Posted on 01/27/2018 5:13:48 AM PST by harpygoddess
Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele (1911-79). During World War II (1939-45), more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz. In January 1945, with the Soviet army approaching, Nazi officials ordered the camp abandoned and sent an estimated 60,000 prisoners on a forced march to other locations. When the Soviets entered Auschwitz, they found thousands of emaciated detainees and piles of corpses left behind.
How do you describe the sorting out on arriving at Auschwitz, the separation of children who see a father or mother going away, never to be seen again? How do you express the dumb grief of a little girl and the endless lines of women, children, and rabbis being driven across the Polish or Ukrainian landscapes to their deaths? No, I can't do it. And because I'm a writer and a teacher, I don't understand how Europe's most cultured nation could have done that. For these men who killed with submachine-guns in the Ukraine were university graduates. Afterwards they would go home and read a poem by Heine. So what happened?
~ Elie Wiesel (b. 1928) (quoted in Le Monde, Paris, 4 June 1987)
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
Definite content warning on the included documentaries.
Years ago we visited Dachau on a cold,rainy,dreary day.It was fitting that the weather was like that because Dachau is the most depressing place I’ve ever visited.
No question about that. I visited Dachau in the 60s as a young soldier. Whenever I see it pictured on TV or Internet, I get cold chills. A truly horrifying place.
Some nations may think they’re so cultured that they should put aside decency, the rule of law and norms of society. Sounds like some people we got around here today.
"Punch A Nazi" meme from the progressive left antifa takes on a whole new meaning...
What a vile disgusting thing...
“Liberated” Poland for the 2nd time during WW2.
Yes, but the folks at FR will denegrate anyone getting any sort of a liberal arts degree.
It was so horrifying that I felt it could not be reality. It was a nightmare. I still cannot get my mind around it.
So horrifying and so unbelievable was the nightmare, that I had difficulty with reality and actually teetered on the edge of psychosis.
As I stared out of the window of the sleeping quarters into the yard, I was afraid to turn around. The nightmare was so surreal that I feared to see starving inmates, of which I was one, that my happy life was a hallucinatory daydream, and that the reality was that I was trapped in the horrors of Dachau.
My life has never been the same.
That was about 25 years after the liberation of Dachau. After all these years, I still tremble as I think about it.
National Socialism + Big Government + Gun Control
+++++
“And because I’m a writer and a teacher, I don’t understand how Europe’s most cultured nation could have done that.”
As did I as well....around 1977, I think-
What hit me so profoundly was walking though the beautiful and lush garden pathways inside of the camp and then realizing that the earth was so fertile because of all of the bodies buried along those pathways...
It was so overwhelming I fell to my knees.
I was only about 30 years old at the time and really knew nothing about what the Nazis had done...I soon became an ardent student.
The “world” is more “educated” about Auschwitz than “The Gulag Archipelago”
“Uncle Joe” (Stalin) murdered three times more people than Hitler.
My impression of Dachau (mid-80s) was that it was too cleaned up and sterile.
People never learn about Mao and Stalin. Pol Pot was the worst in terms ofpopuation percentage he had murdered.
Few things captured the brutality of the Nazis like “Come And See”, a film made in Russia and for some reason had all sorts of trouble getting by the Soviet censors. One of the reasons it’s a great film is that it was brutal without being gory, a feat American filmmakers rarely achieved. Available on YouTube.
When I was there, it was also cold, rainy and dreary. So many of us were openly weeping as we went from room to room. I will never forget the experience.
The Soviets turned Buchenwald into “NKVD Special Camp Number 2”, after the War.
Between August 1945 and the dissolution on March 1, 1950, 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, were held by the Soviet Union at Buchenwald.[49] A total of 7,113 people died in Special Camp Number 2, according to the Soviet records.[49] They were buried in mass graves in the woods surrounding the camp. Their relatives did not receive any notification of their deaths. Prisoners comprised alleged opponents of Stalinism, and alleged members of the Nazi Party or Nazi organizations; others were imprisoned due to identity confusion and arbitrary arrests.[50][51] The NKVD would not allow any contact of prisoners with the outside world[52] and did not attempt to determine the guilt of any individual prisoner.[51]
Jews survived to be stronger than ever. Jesus was a Jew and Hitler was too stupid to understand God would not turn His back on them.
I was seven years old when the Israelis tried Adolph Eichmann.
Maybe the networks didn’t warn viewers, because my parents didn’t get me out of the room or turn off the TV.
To this day I sometimes awake at night seeing the images of skeletal bodies, with mouths agape, stacked like wood.
I was there at the same time and felt the same way.
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