Dare to Compare: Americanizing the Holocaust 

by Lilian Friedburg

This article discusses those who compare the treatment of the American Natives to the Holocaust of the Jews. Friedburg discusses the fact that those who try to make this comparison are often shunned in the intellectual world. She discusses the fact that those that make the treatment of the American Indians sound innocent and understandable, those that say they it was a regrettable but necessary consequence of the rising of the next great country, are published and popularized. Those that try to do the some with the holocaust however, are met with scorn and loathing. Those scholars that try to create an explanation for the way the Nazi soldiers acted, and make them out as good men just following orders, face a brick wall of vehemence. he then shows that America is, to put it simply, in denial. She show that we not only killed more innocent people that the Nazis did, we also killed a greater percentage. We even used the same language to excuse ourselves. In both cases, those being exterminated were made out to be less than human. They were smeared and down talked until they became a race that must be destroyed to make space for the better race. The only real difference between the two situations is that we were successful, which is why the United States is not seen under the shadow of genocide. Ours was erased by historians. It was explained away, made understandable, and warped to the point that hardly anyone knows what actually happened. 

This article is perfect for my paper because it is exactly what I wil be talking about. Not only does it reveal many of the facts that are hardly heard, back them up in a scholarly way, and show similarities between the two genocides, it also leads me to many new sources. Since it spends much of its time debunking common false beliefs, I will use this article to help me predict many counter-arguments to my paper, and answer them before they are brought up.