'Whether I am correct,' is a construction that makes you the judge and jury. I'm not accepting that. Genocide was obviously the goal in the case of the Jews and while the killing included "undesirables" no similar program of public propaganda as regarded mass intent was directed at each of these groups.
Or would the government eliminating a similar number of families either to take their assets or simply because they would not conform to the new order be just as immoral?
It's not a matter of immorality, but whether they are the same intent. That's why we have the word, "genocide" instead of "mass murder." They're different.
Oh, and paragraphs are your friend.
I worry about the effect of insisting on genocide as a central element of the Holocaust's evil. While genocide was an additional element of evil in the Holocaust, I don't see a huge moral gap between Hitler's targeted mass murders of Jews, gays, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other "undesirables", and the less narrowly targeted but still horrifying mass murders committed by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others who interpreted socialism as violently as Hitler did but included more diversity among their victims.
Well go ahead and worry. The sheer mass of propaganda directed against 'the Jew' was totally different than the others who got lumped in (I noted your omission of the infirm, retarded, and insane). If you want to lump the Jewish people in with them when the intent was clearly different, go ahead and you may even earn the distinction of a letter from Mr. Friedman someday to which you can reply similarly.
"Whether I am correct" was a construction intended to convey the idea that I had not thought this issue through completely and hoped to have a discussion on the question, not that I knew that I was correct and simply chose to humor you (if that is what you thought I meant).
The sheer mass of propaganda directed against 'the Jew' was totally different than the others who got lumped in (I noted your omission of the infirm, retarded, and insane).
My omission of those groups is probably parallel to your omission of communists, Poles, and some other groups that we both left out - an omission that I assume was triggered by the broad scope of the atrocities in Nazi Germany. Can you explain why the murder of more than six million innocent people, primarily entire families, is much worse when genocide and racial purity are part of the motivation than when political purity suffices to identify the victims for systematic mass extermination of "undesirables" and their entire families? [If you'll excuse a little snark, and a long paragraph, "Can you explain why" is a construction that invites you to be not quite the judge and jury but at least the prosecuting/defense attorney.]