need for me to go further. If you do not I can only say that I am working on some larger essays to explain it better. Bear with me until a later date.

      But if you have followed me, you can see why there is such emotional support for holocaust stories, they are told by people who think in terms of stories to communicate feelings. The holohuggers are living on the communication of the feelings while fighting the rational interpretation of the context of the stories.

      From here we can go to any number of holocaust stories and show how this pervades them. We know almost all of them came geographically from eastern Europe. And as there was significant migration from the east to the west it would be interesting to learn the origin of those who told such stories in the west.

      Take for example evil/demonic/satanic/maniacal laughter ingredient, the forced naked dancing and singing, the playing of "german" music. These stories come from the same people that preserved the legends from which western authors drew the inspiration for their stories of vampires and werewolves. That in itself should be enough to damn the stories of eastern europeans.

      The ingredients come from stories of witches' sabboths. Mussorgsky pulled Night on Bald Mountain right out of their legends with all the elements of legend that Campbell missed as he was searching for the hero. There are no heros in a culture devoted to superstition and all pervasive evil as was superstitious eastern Europe. There was only the occasional stand against eternal darkness with his reward in heaven -- meaning he died in the process.

      And into this came the Nazis almost volunteering to fit the mold of legend. Consider the pervasive belief that they were not only anti-Christian but intent upon bringing back the pagan gods even though there is not one shread of evidence, not one ritual, not one incident to support this claim. If anyone has not known simple people with simple superstitions you have no idea of the power of that belief.

      I have experienced such people. One told me she was going to see "The Exorcist" to study on it. It was clear she believed it was true and thought she was going to learn from the movie. If you have the opportunity to deal with such people, do not pass it up but bite your tongue on skepticism or they will stop talking.

      So here are people who are said to be reviving worship of Odin. In Christian mythology, all of the "false" gods are satan himself. That meant that all Nazis were followers of Satan in the mind of these superstitious eastern europeans. Eastern European Jews were participants in the creation and preservation of the myths.

      And surprise, surprise, they told stories of the Nazis that paralleled stories of Satan and witchcraft. How could anyone be surprised by that?

      And what if there were any qualms about not quite telling the literal truth? They were worshippers of Satan were they not? Knowing that then everything "known" about worshippers of Satan was also true, whether or not they observed it because that was the way Satan worshippers were.

      And how could such contrived stories appear overnight? Clearly they occurred over years, four to eight years if physical occupation is the criteria depending upon the country. If threat of occupation is the criteria, then eight years is the minimum. If propaganda is the criteria, then the communists were pushing it from around 1925 making it twenty years.

      But even without these years, consider eastern Europe was largely agrarian with many small villages rather than large population concentrations in cities, barely into the twentieth century. And in such small enclaves one of the unofficial positions was that of storyteller. He entertained the children, was the village historian, ennuciated the spirit of the community.

      But in even one year most anything is possible in human belief given the rumor mill. It is not as though there was an evening news covering the occupied territories every night on TV. The people had shortwave radios at best. And the small towns and farmers that dominated eastern Europe have few of those and there is where the rumors grew.

      And the human tendency to embellish rumors with the story telling means of expression lead to the testimony to the holocaust. If looked at in the entirety they are rehashed witchcraft stories. If compared to each other they are mutually exclusive. If looked at individually they recount the impossible.

      And all of this leads to the melodramatic story-telling level of the holocaust stories. As the inspiration for vampires and werewolves came from the east so too the stories of the holocaust. The same ingredients exist in the stories.

      The difference is that the current story-tellers insist upon the literal truth of eastern European stories in the western sense of literal truth when in fact nothing of the kind was either intended or understood by the eastern story-tellers.

      In that regard, 60,000 which is a reasonable number, is exaggerated to convey the depth of feeling to 6 million which is also reasonable but in a different context.

      Emphasis is given to the burning, as in hell fire, as in witchcraft bonfires. A crematoria, burning, is considered synonymous with gassing. Even when they were buried first they must be dug up and burned. For such superstitous people disturbing the dead by digging them up was an equal evil that let loose satanic evil upon the land.

      Is not disturbing the dead a factor in horror movies even today? And the Jewish factor? Jews must be buried intact to the point where an autopsy is prohibited. Burning? They can not be resurrected or whatever they expected. It was the ultimate evil.

      But then as the eastern european jews were converts their beliefs paralleled the christian majority. All believed in this superstition. It was hardly twenty years ago that the Roman Catholic Church took off the ban against cremation.

      It is difficult for western minds to comprehend pure superstition and allegoric thought as a way of life, as a means of perceiving and interpreting events. It is so difficult that it takes decades of paying attention to perception to even notice the differences as there is no sharp demarcation line but rather a slow gradation with bumps along the way.

      Nor do I claim to be the first to notice this. It has been around for centuries. It has simply been impolite to discuss it for so long that the basic difference has been forgotten. Not only impolite but the eastern and western have sought political compromise in adopting a little of each so that it is not clear to average observer that the difference exists.

      For political purposes eastern and western countries give each other a public nod. Israel, as a known example, will portray Palestinians throwing stones as evil as worthy of lethal response because stones are lethal. But when the orthodox stone people going to a movie on the Sabboth it is understandable for religious reasons.

      Obviously both are religious issues, but victim status must be portrayed on one hand and internal disagreements on the other. Similarly, the eastern european stories hold that the jews were innocent victims while the other 6 million did something to deserve it, save for a couple hundred thousand gypsies of course.

      The stories of the holocaust were not told with the intention of being taken literally. In fact the tellers had no concept of literal truth as do westerns. They were, at the same time, telling the story in the eastern sense and lying in the western sense.

      That is our holocaust. It is no different than saying the sun stood still when the great man died. It was intended to be the stuff of legends in the telling of the story.

      The literal truth of it is left for the analytic western mind to find.

      But it is legitimate to suggest that this was so horrible that these people are invoking these traditional satanic motifs to hide the real horror. And in response we need to look at some greater horrors in recent history.

      When the Ukranians revolted against forced collectivization of their farms, Stalin contrived to starve them to death, some twenty million of them. (Is it any wonder Ukranians sided with the Nazis against Stalin?) Is there any place in the history books or in the discussions of this where you find anything akin to Stalin having a lust for the blood of Ukranian farmers? If you found such a reference would you not find it very out of the ordinary?

      In the 1970s Pol Pot mastermined the execution of one third of the population of Cambodia. This was done by simple executions, death marches, and show trials followed by executions. Can you imagine finding a reference to Pol Pot have a blood lust for the educated? And if you did what would be your response?

      In first case 20 million is greater than the original 12 million and more than three times greater than the present 6 million. In the second case one third of the population of a country greatly exceeds anything claimed for any country in Europe in WW II. But in no case is there the wild rhetoric and exaggeration that we find connected with the Holocaust.

      When these stories are reported the discussion there is no dwelling upon moral or victim issues. In one case farmers did not want their land collectivized, what did they do to deserve it but to be farmers? In another case the victims did nothing but receive and education (or wear glasses in the extreme) so what did they do to deserve death?

      What we clearly do not find are any of the elements of horror stories. We do not find the laughter. We do not find the nakedness. We do not find the dancing. We to not find infants torn apart. We do not find anything remotely resembling the kind of stories we find about the Holocaust.

      Yet humans carried out these greater atrocities. They must have been equally "evil." And they are not reported to act in the least like the Nazis acted in the Holocaust.

      Here is another possibility. The recountings of the behavior of Korean and Vietnamese and Iranian and Iraqi guards of US POWs and US State Department personnel is still rather fresh. Torture in all forms including mock and real executions are reported. Not once are they reported to behave like the Nazis, no nakedness, no demonic laughter, nothing of the kind.

      There have been several death squad operations in Latin America in the last few decades and in fact they go back farther than I can trace so they may have originated in Spain. We have plenty of survivor reports from these equally superstitious countries and yet not one report of Nazi-like behavior.

      Like it or not, Nazis were human beings. We have just searched all over the world and back decades over similar and greater events and we can not find one instance of humans acting according to the eastern European concept of demonic behavior. And we have certainly not found any instances of melodramatic presentation of such acts of extermination.

      It should be clear that these stories of the Holocaust are just that, stories. They are told in the form of old world storytelling. The stuff of melodramatic B movies is not to be taken seriously.