Posted on 09/22/2007 6:46:14 AM PDT by Argentine-Firecracker
“Newly released photos of SS officers sitting in canvas chairs,
participating in sing-alongs and enjoying their free time at a
recreation home near Auschwitz have shocked many in Germany this week.”
No suprise to anybody that saw “Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State” on
PBS.
One of the main interviewees was a German who was an SS clerk
at Auschwitz. When he talked about how good life was at that duty
posting I almost could have thrown a brick through the TV.
(But, if you watch the whole series, this same fellow has MUCH more
of a story about the aftermath of Auschwitz.)
I didn’t realize PBS had done the program on Auschwitz. I’ll buy the DVDs since I live in Warsaw. Thanks for the info.
“It is incomprehensible to me how seemingly “normal” human beings can
become so inured in such excruciating and unspeakable cruelty.”
While I think of lots of psychology as Bravo Sierra, I do think
the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo do show how this can happen.
(A year or so ago I read Martha Stout’s “The Sociopath Next Door”.
She included some information I had never heard about Milgram’s
experiment...that females were just about as likely to fall right in
line and administer the shocks. This did make me more accepting
that a few of the cruelest concentration camp guards were...female.)
Stanley Milgram
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
Milgram experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment
Phillip Zimbardo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo
Stanford prison experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
It is “the banality of evil” that shocks us.
I have photographs of Saint Louis police officers laughing while they handcuff and arrest people blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 1985. Laughing, while they open up a door so that babies can be killed.
If American cops can laugh while they participate in mass murder, I don’t see what’s so shocking about photos of SS officers’ doing the same.
“I think there is a parallel between Nazis and the Islamists.”
Nicely covered in this History Channel show...
“Saddam and the Third Reich DVD “
It's not a conventional war. But you can see their first successes in the total PC meltdown we have going here, where to criticize Islam, or the actions of Muslims, it not generally allowed, and how we extensively cater to to Muslims. They can win simply on the coattails of our own liberals winning.
Thanks for the tips!
By the way, I think that visiting Auschwitz or the Terezin Ghetto sometime in High School is a requirement for some EU students. I’ll have to dig up the information, which I can’t right now, but I believe that many EU schools during “spring break” make the trek. Hopefully, like many of us, they are marked for life after this experience.
I think that there is a macabre truth that human beings are willing to obey an authority figure who instructs them to perform acts that conflict with their personal conscience. Especially, IF objecting to these acts puts the human being in the minority...
Every time I visit the horrors of Auschwitz, I ask myself...what would I have done if I had lived near by? as an ordinary citizen?
Actually, it was the SS; which, it could beargued, was worse than the Gestapo. Either way, they embody the face of evil.
While in the AF and living in Germany, I visited Dachau. It was a life-altering event after which I could never look at an elderly German without wondering if they were involved in some way. Look at the young men and women in these photos and imagine that some are still alive. Pure evil.
“Hey, ve just incinerated our 500,000th Jew! It’s time time to zelebrate!”
Sick Bastards!
There are several things that need to be kept in mind about the death camps.
The SS was subdivided into the Waffen, or combat SS, and the General SS. The Waffen SS was very high quality, and the average education was a bachelor’s degree or better. The General SS were just scum from the street.
The Waffen SS were deployed to the front lines as combat units, but were under a completely different chain of command from the Wehrmacht, the regular army. This created a great deal of consternation among the Wehrmacht, because they had absolutely no idea what the Waffen SS was going to do next. But whatever it was, it would be different from what the Wehrmacht was doing. Very chaotic.
The General SS had elements that were in the rear area behind the front lines, engaged in genocide. These were the notorious Einsatzgruppen, and when the Wehrmacht was in retreat they were shocked to find that the Russian towns they had passed by had been slaughtered, leaving huge piles of bodies burning with fuel oil.
The General SS also ran the death camps and other rear area operations. It is noteworthy that any General SS member could instantly transfer to the Waffen SS and face combat, but none, zero, ever did.
This is not to say that the Waffen SS were sweetness and light, as they were a brutal and vicious fighting force. Ironically, after the war ended, entire Waffen SS units were converted to French Foreign Legionnaires, and went sent to French Indochina (Vietnam), to again fight communists. But if captured by Americans or Russians, instead of the French, Waffen SS were immediately killed, just like General SS.
Thanks for the great laugh!!!
“They’re kind of like today’s bitches and ho’s who flock to the thug rappers.”
Or groupies to heavy metal rockers. Just had to get your little bigoted dig in huh?
Like the Nazi thugs...all you have to do is de-humanize and objectify an entire group of people and you, to, can play the concertina have fun and, otherwise, appear normal on the outside.
Surprisingly, lots of people today could be placed in those photos and fit right in.
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