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Post by howard lee on Nov 20, 2020 10:13:30 GMT -5
As a tribute to the many members of my family who perished in the Holocaust, just wanted to point out that today is the 75th anniversary of the first Nuremberg trial. I posted these photos and tables to put faces on evil.
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Post by billhammond on Nov 20, 2020 10:18:36 GMT -5
As a tribute to the many members of my family who perished in the Holocaust, just wanted to point out that today is the 75th anniversary of the first Nuremberg trial. A somber date indeed. Bless the memory of your family members, and bless you, Howard. |
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Post by howard lee on Nov 20, 2020 10:19:33 GMT -5
Thank you, Bill. It seems I will never escape this legacy: my first wife kicked me out on April 20, 1993, the 104th anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler.
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Post by TKennedy on Nov 20, 2020 10:27:27 GMT -5
Incomprehensible evil.
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Post by billhammond on Nov 20, 2020 10:28:04 GMT -5
Numbers can be cruel sometimes, I have a whole bunch of them.
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Post by fauxmaha on Nov 20, 2020 10:31:17 GMT -5
It's all so heartbreaking, Howard, the profound loss your family suffered.
Our capacity for cruelty is boundless. The veneer of civilization is terrifyingly thin.
Thank you for is. We need to remember. Forever.
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Nov 20, 2020 10:36:42 GMT -5
It's all so heartbreaking, Howard, the profound loss your family suffered. Our capacity for cruelty is boundless. The veneer of civilization is terrifyingly thin. Thank you for is. We need to remember. Forever. This. Mike |
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Post by dradtke on Nov 20, 2020 10:43:15 GMT -5
The more I read about them, the more I'm amazed at how boring and normal they all were. The only conclusion I can draw is that the capacity for great evil - as well as great good - lies in all of us. One of Grandma Radkte's relatives worked as a nanny for some officer high in the Nazi command. If I'd lived there then, would I have supported it? I hope not, but I can't say for sure. From letters my grandmother received, her family supported Hitler because he was good for the economy. |
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Post by howard lee on Nov 20, 2020 10:44:51 GMT -5
It's all so heartbreaking, Howard, the profound loss your family suffered. Our capacity for cruelty is boundless. The veneer of civilization is terrifyingly thin. Thank you for is. We need to remember. Forever.
What I find the most staggering aspect of it is the sheer numbers of people who were slaughtered without mercy—millions. My parents lost parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles—relatives I might have known, and more cousins I might have had than the just the one first cousin I have known all my life. Multiplied by all the families comprising Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Catholics, homosexuals, doctors, lawyers, university professors, intellectuals, and social justice advocates.
And this applies to victims of ALL genocides, through all time. Hitler's Final Solution might be the symbolic marker for modern history, but we should also not forget the other genocides that have occurred, even during our lifetimes: Rwanda, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, among others.
I often wonder when we will stop killing each other. I wonder IF we will ever stop.
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Post by TKennedy on Nov 20, 2020 10:47:31 GMT -5
Pat and I have talked about the scenario of a government death camp in Osakis, and we knew what was going on there but also knew that if we spoke up there would be a visit in the night not just for us but our relatives and children.
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Post by fauxmaha on Nov 20, 2020 10:48:59 GMT -5
What terrifies me most is this: Look at those pictures, and what do you see? I see educated men. Sophisticated men. Presumably all quite intelligent. Each of them had demonstrated qualities that elevated them to the top of their respective hierarchies. And yet they were responsible for the greatest act of deliberate and methodical and industrialized mass murder in history. That isn't supposed to be possible. That's not supposed to happen. But it did. And millions of Howards carry the scars. We all carry the scars. Incomprehensible is exactly the right word. But it is our duty to comprehend. We have to. Even if we can't. |
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Post by dradtke on Nov 20, 2020 10:58:36 GMT -5
And this applies to victims of ALL genocides, through all time. Hitler's Final Solution might be the symbolic marker for modern history, but we should also not forget the other genocides that have occurred, even during our lifetimes: Rwanda, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, among others. I believe it boils down to recognizing, respecting and appreciating the humanity of people not like yourself. Awfully trite, but awfully hard to do. And hard to see in yourself. |
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Post by howard lee on Nov 20, 2020 11:10:18 GMT -5
And this applies to victims of ALL genocides, through all time. Hitler's Final Solution might be the symbolic marker for modern history, but we should also not forget the other genocides that have occurred, even during our lifetimes: Rwanda, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, among others. I believe it boils down to recognizing, respecting and appreciating the humanity of people not like yourself. Awfully trite, but awfully hard to do. And hard to see in yourself.
I agree, David, and that's how my parents raised me. That's why one of my closest friends was a right-wing, redneck, card-carrying NRA member, guitar-picking farm boy from rural Ohio.
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Post by Hobson on Nov 20, 2020 11:12:41 GMT -5
What is also incomprehensible to me is that there are people who believe that the Holocaust never happened.
We are nowhere near this stage of inhumanity in the U.S. now, but I worry about the intolerance for those who don't have the "correct" political leanings.
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Post by james on Nov 20, 2020 12:50:04 GMT -5
It was weird to have a link to the site of James Fetzer, a conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier posted here the other week.
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Post by howard lee on Nov 20, 2020 13:08:12 GMT -5
It was wierd to have a link to the site of James Fetzer, a conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier posted here the other week.
The tattoo on the inside of my mother's left arm read "A-14662." She did not get it by being a drunken sailor on shore leave in Singapore.
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Post by david on Nov 20, 2020 13:35:54 GMT -5
Pat and I have talked about the scenario of a government death camp in Osakis, and we knew what was going on there but also knew that if we spoke up there would be a visit in the night not just for us but our relatives and children. Terry, I do not even know where Osakis is or any death camp. What are you talking about? |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2020 13:47:06 GMT -5
Right up there among things I despise is Holocaust Denial. I served in Germany from 1988 - 1991, and visited several camps. They are very clean and neat in their appearance, and it took some imagination to conjure up what several HUNDRED people would have endured crammed into each barracks. The camp museums, no matter how diligent they are in preparing their displays, can't possibly convey that accurately.
Flossenbürg in particular represents the crazy dichotomy of those days to me. The camp was a nightmare. The town itself is beyond picturesque. The view from Flossenbürg Castle is wonderful, especially in the summer. The castle sits high on a hill, surrounded by bright yellow fields of mustard.
It's hard to square that view with the remains of the camp that sits just several hundred feet from the base of the mountain.
I think seeing these camps, and participating in Desert Storm, were the two formative events in my early career that made me vehemently against using any dehumanizing or demonizing language against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2020 13:49:39 GMT -5
Pat and I have talked about the scenario of a government death camp in Osakis, and we knew what was going on there but also knew that if we spoke up there would be a visit in the night not just for us but our relatives and children. Terry, I do not even know where Osakis is or any death camp. What are you talking about? I think Terry is projecting himself into the shoes of a German back in WWII who lived close to a camp. They knew. Many were content. Some were not. The ones that weren't felt powerless to say anything. Those that did ended up like Dietrich Bonhöffer. |
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Post by david on Nov 20, 2020 14:21:46 GMT -5
I have wondered how Germany addresses Hitler in its history to its children. Then I realize that, until my senior year in high school, I had never heard of the "Indian Wars" or "Wounded Knee." My brief Google search shows that the US, and especially California, had a systematic means of eliminating Indians. According to Hitler biographer John Toland:
“Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”
— P. 202, “Adolph Hitler” by John Toland
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