How Can Six Minus Two And One Half Still Be Six?

Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, was visited by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday. During the difficult time for the all of the visitors, the number of victims was addressed by camp officials and the Vatican. An estimated one and one half million people died, mostly Jews. Although a monstrous figure representing human lives lost, it is considerably smaller than the one the world believed from 1945 until the end of the cold war.

Recorded history had established four million killed at Auschwitz, with the total Holocaust figure set at six million victims. That calculation has been revised in the light of history.

At the end of World War Two, a Soviet commission investigated the camp and produced the figure of four million killed at Auschwitz. The confession of camp commandant Rudolf Hoess at the Nuremberg Trials substantiated the number. On May 8, 1945, the Russian newspaper Zvezda first reported the four million figure, which was then printed all over the world - and accepted as truth until 1990.

At the end of the cold war, historians rushed in for a look. They arrived at the much lower figure: one and one half million killed. So now the whole wide world - including Jewish university historians at Tel Aviv, Israel - uses the reduced number.

That is some relief for those who prefer to believe the now established truth: two and one half million people were not slaughtered after all. The new total Holocaust figure should be three and one half million, but we have gone more than 15 years still using the six million figure.

Why? The Holocaust is still a record for genocide, is it not? The communists in Cambodia killed "only" about two million.

The three-and-one-half-million-victim Holocaust is horrible enough for anyone to handle. The old six million figure just makes it worse.



Thoughts While Jaywalking

* As a result of Shock & Awe, half the people of Iraq - women - will lose most of the civil rights that they enjoyed under Saddam, the madman.

* Divine Strake postponed indefinitely. Time to party.

* Everybody ( well, maybe not everybody) is going to Kanab this weekend. It seems to be a celebration of the right of elected representatives to proclaim the cherished values of a community. Period!

* St. George Smog Alert Department: "No smog seen today." The inspector has been quietly dismissed. He was looking for smog in all the wrong places.

* Thank goodness the Bush administration has the sense to out-source torturing prisoners. Somebody has to do the jobs Americans won't take.

* Our (your) president says he regrets saying: "Bring 'em on." Is that all he regrets? I mean, IS THAT ALL?

* A usually reliable source reported sighting a man riding on a Sun Tran bus in St. George. This turned out to be false. The man was the driver.



Help Wanted

Walk my dog mornings and evenings. Pay DOE. Must have own plastic bags. Call 688-0009.

Stuff envelopes. Unlimited potential, not MLM, small up-front investment. See you in
Worthen Park today after sundown.


Meetings & Events

Book signing at the Lil Prof's - Dr. Ira Longterm will exhibit his latest tome: "Wars, Depressions, Droughts, and Other Financial Opportunities." He or one of his staff will be present from 1:30 - 2 pm on Saturday, June 3.


IT'S ALL SO SIMPLE.