Auschwitz

[Cleon]

I don't know if anyone's been following this, but today marks the 60th anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of Auschwitz.

I had a number of family members at Auschwitz; none survived. My family was seriously hit by the Holocaust as a whole; virtually my entire family in Europe was wiped out by the Nazis.

I look back quite a bit on my childhood, and my education. We got a lot of education about the Holocaust; movies, films, classes, frequent events with survivors, the works. Hebrew school made quite a big thing out of it; I'm willing to be most Jewish schools still do.

I think a lot of people wonder why we Jews make such a big thing out of the Holocaust; after all, it was 60 years ago, it's history, why make such a fuss?

I really think people can't comprehend the the shear scale of cruelty and dehumanization that the Holocaust represented. Sure, people might figure it on an intellectual level, but I really doubt they can feel it. I'm not sure it is possible to feel it unless you're confronted with it personally. Even then, I wonder if our "intellectualization" of the Holocaust is nothing more than a defense mechanism so we can't truly comprehend the sheer horror that's involved.

I really wonder if people truly understand what it means to have an entire people dehumanized; where actual human beings are reduced to a "problem" that must be "eliminated."

Anyway, I suppose I really don't have a point to all this, I've just been following the coverage and felt that someone should say something. I guess Maj. Anatoly Shapiro, commander of the first Soviet troops to enter the camp, said it best: "I would like to say to all the people on the earth: This should never be repeated, ever." Simple words, I suppose, but heartfelt from a man who's been haunted for decades by the inhumanity he witnessed.


Yisgadal v'yiskadash, sh'mey raboh...

 

[renata]

I said Kaddish for those soulds today as well. Some things cannot be put in the past. My family was also pretty much wiped out, but not in Auschwitz, in other camps, or just in small village exterminations. The ones who survived did so because they were put in Soviet camps- there is something to be said for irony.

I grew up in a country which as a matter of state policy denied the very existance of the Holocaust. A few hundred yards from my home there was a mass grave, of "Soviet citizens". No mention of who they were- and that was common everywhere, most famous example of Babii Yar. It had to be family oral tradition that made me understand the scope of what happened. These people died twice- once in the extermination, and another when their deaths are denied, minimized, covered up. I heard stories of great uncles and cousins and grandmothers and babies- hundreds of my relatives who died in so many ways, so many places. In the memory of family I never knew.

 

[zenith-nadir]

I too watched the ceremony. When Putin said over 400,000 Russian soldiers lost their lives to liberate Poland I immediately thought of Iraq and the 1400 American dead. Kinda puts things into perspective.

The only person to make it out of Europe and the death camps was my father's mother. Everyone else was exterminated. Her parents, her sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles and all of their children were gassed and burnt. As a kid we used to stare at her numbered tatoo but she rarely ever said a word about the experience her entire life. I guess it must have been too painful.

 

[renata]

I wanted to link to Blue Monk's post about his father- it was one of the most touching tributes I have seen. I think of it on anniversaries such as today.

http://www.internationalskeptics.co...id=1870481678&highlight=Dachau#post1870481678

Ixabert,

Welcome to the board.

Arguing with a Holocaust denier is difficult as you are automatically handicapped in that you are trying to reason with a moron.

I try to be tolerant of the ignorant but this is a subject I find particularly repugnant. You may find this hard to believe but the atrocities of the Nazis continue to inflict suffering on the living. The events of over 50 years ago cause me pain on a weekly basis even though I was born ten years after the fact and thousands of miles away.

The source of both my pain and my unusually intimate relationship with these horrific events is my Father.

My father, a self-proclaimed dumb Oakie farm boy, did his duty like so many others in World War II. Trained in Oklahoma he was one of only a handful of his original Company to survive the war. He earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star and survived Sicily and Anzio and like so many others of his generation was witness to many things that no young person should ever have to see.

But like many others, after the war he was able to eventually adjust and put most of the horrors of what he saw behind him. All except one.

It happened toward the end of the war. He was not part of the invasion of Normandy but was fortunate to land in Southern France, a cakewalk according to him compared to Sicily and Anzio.

Though the fighting was light, compared to what had come before, it was not without danger and one day as they advanced in the woods they were met by a large number of people running at them. My father said it scared the hell out of them and they started to mow them down until the realized that they weren?t soldiers. They were concentration camp survivors. They had overpowered the skeleton SS troops that had been left behind to guard the camp and were making a break for it. They had stumbled upon Dachau.

Once the commanders realized what they had they received orders to seal the camp off and wait for a Colonel from the States to come and document what they had found. My father was assigned the duty of driving the jeep for the Colonel. That is how my father found himself a witness to one of the more horrific events of the century.

But there?s more. My father took photos all throughout the war and when he found himself in such an unbelievable position he asked the Colonel for permission to photograph what he saw. This was strictly against the Colonels orders but I suppose the Colonel understood my father?s need to prove what he had seen so he allowed it anyway.

So that?s what my father did. He pulled out his trusty Brownie and took roll after roll of the most hideous and gruesome photos you can imagine. Many are far worse than anything I?ve ever seen published. My family still possesses this grim gallery.

When he returned to his unit he told the rest of his comrades what he had seen and many did not believe him. This was very hurtful for him but understandable. There were a great number of rumors at that time and the story my father told seemed too far fetched, even for these battle hardened veterans and of course he did not have time to develop the film to show them the evidence.

In the years that followed, back in the States, my father, like so many others was able to, for the most part, put the war behind him and go on with his live.

That all changed about 10 years ago when he suffered a mild stroke. Shortly after he was diagnosed as having Alzheimer?s. As a result his memory began to erode. At first he was simply confused but as the illness progressed he lost more and more of his memory. Sometimes he knew who I was, now he never recognizes me.

This can be hard under the best of circumstances but he eventually reached a point that was especially hurtful. He once asked me if I had met ?Marie? (my mother). He no longer remembered me or my siblings or anything of our life together.

But he still remembered Dachau.

I remember visiting with him, making small talk as he had no idea who I was when he suddenly asked me if I believed him. At first I didn?t know what he meant and then I realized he was back at Dachau still trying to convince his buddies of what he saw.

I can think of no greater injustice than this kind and gentle man would in the last years of his life be slowly robbed of every sweet and tender memory and left only with these vile and inhuman images. I cannot deny that even though I know he loved me dearly, my 49 years as his son could not leave an impression on his consciousness as deep as that brief time he spent within the barbed wire fence of Dachau.

Now, mercifully I guess, he seems to have forgotten even about the war and I am grateful for that.

But when I hear some fool trying to deny what happened in those camps it takes every ounce of composure I can muster to keep from wringing their silly necks.

Sorry for the rant but I?m not sure how much longer my father is going to be around and once I started posting I couldn?t stop. I guess I just had to get it off my chest.

Unfortunately there will soon be no living eye-witnesses to these atrocities left alive.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

I watched a PBS special on Auschwitz last night. It sent my wife to the bedroom crying...as it should. She had recently been (on business) to the holocaust museum in St.Petersburg Fl where one of the exhibits was a railroad car full of shoes of the victims of the genocide.
I guess it kind of blindsided her.

Incredible that humans are capable of such barbarity.

 

[zenith-nadir]

I watched a PBS special on Auschwitz last night. It sent my wife to the bedroom crying...as it should. She had recently been (on business) to the holocaust museum in St.Petersburg Fl where one of the exhibits was a railroad car full of shoes of the victims of the genocide.
I guess it kind of blindsided her. Incredible that humans are capable of such barbarity.

Or such insensitivity:

Originally posted by TillEulenspiegel - 01-26-2005 09:32 PM
I feel more then vindicated by putting Zionist-Nucklehead on my ignore list. The counter posts demonstrait that persons lack of reasoning ability and monomania. He is the only "person" that exists in that list BTW.

If his style of rhetoric enthralls you You might want to try Alt.Nazi.bin or alt.History. or lackofgraspofreality.bin
link

 

[renata]

Can we PLEASE keep personal feuds, political disagreements and such out of this thread?

Come on, guys.

 

[Cleon]

I watched a PBS special on Auschwitz last night. It sent my wife to the bedroom crying...as it should. She had recently been (on business) to the holocaust museum in St.Petersburg Fl where one of the exhibits was a railroad car full of shoes of the victims of the genocide.
I guess it kind of blindsided her.

Incredible that humans are capable of such barbarity.

I've been there; though, at the time, the car was empty. The shoes must be a fairly recent addition.

I've also been to Yad Vashem; I highly recommend it if you find yourself in Jerusalem. It's more a memorial than a museum, and it's also very politicized, but it's incredibly powerful. I found myself--as a fourteen-year-old kid more concerned with girls than history--brought to tears by the "Valley of the Communities," a 3-acre memorial to all the Jewish towns and villages that were wiped out.

 

[Tony]

Thanks for sharing Blue Monk.

 

[Brown]

My close family basically missed the war in Europe. My grandfathers were too old, and one, being deaf, was ineligible to serve. My father was too young (he eventually served in the Korean War). My great uncle (my grandfather's brother) was in Army intelligence, but did not see any fighting. My relatives' war experiences were largely directed to hometown drills, rationing, drives, and reading in the newspaper the names of close friends who had been killed or wounded in Europe or the Pacific.

A few years ago, I learned about some of my more distant relatives, who lived in Europe during WWII. Their stories were chilling. The Nazis siezed the family farm (it had been in the family since at least the 1500s) and turned it into an air base. An international airport now operates on the site. The Nazis built pillboxes around the base and in the surrounding countryside. The pillboxes are still there. Locals use them for storage.

There's more. Though the country was occupied, there was a vigorous resistance. The Nazis were brutal, but the resistance was equally brutal. To this day, family members and locals tell stories about they ambushed and slaughtered Nazi soldiers, sabotaged Nazi equipment and wrecked Nazi supply lines. Occasionally they can point out a small memorial marking a spot at which a successful guerilla operation had been carried out. The memorial also recognizes those who lost their lives in the operation.

The locals are intelligent, charming, soft-spoken people, and it is difficult to imagine them committing such bloody acts. But compared to what the Nazis did, their actions seem easily forgivable.

In the past few years, I have had the opportunity to meet friends, neighbors, teachers who were even closer to Nazi atrocities. I've met men who landed in Normandy on D-Day and who liberated death camps. I've met a man who was inside a railroad car on its way to a concentration camp, when at the last minute he was spirited out of the car and worked his way to freedom. I've met a man who fought in Germany and was captured, and who described how the Nazi guards threatened to murder all the prisoners as Allied tanks approached the stalag. I've met people who lost their entire families to the Nazi murder industry.

And the scariest thought about all this--the one thing that still sends chills up my spine--is that the events that these people described occurred within the lifetimes of people who are alive today. These events are not remote, they are not ancient. They were set in motion by "modern," supposedly enlightened people. And there seems to be no guarantee that the modern, enlightened people of today won't venture down the same path.

 

[Mercutio]

I can never get my head around the sheer numbers.

My picture of Auschwitz is from decades ago, a friend's father. A very quiet man...he wore short sleeves so as not to cover the number tattooed in dark blue on his arm. I was just a kid, so I did not have the questions to ask him, but he did, occasionally, say a few things. He was a really nice guy. His kids were great.

I think of my family and closest friends. I think of my classrooms full of hundreds of students, already a number large enough to give anonymity. I think of the thousands of students I have taught over the years (over 10,000 now), and realize that they would have been the merest drop in the bucket. I think back to family and closest friends, and think that each of the millions was that close to someone. And even with that...I really don't think I have a sense of the enormity of it all.

 

[Jon_in_london]

I think a lot of people wonder why we Jews make such a big thing out of the Holocaust; after all, it was 60 years ago, it's history, why make such a fuss?

I would hope most would NOT wonder so!

Its still in living memory after all....

And its a defining moment in the history of a "people"........ some say that the UK should stop harping on about WWII and the Battle of Britain and all that, but the truth is, its a defining moment in our recent history...... so as the years roll by and it drops from living memory so it will become less of a "big thing" but it will always be there just as the holocaust will always be for the Jews (not that Im drawing any more of a parralell between death camps and blitz-heroics you understand...just that its a defing moment).

My only fear is that people wil think that the holocaust only happened to the Jews and that was the central focus of the war (as evidenced by the ludicrous guilt trips my countrymen are sending themselves on because we didnt bomb Aushwitz)... it wasnt..... gypsies, homosexuals, communists, countless thousands of eatern european peasants, the disabled and mentally ill were also slaughtered by the Nazis...... lets not forget them either........

 

[Hutch]

I remember when this horror first impinged on my conscious...yes, I had read about it in 9th grade (when I spent two months of my 14 yo life reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich") but those were words, and horrible as they were, they were just words to my young mind.

Two years later my history teacher showed us "Night and Fog". the French documentary on the Camps.

Ever see 30 teenagers with nothing to say? Some of those images are still burned in my brain over 30 years later--I can't begin to imagine what it was like for those who had to live--and survive it.

And 60 years on? Well, we have had Cambodia, Rwanda.....humanity still hasn't learned what it is to be human yet. But at least we can remember--and not forget--and maybe, just maybe, learn. One can hope. Sometimes that's all we have.

 

[CFLarsen]

Today, some Danish high schools spent the whole day watching clips from Auschwitz, and discussing afterwards what makes it possible.

Two students were interviewed for a Danish newspaper (Berlingske).

"På begge har debatten efterladt sine spor. Følelsesmæssigt. Det kan ses i øjnene. Det kan høres på stemmerne."

"On both, the debate left its tracks. Emotionally. It can be seen in the eyes. It can be heard in the voices."

That's what education is all about.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Merc:"I can never get my head around the sheer numbers. "

Well that's the sheer overwhelming scope of the holocaust isn't it?
The saying "One death is a tragedy, 1 million is a figure" is not just a trite saying , especially in this case.

To try to realize the depth of this monstrous episode in our ( Humans ) history is ultimately impossible. What you must do is to read 1 or 2 or 6 accounts of the people who survived.

My old man was a bird Colonel and one of his friends who under his command ( who was relatively local ) was a Jew and was a troop who saw first hand this horror.

He broke down in tears ( guy was a hard ass) as many did upon encountering the poor souls left in the camps when the Nazis fled. They tried to give some of the victims food and water but they were so emaciated that they couldn't keep any thing down.

When the US army occupied the local town he was part of that contingent and he told me , it was the hardest thing in his life to act relatively civilly toward those Germans in town. He hinted that was not entirely the case.

Watch Saving Pvt.Ryan to get a real feel for the depravities of war. It isn't the real thing but it depicts reality. Or Spielberg's other take Schindler's List.

 

[ZeeGerman]

Dealing with the Holocaust...

I've been confronted with stories and documentary material about the Holocaust since my early childhood.

I learned the names of the places
I was told how it was done
I saw the pictures, documantaries and movies
I tried to imagine how many 6 million is

The important questions though, are still not answered

How could people actually do that?
How could you let it happen?
How could you not notice that millions of people simply vanished?
How could you simply "not know"?

In the presence of the accounts in this thread, what can I say that will not sound awkward?


I'm sorry.

Zee

 

[Jas]

I was in Auschwitz-Berkenau this summer, and it was something else.

One of the displays was a a glass was which looked into a room filled with thousands of shoes (there was another one filled with human hair). Anyway, I was looking at the shoes, and I saw the neatest pair - high heeled pumps made out of black and white leather in a really intricate pattern. They were awesome, and I wondered where I could find a similar pair.

Then, it occurred to me, that someone else obviously thought they were nice shoes. Someone with similar taste to me, wore those shoes onto a cattle car, when they were brought to Auschwitz. I think that's what stands out in my mind the most.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

ZeeGerman

That's the BIGGEST lesson from WW2 ...that ordinary people can act monstrously!
You need not prostrate yourself on the ground because of the acts of your distant relatives. Collective guilt is BS.

The point is "Did we learn the lesson?" I think we have and altho things like the mess in Sudan still happen, at least now the world is not so "uncaring".

Edit: addressee

 

[Cleopatra]

Dealing with the Holocaust...

I've been confronted with stories and documentary material about the Holocaust since my early childhood.

I learned the names of the places
I was told how it was done
I saw the pictures, documantaries and movies
I tried to imagine how many 6 million is

The important questions though, are still not answered

How could people actually do that?
How could you let it happen?
How could you not notice that millions of people simply vanished?
How could you simply "not know"?

In the presence of the accounts in this thread, what can I say that will not sound awkward?


I'm sorry.

Zee

You won't believe it but this post makes me very sad. I just wish that no human being carried the burden of those actions.

My grandmother survived. When Israel was established the survivors didn't talk at all about it mostly because the natives couldn't understand how so many people were slaughtered without resistence. It was after 1967 that the Holocaust came to light even in Israel. My grandmother didn't talked much about it,she only brought it as an example that humans can survive everything. The camp stories still uspet me very much because I knew people that they have been there and I don't wish to know what exactly happened there.

In Greece this year the Central Jewish Council decided to commemorate the day by honoring the Righteous Among The Nations in the face of Raul Wallenberg.

I believe that this is very important. It's humans that are involved in attrocieties but it's only humans that make the difference.

Today my prayers are for those who did their best to save unarmed souls, the so called Righteous Among The Nations.

May God make them rest in peace.

 

[Brown]

... my history teacher showed us "Night and Fog". the French documentary on the Camps.

Ever see 30 teenagers with nothing to say? Some of those images are still burned in my brain over 30 years later--I can't begin to imagine what it was like for those who had to live--and survive it.

Because you are my evil twin (you have the goatee, so I think by convention you have to be the "evil" one), I am not surprised by these remarks. I had almost exactly the same experience.

My Social Studies/History teacher, Mr. Neyens, showed us "Night and Fog." I was stunned. We all were stunned. 30 kids sat there horrified, shaking, speechless. I remember the images clearly, with utter revulsion. Even when I see clips of the events (e.g., in the excellent "Judgment at Nuremberg" or the miniseries "Nuremberg"), I find myself feeling the very same shock all over again.

The images so disturbed me that my eyes refused to focus on the screen, something that has never happened to me before or since. Even so, the horror of the images came through.

A few years ago, I watched a documentary that featured interviews with US soldiers who liberated the death camps or supplied medical attention to survivors. It was clear that these men, who were tough as nails, were having difficulty maintaining their composure. Never have I felt so many conflicting emotions. I wanted to cry, I wanted to throw up, I wanted to murder the perpetrators, I wanted to scream, I wanted to hide... all at the same time.