'Fresh Air' Marks The 75th Anniversary Of The Liberation Of Auschwitz

[BeckyDem]

January 24, 20201:36 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air

In 2005, journalist Laurence Rees described the inner workings of the Nazi death camp in his book, Auschwitz: A New History, and Elie Wiesel spoke in 1988 about his experience at Auschwitz.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Monday, January 27, is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Today we're going to listen to two interviews. In a bit, we'll hear some of Terry's 1988 interview with Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who died in 2016. But first, we'll listen to my 2005 interview with journalist Laurence Rees, whose book presented fresh information about Auschwitz, the site of history's largest mass murder, as well as insights into Hitler's campaign of genocide against the Jews of Europe.

Rees' book is based on more than a hundred interviews with Auschwitz survivors and Nazi perpetrators, many of whom spoke on the record for the first time. He believes his search for the truth was aided by the fact that surviving Nazis had reached an age where candor no longer jeopardized careers and by the fall of communism, which opened up a wealth of new archival material. His book is called "Auschwitz: A New History."

(excerpt)
But one thing I took from this was a big fear I've now got about people of absolute faith. I always thought faith of itself was - could only be a positive thing. Everyone talks about the importance of having faith. Well, these guys had faith, absolute faith. And there's one really desperately upsetting - all desperately upsetting. But ideologically, there's one desperately particularly upsetting moment where - in the book where I talk about how Himmler and Hoss most admired, as prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses. They pointed to them and said, see that faith? That's the kind of faith we need in our fuhrer - absolute, unshakable faith.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/799228786/fresh-air-marks-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-liberation-of-auschwitz

[BigmanPigman]

1. The Holocaust may have killed 15- 20 million people!

"The new figures of 15 to 20 million, which have astonished some Holocaust historians, come after thirteen years of painstaking study at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum . Historians at the museum brought together and studied the huge amount, and often disparate, files and research on the Holocaust."

"The results of our research are shocking," Geoffrey Megargee, the director of the study, told The Independent newspaper. "We are putting together numbers that no one ever compiled before, even for camp systems that have been fairly well researched - and many of them have not been."

https://www.businessinsider.com/shocking-new-holocaust-study-claims-nazis-killed-up-to-20-million-people-2013-3

After watching a documentary this week about survivors from a fellow DUer's post called Treblinka's Last Witness, I thought about what the survivor said that made me cry..."How could a God let this happen?". It made me grateful that the number of "non-religious" is growing, especially in the US where it is about 25% of the population. I believe religion has been the root of at least half the wars this planet has seen. If there was a God, why would he/she let this happen? The rise of "non-religious" people can only be a good thing for humanity, in my opinion.

"Surveys show that Americans without a religious affiliation (which include 'nothing particular', agnostic, and atheist), sometimes referred to as "Nones" range around 23.8%, 26%,24.8%, 33%, 21%, and 31.4% of the population, with 'nothing in particulars' making up the majority of this demographic. Since the early 1990s, independent polls have shown the rapid growth of those without a religious affiliation."

Here is the documentary and it is very good!

https://www.pbs.org/video/treblinkas-last-witness-4rbuxq/

[BeckyDem]

2. Thank you so much.