Catalog of Nazi Camps Far More Numerous and Worse than Previously Believed

[son_of_montfort]

Just to make sure nobody starts feeling sorry for them.

Who is "them"?

Greybriar points out my motivation here well.

Dan, as I was the one who made the moderation comment here is what caused me to put on the mod hat. We were talking about Jews suffering from the Holocaust and your comment was both cryptic and included a personal pronoun with an unclear antecedent ("them") - did "them" mean Jews, Nazis, who? I can't assume anything regarding the personal beliefs of a poster on the boards and so - with a topic of this gravity - I have to be careful rather than nice.

When I read your comment, I was confused and it seemed both out-of-place and had the possibility of being misconstrued. If I was confused, I'm guessing others might have been as well.

You have explained yourself, I have explained myself, the comment is past.

[LongBlade]

And Dan had to choice to explain himself. He did so, but in a confrontational manner.

That's poor form on any forum.

No one here *wants* to ban anyone. However, disrespecting a mod, no matter how insulted and humiliated one might feel, is never a good idea.

[Jarhead0331]

...and included a personal pronoun with an unclear antecedent ("them")...

You and Bayonetbrant are so made for each other.

[Martok]

^ Heh. 

Thanks for the links SOM.  After visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC this past summer that is even harder to stomach.

Ah, so you did go there when you were in DC.  It's really quite the experience, isn't it? 

[son_of_montfort]

Martok, thanks for bringing this back on topic. I think those numbers need to sink in with America. It was far worse than we thought and harder to claim that people "did not know about what was happening."

The Nat Geo channel had a show on the other day, and I admit that I could not finish watching it, but what I did see was as enlightening as it was horrifying. The people in the video were looking for the legendary human skin lampshade of Buchenwald. Apparently a human skin lampshade was found in New Orleans after Katrina (yes, confirmed human skin), but I did not make it to the part where they did DNA testing to see from what ethnicity and region the DNA originated. Apparently the actual artifacts found at Buchenwald disappeared right before the trial of Ilse Koch.

If you can make it through that documentary, then you are a stronger person that I am.

[Martok]

I wouldn't take bets that I could either, but I'd be willing to give it a go.  (Unfortunately, I don't have cable. :-[ ) 

[LongBlade]

I did a research paper on the Holocaust in college. After WWII we were very careful to document as much of the atrocities as possible so that it would never be deniable.

Anyone who does so is willfully ignorant. Horrific though it was, it is impossible to deny.

[Gusington]

A human-skin lamp shade was found in New Orleans after Katrina?

[Keunert]

and still my parents, post war austrians grew up without much knowledge of the Holocaust. the consensus was: Hitler did improve economy, lower unemployment but went nuts when he attacked russia. no words about the biggest crime known to man. my mother worked for a jewish family and they watched the Nürnberg trial together. she was shocked because she did not know about this.

we cannot assume that this will not be forgotten. even the catholic priest i served for as an altar boy promised me that Hitler will at some time be seen as another Napoleon, a big historic figure and not as a criminal.

[TheCommandTent]

Thanks for the links SOM.  After visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC this past summer that is even harder to stomach.

Ah, so you did go there when you were in DC.  It's really quite the experience, isn't it?

Yes it was.  Very moving and hard to go through but something everyone needs to experience if they can.  After experiencing it my wife and I just sat quietly on a bench on the National Mall for about 30 minutes just letting it sink in.  You think you know about the Holocaust and then you go through that huge museum and see everything thing they have and hear and see eye witness accounts and you realize you will never comprehend the barbarity of what took place.

[Gusington]

That's a very telling and interesting post above, Keunert. I would like to hear more. It's not often I get to hear stories from the Austrian side.

[Toonces]

Very interesting insight, Keunert.  Thank you for sharing.

[son_of_montfort]

A human-skin lamp shade was found in New Orleans after Katrina?

According to this documentary, yes. The provenance was a bit "shady" - a self-professed con artist and thief said he saw an "interesting looking lamp" in the debris on the side of the road, picked it up, and sold it as an antiquity (I even think he claimed it was human skin). Come to find out, it really is human skin. So, connected to the Holocaust or not, some guy had a human skin lamp in NOLA.

[Keunert]

Toonces: according to my parents the war was a non issue during the 50's and early 60's. Austria lost the war, lost so many fathers and brothers and had to deal with the shame of fighting for the wrong side: simply too much to handle instantly after 45'.
from what i understood: veterans that accepted to have served a criminal regime and military chose not to talk about their experience and did focus on their new life with all it's post war difficulties. those veterans
that believed that they just did a soldiers duty organized themselfs in veteran's clubs and shared their stories with other veterans and their kids. the political aspect still was of course not an issue and nobody had seen or heard anything about the Endlösung.

Austria had to restart it's economic and government structures really fast. and like in germany most of the nazi friendly administration servants, judges... would stay in their position and help to rebuilt the needed structures. Austria was in a difficult situation:
some of their most important former industrial partners were now part of eastern europe. Austria established contact with them again. The old nazi's would start to work with communists for the sake of trade and business. all of this was easier to do with the past put away for the moment.

in 1970 one of the most profilic post war politicians became minister: Bruno Kreisky, a jew that fought the austro fascism and fled to Sweden during the war. he was very popular and turned Austria into a social democratic country close to the scandinavian system.
anti semitism was obviously not a big issue anymore but the war still was not discussed. it wasn't until the first post war generation (68's) grew up that the issues of personal guilt or societies guilt were discussed. austrian art, literature has sometimes a very intense and sinister approach to those issue's.

to celebrate the republic's 40'st birthday the government made Thomas Bernhard a very well known writer do a piece that was played in the national theater on the birthday. the piece opens in the dining room of two jewish academics in vienna, it is 1938 and the shouts of the Heldenplatz gathering (to celebrate the Anschluss) 'Heil Hitler' fill the room. this is followed by a discussion on all austrian regions and both Professors come to the conclusion that the entire country consists of national socialists catholics ready to follow the Führer. this was the biggest cultural scandal i have wittnessed so far.

[Boggit]

There is no doubt in my mind that with a very few exceptions the Nazi's were nasty, vicious, brutish thugs who committed some pretty awful crimes on a frightening scale.

But people do forget over time, or choose to ignore it if convenient to do so. We should not for a number of reasons. It is perhaps better remembered than other mass murder due to the media attention it has received over the years. Just remember that this is just ("just" - I'm not sure that is the right word - since it almost trivialises this and the crime was not trivial) "one" of the 20th Century genocides/state murder and whilst totally unforgivable for its brutality was not even the largest in terms of victims, which arguably falls to either Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China. Similarly devastating in terms of percentage of population is Turkey's Armenian, Assyrian Christian, and Anatolian Greek genocides - which Turkey is still in official denial over, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Imperial Japan showed a dreadful propensity to kill Chinese and other Asian civilians in large numbers from the late 19th century up to the end of WW2 in1945. More recently, Pol Pot's decimation of the Cambodian people in the killing fields was appalling together with the sectarian genocides in Bosnia etc. Currently, other genocides are in process as we discuss this. President Al Bashir of Sudan has made it his given aim to annihilate or convert the christians of the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan and doesn't care whether he kills men, women or children, since they don't fit with his vision of a "Pure" Islamic state. I'm sure you can think of other current examples if you look.

Without discounting the scale of the horror of the Concentration camps, please bear in mind that countless numbers of civilians were also killed by the Nazis across Europe outside of the camp system, and in terror bombing too - and being dead from blast, shooting, burning etc is just as fatal as gassing and as distressing to survivors, even if not quite so premeditated.

I guess my point is that we can't fixate on just one horrendous catalog of truly evil crime, because the lesson just hasn't yet been learnt by the world - as such evil acts are still continuing. I say this without any disrepect to those who have lost relatives during the Nazi program of industrial mass murder, which was one of their most atrocious crimes against a civilian population. If we have any respect for the victims of this atrocity, we need to recognise and actively condemn this sort of behaviour wherever we see it, as it is just plain evil and wrong.

And if you think you can turn a blind eye because it is an inconvenient truth, then remember the words Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." or of Dachau inmate, Martin Niemoeller "First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."