Auschwitz

[DWalt]

Tonight on the AHC cable channel was the 6-part documentary "Auschwitz - Hitler's Final Solution." It is well worth your time to watch it - far more comprehensive than anything I've previously seen about the inception and growth of the chain of Nazi death camps. It's not easy to watch, but riveting at the same time. I am sure it will be repeated, so set your DVR.

 

[BigBill]

The worst films I seen on this wasn't on tv. It was the late 70's at the Catholic church CYO. our military was burying dead bodies with bulldozers it was that bad with so many Jews dead.

Why did the Nazis kill the Jews?

 

[HOUSTON RICK]

Why did the Nazis kill the Jews?

In part because Hitler (before WWI) was in love with a Jewish girl in Vienna, but could never muster the testosterone to ask her out as he felt so inferior, in part because he felt betrayed by Jewish politicians that helped dump the Kaiser and sign the armistice that ended WWI which is the only place that he had received any respect to that point in time. In part because Europeans generally disliked/envied Jews back to the time they burned them as witches.

 

[DWalt]

The worst films I seen on this wasn't on tv. It was the late 70's at the Catholic church CYO. our military was burying dead bodies with bulldozers it was that bad with so many Jews dead.

It wasn't OUR military, but the British military. It shows disinterment of bodies of victims the SS killed before they fled the camps ahead of the Russians. And Alfred Hitchcock was in charge of making that movie. Clips of it are in the AHC documentary.

The documentary also shows just how eager the French were to help the Germans round up Jews in France for extermination. It's a well-known fact, but little talked about today. For reasons I can't understand, a great many Frenchmen (and maybe even more women) seemed to be just fine with living under German occupation and collaborating with the Nazis. It also relates how the Americans could have saved a great many Jews in various ways, but chose not to, as it was considered a "low priority."

 

[Sgt.Peck]

What is it with Muslims denying that the Holocaust ever happened? I had to unfriend on Facebook, a guy who was a Sharia Law promoter and Holocaust denier. I just can't tolerate that type of ignorance.

 

[e3mrk]

Hitler and the Nazi's were not the first to hate the Jew's,They were hated long before that,Hitler needed a scape goat for all of Germany's problems and the Jew's fit the bill perfectly in His mind.

 

[steveno]

I have been to Dachau and it is a very uneasy feeling to be in that place. I think that if anybody takes an European vacation one of the camps should be on the list to see

 

[Absalom]

What is it with Muslims denying that the Holocaust ever happened? I had to unfriend on Facebook, a guy who was a Sharia Law promoter and Holocaust denier. I just can't tolerate that type of ignorance.

That has less to do with Muslim than with Arab. Nationalist Arab leaders pretty successfully managed to rile up their populations against the Jewish immigration to Palestine since the early 1900s by adopting common European anti-Semitic stereotypes, and when the new state of Israel was created after WW II, many Arabs were easily convinced that the Holocaust was a fiction invented by Jews and their minions to justify their takeover of previously Arab lands. The fact that a number of former high-ranking Nazis escaped to Arab countries and ended up "advising" their governments probably contributed, too. And somehow, these beliefs have stuck and probably will as long as the Arabs will oppose Israel's existence.

As for the question why the Nazis murdered the Jews, that topics is a bit too big to cover in a forum post.

To touch on the main points in one sentence,
- the conflict started 2000 years ago when Christianity split from Judaism,
- continued with about 1700 years of religiously motivated discrimination and sometimes persecution of the Jews of Europe, sometimes worse, sometimes less so, as they were the only major non-Christian group,
- got somewhat better in the 18th/19th century with the Enlightenment, which de-emphasized religion,
- then got worse again as new racial theories based on misunderstood genetics were applied to people in the late 1800s,
- provided "the Jews" as evil scapegoats for all occasions, even totally contradictory, both as immoral banker-capitalists (like the Rothchilds) and dangerous revolutionaries (like Marx),
- and finally ended up with Hitler, whose beliefs weren't that untypical for Europeans (or for that matter, Americans) of the time, but who unfortunately, due to specific political circumstances in Germany mostly due to the loss of WW I, was put in a position to act on his beliefs.

 

[cmort666]

The worst films I seen on this wasn't on tv. It was the late 70's at the Catholic church CYO. our military was burying dead bodies with bulldozers it was that bad with so many Jews dead.

I presume you saw the French film "Night and Fog". They showed it to us at the Catholic prep seminary I attended. "Harrowing" just doesn't do it justice.

Why did the Nazis kill the Jews?

Coincidentally, the other day I was reading a book review in "The New York Review of Books" in which the reviewer asked that question while reviewing a book on exactly that subject.
There were a number of reasons:

• The psychopathologies of Hitler - This was the number one reason. As in the case of the Soviet Union and Stalin, Hitler's dictatorship was a very personal one. His momentary whim was law. Things that he actually cared about A LOT were at the top of the "to do list". And the Jews were right up there. He may have been involved in the details of implementation to a greater or lesser extent, but he was relentlessly driving the overall eliminationist policies. Given that those below him owed EVERYTHING to his largesse, they were literally fighting each other to do what they thought pleased him.
• A culture of blind obedience - If you read the book "The End", you'll see that with a few notable exceptions, Germans just did what they were told, especially the younger ones who had known little else. Even before the internal terror campaign was ramped up, people just went along.
• Traditional anti-Semitism - Strangely, if you'd asked somebody in 1900 where a future Holocaust would take place, they'd say France or Russia. Pogroms and things like the Dreyfuss affair pointed strongly in that direction, while German Jews were highly integrated into German society. On the other hand, Germany and Austria were seething with low level anti-Semitic cults. Hitler took traditional European anti-Semitism which sought to convert or expel the Jews, and gave it a largely new theme of total elimination, not just from Germany or Europe, but from existence itself.
• Greed and opportunism - As in the Soviet Union and the purges, the non-Jewish public in general and as individuals benefited from the dispossession, expulsion and murder of the Jews. People got their jobs and apartments. Thieves like Goering got their possessions, especially highly valuable works of art.

Needless to say, there is a mountain of books on the subject. If I get a chance, I'll post the titles of the one the reviewer referred to, if not a few others.

 

[cmort666]

What is it with Muslims denying that the Holocaust ever happened?

Those attitudes go back quite a while.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem helped recruit the "Handschar" Division of the Waffen SS for Himmler.

Today, it's a combination of actual belief, nose thumbing at Israel and its supporters, and a finger in the eye of the liberal, democratic West.

 

[S&W Fan]

Also be aware the intense rise of Anti-Semitism that is going on in France today and understand the hate has not diminished in Europe.

 

[wbraswell]

There is a Holocaust Museum in Dallas. I want to go to see it. I will not enjoy it, but I feel that, as a human being, I should see it. I have listened to a woman speak, who visited Auschwitz on her vacation. Damn those who deny it. It is as documented as any event in history. Eisenhower was right to make his officers, media, and all the citizenry around the camps see it.

 

[Jack Flash]

Interesting coincidence in the local news today. Seems there is a summer camp for Jewish children over in the next county but not too far from where I live. Last night some cowardly losers spray painted swastikas on the buildings, fences, picnic tables, etc.

Really? Somebody would do that to children?

 

[cmort666]

Really? Somebody would do that to children?

The Germans did far worse...

 

[Bat Guano]

As a kid I always had a certain interest in WWII. (Having an ETO vet Dad was probably a factor in that) But it wasn't until I was about 18 and saw a similar film that I knew much about the Holocaust.

About 35 years later I was somewhat involved in locating an Auschwitz camp guard for deportation proceedings. He was living across the street from an American Legion hall...

He "wanted to talk", and so I let him, in case he might say something useful in his case--although we already had him dead to rights. Most of it was self-serving rationalizations and frankly revolting.

About three weeks later he committed suicide. Case removed to a much higher Court.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." (William Faulkner)

 

[DWalt]

The documentary points out that most of the dirty work in the camps was done by Jewish Sonderkommandos. But not of their own volition. Had they disobeyed their SS masters to the slightest degree, they would have been among the next group heading into the gas chambers or shot on the spot. They interviewed several former Sonderkommandos. The SS were masters of manipulation.

A very small percentage of the estimated 7,000 SS men and women who worked the camps and survived the war were ever tried and convicted of anything.

 

[the ringo kid]

Hitlers Commanding Officer in WWI, was full blood Jewish.In WWII,Hitler saw to it that his former CO--was protected.

 

[Arik]

The documentary points out that most of the dirty work in the camps was done by Jewish Sonderkommandos. But not of their own volition. Had they disobeyed their SS masters to the slightest degree, they would have been among the next group heading into the gas chambers or shot on the spot. They interviewed several former Sonderkommandos. The SS were masters of manipulation.

A very small percentage of the estimated 7,000 SS men and women who worked the camps and survived the war were ever tried and convicted of anything.

Some were. Others were nor Jewish and more than happy to carry out the orders. Usually captured Ukrainians. One was recently deported from Ohio to Germany. Maybe 3 years ago. He has since died

 

[the ringo kid]

The documentary points out that most of the dirty work in the camps was done by Jewish Sonderkommandos. But not of their own volition. Had they disobeyed their SS masters to the slightest degree, they would have been among the next group heading into the gas chambers or shot on the spot. They interviewed several former Sonderkommandos. The SS were masters of manipulation.

A very small percentage of the estimated 7,000 SS men and women who worked the camps and survived the war were ever tried and convicted of anything.

Those Sonderkommandos,are better known as Kapos. They agreed to do this work for better treatment. There is a Czech film that came out about nineteen sixty or sixty two called: Kapo. That movie is VERY realistic.TCM sometimes pays it and I THINK they still offer it for sale??

 

[cmort666]

Some were. Others were nor Jewish and more than happy to carry out the orders. Usually captured Ukrainians. One was recently deported from Ohio to Germany. Maybe 3 years ago. He has since died

John Demyanyuk; a friend used to picket his house.

After his deportation, the story was that he was "innocent"... forgetting his PREVIOUS alibi that he was a different CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD than the CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD whom they thought he was.

When you admit that you're a CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD, which one, is a matter of degree rather than of kind.