Bier de Stone (blanketsin.com) wrote,
Bier de Stone
blanketsin.com

I'm reading the Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil

There are two passages I do not understand. One is on page 12…
The mid twentieth century saw the Nazis liquidate at least 6 miillion Jews, 3 million Soviet POWs, 2 million Poles, and hundreds of thousands of "undesirable" peoples.

the other is on page 26…
Japanese soldiers butchered between 260,000 and 350,000 Chinese civilians in just a few months of 1937. Those figures represent more deaths than the total annihilation caused by the atomic bomb of Japan and all the civilian deaths in most European countries during all of World War II.

I've hi-lited the words civilian because, when I asked a librarian for clarification, she said the reason the Chinese massacres at the hands of the Japanese are described as worse than the 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviet POWs, etc. is because those atrocities "were Jews". I took that to mean that the sentences I'm having difficulty comprehending because of the conflicting figures of deaths were meant to compare civilian victims, and the Jews who died during "all of WWII" were not considered civilians? Does somebody have a quick explanation of why the Japanese soldiers who butchered 260,000-350,000 in 1937 is considered to be more deaths than the liquidation of 6,000,000 Jews? While the librarian I asked responded by saying, if for no other reason than to send me away, because the other one says Jews. This might be misconstrued to mean that she doesn't consider Jewish people to co-exist on the same level as other people, but I'm beginning to wonder whether the fact that so many Chinese were "butchered" in such a short period of time might have something to do with the conclusion that Japanese soldiers can be real hatchet-men. After all, there is a vast difference between killing people with your bare hands, as the act of butchering plainly describes, and "liquidating" people from a distance with a bomb, gas chambers, a rifle. Am I right on this point?
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