Bryce questions why the holocaust has received such an inordinate amount of attention given that the deaths of a few million is not particularly uncommon.
The most telling reason is found withing what is contained, or rather not contained, within Bryce’s essay. Bryce, as with almost everyone who writes of the holocaust, focuses on the Jews, of which 4-6 million were killed (I don’t care what the exact number is). Given that slavs, particularly Poles, were the largest victims of the nazi cleansings and the largest planned targets,it is interesting that the Jewish killings are the only ones focused upon. We can ascertain it is not the nazi killings themselves which are the focus, but the killings of the Jews in particular.
This means that the obvious neoreactionary analysis, the Whig interpretation of history Bryce mentions, is likely incorrect, or at least incomplete. If it were simply Whig history, then surely the progressives would have been happy to throw the 12M-or-so slavs into the list of crimes of the right.
There are a few other obvious material explanations, some of which Bryce mentions: Jewish predominance in western media, financing, and academia leading to the preeminent position of Jewish historical events, the Western nature of the event (most other modern genocides have been outside the West, in uncivilized places such as Russia and SE Asia), the ruthless Germanic effeciency of modern, organized mass murder technique used, and the historical controversy over the position of Jews in European Christendom.
Instead, I am going to focus on the spiritual aspects.
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If we look to the Old Testament, the Jewish and Christian scriptures, we find the same story played out repeatedly. Biblical Israel presents one of the greatest known examples of cyclical history.
Almost the entirety of the Old Testament, from Moses to Nehemiah, spanning a millenium, is the same story, repeated again and again, with only the names and details changed.
Yahweh loves the Israelites, chooses them from among the nations, and blesses them. Israel prospers, but turns from Yahweh, whoring after foreign idols. God sends prophets, famine, and, particularly, the foreign sword in attempts to draw Israel back into the covenant. In distress, Israel repents and cries for mercy. God, in His compassion and mercy relents and blesses His chosen. Israel prospers yet again, but yet again forgets and whores after foreign idols once more.
The same cycle repeated endlessly. This stiff-necked, stubborn people always spurning their blessing and turning against the God who loves them in favour of the fallen gods of their enemies.
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But the cycle was finally to end: the Jewish messiah comes to Israel. The salvation of Israel is at hand. Yet Israel rejects Him; the Jewish leaders compel the Roman officials to commit deicide. The Jewish messiah is murdered upon the cross while Israel cries, “His blood be on us, and on our children.”
The cycle has not ended.
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God loves the Jews, but the Jews have rejected Him. They have murdered His Son and sworn that His blood be upon their children.
God’s chosen have never repented this crime.
Yet God loves His chosen the same.
He yearns for them, He desires them return unto His love and mercy.
Yet, these stiff-necked, stubborn people refuse His love, reject His mercy.
So God does what He has always done for His chosen, he calls to them.
Through fire and sword he whispers His love and His desire for reconciliation.
Through temporal discipline, he displays His eternal love for His own.
During the Shoah, God replaced famine and sword with gas and bullet.
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. – 2 Chronicles 7:14-16 (ESV)
God calls to His chosen to repent and turn to Him, for He loves them. The Holocaust was the most recent manifestation of God’s love for Israel.
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This spiritual aspect is the reason for the west’s disproportionate focus on the Shoah. Whatever the west’s fallen state, it is still primarily Christian in origin and thought.
The story of the Shoah is compelling for it is western civilization’s founding mythos acting itself out for our modern age.
Most westerners in this degenerate age may not understand it intellectually, but on a cultural level, they know this: the Old Testament was brought to life in all its gory glory.
The eternal story from which western civilization was birthed was and is being told and we can not turn away.
Most will deny the spiritual implications, as our age is one of materialism, of denial of the spirit and of God. Some of the spiritual will deny that it was God’s hand, for they deny the Christian story; they look only unto God’s mercy, forgetting that without God’s judgment, God’s mercy is worthless. But those who have eyes will see and those who have ears will hear.
Those who are unable to hear and those who are unable to see, are also unable to ignore. The truth, even when denied, draws them.
That is the reason the Shoah is the target of such disproportionate focus: it touches our civilizational mythology and tugs at our dwindling Christian spirit.
The Jew may refuse to repent, but cannot turn away.
The gentile Christian sees his own story played out on the Jew writ large and cannot turn away.
The non-Christian see the Lord calling him to be His own through the Jew and, though he may reject the call, can not turn away.
We can not help but look at God’s love and judgment poured out.
Deep spiritual truths from the days of old played themselves out for us in an unforgettable manner. The story of Elijah, of Moses, of Joshua, of the Prophets enacted before our very eyes. Even if we choose not see.
Blessed be the Lord our God.
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They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy.
How he had wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan.
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And he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.And he brought them to the border of his sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand had purchased.
He cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not his testimonies:
But turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned aside like a deceitful bow.
For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images.
When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel:
And delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand.
He gave his people over also unto the sword; and was wroth with his inheritance.
The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given to marriage.
Their priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no lamentation.
Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine.
And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts: he put them to a perpetual reproach.
Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim:
But chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved.
And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever.
He chose David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds:
From following the ewes great with young he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.
So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.