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Seventy years ago, the Red Army arrived at Auschwitz
- Thread starter Amir0x
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I agree with this. This was my first real bit of reading into the goings-on at some of the camps, struck me to the core and just seeing and reading more into the subject just, I can't even put the feeling into words.
It's awful. To know what we as a species are capable off. There's some truly dark shit going on at times and it's just uncomfortable to think about
Makes it all the more important to remember and recognize the holocaust and other genocidal events in our history.
Makes it all the more important to remember and recognize the holocaust and other genocidal events in our history.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
Surely the +6 million jews plus the elderly, disabled, homosexual, romani, and many others that the russians had been exterminating would've come to light. I guess we'll never know.
Blue Submarine No. 6
Member
One of the most moving episodes of the seminal WWII documentary The World At War is the hour in which they examine the Holocaust. The series was made less than thirty years after the war's conclusion, and so includes many interviews with survivors and others. Some of the most telling testimony is from the people who lived in the towns and cities captured by the Nazis, and how they found themselves slowly, insidiously made complicit in genocide. It can be very difficult to watch.
And one last thing we should all remember... Before the Holocaust, well before Kristallnacht, there was a strong, government supported movement in Germany to encourage Jews to emigrate to other countries. And there were a lot of German Jews who wanted to get the hell out, because they could see where the winds were blowing. But many of them just didn't have anywhere to go; most Western countries - including my beloved Canada - had strict limits on the numbers of Jews they wanted coming into the country, and they weren't accepting these immigrants from Germany. So when it all went to hell in a handbasket in '38, there were thousands and thousands of German Jews literally "trapped" in their own country, because they had not been able to get the requisite visas to get the hell out. Because OUR liberal democratic governments, champions of human rights and justice, didn't want them here.
This is ridiculous... What planet do you live on? If you didn't obey your orders you were summarily shot. Period. This wasn't the volunteer army of a liberal democracy. Any dissention in the ranks was met with brutal, uncompromising force.
And one last thing we should all remember... Before the Holocaust, well before Kristallnacht, there was a strong, government supported movement in Germany to encourage Jews to emigrate to other countries. And there were a lot of German Jews who wanted to get the hell out, because they could see where the winds were blowing. But many of them just didn't have anywhere to go; most Western countries - including my beloved Canada - had strict limits on the numbers of Jews they wanted coming into the country, and they weren't accepting these immigrants from Germany. So when it all went to hell in a handbasket in '38, there were thousands and thousands of German Jews literally "trapped" in their own country, because they had not been able to get the requisite visas to get the hell out. Because OUR liberal democratic governments, champions of human rights and justice, didn't want them here.
Mammoth Jones
Member
This should never ever ever be forgotten. Because it was horrible and it happened and it could happen again.
Omegasquash
Member
Remember and recognize.
This is only 70 years ago. Not that long ago if you take a look at human history. Anyone that things humanity is beyond this sort of cruelty should have it framed this way to them.
It was only 70 years ago.
This is only 70 years ago. Not that long ago if you take a look at human history. Anyone that things humanity is beyond this sort of cruelty should have it framed this way to them.
It was only 70 years ago.
They would have probably killed the guards and put their own prisoners in. Why do you wonder?
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Thanks for the brutal reminder, Amir0x. Brutal is the only word I can use to explain this brutality.
Supposedly, Alfred Hitchcock has an unreleased documentary about concentration camps that will release this year.
Humanity shattering event.
Supposedly, Alfred Hitchcock has an unreleased documentary about concentration camps that will release this year.
Humanity shattering event.
What always gets me - and you can get a decent overview of it in the BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution which is viewable on Netflix streaming - is just how methodical it all was.
This wasn't like some slapdash slaughter campaign. This was a highly advanced state using every bit of technological know-how in their arsenal to put together the most efficient form of mass murder possible at the time. They kept meticulous records (which they hurriedly tried to destroy as the Allies bore down on these places), inventoried the precise number of Jews in every territory (the specifics of which you can read in the Minutes of the infamous Wannsee Conference), cataloged an insane method for determining who was Jewish and who was not and proceeded to spend millions in research dollars to find out what was the quickest method of not only killing people in mass numbers, but to dispose of their bodies too. This was a learning process as well... in the early parts of the War they were far less effective at it, and Commanders on the ground had to invent new and radical ways to dispose of thousands upon thousands of corpses. And every bit of these lessons were applied toward the Final Solution.
This wasn't just mass slaughter. This was industrial genocide made possible only in the modern era. And the sick thing about it is many of the Nazis treated it as if it was nothing more different than ordering staples.
Here is a documentary on that documentary which was shown on Saturday in the UK titled Night Will Fall: -
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/holocaust-night-will-fall/on-demand/57245-001
It's on HBO tonight in the US at 9pm Eastern and Pacific times; 8pm Central time.
Baron Doggystyle von Woof
Member
I cried when I saw a documentary about concentration camps. Truly the lowest form we humans ever reached.
To think that people still agree with these ideas and call themselves nazis.
To think that people still agree with these ideas and call themselves nazis.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
Without knowing their excuses and just having some basic knowledge of war strategies from reading a bit of history and what podcasts i've listened to, often roads, bridges, railways etc are not destroyed due to the opposing force wanting to use them if and when they end up taking over that area to help move supplies and such. So there's that. I'm at work so i can't look up something definitive for ya.
Daffy Duck
Member
I saw a couple of programs on Auschwitz on Channel 4 over the weekend and they were truly sobering programs. The second one was showing the lines of dead bodies and the horrific state of decay they were in, really brutal watching.
The sad thing is those images don't even go 1% towards portraying the horror of these places and the evil the people there had to endure.
The second one started off asking why did the allies not bomb Auschwitz as they had reconnaissance photos from a plane but they were just filed away and not acted on, it was only when they interecepted some enigma encodings did they start to piece together what was going on, and even then, the top brass in charge did not even think this sort of thing was something they were capable of doing.
One account on the program had a guy who had been sent there with his family and child, and he was seperated from his wife and child and they put on the back of a truck to be sent to the gas chambers, the guard told him "You will never see them again, do you smell that smell in the air? That's your family".
The sad thing is those images don't even go 1% towards portraying the horror of these places and the evil the people there had to endure.
The second one started off asking why did the allies not bomb Auschwitz as they had reconnaissance photos from a plane but they were just filed away and not acted on, it was only when they interecepted some enigma encodings did they start to piece together what was going on, and even then, the top brass in charge did not even think this sort of thing was something they were capable of doing.
One account on the program had a guy who had been sent there with his family and child, and he was seperated from his wife and child and they put on the back of a truck to be sent to the gas chambers, the guard told him "You will never see them again, do you smell that smell in the air? That's your family".
Succinct Verbosity
Member
I decided to watch some documentaries today -despite watching a lot of the most informative ones- and i decided to look into human experimentation and, fuck, I really want to go back in time and punch everyone involved in such experiments in the face. The doctors. The SS officers. The Politicians. Everyone. Fuck me, am I mad.
HammerOfThor
Member
I went to the holocaust museum in Washington DC in 8/2014 and I am still unable to comprehend everything that happened in those camps. There was a room that had the walkway path with glass sides above a floor that was covered in shoes that had been retrieved from one of the camps. I think that's the closest I've come to truly understanding that horrible period in our history. I broke down and cried for a few minutes, at the time.
I can't even imagine how someone that experienced these camps firsthand would cope with a holocaust denier. I imagine I would go insane.
I can't even imagine how someone that experienced these camps firsthand would cope with a holocaust denier. I imagine I would go insane.
I was once at the Auschwitz and twice at the Sachsenhausen concentration camps a few years ago and it really is an incredibly humbling experience, to say the least. Seeing the barracks where people were imprisoned, seeing where doctors experimented on humans, seeing where the prisoners worked literally until they died, seeing where the prisoners were executed, seeing where the dead were burned, just knowing you're at the exact same spot these atrocities happened just 70 years ... words can't really describe the thoughts that rush through your mind and the feelings that kick in while you're there.
Phoenician_Viking
Banned
I really wish other massacres would be remembered like the Holocaust like the Armenian massacre etc....
22 million Soviets troops and people died from the German war. Don´t even dare to compare the atrocities that the Nazis did to the Soviets, whom the Nazis considered to be sub humans.
22 million Soviets troops and people died from the German war. Don´t even dare to compare the atrocities that the Nazis did to the Soviets, whom the Nazis considered to be sub humans.
I suspect it's about scale and about the unique way in which this genocide was carried out. The Rwandan Genocide killed approximately 700,000 people; Cambodian Genocide killed another 1-1.5million people and estimates that go higher than that. Yet few can even recall these things in the imagination of the general public.
Something about the systematic way Germans did it, the time it took place and the scale of it just left a huge mark on mankind. Of course, around 46 percent of people who were asked what the Holocaust was didn't even have an answer... so... sometimes humanity just prefers to try to forget.
Which is the problem.
To be fair, Stalin himself was complicit in the killing of well over 20,000,000 Soviets in mass executions and camps and torture regimes. The scale of these things is just nuts to imagine.
Rug Monkey
Member
The 2nd highest number killed were Polish Catholics - nearly 4 million
Hitler regarded all slavic peoples as inferior
All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles. Heinrich Himmler
D
Deleted member 80556
Unconfirmed Member
I'm still debating with myself what's worse. If it's coldly calculated, or if it's done on impulse to your own neighbors.
It's something that's not really talked about, but there wasn't really any country in the world during WW2 where Jewish people were properly accepted and respected. The English for example due to Jewish terrorism in our mandate for Palestine sent thousands of Jews away to their deaths as they either starved on boats in the Black Sea or they survived long enough to have their ship sunk by Stalin ordering the sinking of all civillian ships in the area incase they were German lookouts/spies.
It's also even more sad thinking about the Holocaust in that so many people died and it was only a tenth of the population that died during the war. It's a scary, scary thought and RIP to those that died most of the time fighting for their own survival rather than that of their countries. Of course you had some sadistic psyopaths who did some horrible things as well, but had it not been for the war in the first place none of it would've happened.
I hope even though humanity doesn't seem to have learned from the past we eventually do wake up and change our ways or all the 60 million people who died would've died for nothing. This is an sad, but happy anniversary as it marks the day that the few survivors that were left were freed. I really can't imagine what it must've been like for those poor Red Army soldiers who found these people. The things they must've seen leading to that point was bad enough, but I don't think anyone really thought that humanity could do that to people.
The other thing people often forget is that this wasn't even the first large scale genocide in history. When we Europeans went to colonise America we commited the Genocide of the Native Americans be it through war, disease and famine. It's the first systematic destruction of near an entire population and culture that I can think of, but I'm sure it's not even the first. Why is humanity so set on killing itself, I just don't understand.
The ones who got to the gulags were both lucky and unlucky. Most of the Russian POWs were just executed before they could leave the POW camps. The one thing that the Wermacht did do was treat POWs with respect and it's probably due to how they had nothing to do with the SS. People like to paint all Germans with the same brush when thinking about WW2, but the vast majority of Germanies standing army, the Wermacht and Luftwaffe had no idea what was even going on inside the territory they captured. They just had to keep pushing forward.
There was even uprisings within the Wermacht by groups who found out about the concentration camps and that seems to be ignored quite a lot in history books. I guess that's the issue with allowing only the victor to write the history. Most of the stuff surrounding Russia and the Red Army is filled with propaganda, same goes for the American stuff. The Allied nations were very quick to hide the awful things they did.
How quaint. It feels like this is the exact same thing going on these days.
Many in the Wermacht knew and were complicit, especially on the Eastern Front. It's not possible to tar all of Germany with the same brush, because the range of views were huge - and as you mentioned, there were people who fought against the Nazi government - but absolutely the common soldier knew a lot, and in fact some of the clearest witness testimony we have about the mass murders came from Wermacht Soldiers reporting what they had participated in and seen on the Eastern Front. The evidence is endless.
Yeah.
This incident for example was an exception, not the rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara
Blue Submarine No. 6
Member
Allied strategic bombing campaigns were tasked with impeding German industry, demoralizing German citizens and supporting the ground war in any way they could. In the cold calculus of military planning, where there are never enough resources to meet the needs of the front, a daylight raid deep into enemy territory to destroy railroad tracks transporting prisoners to a concentration camp would not have been deemed cost effective; it would have cost us dearly in terms of planes and airmen, and done virtually nothing to further the war effort.
Yes, and there were others, of course. It's sad how most of them were acting against the instructions of their superiors and governments.
Watching documentaries on this breaks my heart every single time.
The thing that gets me the most is how those poor people would just do what they were told, kowing they were making it easy for the nazi to kill them.
I rewatched "The Pianist" a couple days ago. One of the best movies of all time for me.
It portrays perfectly what those poor human beings went through.
The thing that gets me the most is how those poor people would just do what they were told, kowing they were making it easy for the nazi to kill them.
I rewatched "The Pianist" a couple days ago. One of the best movies of all time for me.
It portrays perfectly what those poor human beings went through.
I watched that last night for about 30 minutes, got completely depressed and sad. People hear about it, read about it, see pictures and news clippings, but that show was just... Brutal. I can't think of another word for it.
The videos showing the sheer mass of people dead, storage for ashes, etc. I honestly couldn't finish watching it
Leatherface
Member
Thanks for posting OP. It's heart breaking what humanity is capable of. I feel tragedies like this need to be talked about and never forgotten if only to teach newer generations empathy and compassion. No one should ever have to endure that hell and it kills my soul to know that this was something that not only lived in the past but still exists today. How awful this world can be. 
User 479360
Banned
Whenever I think about Hitler and his concentration camps, I feel as if I'm thinking about something out of a nightmare or some sort of fiction. It's too sadistic to even believe, yet it happened, and I can't help but feel sick just thinking about it.
All of those poor, innocent people, who did nothing to deserve what they were forced to endure. May those who didn't make it Rest in Peace.
All of those poor, innocent people, who did nothing to deserve what they were forced to endure. May those who didn't make it Rest in Peace.
Patrick Bateman
Member
I don't compare.
I just mean that atrocities on both sides were done. One side just is never mentioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
For example.
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