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Auschwitz - we must never forget

Trouble is, while the scale has never been repeated, mass murder as a tool of ethnic cleansing is still very much with us (Cambodia, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia). It really doesn't take a lot - the US didn't murder Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, but it was more than happy to shut them away in camps, for no reason other than their ancestry. And pre-WW2 countries such as the UK and the USA didn't want any more Jews. Small steps towards the slippery slope.
 
I have very little faith that populations would be somehow less permissive or more resistent of populist led atrocities even now. The idea that you can be made great, or that all your problems are the fault of another group/race/country is still toxically powerful and people are just as easily manipulated. In fact, you could argue that technology has made the latter even easier as propaganda and misinformation is more easily disseminated.
 
There's no doubt that Nuremburg was victor's justice to a certain extent (it could have been worse - the Soviet Union wanted the sorts of show trials that were common in Stalin's purges). However, the service it did was to put on record the evidence for the most horrendous crime in human history, in a way that no reasonable person could dispute. I find it amazing that there are so many unreasonable people who actually can dispute it. And their voices will become louder as the elderly survivors with their first-hand knowledge fade from the scene.

Our American secretary in a previous job had a father who was an Auschwitz survivor. He was a Hungarian Jew, and the Nazis got to them relatively late (for all his faults, Hungarian Regent Admiral Horthy resisted all attempts to deport Jews for as long as he could). He was a young, fit man, so, at Auschwitz, he went into that queue - the rest of the family went into that queue... Because of his youth and the late Hungarian deportations, he survived until the Russian liberation of the camp. Years later, in the USA, he saw an article by a Holocaust denier in the local paper. For the first and only time in his life, he wrote a letter to the paper, saying how delighted he was at this article, because it meant that his family was still with us, and, please, where could he meet them?
 
What concerns me is that in spite of the lessons of history our press are gradually chipping away at popular opinion such that Muslims are the new religious group to be vilified. We all say how dreadful the Holocaust was, and it was indeed. However I wouldn't have liked to have had a referendum on rounding up Muslims after the 7/7 attacks in London. I wouldn't today in large areas of say West Yorkshire. This is how it starts. We know.
 
Some years after my grandfather died, my grandmother told me how he was a “mini-Schindler” in his small village in Hungary during World War II. Apparently, he was ordered to take captured Jewish families into the woods, where he was supposed to shoot them in the head, but he instead fired several shots into the ground and told them to run, run like hell.

I have no idea if the story is true and whether it was one family or many, as he never spoke of this to me, but I like to think that the simple gardener who got swept up in a world war did the right thing.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Some years after my grandfather died, my grandmother told me how he was a “mini-Schindler” in his small village in Hungary during World War II. Apparently, he was ordered to take captured Jewish families into the woods, where he was supposed to shoot them in the head, but he instead fired several shots into the ground and told them to run, run like hell.

I have no idea if the story is true and whether it was one family or many, as he never spoke of this to me, but I like to think that the simple gardener who got swept up in a world war did the right thing.

Joe
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That's a wonderful story Joe. I'm sure it is true, and you can be enormously proud of your very brave grandfather.
 
Joe P said:
Some years after my grandfather died, my grandmother told me how he was a “mini-Schindler” in his small village in Hungary during World War II. Apparently, he was ordered to take captured Jewish families into the woods, where he was supposed to shoot them in the head, but he instead fired several shots into the ground and told them to run, run like hell.

I have no idea if the story is true and whether it was one family or many, as he never spoke of this to me, but I like to think that the simple gardener who got swept up in a world war did the right thing.

Joe
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Great story Joe, thanks.

The thing that really gets me about the holocaust was the sheer banality of the whole thing, there was a piece on R4 this morning in which a survivor was telling the familiar tale of you to the left (death) and you to the right (life) anyway this woman said that when she got to the camp there was a German officer directing the queues now I'm sure that these people (the army/soldiers) were for the most part ordinary citizens but the absolute frightening thing for me was the fact that some 'ordinary' German officer who, presumably, was well educated and who knew exactly what was going on, went along with the charade or the game of murder by conning poor helpless people into going into the trucks 'that would take them for a meal and a shower after their long journey' knowing full well they would be dead within hours, and then, presumably, when it was all over went back to his life and lived as though nothing really happened.

I was thinking about this this morning and thinking if I or my family or whoever were being transported somewhere to be murdered and we had no clue that was what was going to happen but when you get to your destination and some authority figure say's 'right, you lot go there and you lot go there' most or everyone would just do as they were told, who in their right mind would, for a moment, think that this person was conning them into being murdered?

Rwanda was just as bad, Catholic priests murdering thousands of people, one of them bulldozed a church full of poor people.

He was responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people.

Madness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanase_Seromba
 
We should also never forget the atrocities carried out on the Eastern Front.

Estimated civilian deaths range from about 14 to 17 million. Over 11.4 million Soviet civilians within pre-1939 Soviet borders were killed, and another estimated 3.5 million civilians were killed in the annexed territories.

Those numbers are truly shocking. We remember the Holocaust and rightly so. Yet we forget the enormous numbers of civilians murdered by the Nazis because of their perceived inferiority.
 
Bob,

He was a little guy and a simple soul, but man did he have a harsh life. This is the article about him when he was reunited with my grandmother, mother and uncle. He fled to Canada in 1949. The rest of the family escaped in 1957.

https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMDC-TSPA_0012909F&R=DC-TSPA_0012909F

That was the stereotypical cold war photo taken at the time — impoverished family from East Bloc country escapes unspeakable hardships. They end up in Canada and are amazed to see a "refrigerator" stuffed with food. Forget for a moment that they all could have lost a few pounds before they escaped.

Joe
 
Roger Adams said:
We should also never forget the atrocities carried out on the Eastern Front.

Estimated civilian deaths range from about 14 to 17 million. Over 11.4 million Soviet civilians within pre-1939 Soviet borders were killed, and another estimated 3.5 million civilians were killed in the annexed territories.

Those numbers are truly shocking. We remember the Holocaust and rightly so. Yet we forget the enormous numbers of civilians murdered by the Nazis because of their perceived inferiority.
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I have never forgotten that 25million Russians died in WW2 but 6million Jews were systematically murdered, in 1944 almost the entire Jewish population of Hungary, 750,000 people, were transported to the death camps and by then the war was lost for Germany.

"Between May 15th and July 9th, about 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported, mainly to Auschwitz, where most were gassed on arrival"

https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/jews-of-hungary-during-the-holocaust.html
 
Roger,

Roger Adams said:
We remember the Holocaust and rightly so. Yet we forget the enormous numbers of civilians murdered by the Nazis because of their perceived inferiority.
Click to expand...

I've found it possible to remember both. Maybe it's because I have a head as big as a Talosian's.

Joe
 
When the hiroshima bomb dropped, the US scientists went to a bar to celebrate. These guys are the cleverest people in the world.
 
philiphifi said:
When the hiroshima bomb dropped, the US scientists went to a bar to celebrate. These guys are the cleverest people in the world.
Click to expand...

Seriously, most of them were German/Nazis weren't they?

I watched a programme recently which was about lost photographic images of Germany during the WW2 and there was a Jewish guy who lived in Germany somewhere who was a prolific diarist (pretty famous I believe) and in his diary he recorded that Jews weren't allowed to keep cats which meant that the Jewish guy and his wife had to have their 11 year old cat destroyed rather than let the Nazis take the cat away from them.

The Jewish people also lost their driving licences because of some other mad law (Jews were not allowed to drive on roads built by German workers) that the Nazis brought in to make Jewish people's lives a misery, something like 600 anti Jewish laws were passed during the 13 years the Nazis were in power.

1941
Action

  • Jews over 6 forced to wear a Yellow Star of David with 'Jew' written on it
  • Jews Forbidden to use public telephones
  • Jews forbidden to keep dogs, cats and birds
  • Jews forbidden to leave the country
https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/decrees/decrees.html
 
Joe P said:
Roger,
I've found it possible to remember both. Maybe it's because I have a head as big as a Talosian's.
Joe
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I too remember both atrocities.

I wish more could. Both were the appalling and systematic murder of whole Ethnic groupings, purely because Hitler and the Nazis considered them to be inferior to the "Master race".
 
I will not forget any of the many genocides of which I am aware. I'm fully supportive of the idea that we need to take the message forward to younger generations who, especially in the West, have not experienced major conflict or the dreadful consequences of scapegoating and stereotyping.

However, I don't need to be personally reminded. I get it and I simply cannot watch the many documentaries/films etc., which are bound to get played at times like now.

The last time I actively exposed myself to the topic was reading 'Mauthausen-Diary of a Death Camp', by IIRC Evelyn Le Chene probably 40+ years ago. I find it far too upsetting.

OTOH, Mrs Mull has a sort of morbid fascination with the whole subject and will watch anything and everything about it.
 
There were so many famous scientists working on the projects - German, Italian, US, UK. Many of the scientists were refugees from Europe. Some were Jewish origin. Richard Feynman said during an interview that they lost sight of the reasons why they tried to build it. Many of these guys were Nobel prize winners. I kid you not, the Nobel prize is for the greatest benefits of mankind.

twotone said:
Seriously, most of them were German/Nazis weren't they?

I watched a programme recently which was about lost photographic images of Germany during the WW2 and there was a Jewish guy who lived in Germany somewhere who was a prolific diarist (pretty famous I believe) and in his diary he recorded that Jews weren't allowed to keep cats which meant that the Jewish guy and his wife had to have their 11 year old cat destroyed rather than let the Nazis take the cat away from them.

The Jewish people also lost their driving licences because of some other mad law (Jews were not allowed to drive on roads built by German workers) that the Nazis brought in to make Jewish people's lives a misery, something like 600 anti Jewish laws were passed during the 13 years the Nazis were in power.

1941
Action

  • Jews over 6 forced to wear a Yellow Star of David with 'Jew' written on it
  • Jews Forbidden to use public telephones
  • Jews forbidden to keep dogs, cats and birds
  • Jews forbidden to leave the country
https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/decrees/decrees.html
Click to expand...
 
I've heard much of the history and many tales since childhood. It still stops me in my tracks when I hear a fresh account but I feel our duty is to bear witness to those who lived and died.

Over the last few days I've heard more about the kindergarten transports, the agonising decision of parents to put a child on a train in an attempt to secure their survival whils facing annihilation themselves. One family pulled their six year old off the train at the last moment. They all perished.

It also sickens me that at such a poignant moment our parliament has chosen not to accept children of refugee families who are already here.

There is a lot that is different about us now and then, and very little of it is any good.
 
roman said:
I've heard much of the history and many tales since childhood. It still stops me in my tracks when I hear a fresh account but I feel our duty is to bear witness to those who lived and died.

Over the last few days I've heard more about the kindergarten transports, the agonising decision of parents to put a child on a train in an attempt to secure their survival whils facing annihilation themselves. One family pulled their six year old off the train at the last moment. They all perished.

It also sickens me that at such a poignant moment our parliament has chosen not to accept children of refugee families who are already here.

There is a lot that is different about us now and then, and very little of it is any good.
Click to expand...

There were 1.5million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis.
 
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