Comment by thaumasiotes
7 hours ago
So, the Netherlands kept a list of everyone, and they specifically marked out all the Jews, but that doesn't constitute keeping a list of Jews?
7 hours ago
So, the Netherlands kept a list of everyone, and they specifically marked out all the Jews, but that doesn't constitute keeping a list of Jews?
It wasn't a list of Jews, it was a list of everyone from which Jews could be easily identified.
The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.
This is relevant to data collected by companies and governments today.
Consider a list of children with their parent names and the parents' preferred pronouns. You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.
> The distinction is important in this context, since the purpose of collecting and keeping the data wasn't specifically to have a list of Jews handy.
How does that make the distinction important? The lesson to draw is "you shouldn't keep a list of Jews, whether you think you're doing it for good reasons or not". The list is a list regardless of whether you think calling it a list is fair in some abstract sense.
> You don't have a list of gays, but you have a list from which gays can be readily identified with high accuracy.
Well, you're almost right. Except of course that you do have a list of gays. That's why Grindr having Chinese ownership was seen as a national security risk.
The Netherlands today is a secular country in which the government doesn't give a flying fuck about your religion or identity.
But the situation in 1940 was very different: religion permeated every fabric of society. Mind you the government simply took over the job of record keeping from the churches, temples and synagogues.
I am sure Jews today still keep lists about who is a Jew and so does every other religious denomination because such mundane information matters to them.