Jan 26 1945 Auschwitz

[painter777]

72 years ago...........
January 26th, 1945 is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army.
They arrived to find nearly 700 corpses and more than 7,000 starved survivors.

Many today do not believe this happened.

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[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

I wonder if anyone knows how many survivors are still alive. Horrible situation.

[CINDERS]

Just from my foggy mind I think the Final solution saw the horrible demise of some 5 million+ Jewish souls just madness personified

[mrclark303]

Just from my foggy mind I think the Final solution saw the horrible demise of some 5 million+ Jewish souls just madness personified

Plus many others Cinders, it was the German preoccupation with record keeping that gives us a rough number and led to the long drop for a good number of the vile perpetrators.

No one really knows on the other hand, quite how many people the other jackboot wearing monster Stalin killed.

Millions I am sure...

[Ovidio]

The official count says >6 million. Mostly Jews, but also handicapped people, gipsies, gays, political opponents......
Really an unbelievable number, especially if you thing this has been done by a highly civilized population.
I've been raised by Germans and have always seen them so struck by the monstrosity of the Shoah (1970s-1980s) that I thought they would never recuperate any self-respect.
They really could not figure out how mum or dad, or the grandparents, or the neighbor or anyone else could have fallen into something like that.
Knowing now with much more maturity to it how people are, how crazy ideas can spread and, more worrying, how things can be forgotten or "relativized", I really am not sure that we can consider ourselves safe yet (I'm not meaning the Germans specifically, just generically humans).
But there have been plenty of other massacres during those years, all of them more or less forgotten.
Being a bit partial, and living in the area, I have to think about the foibe, crevasses in the ground in the area of Trieste and Gorizia, where Yugoslav communist partisans and Italian communists threw over 7.000 people killing them.
They tied them all together and then shot the first one who, falling, dragged all the others down.
Everything after torturing or raping them.
The most famous one is the Foiba di Basovizza. 200 meters deep. It is filled with wrecks of Austro-Hungarian military equipment thrown there after WWI, then there are many meters of human remains from the massacres of 1943-1945 and later.
They said it was for killing fascists, which would be monstrous just the same, but in fact they were making an ethnic cleansing of Italians from the area in order to have Jugoslavia take over these regions.
There are many more such foibe.
After over 70 years it is still very difficult to talk about this here.
Memory is politically easy to manipulate, and here you still have class A and class B dead.........
The celebrations for them are always very "shy".
If anyone is interested, here is the official website of the Foiba di Basovizza. It is also in English (don't know how well translated, I did not check).

[CINDERS]

The world has had its fair share of dictators one recent one Idi "Da Da" Amin was very good at doing things differently in fact more horrific than most others involving a line of victims the 2nd in line given a sledge hammer to bludgeon No.1 in the line that done they pass it to No.3 who metters out a similar fate to No.2 until the last one gets their comeuppance from the guards. Or utilizing a steam locomotive chugging along the line with the victims necks on the railway line till the train ran over their necks! And lastly I cannot place to print what he did to one of his wives but it involved her demise and the removal and re-attachment of various body parts including her head to different locations of her body all the while kept in a walk in freezer for his viewing pleasure.

In fact when in exile and Uganda was going through strife he offered his services again thank god he is dead. We are on our 3rd WV sponsored child from one of the poorest parts of Uganda we hope the communities benefit.
Two things spring to mind was the 2nd one sent us pictures of his first bicycle (old refurbed ladies bike) and the 3rd has sent us a picture of his first set of shoes he has had in his life it may not be much to some but to my wife and I to bring a small bit of happiness to a child in that sad and impoverished country makes us very happy indeed.

So much we take for granted like cursing the weather because we cannot get out to have a shot where on the other side of the world they die in droves for the want of basic care and hygiene such is the way of our world.
I have never been that poor as they are but my wife and I have been perhaps like some of us here may have experienced and that is on the bones of our ring gear with having money for that next meal was a lottery!

[Peter Laidler]

My parents were part of the advance into Italy and the post-war occupation Army of Italy and the British Zone of Germany until 1956. And my parents views of Germany and the Germans was total and absolute. Even as a small child I recall that he wouldn't even address a man or woman without them standing up straight in front of him. It was all about utter humiliation - and I pass no comment on that. I learned to speak German at school and go back several times a year and love them to bits......... In the past I have told them of how it was when I was a little boy there in the early 50's and how not just my parents thought and acted - but all of the occupation Armies thought and acted. And I feel that it's my turn to be a tad humiliated occasionally.

Not really relevant to the thread but........ I remember we lived like lords with the loveliest maid (who's husband was a lost submariner) you could ever dream of having. A boiler-man (and his wife) who loved us as his own kids

[Ovidio]

I forgot the link, sorry.

foibadibasovizza

Peter, I can connect with your memories very well.
It has started getting normal again only much later than the early fifties, actually for my experience only in the last 15 or so years.
Before that people stopped acting like you say, but the topic was discussed daily on every TV channel and not only there.
We had discussions about that very often at school (German School of Milan).
For me as an Italian (we also had our big guilts, but the population never really accepted the racial laws, so the feelings here are quite a bit different - it's a long and complicated topic) it was so strange as a kid.
Growing up and really understanding the size of the tragedy, I must admit that a similar cathartic "bath of humility" has been a positive and maybe even a necessary measure.
I'm also glad for them that now they can start looking at that with some historical angle, because cursing the generations which had nothing to do with that would not be right.

[CINDERS]

I look at it as a generation thing at that period in time like most things and how they cycle - we should never forget the past or those that gave their all so we could have all but there comes a time when the accountability has to stop and people move on sad to say there are some WWII vets that will not speak to a Japanese person yet there are others who will I cannot blame them for their experiences have cast the mold.
No matter what era we live in conflict/wars/famine and subducation will always be a part of our matrix in society today and to be truthful no matter the era I feel there were no romantic times 1800's you had Crimea, 1890's-1900's Boar war, 1914 - 1918 WWI, 1930's the depression, 1939-1945 WWII, 1950's Korea, others like Malaya, Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan cont with a myriad of minor conflicts.

WWII accounted for @50 million souls the Russian losses are not factored into this but they have been estimated to be in the region @20+ million for WWII and still even in our world the war continues under a different guise.

I had the pleasure of working with a WWII vet when a farmhand he had a few colorful stories to tell, one was they were advancing on the Germans when he said all hell seemed to erupt his 303 rifle was shot from his hands in that battle he was taken prisoner and ended up at a Stalag.
Rations were not plentiful and a plan was hatched to get some potatoes from a field outside the wire John said he would go and he went under the wire, he had managed to get some in his tunic when he said he heard a sound behind him and as he turned he came face to face with a German guard with his rifle aimed at him. There was nothing he could do and he expected to be shot there and then but to his surprise the guard said to hurry up and get back to his hut and that if (He) the guard ever caught him outside the wire again he would shoot him dead. John never went outside the wire again. So all cannot be judged by the actions of a few.

John Warburton a friend R.I.P

[Ovidio]

Gentlemen, I really would like to thank everybody for the civility of this discussion. It is rare when addressing such topics.
My most sincere thank you!
I have very little faith in social media, but here things are different.
Passion unites us. I really enjoy that a lot.