How hard it is to accept the fact of The Holocaust: my heart goes out to survivors.

[Mike 03]

I was thinking about the Holocaust today (especially because of coverage on the radio: I think it is Holocaust remembrance month) and how it's so hard to fathom, how unbelievable it is that this happened.

And the 1940s seem so long ago. Yet, I know from listening to radio coverage that there are still people alive who went through that and survived. It's so mindboggling, frightening and horrendous that this happened...

Naturally, you would want to think this happened so long ago that it was ancient history.

It's just the most shameful thing that I can think of that has ever happened on this planet, and it's hard to accept that it was not so long ago that people who went through it are still living.

It just fills me with shame that human beings could devise something like this and do this to each other.

Is there anyone at DU who was affected by the Holocaust?

Does anyone else have trouble even accepting that this could have happened or been allowed to happen? It's so hard to wrap my head around. Although I have read books and books and books about it. It's so horrible.

It just makes me so ashamed.

[wyldwolf]

1. My wife's grandfather escaped from it.

[eyesroll]

2. My paternal grandfather lost some relatives.

He was born in the US, as were both of my grandmothers (my maternal grandfather came over from Russia around 1915), so he wasn't a direct victim, but some of his relatives (a grandmother, I believe) were killed.

My uncle's three kids' grandparents on the other side (if that makes sense) were holocaust survivors. (Sadly, it has affected my cousins to the point where the 14-year-old cannot have a rational conversation about Israel. She feels that Israel is restitution for the holocaust, and can do no wrong.)

[RexDart]

3. Grandmother in law was an Armenian Genocide survivor.

Sadly she passed away a couple of years ago. Kind old lady who happened to be smart as a tack. My wife and I would try to get her to talk about it, just so we could get some kind of record, but she always refused because it was "too sad" to talk about.

[AliceWonderland]

4. My beloved lost his paternal family, Hungarian Jews. His father was an

academic and got out for a conference in the US, literally just in time, and was halfway across the Atlantic when the war broke out. Apparently, he tried to get his family out but he couldn't reach them. His entire family died in Auschwitz.

Beloved said it was all very distant until he went to Dachau as a grown man. At the Dachau museum, he saw a picture of a little Jewish boy being terrorized by a big dog held by a German solider. Beloved said he stood there and publicly wept and thought of his grandmother, who was beaten to death by soldiers because she couldn't keep up with the last march out of the camp. I didn't say anything, but I think he related to the frightened little boy in the photo.

My beloved is the most principled, generous human being I've ever known. His father died of a heart attack a few months before he was born and he never knew his father -- it seems his father's health was never the same after the war, when he finally heard the news.

How do we even imagine what hatred does to the human heart?

/delurk

[GentryDixon]

5. I have been to Dachau.

The inhumanity against these people was certainly a fact, regardless of the naysayers.

I saw the ovens, all lined up in a nice neat row, Very efficient, those Nazis.

The day I was there was late December, rainy and very dismal. It fit the mood of my visit. The pictures in the museum made me so ashamed man could be a part of this atrocity.

I do not need a direct relative to tell me this stain on our conscience did in fact happen.

Edited for haste.

[aceofspades]

6. I saw Schindler's list. Made me cry

The atrocities were so terrible and unjustifiable, based on the notion that not all men are created equal.

[Shell Beau]

15. That movie was tough. Schindler was a brave brave man!

[struggle4progress]

23. Schindler was a Nazi war profiteer who made money using slave labor and then somehow inexplicably

started doing the right thing: he's a complicated figure, simultaneously a hero and a dirtbag

[alphafemale]

36. He probably wouldn't have been able to save anybody if he hadn't been "inside"

I don't need my heroes to be perfect. I don't even want heroes.

I just appreciate people who do the right thing,

[Dorian Gray]

37. Heoes

are heroic because they rise above their baser instincts. Which is what makes Schindler's story so compelling.

[struggle4progress]

45. That's true: if he hadn't been a real dirtbag, he'd never have been a real hero

[Forkboy]

40. Chiune Sugihara, The “Japanese Schindler”

I saw the documentary on this man a couple years ago. An amazing man.

One morning in July 1940, Consul Sugihara and his family were awakened by a crowd of hundreds Jewish refugees standing outside the Consulate, all desperately hoping for visas. Facing these women, children, and elderly people with pleading eyes made Sugihara feel helpless. He wanted to help, but had no authority to issue visas without permission from the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. He wired his government three times requesting to issue these visas, and all three times he was denied.

Time was running out for the refugees, and Sugihara had a difficult decision to make. He knew he might be fired and disgraced if he defied government orders, but he also knew that he could not allow these people to die. “I may have to disobey my Government, but if I do not, I will be disobeying God,” Sugihara said to his wife, Yukiko. “I know I should follow my conscience.”
Guided by the strength of his morality, Sugihara began issuing the transit visas. For 29 days, from July 31 to August 28, he sat for endless hours composing them. Hour after hour, day after day, he wrote and signed - 300 visas a day all written entirely by hand. He did not even pause for meals - Yukiko would prepare him sandwiches and leave them by his side. At the end of the day, she would massage his aching hands.

Hundreds of applicants became thousands. Day and night, desperate people lined up outside the Consulate begging for visas; when some of them attempted to climb the compound wall, Sugihara came out to calm them, promising not to abandon them. And he did not: when he was forced to close the Consulate and leave Lithuania, Sugihara continued writing visas on his way to the train station, in his car, and in his hotel. After boarding the train, he kept signing visas as fast as he could, handing them down from his window. Even while pulling out of the station, Sugihara was seen throwing visas to refugees running alongside the speeding train. Because many passports had been left unstamped, Sugihara also tossed his visa stamp into the crowd, so that it could be used to save even more Jews. “We will never forget you:” those were the last words he heard from the refugees.



http://www.jewishpost.com/shalom/Chiune-Sugihara-The-Japanese-Schindler.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sugihara/film/index.html

[struggle4progress]

47. Thanks! What a great story!

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. My dad survived it

he was hidden by a Polish family

Recently the rescuers were recognized by that amazing act of valor by the Yad Vashem foundation and the Government of Israel

[applegrove]

8. Thankfully two generations later we still discuss it.

[kestrel91316]

9. I had a client about 25 years ago when I was just starting practice -

he was an elderly Jewish gentleman who brought his dog in to the place I worked. I "knew" all about the Holocaust intellectually, of course. But when I saw the tattoo on his left arm and asked him about it and he told me he had been at Auschwitz as a young man, it really became real.

[MadHound]

10. I have no problem with Holocaust rememberence,

However what I want to know is why just this particular Holocaust? After all, it's not like Stalin was carrying out his own Holocaust, to the tune of 24 million people in Russia. It's not like Americans haven't carried out their own Holocaust, 14 million plus Native Americans killed over the years. More recently 5 million Vietnamese also. Do a bit more digging and you find genocidal purges throughout history, recent and ancient.

So my question is why just memorialize just this one?

[SoCalDem]

11. don't forget Armenia, either

The "estimates" are just that...estimates../ Back then there was no TV or radio ...just lots of killing to "cleanse" areas of people who were not "liked"..

Genocide is not a new phenomena., and had Hitler actually won, no one would have been in a position to stop him from continuing it..


He orchestrated a blatant genocide, but it's been done in subversive ways forever..It's the 21st century, and almost every contry on earth has "throwaway" people of this group or that, and given an "opportunity", someone could come to power and try their darndest to "eliminate" that group..

we have not changed as a species:(

[Shell Beau]

16. It is unfortunately a huge part of human history.

[cali]

17. why this particular holocaust? several reasons. it's sadly singular

due to how the Nazis mechanized death and due to their meticulous record keeping, ergo, we know far more about it than any other genocide. The record keeping has provided historians and social scientists with the material to write thousands of books and articles. In addition there were things such as the Nazi medical experiments and the slave labor which was worked out and documented in meticulous fashion. The genocide of the Native Americans was scarcely documented at all and ocurred over a relatively long period of time. The Holocaust killed millions in just 4 or 5 years. And in that brief time, they managed to kill off most of Europe's jews. As for Stalin, again, the documentation wasn't nearly what the Nazi documentation was.

So that's some of the reasons why the Holocaust is treated differently from other genocides.

[MadHound]

19. So in other words, the Holocaust has simply had better publicity

After all, the Japanese were doing the same sort of experimentation, hell the Americans killed with more effectiveness than the Nazis, not to mention killing off a higher number, and percentage of Native Americans in this country than European Jews.

So if it all comes down to better publicity, then why did the Holocaust receive better publicity?

[cali]

20. No. That's not what I said. I said it was basically

two things: the documentation, and the mechanization of killing. And no the Americans didn't kill with more effectiveness. It took over a hundred years to decimate the native american population. And it wasn't the kind of organized and dedicated campaign that the Nazis conducted in 5 years. The Japanese didn't set up killing camps of the same magnitiude or do experiments of the same magnitude. The gas chambers are emblematic of the mechanized mass death that the Nazis employed. And that mechanization coupled with the documentation that is so extant, is what fascinates social scientists and historians. No, they're not doing it for publicity, which is not to say that the Holocaust hasn't been abused.

I must say I find your attitude curious- and your determination to belittle the Holocaust is quite interesting- in a repugnant kind of way.

[MadHound]

39. I find your determination to try and force my opinions into your own mold quite interesting also

I'm not trying to belittle the Holocaust, more like I'm trying to figure out why the Nazi Holocaust is the only one we memorialize.

As far the Japanese go, yes, their medical experiments were of the same, if not greater magnitude as the Nazi's medical experiments. Go read your history and find out for yourself. The scary thing is that the US sucked down all that medical information, all those experiments that we couldn't ethically perform, and then used the information ourselves.

As far as the Native Americans go, while the killing process itself wasn't "mechanical" (though I fail to see how that contributes to the horror), it was just as deliberate. Hell, we deliberately sent the Indians smallpox blankets which, within ten years (less time than what the Holocaust took) reduced the population of the Plains Indians from twenty five million to six million. Nineteen million people dead, at our hands, in a deliberate act of genocide. Then we followed up by virtually wiping out the buffalo in order to starve the rest of the Native Americans to death. Which is worse, death by bioterrorism and hunger, or death in the camps? I find both abhorrent, yet only one is memorialized.

What I'm trying to get across here is that it's only polite and politic to memorialize one particular Holocaust. We can't memorialize the Holocaust that we inflicted on the Native Americans, after all, we're America, that shining city on a hill and ugliness such as a massive genocide only interferes with our national myths. That I get. But other genocides, why are they covered up and forgotten?

[cali]

43. i explained it to you. you seemingly purposefully miscontrued what I wrote.

And what I wrote is hardly something that's debated much in social science circles or by historians. If you can't see why the mechanization of death and the meticulous documentation is a big reason why the Holocaust is viewed as unique, well, you can't. And again, you neglect to note that it took over a hundred years for the U.S. to decimate the NA population whereas it took less than 5 years for the Nazi destruction of European Jewery.

Other genocides should be rememered. they're all horrific. they all have unique characteristics, but the Holocaust was documented in a way that makes it unique: the victims have faces, in large part because of that. History is built, not just on who won, but on documentation.

[Balbus]

21. Relax. No one is telling you which holocaust to remember..

Remember any holocaust you want. Pick your favorite and go nuts. Do what makes you happy.

[roguevalley]

24. memorialize them all. this one was supposed to be the last, it was

industrial murder as opposed to just pogroms all over the place. very, very terrible stain on humanity, this kind of thing.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. Exactly.

I stated as much below before reading your post.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. In a conference on many holocausts

of the 20th century, starting with Armenia and ending in the Balkans, we covered all, we asked that question

1.- Armenia, you mention it even today and the Turkish government will have a cow. IMHO we should ignore them and mention it... also there were relatively few survivors compared to

2.- Pol Pot, similar problem

3.- Chile-Argentina, now due to their truth and reconciliation commissions, there is more work on it

4.- Here is the particular thing with the Holocaust, it's not the first... and Jews decided that it had to be the last. Also the rest I mentioned didn't horrify western governments enough...

The Armenians, the general attitude until recently was who cares, outside the Armenian Community. the Balkans, few people even know it happened, and that was ten years ago. Pol Pot, even less... Argentina-Chile et al, outside the local area nobody knows

So partly it is the efforts of a people to keep it front and center

but also, not that most people realize this... Israeli politics are infused with it

Notice we know of six million (accepted number, five to seven, we average things) but how many people know of the other seven million?

In my view genocide is far more common than we like to think

[Forkboy]

12. I know of at least one DUer whose family was directly affected by it.

:(

[H2O Man]

13. When I was little,

one of our neighbors was a survivor. He was a kind and gentle old man, the only member of his family to survive. He used to give my siblings and I presents, including a large collection of old coins that my oldest brother still keeps. I remember him well, and when I think about the horrors of that era, I always think of it in terms of what it did to him, and millions of human beings like him.

[Shell Beau]

14. I do not know anyone that was affected. It is mind boggling though.

So many people died such needless and horrific deaths. I did have the wonderful opportunity to visit the Smithsonian Holocaust Museum. That was rough. I just can't imagine what it must have been like.

[Lerkfish]

18. unfortunately, the holocaust was not a vaccination, it was a warning, that has repeatedly

gone unheeded -- the Kmer Rhouge, Rwanda, you name it.
Even though survivors said "never again", the fact is that we must actively fight constantly against it ever happening again. It happens because we assume it cannot.

I remember when Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were installed, and I said at the time, we need to have oversight because without oversight there is no protection against torture. At the time I was on a mixed political board, and every republican ridiculed me, saying "OUR soldiers would never mistreat any prisoner"......

But I Knew better. I knew that if ordered, there would be people who would torture.

And, I knew the order would be given.

Am I a freakin prophet? No, I just REMEMBERED the holocaust (or more specifically Mengele I suppose). I never ASSUMED it couldn't happen again.
The fact is, the ONLY thing that prevents these sorts of things is oversight.

[cali]

22. Absolutely spot on, Lerky.

though I'm not sure anything can prevent future genocide.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. I had a similar experience

I mentioned the Holocaust and Central America

Of course I wasn't American enough

:sarcasm:

[Lerkfish]

41. exactly. I was accused of being unpatriotic and a traitor for accurately predicting the future.

of course, I would have preferred to have been incorrect. Torture in my name is unacceptable to me.

[Blue_In_AK]

25. We should never forget that this was only one of many, many genocides

that have occurred in the past couple of centuries (and before) all around the world -- even here. I'm not saying this to minimize the horrors of the Jewish holocaust, but sadly it was not a unique event.

[zonkers]

27. My grandmother's family was wiped out in Romania. Off topic,... it seems IBM was very involved in

the statitstical/census computer punch card system that helped classify and exterminate the Jews and Gypsies of Romania. I just found this out. Here is a link. Very fascinating.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Gypsies/IBM_Hollerith.html

[sampsonblk]

28. Never let a holocaust denier get away with it

Thats my rule.

[hfojvt]

29. it was very cold-blooded, but I am not sure it is the worst

Something like 6 million Jews and gypsies and slavs were killed. That's death and destruction and suffering on a massive scale, but WWII itself was worse. Something like 10 million Germans died and something like 20 million Russians and 400,000 Americans and so on across the globe - Japanese, British, French, Africans, Chinese, Italians, Koreans, Philipinos, Australians, etc.,etc., etc. The total was probably ten times the number killed in the Holocaust and yet the Holocaust is held up as the absolute worst. The suffering and destruction and death from the war was on a far more massive scale. Perhaps not as cold-blooded, but isn't it pretty cold-blooded to fly over people homes and workplaces and drop tons of explosives on them?

I think war itself is just as shameful and yet many people do not recoil in horror at the idea of war.

[Peggesis1]

33. Yeah it is; that process puts it in a catagory by itself

No, I would maintain that aside from the horrendous numbers (10,000,000 Germans, 20,000,000, etc.) there is STILL something even worse about the process of systematically lining up half starved civilians, children and all, and marching them into gas chambers. By the millions. Seriously.

[Solly Mack]

32. I attended a Yom Hashoah program/event on Tuesday

This years event was centered around the city of Mannheim and the history of the Jewish community before/after/during the Holocaust


Here's the program

[alphafemale]

34. I remember, as a kid, seeing people with the numbers tattooed on their arms

Survivors were so much a part of everyday life then, that denial it happened was pretty much impossible.

[Behind the Aegis]

35. "that denial it happened was pretty much impossible."

One would think, but yet....

The more common motif is "minimalization" as demonstrated by some here anytime the subject of the Holocaust emerges.

[KharmaTrain]

38. A Major Part Of My Childhood...

My father served in the Army and was present at the liberation of several camps in Germany...a sight he never talked about until his last days. Being Jewish and growing up in the 60s and 70s, "Never Again" was a popular saying...the holocoust was all around, from the large number of survivors in my neighborhood to each family having some family that was affected.

My mother's family came from what is now Poland (Russia 100 years ago)...we had family letters (I still have them in my posssession) that stopped when the war broke out in 1939...not a word was heard again. In 1967, when we were in Paris, my mother had a lead on where some of that family may have gone. She got a phone book (didn't speak French, just Yiddish) and, with our tour guide, tried to call several families with her last name...sadly none were from her family. Several years later, she traveled to the town my grandmother had been born in...which had over 20,000 Jews when she lived ther (until 1910), but when my mother visited, there were only 3 Jews left. The landmarks noted in the letters were there, but the synagogue had become a government building and many of the homes of relatives had been given to Polish exiles from Russian controlled areas.

The holocoust was the end-result of centuries of systemic anti-semetism that followed the Jews across Europe. While the stories of the Holocoust are horrible, I grew up with my grandmother's stories about raids of her village by Russian Cossacks and Polish police who would pillage their town...forcing her to emigrate and my letters indicate how difficult it was for her family prior to 1939...unfortunately we never have found out what happened.

[Deep13]

42. There is no limit to what evil people will do.

Anyway, I've been to Dachau and there was still ash in the ovens.

[truebrit71]

44. On an exchange trip to Germany many years ago I discovered that the father of the family

I was matched with had been a guard at Auschwitz. He seemed to be nice older gentleman, very polite and courteous to me, his British guest, but his demeanour was one of a man that had seen something truly awful and the burden of those memories weighed heavily on his shoulders...his eyes were so sad..like that of someone that knows that they are slowly dying and can't do anything about it, and that everyday they wake up is not something to celebrate, but rather a reminder that he is one day closer to death...

The younger generation talked openly about their past, and the history was not glossed-over in the schools, and rather than being constantly apologetic they appeared to be more focussed on making sure that it never happened again through open discourse and education...

[Nye Bevan]

46. The worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world

in my opinion. Pure, unadulterated systematic evil. As a Christian myself I am especially horrified at how little opposition there was from the so-called Christian churches at the time.

I just read this book on my Kindle which does not cover the Holocaust itself, but describes how the Jews were persecuted and marginalized in the years leading up to the Holocaust, in preparation for their eventual fate.

http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-Persecution-1933-1939/dp/0060928786/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240510868&sr=8-2

Very long, but gripping and horrifying. One of the most chilling books I have ever read, made even more so by the fact that it is non-fiction.