Holocaust Remembrance

[Fata Morgana]

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

George Steiner

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a97/foxkitsune/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-74237-004_KZ_Auschwitz-Birkenau_alte_Frau_und_Kinder_zpsf3342ad3.jpg

 

[Fata Morgana]

We walk on, treading the bottomless, undulating Treblinka earth, and suddenly we stop. There before our eyes is a yellow lock of hair gleaming like burnished copper, the finee, light, lovely hair of a young girl, trampled down into the earth; next to it is a lock of light blonde hair, and further on we see a thick black braid lying in the brightly-coloured sand, and on and on and more and more. These are apparently the contents of one - and only one - of the sacks of hair that the Germans had failed to ship out. It is all true. The last hope that it was all a dream is crushed. The lupine pods pop open, and the seeds make the sound of countless little bells ringing out a funeral dirge from deep within the earth. And it seems that the heart will come to a half under the weight of such sadness, such sorrow, such anguish, beyond all human endurance.

Vasily Grossman

 

[Tathagata]

Yeah none of them are raging are they? Me neither. I don't think I could.

It's funny Fata
I had originally typed " None of them rant and rave" and thought better of it because I'm sure some do...but I don't recall ever seeing one.

 

[Tathagata]

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

George Steiner

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a97/foxkitsune/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-74237-004_KZ_Auschwitz-Birkenau_alte_Frau_und_Kinder_zpsf3342ad3.jpg

And that, really, is the horror of it all. These were not mindless uneducated people doing this.

 

[Bidin~Time]

Most of the survivors I've seen interviewed seem to be gentle people.

They are bent by sadness..I don't know how they pulled themselves back into this life after that.

I shouldn't presume to know how they managed to re-enter life. But maybe, just maybe, it's because they know nothing, absolutely nothing, life could throw at them after that experience, could possibly be be as horrific.

 

[RobDownSouth]

The BBC had posted a "drone's eye view" of Auschwitz the other day. You get a sense of just how freaking huge the camp was.

 

[Tathagata]

We walk on, treading the bottomless, undulating Treblinka earth, and suddenly we stop. There before our eyes is a yellow lock of hair gleaming like burnished copper, the finee, light, lovely hair of a young girl, trampled down into the earth; next to it is a lock of light blonde hair, and further on we see a thick black braid lying in the brightly-coloured sand, and on and on and more and more. These are apparently the contents of one - and only one - of the sacks of hair that the Germans had failed to ship out. It is all true. The last hope that it was all a dream is crushed. The lupine pods pop open, and the seeds make the sound of countless little bells ringing out a funeral dirge from deep within the earth. And it seems that the heart will come to a half under the weight of such sadness, such sorrow, such anguish, beyond all human endurance.

Vasily Grossman

You know in that Hitchcock documentary they have some Russian footage.
The first thing one of the Russians says as they enetr the camp and see whats going on " We shot all the guards immediately"

 

[Tathagata]

I shouldn't presume to know how they managed to re-enter life. But maybe, just maybe, it's because they know nothing, absolutely nothing, life could throw at them after that experience, could possibly be be as horrific.

I think that's probably true.
I also know that many of them keep a small bottle of poison on hand in case it ever happened again.

 

[Tathagata]

The BBC had posted a "drone's eye view" of Auschwitz the other day. You get a sense of just how freaking huge the camp was.

They were like small cities, some of them.

 

[Fata Morgana]

I shouldn't presume to know how they managed to re-enter life. But maybe, just maybe, it's because they know nothing, absolutely nothing, life could throw at them after that experience, could possibly be be as horrific.

True enough. On a documentary shown on the BBC this week - Touched By Auschwitz - it followed the lives of six survivors. One lady said she told her children to never be angered by the small things. Another's daughter said that when ever she faced hardship she was reminded what her father survived and everything paled in comparison.

Interestingly there was another lady on who's son was quite frustrated with her. He said all through his life every time he mentioned something she would bring up the camp, and compare his life to hers (she'd been in there as a child). She was sat beside him during the interview and got quite feisty with him and said something along the lines of not having his privileges and she missed out on having a *insert blank* as was trying to survive in the camp instead. He had his head in his hands at this point! Another child of a survivor said she was always nervous and frightened, a trait learned from her mother.

Also interesting was one of the survivors from the gypsy camp. I had never seen or heard a gypsy camp survivor interviewed before.

 

[spacekowboy]

Twas a bad joke in poor taste.

I apologize for offending anyone. It won't happen again.

 

[Fata Morgana]

.....

 

[Fata Morgana]

Many jocular comments followed, as did another onslaught of "heil Hitlering." You know, it actually makes me wonder if anyone ever lost an eye or injured a hand or wrist with all of that. You'd only need to be facing the wrong way at the wrong time or stand marginally too close to another person. Perhaps people did get injured. Personally, I can only tell you that no one died from it, or at least, not physically. There was, of course, the matter of forty million people I picked up by the time the whole thing was finished, but that's getting all metaphoric.

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

 

[RobDownSouth]

They were like small cities, some of them.

Yeah, I expected to see 10-20 barracks....it kept going, and going....I lost track at around 40 barracks and recalled they people in there five levels deep.

 

[snugglestruggle]

Fata,
I volunteered at a local Jewish community center between 2010 -12, I worked in their Library. It's dedicated to the memory of Holocaust. Among the books there are personal testimonies from survivors and GI's , a uniform the prisoners wore in a display case and other personal items from Auschwitz.

There is also a detailed scale model of Auschwitz. I don't think the drone view Rob mentioned earlier can do justice to it. Not because of the view but because it doesn't quite do justice to the sheer evil of the place. The closest thing to understanding that short of talking to a survivors (which I've done) is the excellent series The World at War , episode 20 Genocide 1941-1945.

 

[Fata Morgana]

Fata,
I volunteered at a local Jewish community center between 2010 -12, I worked in their Library. It's dedicated to the memory of Holocaust. Among the books there are personal testimonies from survivors and GI's , a uniform the prisoners wore in a display case and other personal items from Auschwitz.

There is also a detailed scale model of Auschwitz. I don't think the drone view Rob mentioned earlier can do justice to it. Not because of the view but because it doesn't quite do justice to the sheer evil of the place. The closest thing to understanding that short of talking to a survivors (which I've done) is the excellent series The World at War , episode 20 Genocide 1941-1945.

Wow. I bet that was interesting stuff.

When I was there on the ground at Birkenau you couldn't really take in the size of it either. Like Rob says, when you think how many were crammed in to each bunk as well, it beggars belief.

And I'll check out that WAW episode. Thanks.

 

[rimmy]

OK, here we go. As a Jew I no longer am interested in anything Holocaust related. I've been to the Holocaust museums in Chicago and Israel and the realization that if I was alive then it would have been me in the gas chamber took too much of an emotional toll on me. We all know the images are horrifying but if you've ever spoken to a survivor, it's beyond comprehension. I think it's 20 million people who died and only 6 million were Jews so I'm not trying to make this about me but as a Jew I have many people in my family tree that were killed and I had a cousin who spent two years rummaging in a Polish forest as a child trying to survive. He made it physically but emotionally you could always tell it was never far from his mind. I've known several people in my life with serial numbers on their arms and that constant reminder was hard for me to endure so I can only imagine what it was like to them.

My grandfather was hoarded up with 5 of his siblings and made to watch at gunpoint while the nazis tied their mother to a tree and burned her alive. I can understand the fascination with WW2 but I have enough stories running through my head on a personal level that documentaries and movies, fictional or not, put me in a funk for days so I tend to avoid them.

And as for what Kowboy said...I laughed. As Jews we often discuss how to deal with it and I prefer to take the Mel Brooks route. We can let it get to us and keep us down or we can make light of it, laugh, and take the power back. It's akin to African-Americans using the N word.

Fata, I've often wondered about the European crowd in the sense that you must all have family members who died in the war or faced horrible atrocities. How do you deal with it? Ar least here we are physically removed from any reminders.

I'll be out for an hour or so when I come back I will read your responses.

 

[Fata Morgana]

“Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.

The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"

And the answer: "Where was man?”

William Styron, Sophie's Choice

 

[Fata Morgana]

OK, here we go. As a Jew I no longer am interested in anything Holocaust related. I've been to the Holocaust museums in Chicago and Israel and the realization that if I was alive then it would have been me in the gas chamber took too much of an emotional toll on me. We all know the images are horrifying but if you've ever spoken to a survivor, it's beyond comprehension. I think it's 20 million people who died and only 6 million were Jews so I'm not trying to make this about me but as a Jew I have many people in my family tree that were killed and I had a cousin who spent two years rummaging in a Polish forest as a child trying to survive. He made it physically but emotionally you could always tell it was never far from his mind. I've known several people in my life with serial numbers on their arms and that constant reminder was hard for me to endure so I can only imagine what it was like to them.

My grandfather was hoarded up with 5 of his siblings and made to watch at gunpoint while the nazis tied their mother to a tree and burned her alive. I can understand the fascination with WW2 but I have enough stories running through my head on a personal level that documentaries and movies, fictional or not, put me in a funk for days so I tend to avoid them.

And as for what Kowboy said...I laughed. As Jews we often discuss how to deal with it and I prefer to take the Mel Brooks route. We can let it get to us and keep us down or we can make light of it, laugh, and take the power back. It's akin to African-Americans using the N word.

Fata, I've often wondered about the European crowd in the sense that you must all have family members who died in the war or faced horrible atrocities. How do you deal with it? Ar least here we are physically removed from any reminders.

I'll be out for an hour or so when I come back I will read your responses.

Well those are horrific stories and I can well appreciate your reluctance to immerse yourself in this kind of stuff. I hope I haven't pissed you off with this thread.

The reason for starting this thread? I was having an interesting convo in PM about the topic, and after talking about it earlier in the week I sensed a few seemed put off by the topic and tried to changed it, so I thought I'd start a thread. Then if you don't want to read it, or find it depressing, don't click (not a jibe at you, you know I love you, you cunt ). I just found it odd it was never mentioned and looking down the list of stupid fluffy threads on here today fancied something more serious and topical.

Praps I should just to stick to posting about cheese and calling people cunts.

 

[snugglestruggle]

Wow. I bet that was interesting stuff.

When I was there on the ground at Birkenau you couldn't really take in the size of it either. Like Rob says, when you think how many were crammed in to each bunk as well, it beggars belief.

And I'll check out that WAW episode. Thanks.

YW, but I warn you it's graphic.

The uniform is actually creepy to look at, its a much different than looking at a picture because you know someone who was alive wore it it would at times give me Goosebumps. Working in the library afforded me time to read some of the books written about the Holocaust and chat with survivors. Though I/m not surprised at mans inhumanity towards his fellow man. I had relatives that perished in the Genocide committed in 1915 by Turkey. That saying about repeating history is so true.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Perhaps we should honor the victims by fighting the prejudices that made the Holocaust possible; let's stop judging people by the color of their skin, by their religion, by their sex, by their sexuality or by their nationality.

...

Gee, what a lovely thought. Unfortunately, it only works among those people possessing the humanity to make the effort.

Sadly, "fighting prejudice" means fighting the people who have vowed to hold it with a literal death grip. It would appear that fight never ends. It has been a constant struggle in the years since the Third Reich was vanquished.

The cry for the next holocaust rings throughout the Middle East daily. Those who believe the United States can make such unpleasantness disappear by simply adopting a position of isolationism with respect to the affairs of that region are lying to themselves about what such a policy would mean in practice.

It would mean the abandonment of Israel as a nation, and the Jews as a people.

I fear there are far too many in this country who really have very little concern about such abandonment, but at least have the good sense to be ashamed to admit it.

 

[Killswitch]

And that, really, is the horror of it all. These were not mindless uneducated people doing this.

Humans, are smart.

People, are stupid and dangerous.

 

[MonaLittle]

Those rooms in Auschwitz are beyond comprehension even when you're stood in front of them. I think the one full of hair was the hardest for me. Maybe it's a vanity thing, cos I'm precious about my hair etc...dunno. My friend who I went with was most effected by the wall where they gunned people down. I know that night apparently I kept shouting Anna! in my sleep. I've never known an Anna, so I presume it was one of the names on the suitcases. I did spend ages looking at those.

There was another doc on the other night here about a British soldier who was kept there for some time. A journalist took him back and they went round the camp with him sharing his memories. This guy was 97! Spritely as fuck and could remember it all. Unbelievable. He read out the letters he wrote to his wife back in Wales telling her how much he missed her. One day he snuck a sausage to a Polish prisoner and he gave him a silver ring. He still wears it to this day. Not sure if you can get that on BBC America but it's called From Auschwitz With Love.

That room with hair was also the hardest for me to see. All of it was horrid, tho. Everyone should go and see Auschwitz so they can get somewhat of a first hand experience at the horror of it all. Words alone can not come close to giving you a true feel for how truly deplorable it was.

 

[Killswitch]

Seeing the few remaining people who still bear the tattoos is pretty powerful too.

 

[thør]

That room with hair was also the hardest for me to see. All of it was horrid, tho. Everyone should go and see Auschwitz so they can get somewhat of a first hand experience at the horror of it all. Words alone can not come close to giving you a true feel for how truly deplorable it was.

I do not know if I will make it to Auschwitz. At my high school in history class, the French teacher told in detail of her time in the camps and the march where you'd be shot or attacked by the dogs if you stopped or fell down. Then, she rolled up her sleeve and showed us the ugly tattoo that the Nazis had done to identify her There were no smart-assed comments from the back of the room. In fact, the room was silent.