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Silent Holocaust or silent holocaust is a phrase that is used to refer to several unrelated events. One usage is abortion among some involved in pro-life activism. One group has even named itself Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. Another usage is among certain Jewish communal and religious leaders when they describe the assimilation and intermarriage of Jews with gentiles. Others still have used the term to refer to the AIDS epidemic, particularly in Africa. This is because it kills millions, but supposedly is "silent" in comparative attention. The term is often highly controversial, regardless of use. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Anti-abortion movement. ... Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust is a pro-life Activism group based out of L.A. They participate in both legal and illegal protests. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination... Cultural assimilation (often called merely assimilation) is an intense process of consistent integration whereby members of an ethno-cultural group, typically immigrants, or other minority groups, are absorbed into an established, generally larger community. ... Intermarriage normally refers to marriage between people belonging to different religions, tribes, nationalities or ethnic backgrounds. ... A Gentile refers to a non-Israelite; the word is derived from the Latin term gens (meaning clan or a group of families) and is often employed in the plural. ... Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). ...

Use in pro-life circles

There are pro-life activists who take the position^{[citation needed]} that since in the United States alone over 1 million abortions occur each year, with between 25 and 35 million in the period from Roe v. Wade to the present, this would count as a holocaust. This is because they view all abortion as the killing of an innocent human life. They deem it a "Silent Holocaust" due to the perceived lack of outrage. Holding Texas law making it a crime to assist a woman to get an abortion violated her due process rights. ...

The term is highly controversial and many Jewish people have found it demeaning to the Holocaust itself. Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox praised a book by a Nigerian missionary that directly compared abortion to the Holocaust, among other things. This event caused controversy as have similar comparisons made by Michael S. Steele and other politicians. Caroline Ann Cox, Baroness Cox (born 6 July 1937) is a cross-bench member of the British House of Lords, and campaigner for many humanitarian causes. ... Michael S. Steele (born October 19, 1958) is a former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, having been elected on the same ticket as Governor Robert L. Ehrlich in 2002. ...

Referring to the Worldwide Extermination of Muslims and Media Apologists

This usage refers to the worldwide set of conflicts, largely led by Neoconservative and right-wing elements of the US Government, focusing on mass civilian destruction in the Muslim world. One example would be the 1.5 million civilian deaths between 1991 and 2000, caused by the United States-led food sanctions on Iraq and destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure. This conflict, amongst many, are referred to as silent because they are almost entirely ignored and often denied by main stream media in the United States. In some cases, media figures even actively encourage the practice. CNN host Glenn Beck, for example, warned that if Muslims don't "act now" by "step[ping] to the plate" to condemn terrorism, they "will be looking through a razor wire fence...." -- allusions to a coming concentration camp and potential Holocaust against Muslims.

The term is highly controversial and many Jewish people have found it demeaning to the Nazi-led Holocaust. However, most rational discussions quickly conclude that a six-million figure need not be crossed for a mass extermination to be classified as a Holocaust. The two million deaths in Iraq, half million in Iran, quarter million in Sudan, and dozens of other conflicts is itself abhorable.

Referring to assimilation of Jews

Many Orthodox Judaism rabbis refer to assimilation as a type of "Holocaust". Assimilation [1] is the leading cause for the shrinkage of almost all Jewish populations in Western countries since World War II, and it has been called the Silent Holocaust [2] in comparison to the genocide against Jews during World War II by communal leaders such as Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program, perhaps the best-known popularizer of the phrase. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Rabbi, in Judaism, means a religious ‘teacher’, or more literally, ‘great one’. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ or ‘distinguished (in knowledge)’. Sephardic and Yemenite Jews pronounce this word ribbī; the modern Israeli pronunciation rabbī is derived from a... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... “Shoah” redirects here. ... Rabbi, in Judaism, means a religious ‘teacher’, or more literally, ‘great one’. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ or ‘distinguished (in knowledge)’. Sephardic and Yemenite Jews pronounce this word ribbī; the modern Israeli pronunciation rabbī is derived from a... Ephraim Buchwald is an influential Orthodox Judaism rabbi based in New York City. ... The National Jewish Outreach Program, known as NJOP, is a Jewish adult education and outreach organization that was founded in 1987, by Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, a leading rabbi at the Lincoln Square Synagogue New York City. ...

Use of the term "silent holocaust" in reference to Jewish intermarriage is common: Before the Jewish Enlightenment and emancipation, which swept through communities in the diaspora in the 19th and 20th centuries, marriages between Jews and non-Jews were uncommon. ...

• "More than 50% of the Jewish People today are intermarrying, in some places it is as high as 90%.....Intermarriage has created a silent holocaust in this generation..." [3]

• "...Unlike the persecution that the Jewish people have endured by the hands of others for over 3,000 years, Jews on this continent now face a "silent holocaust" stemming from within their very own communities and their very own households..." [4]

• "There have been many other arguments offered against intermarriage...Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, 12 million were left afterwards. Today there are only 13 million Jews in the world. Where are the rest that by natural increase should number close to 20 million? The answer is that the silent holocaust of assimilation has caused them to disappear as Jews." [5]

• "There is a Holocaust taking place in America right now. We can't hear it, because there are no barking dogs; we can't see it because there are no goose-stepping Nazi soldiers and no concentration camps; we can't smell it because there are no gas chambers. But the net result is exactly the same. If we fail to act now, if we fail to share with our young Jews the beauty and meaningfulness of Jewish life and Jewish heritage, there will be few Jews left in the next generation who will even know that there ever was a Holocaust of European Jews. The "silent Holocaust" will have done its job. Hitler will have emerged victorious.[6]

Intermarriage, assimilation, apostasy, and abortions of Jewish babies are all described in terms of a "silent holocaust".^{[citation needed]} National Socialism redirects here. ... A concentration camp is a large detention centre created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. ... Gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison A gas chamber is a means of execution whereby a poisonous gas is introduced into a hermetically sealed chamber. ... Apostasy (from Greek αποστασία, meaning a defection or revolt, from απο, apo, away, apart, στασις, stasis, standing) is a term generally employed to describe the formal renunciation of ones religion, especially if the motive is deemed unworthy. ...

Controversy with the Assimilation usage

As noted above, use of the term "Silent Holocaust" is highly controversial and occurs mainly among Orthodox Jews of Conservative and Nationalist tendencies. An especially outspoken opponent of the term and the way of thinking behind it is Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Education Minister, who considered its use "an insult to and desecration of the Holocaust victims' memory". Separate articles treat Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Orthodox Judaism. ... Conservative Judaism, (also known as Masorti Judaism in Israel predominantly), is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s. ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... Shulamit Aloni (born November 29, 1928) is a human rights activist, lawyer and former Israeli politician. ...

Adam Keller, editor of the Tel Aviv-based The Other Israel, spoke at length on the issue during a lecture tour of the US in September 2004, especially in the course of an intense and highly emotive debate with right-wing Jewish hecklers on the university campus at Fullerton, California. Among other things he said on that occasion: Adam Keller (front right) with the former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (center) in 2004 Adam Keller (born 1955 in Tel Aviv-Yafo) is an Israeli conscientious objector, peace-activist and writer. ... Tel-Aviv was founded on empty dunes north of the existing city of Jaffa. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

"I find this term, 'Silent Holocaust', more obscene than all the pornography in the world put together. The Holocaust, from which my mother and my father barely escaped and in which many of their relatives perished, was the systematic genocide and mass murder of millions of people, solely because of their ethnic and religious identity. The so-called "silent holocaust" is the freely chosen exercise by human beings of the right to choose a spouse and live a happy and satisfying life with him or her, a right specifically guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which the State of Israel is one of the first signatories. Only a monstrously perverted mind can possibly conceive of making such a comparison. This comes from a mindset in which an individual counts for nothing, his or her wishes count for nothing, and the individual's only worth is as being a component of an overwhelming, all-supreme Nation or Ethnos. This is a racist way of thinking, a fascist way of thinking. It is, I must say, Hitler's way of thinking, and I am deeply ashamed that some Jews have taken it for their own." For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation). ... Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people as defined by Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or... Bold text Eleanor Roosevelt with the Spanish version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ...

See also

• AIDS pandemic
• AIDS in Africa
• Assimilation
• Fixing Broken Windows
• Melting pot
• Transculturation