[HN Gopher] David Dushman, last surviving Auschwitz liberator, d...
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David Dushman, last surviving Auschwitz liberator, dies aged 98
Author : Anon84
Score : 303 points
Date : 2021-06-07 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| To get a glimpse at the incomprehensible inhumanity of these
| camps, read this interview with an SS officer who worked at the
| Treblinka death camp:
|
| https://religiondocbox.com/73089029-Judaism/Transcript-of-th...
| heelix wrote:
| Good lord... that was a tough read.
| slivanes wrote:
| I managed to get about half way through. Discriminate human
| murder factories of men, woman, children. Frightening and
| horrific.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't think it's a coincidence that we've seen a rise in
| holocaust denial, nazi sympathisers, etc. as this population has
| left us.
|
| It's a sad thought really, no number of history books will ever
| have the same effect as talking to your grandpa about his
| experiences on the beaches at Normandy, or marching in to
| liberate a concentration camp. I fear we're on the brink of
| forgetting a lot of lessons.
| ptoa wrote:
| Forget about talking to grandpa to remember lessons. Most
| Europeans who fought in World War 2 either participated in or
| experienced the horrors of World War 1 or had live family
| members who did.
|
| The chimp brain of ours is highly over rated in what lessons it
| can learn from blundering about. The more complex the issue
| blundering is garaunteed no matter what lessons are available
| and who tells a good story. Look no further than Afghanistan.
| No lessons learnt.
|
| The only thing to do when things get too complex is get out of
| the room and run for the hills. Let the buffoon class who think
| they have a handle on complexity because of their grandpas
| stories blunder away. When the dust settles return and rebuild.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| "get out of the room and run for the hills"
|
| This is a good lesson from history. The Jews who stayed in
| Europe say that it crept up gradually, an actual slippery
| slope, and this is one of the reasons they didn't uproot
| themselves until it was too late.
|
| If you're not a member of the majority group in society and
| you feel a fomenting hatred towards you, it's probably a good
| idea to sell your stuff and run away quickly. The downside of
| a false positive isn't that bad.
|
| Fortunately in modern wealthy countries few have had to do
| that in a rather long time.
| guythedudebro wrote:
| > If you're not a member of the majority group in society
| and you feel a fomenting hatred towards you, it's probably
| a good idea to sell your stuff and run away quickly.
|
| What if you feel a hatred fomenting towards you but you're
| still the projected majority for at least a few more years?
|
| Lolol jk jk please don't take this seriously.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Not to mention that many folks (including a lot of HN -- see:
| the recent thread on the ACLU) seem to be fighting to the death
| for the right to spread holocaust denialism and misinformation.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > Not to mention that many folks (including a lot of HN --
| see: the recent thread on the ACLU) seem to be fighting to
| the death for the right to spread holocaust denialism and
| misinformation.
|
| If this is true, why not give some links to a few HN
| comments, if not a lot, to add a lil evidence to what seems,
| on the face of it, a truly ridiculous claim.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Here's one right on this thread (now dead):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423200
|
| Regrettably this sort of trolling has become a pervasive
| problem on the internet over the last decade or so.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's less ridiculous if you take the charitable
| interpretation of the comment as they are referring to
| those in support of generic free speech which often
| devolves into debates about these extreme cases in
| isolation rather than there is a group campaigning here
| with the literal text "spreading holocaust denial is a
| right" as a singular primary/starting issue.
|
| I think this is the thread they were referring to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920 or rather at
| least that's what I found with Google.
|
| Edit: Very relevant follow-up to that post just landed
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424421
| yesenadam wrote:
| Ok thanks (replying to both). I thought I _was_ being
| super-charitable asking for evidence instead of just
| downvoting, flagging and perhaps complaining. I don 't
| hear any charitable interpretation applied to me, rather
| telling me I was the one exaggerating here!
|
| I'm not in the USA, like about 50% of HN, and know very
| little about the subjects, so asked only about the HN-
| part of the claim, that
|
| > a lot of HN ... seem to be fighting to the death for
| the right to spread holocaust denialism and
| misinformation.
|
| How many comments or HN users until you get to reasonably
| call them "a lot"? What percentage? What if it's actually
| 0.0001%? How bad the "holocaust denialism and
| misinformation" before "fighting to the death for the
| right to spread it" is reasonable? Especially in a
| comment particularly targeting misinformation, such
| extreme hyperbole and writing like that apparently breaks
| the guidelines in a lot of ways.
|
| Also, being charitable, different people read different
| parts of HN, maybe the GP reads mostly the political
| topics with disgusting comments, and "a lot of HN ...
| seem to be fighting to the death for the right to spread
| holocaust denialism and misinformation" is reasonable. UH
| but no, it's ridiculous exaggeration, is precisely an
| area such a thing is not helpful, even on a very
| charitable interpretation. "Fighting to the death" really
| means literally that, or anything like it? or..just
| writing one or a few comments on HN?
|
| So, what would you or anyone say the "strongest plausible
| interpretation" of "a lot of HN ... seem to be fighting
| to the death for the right to spread holocaust denialism
| and misinformation" is? (genuine question) I'm struggling
| to give it any remotely plausible interpretation, even
| assuming it's extreme exaggeration. Even in the
| "strongest plausible interpretation", though, it seems to
| me, drastically changing the meaning of most of its words
| in favour of the writer, the comment is still hysterical,
| break a lot of guidelines[0], and is itself
| misinformation.
|
| Edit: Sorry, I should have had morning coffee before
| writing above comment. (Also I have the flu!) I reread
| your comment, you seem to be saying that you thought the
| GP was trying to say in essence "a lot of people on HN
| support total free speech" (or whatever you want to call
| that, if it even makes sense). OK! That does make some
| sense. But still, describing that as "fighting to the
| death for the right to spread holocaust denialism and
| misinformation" seems the kind of writing that regularly
| gets people banned from HN. It still breaks the same
| guidelines. Thank you, much appreciated!
|
| [0] You know, like _Please don 't fulminate_, _Comments
| should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as
| a topic gets more divisive._ , _Eschew flamebait._ ,
| _Please don 't use Hacker News for political or
| ideological battle._ etc
| CodeBeater wrote:
| I also fear that due to the extreme "politification" of
| everything the narratives that survive might not be accurate.
| But oh well, "the victors write history" I guess.
| panzagl wrote:
| I don't know if you meant it to sound this way, but this
| comment comes off as sympathetic to the Nazis- you're
| implying the concentration camp 'narrative' is not accurate,
| but imposed by the 'victors' (Allies).
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| Who do you consider to be the victors in this case?
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I've long felt that the last 20-30 years have shown a slow
| reversal from international cooperation back to nationalist
| protectionism. I've wondered whether this is a consequence of
| the dying out of the generation that experienced just how badly
| wrong that can go.
| brudgers wrote:
| My grandpa was a paratrooper in the 504 PIR from Bizerte into
| Germany. The times he talked about the war with me, he talked
| about times he was scared shitless. Husky Two. Strafed in
| Italy. Jeep blown off the road by artillery fire. Holed up in a
| barn at night in the Ardennes snow.
|
| The most glamorous thing he ever mentioned was bivouacing
| somewhere with enough French wine to keep a functional drunk
| on...that story was over glasses of Port because his war
| experience inclined him to functional drunks for the rest of
| his living days.
|
| I don't recall ever meeting a veteran who thought the important
| lesson was D-day or liberating the camps. Invariably the point
| was how much war sucks.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Invariably the point was how much war sucks.
|
| My experience has been that when I meet people who saw actual
| combat, they invariably focus on how much it sucks. The folks
| who glorify it seem to always be the people who never
| experienced it first hand.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| _What will become of all the memories?_
|
| _Are they to scatter with the dust in the breeze?_
|
| _Who will stand before the world, knowing what to say_
|
| _When the very last survivor fades away?_
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XcyeXd7Takk
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It would be a good idea to teach kids about the biological and
| psychological factors behind these atrocities as an addendum to
| the classic history curriculum. It'd give them a more well
| rounded interdisciplinary understanding of exactly how this
| happens and hopefully give them a better ability to introspect
| if they get caught up in similar mob insanity in their future.
| dizzant wrote:
| > "They were standing there, all of them in [prisoner]
| uniforms, only eyes, only eyes, very narrow - that was very
| terrible, very terrible," he said.
|
| My grandfather helped to liberate Dachau. The only detail he
| ever told us about that day was how thin the prisoners were.
| The men were light enough to carry out two at a time, one on
| each arm; and they felt fragile, like small children.
| cholmon wrote:
| > Dushman has said he was unaware Auschwitz existed during the
| war, only learning about the atrocities carried out there in the
| years after.
|
| It's always jarring to me, with my modern/simplistic/naive
| perspective of these major historical events, to consider that
| the people who lived during and/or participated in these events
| didn't understand full extent of what they were seeing or what
| was happening. It totally makes sense, academically...fog of war,
| slow/spotty spread of information, determining what's propaganda
| and what's not.
|
| But still, there's something mind-blowing to me about a soldier
| mowing down the fence at Auschwitz with a tank, but not knowing
| what the place was.
| zahma wrote:
| It does make sense that a soldier didn't know. On the other
| hand, the American military knew of Auschwitz and Birkenau, had
| the opportunity to bomb and incapacitate it, and didn't
| apparently at the request of FDR to direct all munitions toward
| winning the war. His administration was implored by escapees
| and refugees. One of the greatest tragedies of many during the
| war.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Not necessarily. The international Red Cross was famously
| invited to tour Auschwitz[1] where they were given a
| carefully staged show of how well their prisoners were being
| treated. Plus prisoners would have been in danger.
|
| [1]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/theresie
| ns...
| goto11 wrote:
| That was Theresienstadt, not Auschwitz. Theresienstadt was
| specifically staged as a "model camp" for propaganda
| purposes.
| rkk3 wrote:
| It's questionable how much it would have inhibited their
| genocide capabilities, it almost certainly would have killed
| the people in the camps and it was only an option late in the
| war. Prioritizing strategic targets to end the war & regime
| faster is defensible.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| Wouldn't bombing the camp kill the prisoners? Or are you
| suggesting that they could have successfully bombed and
| "incapacitated" the camp _without_ killing the prisoners? How
| exactly?
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| The Americans strafed the concentration camp my grandfather
| was working at in 1944 from air -- my grandpa still carries
| a scar from that. It was definitely not an easy decision to
| attack or not attack these camps.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Destroying the gas chambers would probably save thousands.
| bitcurious wrote:
| Babi Yar and the hundreds of similar tragedies show that
| the Germans had no trouble killing Jews using more
| conventional means.
|
| It might have helped but it's far from a certainty.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| That's right, and 200000 in Warsaw. It's not certain,
| however, approximately 1.1 million people died in gas
| chambers. Let's not forget about the atrocities of those
| who were not sent to the gas chamber. It's all ifs and
| maybes but maybe the camp would have to be abandoned if
| mass gassing wasn't possible.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Well, giving the accuracy of the bombings at the time it
| wasn't simply possible.
|
| Objectives (such as bridges) were often missed by
| hundreds of meters.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I agree. Hence the scale of the bombings in WW2. But the
| camp operated multiple years. Maybe there was a price to
| pay but in the long run, maybe it would have been worth
| taking a chance. We will never now, it's a maybe game.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| We're Monday morning quarterbacking, but I wonder if
| destroying the railroad lines into the camps would've
| been effective. Less chance for a missed bomb to kill
| camp prisoners, lots of opportunity to hit the tracks.
|
| I think the same trains or tracks that carried prisoners
| carried the (paltry) food for the camps, so I guess it's
| a trolley problem still.
| thrill wrote:
| Destroying rail lines is even harder and generally
| temporary. They're fairly easily repaired within a few
| days, given material and labor.
| Someone wrote:
| Optimist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_Report:
|
| _"Of those aircraft recorded as attacking their target,
| only one in three got within 5 mi (8.0 km)."_
|
| https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/worldwar2/t
| hea... has data for later years. It got better, but
| stayed bad.
|
| https://www.airforcemag.com/article/1008daylight/:
|
| _"Bombing accuracy was terrible. The average circular
| error in 1943 was 1,200 feet, meaning that only 16
| percent of the bombs fell within 1,000 feet of the aiming
| point"_
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| GistNoesis wrote:
| My grandfather used to tell me how one time he "flew" with
| his "bed" when he was there ;
|
| How he woke up safe on his bed in the middle of the
| courtyard ; There were walls when he had gone to sleep
| before, but the walls weren't there anymore.
|
| When I became older, I learned that fifty prisoners in his
| barrack had died this night.
| apendleton wrote:
| There were probably some who wanted to try something
| targeted/infrastructural to avoid that, but there were also
| some advocates (including Jewish ones) who explicitly
| supported bombing the camps, including their occupants,
| because even if they died, it would be net-life-saving as
| future waves of trains would no longer have a place to go.
|
| PBS's "Secrets of the Dead" series did an episode about
| this last year: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/bombing-
| auschwitz-wnrzgw/47...
| rabidonrails wrote:
| I think the general "hope" was to bomb the train tracks so
| that they couldn't keep bringing trainloads of people to
| the camps. This could be done without bombing barracks of
| people.
| Animats wrote:
| Old issue. See [1]
|
| "The first proposal to bomb Auschwitz was made on 16 May 1944
| by a Slovak rabbi." That was 3 weeks before D-Day (June 6,
| 1944).
|
| Eisenhower's policy was to defeat Germany, and not get
| distracted. He had planned to bypass Paris, which wasn't on
| the route to Berlin.[2] (De Gaulle went off-script and
| liberated Paris ahead of schedule, but that's another story.)
| Eisenhower was trying to hold an alliance with different
| goals together. All the allies were agreed on "defeat
| Germany", but there were other national goals. Britain was
| concerned about preserving its empire, for example. To hold
| the alliance together, Eisenhower focused on "win the war"
| above all else.
|
| The person this article is about was in the Red Army. "One of
| just 69 men in his 12,000-strong division to survive the war,
| Mr Dushman suffered serious injuries during the conflict".
| The USSR had about _20 million_ casualties in WWII. Never
| forget that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_bombing_debate
|
| [2] https://www.historynet.com/the-generals-who-brought-
| paris-ba...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _had the opportunity to bomb and incapacitate it, and didn't_
|
| War is not a video game.
|
| Bombing an enemy concentration camp, especially with WWII-era
| weapons, would mean killing the people you're trying to save.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| FDR's inactivity during the war, regarding the Jews is a very
| large, black stain on his legacy.
| [deleted]
| throwkeep wrote:
| Part of it may also be that people don't want to know. Take the
| ongoing Uyghur genocide right now, but most are ignoring it.
| Why isn't it an emergency and headline news every day?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
| decremental wrote:
| Because it's China and the ruling class in America decided it
| would not be in their interests to press them on the issue.
| So they spread propaganda to dismiss it as a Conspiracy
| Theory. Which is the mental short circuit the media uses to
| shut down any further thought on the matter.
| mxxc wrote:
| they're not ignoring it, plenty of countries have been
| recognising it. the issue is that much of the available
| information isn't exactly reliable, a lot of the research
| comes from one single person (an ultra-christian extremist),
| and plenty of the people who have been detained are leaving
| from the front door, unlike the armenians in 1895-1925 and
| the jews in 1943-1945. mosques are still open and there are
| plenty of videos of 2021 eid al fitr in xinjiang.
|
| not saying "there is nothing going on there" and "those
| incarcerations are complete lies" but the whole thing is
| fishy, especially considering that there are political
| motives behind screaming bloody murder - for comparison,
| there is literally zero western pressure on israel on the
| occupation issue, and the EU is blatantly ignoring the insane
| conditions migrants are subjected to on the other side of the
| EU barriers.
| partiallypro wrote:
| We have plenty of data to prove the camps are real, birth
| rates among Muslims in the country fell through the floor.
| People disappear in the night, cities that were once heavy
| Uighur communities are now devoid of them. We've
| intercepted shipments of Uighur Muslim hair, etc. It's not
| to the extreme level of the Holocaust with mass executions,
| but it is real.
|
| China has done a great job of making people frame it as the
| US/EU lying and the "whataboutism" in your last paragraph.
| This is also a tactic that Putin loves to use. Using
| Western shortcomings to justify their own tyranny.
| mxxc wrote:
| let's first address the heart of the matter, as i've said
| in a few comments: i think it would be great to have an
| explanation from china on what the hell is actually going
| on in xinjiang, and if those claims are correct, i
| obviously think that policy is atrocious. it's still not
| a genocide, of course, as there is no planned
| extermination. it's not just "not to the extreme level of
| the holocaust". it just isn't a genocide. it doesn't have
| to be a genocide to be despicable.
|
| on the data: if by "we" you mean adrian zenz then you're
| out of luck when it comes to quality. i'd like to see
| better sources than someone who thinks he's in a mission
| from god like he's the blues brothers. china hasn't done
| "a great job" at framing the west for lying otherwise
| there wouldn't be a wikipedia page and we wouldn't be
| discussing this on hacker news. the sad reality is that
| china doesn't give a shit about its reputation abroad,
| which is why many of the rebuttals to those claims are in
| chinese. one is here: https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews
| /status/13029926735409111... - it's by the chinese state
| media so one can still claim they're lying.
|
| on the "cities that were once heavy uyghur communities
| ..." as i mentioned above: kashgar still has a lot of
| uyghurs. they go to their mosques and so on.
|
| what is true, however, is that china is encouraging
| resettlement of han chinese (they've been doing it for
| decades), for the sole purpose of making the uyghurs a
| minority in their own land. this is something that
| personally i don't like, but (here comes the
| whataboutism) i have not seen a single piece of criticism
| when this happened literally everywhere else, minus of
| course when it was accompanied by planned extermination,
| which only applies to anatolia's christian minorities, as
| the jews were already a small minority in the locations
| that were affected by the deportations.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > It's not to the extreme level of the Holocaust with
| mass executions, but it is real.
|
| Those may well be actual death camps. The stated amount
| of people disappeared (2m+) far exceeds just how much
| people you can physically fit into those camps. They may
| fit few hundred thousands, but not millions.
| partiallypro wrote:
| It's possible, but I would bet most are scattered about
| doing slave labor, while also having been sterilized. So
| they get free labor and can effectively kill new
| generations. That to me seems like the most likely CCP
| method than mass executions and has a much smaller paper
| trail/footprint.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > and the EU is blatantly ignoring the insane conditions
| migrants are subjected to on the other side of the EU
| barriers
|
| What would you propose to do?
| mxxc wrote:
| this is the same question that china asks when confronted
| with the uyghur problem. they believe they are fighting
| terrorism and extremism and those camps are (part of) the
| solution. we can disagree with them - and if the extreme
| claims about those camps are correct, then i do disagree
| with them.
|
| on the EU issue: there isn't one single solution since
| all the cases are different. a few come to mind. i would
| not pay blood money to morocco and libya to "keep them at
| bay" because the EU can't just champion human rights at
| home and then fund concentration camp-like establishments
| outside of its borders - we are not funding the ones in
| xinjiang, we are funding the ones in the libyan litoral.
| a way more efficient refugee processing scheme with the
| participation of everyone else would be ethically better.
| much as i disliked him, matteo renzi put it very well for
| the eastern european extremists: no refugees, no money.
| on an EU level i'd also crack down on pushbacks (such as
| the ones happening in spain and in greece), where the
| carrot should be a better refugee distribution.
|
| let's not forget that europe's exploitation caused this
| problem, it's also on us to help people and figure out a
| solution.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| You are participating in the denial when you make
| statements like this. Let's say we start at our most
| charitable to the ruling party: there's no work camps,
| Uyghurs are treated fairly, paid a decent wage. Why then
| are the compounds, which we can see from the _sky_ , off-
| limits to human rights observers? Why are these complexes
| expanding at an alarming rate?
|
| I expect evidence. I do not get upset because it is the
| fashion to do so. If someone calls me a liar and demands
| proof I didn't mislead them, I do my best to display
| evidence in my defense. All that the CCP offers is threats
| to other sovereign nations.
|
| There is a pattern of behavior from the CCP which indicates
| duplicity and untruthfulness from the destruction of viral
| lab samples in Wuhan, to entire fishing fleets going dark
| off sovereign waters. Every day we receive more of these
| reports of bad behavior. If China wants us to believe them,
| they need to start producing evidence. Let observers in.
| Show the world.
| mxxc wrote:
| there are a few rhetorical tricks here. what am i denying
| exactly? the genocide? yes i am. it's not a genocide.
| there isn't a planned extermination of uyghurs going on.
| there have been planned exterminations of armenians from
| anatolia and jews from europe.
|
| on the other hand: am i denying the existence of fishy
| "re-education camps" targeting one ethnic group and one
| only, where they are brought in under very opaque
| circumstances? no, i am not denying that.
|
| if you want a very long read with some context behind
| some of those claims, here's one:
| https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang
|
| there are a bunch of things there, a full timeline of the
| "conflict", a couple of articles debunking both poor
| google maps journalism and a few poorly-made BBC & vice
| docs on the matter.
|
| there's also the fact that some of the "punishments"
| against the uyghurs are forcing children to go to school,
| to mandarin-speaking public ones even, which is the same
| policy most countries in the world adopt (a recent
| request in france to partially allow schooling in catalan
| in the region of perpignan has been rejected). there are
| some claims that state-funded xinjiang schools are even
| bilingual but i haven't dug enough on it.
|
| i won't comment on the wuhan issue because i don't really
| know enough about it, but as someone who is born in an
| island with plenty of US bases i laugh at everyone
| claiming china is "flexing their muscles" with their
| navy.
|
| to be clear: nobody approaching any of those bases gets
| allowed in, just like in the "xinjiang camps". does this
| excuse china? no, it doesn't, but we should probably be
| fair in our judgment.
| [deleted]
| xtian wrote:
| > Why then are the compounds, which we can see from the
| sky, off-limits to human rights observers? Why are these
| complexes expanding at an alarming rate?
|
| Can you prove that this refutation of those satellite
| images is false? Let's remember that there were satellite
| photos of WMDs before the Iraq War also.
| https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1208288.shtml
|
| > Let observers in. Show the world.
|
| According to China many observers have come, and there is
| an open invitation for more to come as well:
| https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1180917.shtml
|
| Do you have evidence that this is false?
|
| The Palestinian, Pakistani, and Syrian ambassadors to
| China have commented on camera about what they observed
| in Xinjiang: https://youtu.be/ebeGipO6-gU?t=490
|
| Do you have evidence that they are lying? Have any
| Muslim-majority countries or non-Western-aligned Muslim
| interest groups condemned China for human rights abuses
| in Xinjiang?
| SPascareli13 wrote:
| It makes me think that some truths may take years, decades to
| really come out. Things we read today in the news might only
| become clear in the future, specially politics and such.
| suifbwish wrote:
| There is a theory that the Nazis were just a sub group of a
| much older and secret group. This group empowered Hitler to
| become a major distraction while they took control of the
| worlds economy, shipping and communications in the
| background. This theory supposed that nazis were completely
| invented purposely as a group of villains performing evil
| that no one can ignore. The theory also suggests that the
| jews were chosen because it was known that it would evoke the
| largest response from the Christian nations
| myth_drannon wrote:
| You mean the least response? "it would evoke the largest
| response from the Christian nations"
| Christian/American/European leaders didn't care at all
| about jews.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Can you cite any of this, or at least give the name of the
| supposed group?
| gumby wrote:
| This has definitely always been true.
|
| I have never been interested in "breaking news" because it is
| usually pretty impossible to give it context. Reading the
| news from a few days or even weeks past helps make clear what
| matters amd what does not.
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Dushman has said he was unaware Auschwitz existed during the
| war, only learning about the atrocities carried out there in
| the years after.
|
| Germany was USSR's ally in their planned occupation of Europe,
| which fortunately never happened.
|
| USSR spent the remaining 45 years of its existence erasing the
| fact Union-Germany military alliance from the history.
| guythedudebro wrote:
| > Germany was USSR's ally in their planned occupation of
| Europe, which fortunately never happened.
|
| This sentence comes up a lot and I've never seen it fail as
| an indicator of either ignorance or Nazi apologism
| newdude116 wrote:
| Germany also decided between China and Japan and chose Japan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-
| German_cooperation_(1926%...
|
| Quite strange to see Chinese in German uniforms:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-
| German_cooperation_(1926%...
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Yes, and Britain and US were arming Germany to take over USSR
| and destroy communism. Munich pact allowed Poland and Germany
| invade Czechoslovakia all with encouragement from Britain.
| Stop your propaganda lies.
| swebs wrote:
| What part are you saying is a lie?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pa
| c...
| eaa wrote:
| The part that's implying that it was the first and only
| attempt of someone to postpone the war.
|
| 1. Occupation of Czechoslovakia - Poland happily took
| part in this. Does it count as dividing Europe together
| with nazis?
|
| 2. Munich agreement between nazi Reich and UK and France.
| Does it count as dividing Europe together with nazis?
| baybal2 wrote:
| The future would be Allies did not really believe they
| were postponing anything.
|
| A big part of the Western establishment was happily
| planning for chummy future in Europe with Hitler, and
| things he did.
|
| Of course when the war came, and German attacked not some
| Czechoslovakia, but France -- a Great Power, and made
| aggression towards GB, and USA, everybody instantly
| picked a barely believable narrative about them not doing
| so.
|
| And yes, they soiled their pants. Chamberlain locked
| himself in his cabinet and drank for days.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| "Germany was USSR's ally in their planned occupation of
| Europe."
|
| That's a lie/hyperbole that is being pushed in the last
| decade or so. Although I imagine every country had some
| plans of occupying Europe at some point or another,
| saying USSR was planning on occupying it based on
| Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is lie.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| So:
|
| 1. what was exactly (and please be specific) was the
| Soviet military's objective after moving 600,000 -
| 800,000 troops, in 33 divisions with ~5,000 guns, 4,700
| tanks, and 3,300 aircraft onto Polish soil on 17
| September 1939?
|
| 2. were say the USA to land a similar expeditionary force
| in Russia tomorrow, what would you call it?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Stalin certainly had expansionist ambitions, but Poland
| isn't Europe and historically its boundaries have gone
| through numerous changes. Europe's history is one of
| numerous countries struggling for territorial and
| military control of the others.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Nothing here again implies occupation of Europe. More
| like fear. You can also mention mass executions of its
| army officers corps. Red army was weak, disorganized and
| lagging technologically. Does it really signals an army
| that is about to occupy Europe?
|
| Was Poland a Nazi ally with intention of occupying Europe
| when it amassed its army in Czechoslovakia?
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I imagine every country had some plans of occupying
| Europe at some point or another, saying USSR was planning
| on occupying it based on Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is lie.
|
| Well, Stalin saying this, on record, many times, also
| told "American lies?"
|
| The giant USSR's military buildup prior to WW2 was for
| fighting whom? Stalin did not believe his own spies
| telling him Hitler was planning an attack on him.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Right, but in spirit of responding to the strongest
| interpretation of a preceding comment, it's rather hard
| to miss how advanced were the talks in November 1940. It
| was not the lack of _planning_ , but rather too much of
| it. I am talking about official diplomatic notes, all the
| evidence remains documented.
|
| Citing the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93S
| oviet_Axis_tal...:
|
| > Stalin directed Molotov to draft a new pact with a much
| greater scope, including the division of Europe, Asia and
| Africa among the four powers [i.e. USSR, Germany, Italy,
| Japan]. On November 25, the same day as the surprise
| statement of Soviet nonresistance to Bulgaria's joining
| the Axis and a potential Soviet joining of the pact
| [sic], the Soviets offered a counterproposal to
| Ribbentrop's draft agreement. It began, "The Soviet
| government is prepared to accept the draft of the Pact of
| Four Powers on political cooperation and economic mutual
| assistance". [...]
|
| > On several occasions, Molotov asked German officials
| for their response to Moscow's counterproposals, but
| Germany never answered them.
|
| > Regarding the counterproposal, Hitler remarked to his
| top military chiefs that Stalin "demands more and more",
| "he's a cold-blooded blackmailer" and "a German victory
| has become unbearable for Russia"...
|
| Also, I'm not saying that these talks were honest - they
| were diplomacy after all. But none of the sides were in
| the "minding my own business" business.
| baybal2 wrote:
| When I was in Russia last time in 2016 (and was robbed for
| third time in my life btw,) it was then when I stated a
| chat with a youngster in a case about WW2, and my jaw
| dropped when he said the same.
|
| Pupils in Russian secondary schools are now told this >
| never happened, and it was all American propaganda lies: ht
| tps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Bundesar.
| ..
| myth_drannon wrote:
| We can post photos from wikimedia all day long and then
| subvert them with lies. British Prime minister smiling
| warmly at his ally Hitler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Munich_Agreement#/media/File:B...
| baybal2 wrote:
| I don't deny that Sudetenland also happened due to
| another major power racing to get in bed with Hitler.
|
| The key phrase in the article:
|
| _> Hitler announced it was his last territorial claim in
| Europe._
|
| Of course it were Lebrun, and Chamberlain who were
| soiling their pants just few years later when they
| understood their own folly.
| pwg wrote:
| > to consider that the people who lived during and/or
| participated in these events didn't understand full extent of
| what they were seeing or what was happening.
|
| No internet. Television was in its infancy (meaning few even
| had a television). There were no "24-hour news channels"
| anywhere. News arrived via newspaper, film short before a movie
| in a movie theater, or a brief "news update" on a radio
| station. Information flowed (worldwide) at a snails pace as
| compared to how quickly we learn of some happening on the other
| side of the globe today.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| There are atrocities happening on the other side of the globe
| right now and many still don't know.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Well, oftentimes people don't -want- to know or believe the
| truth, too. We've seen ample evidence of that recently, with
| one noted politician even flat out telling his followers a
| couple years ago that "what you are seeing and reading is not
| what is happening".
| Grustaf wrote:
| How much do you know about what is going on in North Korea? The
| little you do know is probably due to it being politically
| expedient for the US to trot them out as the evil empire.
| colinb wrote:
| Well, we could obviously just ask the North Korean emigres
| who work in our countries. Surely they will tell us the
| truth? Or the many North Korean tourists who visit Europe and
| North America? Or indeed the vast numbers of North Korean
| folks visiting around the world for work purposes?
|
| Oh, wait. We can't ask any of those people, because they seem
| not to exist. Is that because North Korea is so wealthy that
| no one wants to leave to work elsewhere? Because North Korea
| is such a utopia that they don't even want to travel
| overseas? Because their industry is so advanced and self-
| sufficient that they need no trade deals with others?
|
| You don't have to believe everything you read about North
| Korea, but to dismiss it all as US propaganda without
| offering a significant countervailing body of evidence is,
| well, silly.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Sorry, I was unclear.
|
| While I do definitely mistrust US propaganda on North
| Korea, I don't doubt at all that it's a terrible place to
| live in every possible way, I have read several books by
| defectors (and visited numerous communist and post-
| communist countries).
|
| My point was more that the reason we have heard about it is
| mostly because that suits the Western agenda. Otherwise
| very few would have any idea about what is going on there.
| Just like few Americans or even Europeans know much about
| Transdniestria, a present day communist state in Europe. Or
| Bhutan, a seemingly very happy little country.
|
| Even in the days of Wikipedia and internet news, most
| people don't know much more about the world than what is
| convenient for Western media to tell us.
|
| All this to say that it's inconceivable that people outside
| Germany could be pretty ignorant about what was going on in
| the late 30s.
| markvdb wrote:
| Incredibly, in my native Belgium, there's an old lady turning 100
| (!) come September. She helped save almost 1000 jewish children
| by moving them to safe places. Many were hidden amongst other
| children in catholic boarding schools.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e_Geulen-Herscovici
| dalbasal wrote:
| yhy zykrv brvk
|
| My grandfather was on a train to Auschwitz, but managed to avoid
| it and survive. A childhood friend of his survived in the camp
| until liberation. They always paid tribute to the liberators
| along with those who died in the attempt, at a ceremony
| commemorating their community.
| himinlomax wrote:
| I once met a Polish Jew who had barely escaped being deported
| to Auschwitz. He had been in the Polish army, escaped to France
| through Switzerland (a whole movie could be made about that)
| with his father to fight here, didn't go too well either. They
| got arrested by the Vichy police. The policemen guarding them
| told them, "you know, we're not looking _wink_ _wink_ " His
| father was too sick to run away, he had to leave him behind. He
| was deported and died in Auschwitz. He managed to join the
| maquis. He was a distant relative of a friend who told me, "he
| never told that story, I think he may be dying." And he did, a
| few weeks later, I learned.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| My great uncle died at Bergen-Belsen - he was a doctor in
| Vienna, and he had been harbouring a Jewish family. His young
| sister - my grandmother - sold him out for a promotion in the
| hitlerjugend.
|
| From what I gather, he managed to get quite a few people out of
| there on medical grounds - but not himself.
|
| She never spoke of him. I only found out from the posthumous
| memoir of her surviving brother, who was a conscientious
| objector who got sent to Stalingrad. Not an easy read, but one
| that made me acutely aware of just how quickly things can go
| incredibly bad.
| galuggus wrote:
| How did he avoid it?
| dalbasal wrote:
| A long series of events, 3 years. Initially there was a
| backlog. Not enough trains to Poland. He went through several
| camps, work assignments. He never got shipped to Poland.
| Eventually he was freed by his brother, with the help of the
| Czech partisans using forged/backdated baptismal records. The
| Slovak subsidiary of the third reich was church oriented.
| Most survival stories that I know of personally involved the
| church, one way or another. The brother who worked tirelessly
| to save him had been the one on the list. He had a baby on
| the way, born the following morning. My grandfather
| volunteered to take his place, while the couple hid. The
| daughter became a teacher. He survived the rest of the war as
| a partisan. I don't know the whole story. He rarely spoke of
| it.
|
| Many/most of the Lubaks (local SS) were from the area, and
| he'd gone to school with some of them. That's part of the
| story, but I don't know exactly how it fits in.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Eventually he was freed by his brother, with the help of
| the Czech partisans using forged/backdated baptismal
| records. The Slovak subsidiary of the third reich was
| church oriented.
|
| I want to remind how little people today remember who 3rd
| reich collaborators were.
|
| The myth of "unwilling collaborators," and "forced to work
| for Germans under a gunpoint" was invented after the war by
| political forces who got in bed with 3rd reich, and then
| wanted to save their skin from pitchforks when they lost.
|
| Those were often very mainstream, and popular political
| parties. Some of them exist to this day.
|
| Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact, quite
| plenty of them.
| AriaMinaei wrote:
| > The myth of "unwilling collaborators," and "forced to
| work for Germans under a gunpoint" was invented after the
| war by political forces who got in bed with 3rd reich,
| and then wanted to save their skin from pitchforks when
| they lost.
|
| Not to mention Ordinary Men [0], the dynamic that makes
| your average citizens with no ideological indoctrination
| become the murderers of tens of thousands of Jews, to the
| point they'd shoot at small children with a clear
| conscience. They'd even have the option not to directly
| take part in the murders, but still do.
|
| Again, these were average, ordinary people. No strong
| party affiliation, SS membership or anything.
|
| The fact that Christopher Browning's book was a
| revelation when it came out shows how little we've
| learned from WWII. We might have put the lid on
| undisguised antisemitism, but we have merely channeled
| its otherising roots elsewhere. Otherwise, we wouldn't
| find it so easy to turn a blind eye to the settler
| colonialism happening right now in Palestine.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-
| Battalion-Soluti...
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are trying to say - hopefully not
| that there weren't any unwilling collaborators?
|
| Read the biography of Stanislaw Lem for instance, who
| grew up in Lwow(current Ukraine, back then Poland) -
| Nazis frequently recruited local population to both kill
| and then bury anyone they wanted to get rid of, under a)
| promise of reward b) threat of being killed themselves.
| But you don't need to trust the biography of one man and
| his experiences - we also know this because Nazis kept
| _extensive_ video and photo evidence of those executions,
| which they would show back in the 3rd Reich as
| "evidence" of the barbarism of the local people in places
| they were occupying ("look at those stupid
| Poles/Ukrainians/Jews, killing each other for a scrap of
| food!").
|
| "Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact,
| quite plenty of them."
|
| Again, because some of them were given a choice of either
| joining the ghetto kommando unit, or being shot there and
| then, along with their families. It didn't matter at all
| in the end of course, because they all got executed in
| the end anyway. Can you say with with 100% confidence
| that you wouldn't make the same choice in the same
| situation? And I do mean 100% confidence?
|
| Polish nobelist, Wieslawa Szymborska, said something
| about these choices people faced in WW2 that I will
| always remember - "we only know ourselves as much as we
| have been tested - and I pray that my moment of trial
| never comes".
|
| I think she's absolutely right - it's easy to judge what
| people have done from the comfort of our homes in 2021.
| But I do hope that I am never put in front of the same
| choice. I hope I will never be tested in the same way
| those people were.
|
| And I will clarify here - of course there were willing
| collaborators too. 100%. But your comment reads as if
| that wasn't the case and the "myth" of unwilling
| collaborators was purely made up. I see no reason to
| believe such a thing.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Can you say with with 100% confidence that you wouldn't
| make the same choice in the same situation? And I do mean
| 100% confidence?
|
| 10000% confidence
| gambiting wrote:
| Then all I can say is that I envy your confidence in your
| resolve, and I wish I could be as confident about what I
| would do with a gun to my head(or worse, to my children
| and my wife heads) as you are.
|
| Like I said above - I hope my moment of trial never
| comes.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >Well, there were even Jewish collaborators, in fact,
| quite plenty of them.
|
| Yet they themselves were eventually murdered by the
| germans..
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Not always. My grandfather, who was in Auschwitz, ran
| into, and confronted one of his own Kapos[1] on the
| street several years after the war.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo
| dalbasal wrote:
| I wouldn't even necessarily call the SLS collaborators.
| They were primaries. Broadly though, yes. When we know a
| little about a topic, it tends to be clean, black and
| white stereotypes and cliches. Real history is infinitely
| complicated. Even (especially) individuals are not one
| thing or another.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > we know a little about a topic, it tends to be clean,
| black and white stereotypes and cliches. Real history is
| infinitely complicated.
|
| The history is simple, in this case. There were bad
| people, and there are bad people trying to muddy the
| boundary of a very clear cut difference of who was bad,
| and who was good.
|
| One go kills random innocent people -- he is bad.
| andischo wrote:
| As a German, born roughly 40 years after the war, I still
| cannot fathom the atrocities we Germans brought to the
| world at large and to so many million individuals. I grew
| up learning the history, I know my grandparents (as well as
| probably great grandparents) played their part in what
| happened. I am deeply sorry for what they/we did and even
| saying it these words just sound hollow in light of the
| magnitude of cruelty and injustice that happened.
|
| I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and I
| am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past I
| will make sure that my children and grandchildren will
| remember what happened in order to prevent anything like
| that happening in our lifetimes again.
| e40 wrote:
| > I am very sorry what your grandfather had to endure and
| I am happy he survived. Though it doesn't change the past
| I will make sure that my children and grandchildren will
| remember what happened in order to prevent anything like
| that happening in our lifetimes again.
|
| You might want to check out the new podcast Day X. It's
| about resurgence of far right extremism in Germany going
| on right now. Sadly, the same thing seems to be happening
| in my country (US).
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/podcasts/far-right-
| german...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I would suggest avoiding some sort of self-inflicted
| trauma from this horrible past (which might not be
| happening but it reads like that to me).
|
| There is no point getting depressed from one's ancestors
| past - if one looks in the past far enough, there will be
| probably something utterly horrible that given
| nation/tribe/group did to somebody innocent. Basically
| all western european democracies fall into this category,
| and many, many other nations too.
|
| Don't forget about it by any means, tech your kids as I
| will do, but don't put emotions into this just because
| your nation was the culprit. There were similar things
| happening to innocent civilians en masse in the past
| elsewhere. Genocides are not an invention of Germany or
| 20th century, life was often pretty horrible and violent
| in the past.
| vmception wrote:
| Naaaaaaaah
|
| Everywhere else the state just cut off the ability to
| feed a large population, or a particularly brutal
| military unit went from town to town.
|
| Germany built trains and factories for the express
| purpose of turning people into jello and ash
|
| This is the only reason anybody is interested in German
| politics, a comical off-broadway show just to see if
| they're going to turn the ovens back on.
|
| And this is coming from someone that likes Germany and
| Germans and would avoid some areas. Thats what they did.
| Their robotic efficiency is still relevant in the
| industrial way the world went, especially compared to
| their neighbors. Even the most extremist Germans 100
| years ago weren't inaccurate about that: the cultures
| around them did not support efficient allocation of
| resources and making those resources valuable to others.
| The methodology those extremists chose was not tolerable.
| Third time is a charm with domination in the form of
| finances this time. Everyone is skeptical of ongoing
| German tolerance of the situation.
| distribot wrote:
| I don't know if personal guilt or shame is the correct
| feeling either, but I also don't think OP should feel
| _nothing_.
|
| Time and entropy (empires dissolving or population groups
| migrating) definitely diffuse the responsibility for a
| horrific act. Of which there are _many_ in history. But
| this specific thing happened in living memory, was
| performed by an organization that still exists (a German
| speaking nation state, with almost the same borders as
| before), and by people the OP knows personally. In fact,
| it 's a very wealthy nation that OP has gained a lot of
| advantage from living in. It's subjective and graduated,
| but I don't think it's been nearly "long" enough that the
| Holocaust just background noise next to all other events
| that have happened in human history.
|
| Modern Germany is awesome btw. Really respect how they've
| reckoned with this awful time in their history.
| fit2rule wrote:
| I hope you will understand that there are also people in
| the world who truly love the German people today, and
| consider their lives enriched by the experience of modern
| Germany.
|
| I am grateful for what the Germans are today. Your
| society kicks ass in so many ways.
| dalbasal wrote:
| He held no grudges by the time I knew him, certainly not
| against unborn generations. He visited in Berlin in the
| 70s, as a tourist, spoke german, had german friends and
| felt sorry for those who (like him) had their communities
| destroyed after the war. We were brought up to believe
| the remembering _does_ matter, fwiw.
|
| I have a lot of respect for Germany's honest portrayal
| and study of its past. It is a rarity, perhaps singular.
| [deleted]
| shrubble wrote:
| The Allies also committed war crimes, the bombing of
| Dresden being the most well-known I would guess.
|
| The Soviets brutally enslaved and worked to death 1000s
| of German POWs at a minimum also. War is detestable...
| adventured wrote:
| If someone initiates war, brings war to your people,
| threatens the destruction of your people (I mean as a
| nation state) - you are morally entitled to do anything
| required to defend your people. Anything. Without
| exception, and up to including killing every single
| person of the attacking nation if that is what is
| required to stop the war (which you did not initiate).
| Realistically you won't have to go that far, however
| there is no scenario where you can have total war on the
| scale of WW2, and civilians from the attacking side are
| not likely going to die in very large quantities. All of
| those deaths, without exception, rest on the moral back
| of those who began the war.
|
| The attacking party holds the moral responsibility for
| what is required to stop them.
|
| If you have to kill all the civilians supporting the
| industrial side of the war in order to stop the war
| machine supplies (whether in Nazi Germany or under the
| Empire of Japan), the moral responsibility rests with the
| party that initiated the war.
|
| Your moral duty as a defending nation is not to trade
| your people's lives at a equal proportion so that you
| feel great about not killing too many people. It's to
| make the attacking party stop, capitulate, give up,
| surrender their efforts, and that is all. If that
| requires killing their civilians at a 100 to 1 ratio,
| that is entirely morally rational and just. The guilt of
| those deaths entirely rests with the attacking nation.
|
| Which is also not the same as saying that the defending
| side should kill as many civilians as possible, just to
| do it. It means they're absolved of civilian deaths on
| the attacking side as a concern morally, so long as the
| civilian deaths serves the purpose of helping to end the
| war.
| w0de0 wrote:
| All arguments of just war and the morality of self
| defense aside: this a disastrously foolish way to go
| about being a sentient species on a single planet.
| shrubble wrote:
| Nothing that you wrote matches the Geneva conventions. Or
| more properly, almost everything you wrote would be in
| violation of the Geneva conventions.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| Playing the "both sides" card is a hell of a take
| regarding WW2, especially when the article is literally
| about liberating Auschwitz.
|
| Of course both sides committed atrocities in war. But
| only one side committed mass genocide on an industrial
| scale.
| shrubble wrote:
| I was responding specifically to the German poster above.
| Crushing guilt laid on a generation that wasn't even
| alive at the time is unwarranted.
| morelisp wrote:
| Germany has an extremely healthy attitude towards the
| Holocaust; it would do most western nations well to model
| it as regards their own historical atrocities.
| aduitsis wrote:
| Hey fellow European. Please allow me to thank you deeply
| for that. You cannot be held responsible for anything
| that some people 3 generations before yours did, but
| nevertheless your sense of responsibility is really truly
| inspiring.
| thechao wrote:
| I know everyone has a story, here, but I knew several
| survivors when I was younger. The "general" answer is that
| the few that survived were highly exceptional -- they Nazi
| machine wasn't perfect. So, most of them had stories that
| were really over-the-top & full of coincidence. Everyone who
| had a _normal_ story was dead before the war ended.
|
| One of the survivors I knew was executed _twice_. He said
| "it didn't catch".
| gambiting wrote:
| Interesting, my grandfather was also on the train to Auschwitz
| and also survived - he was in an orphanage in Katowice, after
| his parents were taken to camps in Germany, but a few months
| later Nazis decided to clear out the orphanage as well - he was
| taken along with all the other kids and put in a train carriage
| destined to Auschwitz, but a nurse who worked at the orphanage
| managed to sneak into the trainyard and grabbed the first kid
| that she had a chance to - my grandfather. As far as we know he
| was the only kid to survive from that orphanage, thanks to the
| actions of that nurse.
|
| He was then placed with the family of Kazimierz Golba, a Polish
| poet(who was himself hiding first from Nazis then from the
| secret police after the war) - and lived with them using a fake
| name for a while, only going to back to his original name and
| surname some years after the war.
|
| Him and my grandma spent years and years of their lives trying
| to find any trace of what happend to his parents or any of his
| other family, but without any luck.
|
| Unfortunately, he passed away last year, almost certainly due
| to covid(I say almost certainly - he passed away due to
| respiratory problems, and grandma got diagnosed with covid a
| day later, he was never tested).
|
| Him and grandma and myself and the rest of our family have
| always lived literally 10 minutes away from the former
| Auschwitz camp as well - in a little town nearby.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Bless his memory too, and those who saved him. Heroism and
| tragedy of that era is beyond my comprehension.
|
| My Grandmother (wife of the man I spoke about) was from your
| area, Wadowice. She was 16 on the eve of invasion, and her
| family survived by fleeing east.. gambling on Stalin over
| Hitler. Her father almost turned them back, having fought
| Russians in WW1. They were refugees for 7 years, most of the
| time in central asia. They returned for a while, but a couple
| of murders over property disputes convinced most survivors
| (very few survived from Wadowice) to leave. I have some
| family members who married out and converted. We're not in
| touch, unfortunately. The live in Krakov, last I heard.
|
| She always maintained ties to her old community, even their
| most famous member. This is her elbowing past a Prime
| Minister to say hi and try to get him to do some renovation
| on an old synagogue. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EcC8xKg
| plBhF3BthO82AbazxkeM...
|
| We might be related.
| rglover wrote:
| RIP sir. Running a tank through an electric fence to free people
| is badass.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I remember having a conversation with a coworker about the
| Holocost in the 90's.
|
| We were walking to my truck. He said, "What do you think about
| the event."
|
| I said something along the lines of, "Well--others have had it
| worse?".
|
| I blame it on stupidity, a bad American education, and an angry
| 20 something that was completely lost in every aspect of my life.
|
| I so regret how flipped my response was. I don't think I have
| ever said anything so stupid. I bet the guy I said it to
| remembers it too. He went into programming after our stint in the
| snack bar, and I imagine he's on hn.
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| If you remember his name, you could contact him and tell him
| that you changed your mind on the subject.
| hi41 wrote:
| I too remember a time in during college when I taunted a Sikh
| student with an extremely racist joke. I said sorry but even
| after many decades I have great regret at how callously I said
| that joke. To this day I don't say any jokes and many people
| consider me uptight.
| pythonlion wrote:
| somehow, when we look at human life as the preciousest thing,
| the act deleting communities and cultures altogether stings our
| souls on another level.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Funny how some things stay with us.
|
| We live. We grow... to paraphrase Rabbi Hillel.
| olegious wrote:
| "One of just 69 men in his 12,000-strong division to survive the
| war"
|
| The Soviets suffered a horrific toll in WWII. 25 million dead is
| an unimaginable number.
| js2 wrote:
| The Soviets also had women fighting alongside the men. I can't
| recommend this book highly enough:
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/540744/the-unwomanl...
| k2enemy wrote:
| I also recommend Vasily Grossman's books. Life and Fate,
| Stalingrad, Everything Flows, etc. Life and Fate is one of
| the most powerful books I've read.
|
| https://www.nyrb.com/products/life-and-
| fate?_pos=1&_sid=f10e...
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The Soviets suffered a horrific toll in WWII. 25 million dead
| is an unimaginable number.
|
| It is.
|
| In the town in the Russian Far East where I spent my last few
| years in Russia, one old timer was telling me how extreme food
| confiscations were.
|
| There were people basically solo living in sticks, hunting,
| fishing, gathering, doing crafts etc. One such guy probably
| only catches, and dries few fishes a week, and lives off that.
| He lives in really unpassable wilderness, weeks of travel to
| get to his place.
|
| Nevertheless, NKVD had few men teams to regularly reach, try in
| a show trial them for "connivance," do simulated executions,
| and confiscate their few fishes which rot from improper storage
| by the time they come back to the city.
|
| _At some point, there were nearly equal amount of men drafted
| into NKVD, and other political police, than the men on front
| lines. At every moment of the war, communists were equally
| scared of their own people, as they were of Germans, if not
| more._
|
| Communists fought the war betting fully on assumption that they
| had more soldiers than Hitler had bullets. And it was Stalin's
| fright, and surprise of a lifetimes when Germans somehow popped
| up within 10km of Moscow. He was hours away from taking a plane
| away from Moscow. He wasn't afraid of Germans as much as the
| prospect of meeting his end Gaddafi style.
| [deleted]
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Soviet Union would have lost the war if Stalin and his
| henchmen didn't stop terrorizing the people. Only when Stalin
| strategically decided to give more freedom, Soviet people
| started to mobilize and defend their homeland. Before it was
| no difference between the two evils. The rest is history. Of
| course after the war, NKVD and the rest were given free reign
| again.
| eaa wrote:
| There is an interesting book on this grim subject - the book "Yes
| to Life" of Viktor Frankl. He managed to survive concentration
| camps and stay mentally sane person. He describes the life of
| prisoners there and what was helping them to survive. Sad but
| remarkable book on both history and psychology.
|
| Also, someone in this discussion said that as more and more
| people pass away there is less and less truth about WW2 and less
| and less respect to its lessons. There is also another
| interesting observation: the more related to WW2 people die the
| more Cold War #2 we see. Cold War hasn't become "hot" because
| during these times almost everyone except kids knew what is war
| and how it looks and that it causes. War heroes were not
| imaginary movie personalities, they were everywhere. And kids
| could hear real stories from someone who has seen it all with own
| eyes. And so, everyone knew that war is hell and that nuclear
| weapon can make war even worse, so that WW2 will look like a
| picnic.
|
| But what do we have now? Movies about WW2 with expensive SFX and
| cheap plot, Call of Duty, etc. War isn't scary anymore. People
| are eager to fight something. This mad mad mad mad mad world.
| knuthsat wrote:
| I think it's the way history works. Napoleon was pretty
| horrible, yet even the enslaved Dalmatians forgot what he did
| and praise him for building roads.
|
| I'm pretty sure Hitler will have a similar public image to
| Napoleon in a few hundred years. We do similar things with
| Roman emperors and praise their accomplishments forgetting the
| massive amounts of suffering they caused.
| eaa wrote:
| By the way, this is quite interesting! Most events of 20th
| century were related to ideology. But before that, in old
| times maybe only religious wars were close to this. Other
| wars and conflicts were good old attempts to conquer someone
| and/or to gain resources and power. But was there as much
| hatred as produced by ideology? E.g. during the napoleonic
| wars many people died but does someone hate France because of
| Napoleon? I guess not. Or take WW1, it was only 107 years
| ago. Surely a lot of people died. Does someone remember it
| with hatred? Only as a great tragedy I think.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Aside from the similarly fated Russian invasions, they are
| completely different. Napoleon was not genocidal and contrary
| to his popular reputation was not a warmonger. England & the
| coalition was generally the aggressor because they wanted to
| restore the Monarchy (The Bourbons) to France & weren't happy
| about the Rights of Man and Liberalism that the Grande Army
| was spreading.
| rendall wrote:
| Napolean and the Roman emporers of which you speak had some
| actual military victories to counterbalance their other
| atrocities. Hitler brought nothing but ruin and dishonor to
| his beloved German people, and lost the war to boot. No.
| History will remember Hitler forever as a blustering fool who
| invented industrial scale genocide. He'll be sitting
| alongside Nero and Caligula in the collective memory, not
| Napolean and Julius Caesar.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| > People are eager to fight something
|
| Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. They'll be
| sitting in the tanks, on the battlefield on tiktok or
| something. Worse, (better?) is the ideas they pick up from the
| movies. Superbly advanced civilizations, with an almost [Edit:
| actually] unbelievable array of weapons, still hang their fate
| on individual superheroes. Their principal weapons are (get
| this) modern day swords and spears and body armour! also, the
| weapons are quickly abandoned in favour of punching the
| opponent in the face, with no apparent effect, and they don't
| even do that properly. If anything, violent superhero movies
| should be encouraged.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight.
|
| This zeitgeist is not ubiquitous. There are plenty of newly
| minted adults who jump into the military. Not all of them are
| lifers, but the government incentives are very good for the
| poor facing minimum wage at a McDonald's.
| echelon wrote:
| > There is also another interesting observation: the more
| related to WW2 people die the more Cold War #2 we see.
|
| I might be misinterpreting, but many in Gen Z seem to consider
| WWII and Nazi history as a kind of meme to joke about. (9/11
| too, for that matter.)
|
| I'm worried we might be destined to forget the lessons we
| learned. The rise of domestic terror, hate, and partisanship
| doesn't help.
| caslon wrote:
| It's called dark humor. Tragic events _can be_ respected and
| grasped without some puritanical concept of them being
| "untouchable" subjects. A joke about 9/11 is almost certainly
| taking advantage of (and probably directly in opposition to)
| the exact attitude that lead to it becoming "off-limits" in
| the first place, and playing with it.
| mhh__ wrote:
| That and it's important to counteract people in high
| office/s around the world using 9/11 and other terrorist
| attacks to achieve their own ends.
| tombert wrote:
| Wait, really? I'm a millennial, not gen-z, but I feel like
| Nazi/WWII jokes were way more popular in the 90's and early
| 2000's than they are now.
|
| For example, in Seinfeld, they had a character called the
| "soup Nazi", a character that was extremely asshole-ey about
| who he gave soup to. This was not a controversial episode or
| anything, and became one of the most quoted episodes of the
| series. Nowadays I'm not sure if that would be considered
| "ok."
|
| I feel like the rise of domestic terror, white nationalism,
| and fascism is scary, but seems to a) by mostly composed of
| millenials my age and older, and b) a lot more complicated
| than some edgelord humor.
|
| That said, despite the fact that I love edgey subversive
| humor, I agree that trivializing things as "just jokes" isn't
| a good thing; if it means fewer memes, I can live with that.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There is a long history of lampooning nazis for comedic
| effect, very often performed by Jewish comedians. Hogan's
| Heroes is a _sitcom_ about POWs sticking it to the foolish
| krauts. The concept would never fly today but it was
| standard fare for post war comedy. The children who grew up
| with that culture continued using it into the 90 's.
| rendall wrote:
| Anglophone millennials have a reputation for being
| humorless, self-righteous and fragile. Hopefully, this is
| untrue.
| derivagral wrote:
| I'll second Frankl. I enjoyed his (other) books around love and
| searching for meaning, drawing from his experience. I'll have
| to check that one out as well. Very humbling stuff.
| cm2187 wrote:
| When you saw the wide support for communism after the war and
| the blindness to its own concentration camps and genocides, a
| lot of people who lived ww2 didn't really respect its lessons
| either.
| guythedudebro wrote:
| I'd say better evidence that people didn't respect WW2's
| lessons is the constant equivocation you see of Nazi Germany
| with the USSR.
| d0mine wrote:
| it is just the cold war propaganda
| eaa wrote:
| Well, your post has no question, but I will comment anyway.
|
| First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration
| camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of
| Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliche.
| For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of
| national-socialist party, but anyone could become a
| communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it
| cannot be compared to nazism.
|
| As for popularity of communism, well, Red Army was
| victorious, USSR was one of those who survived and won, so
| it's ideology was gaining supporters. There were many true
| believers in ideas of communism. E.g in socialist
| Czechoslovakia there was an attempt to build "socialism with
| a human face." In USSR there was a generation called
| "sixtiers" who were true believers in communism but saw
| stalinism as something horrible that should never happen
| again. But, for better or for worse, it looks like believers
| was the last thing the communist party needed.
|
| By the way, the book "Monday begins on Saturday" by
| Strugatsky brothers is exactly about a RnD institute (almost)
| full of people sincerely trying to make world a better place.
| Strugatsky brothers were believers themselves. To the end of
| USSR they have become bitter haters.
|
| PS. I am not stating that communism is good or better than
| capitalism.
| travismark wrote:
| several million people died in the famine during the
| initial forced collectivization in Ukraine and other soviet
| states. Walter Duranty, an American reporter lied to the
| West about the extent of the famines and added to many
| elites' delusions about soviet communism. this isn't
| propaganda, it's history
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
| eaa wrote:
| I know. Four little sisters & brothers of my grandma
| among them.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The double agent Oleg Gordievsky was at heart a sixtier,
| and after hearing about the demise of the prague spring,
| while either drunk, stupid, or unbelievably brave - if I
| have the story right - actually indicated his desire to
| defect, while on duty as a KGB officer in Denmark, by
| phoning his wife and going on a tearful tirade against the
| Soviet Union.
|
| He knew the line was bugged, likely by both PET and the
| KGB. His cries were heard, and after a "chance" meeting at
| a squash game he became a double agent, years later
| stationed in London where he nearly became the rezident
| (~CEO) at the Embassy. He was betrayed by Aldrich Ames at
| some point around 1985, and went on to become the only (as
| far as I'm aware) person to be exfiltrated from the Soviet
| Union directly under the nose of the KGB. Not a bad life
| story.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" First of all, I am not going to defend soviet
| concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins.
| But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist
| propaganda cliche. For obvious reasons: no jew could become
| a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could
| become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the
| stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism."_
|
| Wait, your whole argument for why Stalinism can not be
| compared to Naziism was that jews could become members of
| the communist party?
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| And the Jews who became members of the Communist Party,
| even those at the top of it, were still not safe from the
| anti-semitism of the regime:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD_trial
| cm2187 wrote:
| The irony of course being that the soviet union was no
| stranger to antisemitism (an heritage that a lot of
| modern leftist organisations perpetuate).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_
| Uni...
| eaa wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| Stalinism/communism provided you a moral/ideological
| choice: to be part of it or to oppose it. Although
| sometimes people who were taking the side of stalinism
| and were active in whistleblowing and finger pointing in
| the name of ideological purity were later repressed
| themselves.
|
| Nazism, on the other hand, gives you no choice if you are
| a jew. It is already decided for you.
|
| But again, stalinism was awful. I am not going to defend
| it. I too have some far relatives who died because of it.
| My grandmother survived thanks to luck. But to compare
| communism or even stalinism to nazism is wrong.
| Libkarma wrote:
| "no jew could become a member of national-socialist party"
|
| Hitler's no.2 was Jewish:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice
| yyyk wrote:
| "But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-
| communist propaganda cliche. For obvious reasons: no jew
| could become a member of national-socialist party, but
| anyone could become a communist."
|
| The main reason Jews could become communist in the USSR is
| that Stalin died before he could commit his own
| explusion/genocide. Had he lived, he would have likely used
| the Doctor's Plot to deport Soviet Jews to Siberia. Read
| _Stalin 's Last Crime_:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Last-Crime-
| Against-1948-1953-...
| gotoeleven wrote:
| We're fine with the ones in china because we get cheap stuff
| with two day delivery from amazon
| endymi0n wrote:
| "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
| it."
|
| -- George Santayana
|
| "I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the
| past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive."
|
| -- Kurt Vonnegut
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The average person on the internet can view more war and
| carnage than even the average soldier in WWII (remember that
| the majority of the fighting forces don't actually "fight", per
| se). We can also connect to survivors of even the smallest of
| conflicts. We're steeped in the miasma of geopolitics. For
| sure, it's nowhere near as saturated as post-WWII, but we are
| still connected to the sad reality of violence.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Any casual observer of history knows that reading/watching
| content about war is nothing like the reality.
| julienchastang wrote:
| On this topic broadly, read the autobiographical "Survival in
| Auschwitz" by Primo Levy. If I recall correctly, out of his
| original convoy of 700 souls, three survived. One insane detail I
| remember from that book is that there was a hospital in Auschwitz
| where some (lucky?) prisoners could convalesce before
| subsequently being worked to death. Levy himself was able to
| survive due to his skills as a chemist which the Nazi's put to
| use in a laboratory and was therefore able to work in relatively
| sheltered conditions.
| ruined wrote:
| Son of Saul is a hungarian dramatic film about a member of the
| sonderkommando in auschwitz that i appreciated. it is the only
| production about the holocaust that didn't feel fetishistic to me
| somehow. i feel like it gave a small sense of the totality of
| defeat that must have been overwhelmingly present in that place,
| and the desperate reality of existence and struggle despite all,
| though the main character is by no means a fighter.
|
| it's beautifully made, in a very personally close and intensely
| emotional style. it's entirely fictional but based in part on
| secret diaries and photographs found buried within the camp.
|
| >Dear finder of these notes, I have one request of you, which is,
| in fact, the practical objective for my writing ... that my days
| of Hell, that my hopeless tomorrow will find a purpose in the
| future. I am transmitting only a part of what happened in the
| Birkenau-Auschwitz Hell. You will realize what reality looked
| like ... From all this you will have a picture of how our people
| perished.
|
| i recommend this film, and the book Blessed is the Flame by
| Serafinski, to anyone interested in the people within the camps.
| internetslave wrote:
| Holocaust is propaganda like CNN
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account. You can't do this here.
|
| If you'd please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines
| with, we'd appreciate it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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