Yad Vashem

The museum in Jerusalem for the Holocaust is called Yad Vashem.  
The library there catalogues the names of the six million martyrs.  
Besides their names it also has where they lived, were born -  
Anything that can be found out about them.  
These people existed, their lives mattered.  
Yad Vashem means "Memorial to the Name."  
Were they nameless masses that were slaughtered? No !!  
They were human beings with names, whose lives mattered !!  
(This info comes from "Writing down the Bones," Natalie Goldberg,1986)  
 
Here's some statistics, Auschwitz = 1.3 million;  
Treblinka-Sobibor-Belzec= 2 million Jews;  
Majdanek-Chelmno = 800,000 Jews.  
Add them all up, you get over 4 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  
But what about the figure of 6 million deaths? Where does it come from?  
Is it inflated, inaccurate, exaggerated? Not at all.
The first 2 million were "liquidated" the old fashioned way -  
They were shot with rifles.  
When the Nazis moved into a town of whichever nation  
they were conquering (think Poland,Ukraine, etc),  
They would round up all the Jews and march them and their shovels  
to the edge of town and make them dig holes (graves).  
The Nazis then had them stand in front of their graves.  
As they shot them, they literally fell into their graves.  
A few Jews were spared, but only for a short time -  
Until they had covered up the graves of the others with dirt.  
At that point they too, of course, were shot.  
 
But German soldiers didn't like shooting women
and children, even if they were "only Jews."  
Despondent, they started drinking heavily,  
acting erratically, sulking - desertions mounted.  
The generals called up headquarters, reporting the effects it was having on their troops.  
So, ironically, it was the Germans' humanity that led to the factory-ization of the Holocaust,  
The industrialization of the extermination process of the Jews..  
 
The concentration/death camps equipped with gas chambers were built
because killing women and children was more than ordinary troops
could handle without becoming demoralized zombies.  
We see much the same thing today -  
boys, young men, do bad things then feel guilty,  
Then turn to booze or drugs to deaden the psychic pain  
that robbing, raping, murdering causes them.  
 
This explains why drug rehab doesn't work -  
it doesn't deal with morality, the need for a sense of righteousness.  
It doesn't teach that doing good deeds gives you psychic pleasure.  
Developing true Altruism is a cure for addiction of all kinds.  
 
PS: as you can see, i like to close with a surprise (unplanned) ending.