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Troops of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division force Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) members to view the bodies of camp inmates found dead in rail cars at Dachau concentration camp. Dachau concentration camp, Upper Bavaria, Germany. 30 April 1945.
My grandson plays violin, I went to one of his practices... one song was an old German folk tune. The teacher was aghast when I told her that it had been co-opted for the Hitler Youth March, but it was true... Die Jugend Marchen.
Wonder if those in the film would have envisaged the horrors of "The Final Solution" in the years to come.
There is still a need to educate people of exactly what horrors went on in the concentration camps and in the wider Third Reich especially to the Jewish community but also other minority groups. I continue to be staggered at some people's total ignorance.
While in grade school we were visited by a monk who was in Dachau - he showed us a picture of a internee in the striped uniform front, left and right view.
The side views show a large nail protruding out of the wall and embedded into the back of the skull ( this was to keep the head still for the photo)
also on the card was the individual number.
He slowly rolled up his sleeve and held the card next to his tattoo to show us the numbers matched.
He defiantly created a life long memory
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My father was stationed in Europe in the '60's.
We visited Dachau in the summer of 1963, I was 10, I had heard stories from one of dad's friends who liberated Dachau, and had seen a couple of documentaries, so I knew a what it was about.
When we got there I was overcome with feeling that the air was heavy, a feeling that the earth was forever tainted with evil there.
I have never been able to shake that memory--a feeling from bad things that had happened 20 years before, that had ended almost ten years before I was born.
I believe that, bizarrely, Hitler gave some sort of "official pardon" to Jewish WW1 veterans who held the Iron Cross so that they and their family were exempt from being deported to a Concentration Camp. Is anyone able to confirm this and provide any further information concerning this, please?
It all illustrates why "morality" (what is right and what is wrong) has been one of the main issues in philosophy for thousands of years. "Right" can change with the society you live in.
I was stationed in West Germany during the middle 70s in the 536 MP Company. In the basement of company headquarters building lived the company tailor, an older Polish Jewish man who had attached himself to the company after being liberated from a concentration camp during WWII. As part of the new guy orientation, we were all introduced to him and listened to his story. He was a sole survivor, having lost all his family members in the concentration camps. Had the numbers tattooed on his forearm. Very sobering to listen to him and what he went through in the concentration camps.
Visited Flossenberg, a "small" concentration camp. I think they only machinegunned and burned 25,000-35,000 people there. Some were captured US and British pilots and resistance fighters.
During that time the Holocaust miniseries from the US was shown on West German Television. It shocked the whole country with many disbelieving it. A German civilian, whom I had befriended, had been a marine in the German Navy during the war. Told me he had always been proud of his service to his country and knew nothing of the holocaust. It was little known about or talked about by any Germans until that miniseries was shown. He was crying, wringing my hands and apologizing to me for what his country had done. I told him I was the wrong one to apologize to.
That bring us to the very timely topic of relative truth (and relative morality) and absolute truth. I say 'timely' because our global societies are awash with the debate as we speak.Quote:
Originally Posted by bob seijas
We can leave that discussion for another, more appropriate venue.
2 sobering books you may wish to read both by Lord Liverpool "The Scourge Of The Swastika" also "The Scourge Of Bushido" the second book will really affect you I have read both (Have copies) and can categorically state the Bushido one had me aghast it was about as inhumane as you can get it is so awful you cannot get angry just sad, it makes the Dr. Mengle experiments look positively benign.
One more book is Defy the Darkness a tale of courage in the shadow of Mengle By Rosenblum & Kohn a modern book but pretty damn awful, inspirational for its courage portrayed.
Buchenwald camp held a true horror of a woman called Ilse Koch (Commandants wife from memory) who loved tattoos she would roam the compounds looking for well tattooed victims pick them out they were then taken away killed by lethal injection, skinned and the tanned product made into lamp shades for her. She also had the fat rendered down and made into soap so she could be clean always accompanied by her two Rottweilers she laughed gaily as they tore prisoners to pieces on various occasions, thankfully justice prevailed and she had her neck stretched after her trial post WWII.
I was close BAR pity she did not get the gallows
Not quite ... she should have though... Ilse Koch - WikipediaQuote:
Originally Posted by CINDERS
Within the last couple of years or so I happened, by chance, to have a conversation with a middle aged white British male who insisted to me that the United Kingdom would have been a perfectly pleasant and agreeable place to live had the Germans mounted a successful invasion in 1940. His main argument for this assertion seemed to be that the German people were a civilised race and he kept pointing this out to me during our conversation. I pointed out that had the Germans been successful they would have deported almost the entire male population of the U.K., of fighting age, to continental Europe; he was totally ignorant of this fact. I then went onto say that it wouldn't have been very pleasant for members of the Jewish Community living in the U.K.. Although he didn't come back with an answer to this point, the impression I got was that he wouldn't have been too concerned about what may have happened to Jews living in the U.K. had the Germans invaded. I had to bite my tongue a fair amount with this chap because I didn't wish to get into an argument with him.
I have been thinking about this thread all day particularly that video of the children singing about taking over the world. Wow! I could not imagine teaching anyone, specifically my children that destroying a society, religion, group, or race is ok. Civil folks do just that.... act civil and understand there are differences between everyone. If acting civil, one would turn away if he/she doesn't like what they see or hear.... not kill them. As was alluded to earlier: same problem is occurring today as it did back then and even centuries/mellinia for that fact. Now its just more easy to see what is happening around the world because of media. My father always says.... know your past and you will predict your future. He is a paleontologist. -andy
From my reading on the subject Germany was a very different place in the 1930's and was a place that could happen to any society given similar circumstances. It is easy to use our modern perspective to look back and judge, however when a person is truly at the end of their rope, the measures they will take for survival are immense, when an entire country or culture feels at risk of extinction, the effect is magnified by the size of the group. Any one offering hope in one of those times will be seen as a savior and followed with increasing zeal as their situation improves by their hand. I don't look at this as an excuse or anything like that, but as a real life example of the actions humanity will take in certain circumstances.Quote:
Originally Posted by speckles
The world in regions is still a very violent, horrifying place, and while the National Socialists made human suffering into an efficient mass scale system, the concept and practices have not been abolished outside of the safe areas we call the developed world.
The concept of universal peace and human right is not universally accepted yet, unfortunately.
I remember going to market and carrying items for my mother. She bought eggs from a man who had crude tattoo's on his arm. When I asked what they were and she explained I couldn't believe it. Not long after, I guess after I was deemed old enough to be educated in the ways of the world, I was shown photographs that were taken by my deceased uncle of a death camp, many photographs, some however I was not able to see. I wonder now if it was just my mind blocking out the images for what I was viewing. Those pictures are still there 40 some years later. Only a fool would believe the atrocities were never committed, and they still are.
I have heard it suggested that Hitler himself may have been partly Jewish and that his biological father may not have been the person who he said was his father. The person who told me this explained that the reason Hitler hated the Jews so much was due to the way his mother was said to have been treated by his real father and family. I do not know if there is any truth in this matter but this was suggested to me as an explanation as to why Hitler hated the Jews so much.