I hate to go and ruin the fun in historical acts of genocide, but this seemingly minor detail of a myth is one worth straightening out: victims of the Nazi’s weren’t killed in ovens.
This historical correction comes on the heels of a quote getting buzz by critics of Mike Huckabee who, in a condemnation of the Obama administrations nuclear deal with Iran (a nation dedicated to “wiping Israel off the map” in one way or another).
The actual quote isn’t anything remarkable, but got a lot of coverage because of the specific holocaust reference he used.
“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It’s got to be stopped.”
As a political story, this doesn’t interest me because there’s no reason it should. The Left tried to exploit it as a big deal. It was misconstrued as every Nazi-related analogy is. Other 2016 Primary Republicans had to play the “agree or disagree with what the Left says is a big deal” game (Rick Santorum said right-on – Jeb Bush said tone it down). Huckabee doubled down on the sentiment. blah blah blah.
But what no one is mentioning in any of the coverage is the misleading history in the comment. Jews weren’t “marched to the ovens” in the holocaust. Ovens weren’t a method of slaughter.
It’s an easy mix-up to make since the holocaust is known for mass killing and mass body burning, so skipping over the part where the bodies were dead and mashing it with the part where people were murdered in unconventional methods is a common jumble. I used to be one of the mixer-uppers. Around 2008 when I was baking a pizza and I opened the lid, causing the wave of heat to hit me in the face, I had an immediate empathic PTSD-style flashback of how holocaust victims had to have felt dying this way. Everyones worst way to die is burning, and even if you’re not claustrophobic – the addition of being in a casket sized space is a tremendous horror. Everyone who has had a loved one cremated has had their mind go to the morbid “what if” thought of their own death being misdiagnosed somehow and waking up just as they were being put into the crematory oven. *shudder*
Survivors of the Dachau concentration camp demonstrate the operation of the crematorium by preparing a corpse to be placed into one of the ovens. Dachau, Germany, April 29-May 10, 1945. Credit.
But if there’s a bright side to horrific senseless mass murder, there is the comfort that this didn’t happen in the concentration camps of the holocaust. Back when I had my pizza vision, I looked up how many people died this way and could only find one or two instances of a prisoner being put into a crematorium oven alive as a special punishment.
I blame for this myth, the intentionally-offensive joke regarding exactly this connection between the best thing on earth (pizza) and the worst thing on earth (burning alive) that goes “Q: What’s the difference between a Jew and a pizza? A: the pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven.” Womp womp. But you’ll be shocked to find out that the normally reliable factually rigorous nature of anti-semitism has, in this instance, failed on accuracy. Idk about you, but I did Nazi that coming.
But for real, guys: Victims murdered by the Nazi’s were shot or gassed to death en masse. Their bodies were carried to crematoriums afterward. Yet a lot of people, evidently a 2016 Presidential candidate included, seem to think mass oven killing went on in the holocaust.
While Huckabee didn’t explicitly state the historical inaccuracy, it’s implied in the term “marching to the door” and he continued the implication that people were murdered by ovens when commenting on the comment afterward:
“When I talked about the oven door, I have stood at that oven door,” he said. “I know exactly what it looks like, 1.1 million people killed. For 6,000 years, Jews have been chased and hunted and killed all over this Earth, and when someone in a government says we’re going to kill them, I think, by gosh, we better take that seriously.”
It’s the Iranians who used the word Holocaust first, Huckabee said, and refused during the negotiations to recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
“They refused to tone down their rhetoric and said the Holocaust did not exist and that they’re going to wipe Israel off the map,” he said. “When people in a government position continue to say they’re going to kill you, I think somebody ought to wake up and take that seriously.”
Not withstanding dopiness of his Appeal to Authority fallacy in saying he saw the ovens in person (and I saw them on a Bing search alongside disturbing juxtapositions of actual ovens. So what?)…
-the rest of what he said is at least accurate. Iran brought up the holocaust first so if someone thinks the Obama deal with Iran empowers the enemy-state (as it does) then it’s not a wildly off base comment – just in-artfully stated (he should have said that it potentially makes such a march, not that it does).