Auschwitz 70 Years On.

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I honestly believe that 'We' believe in nothing.

Life is simply too fragile.
 
I was there last year , I would recommend doing it with a guide, the room with all the kids clothes and shoes in was the hardest part for me.
 
We've not really learned anything as a species have we? There have been genocides since, and no doubt there will be more in the future. Imagine what ISIS or Al Qaeda would do if they could industrialise murder like the Nazis did?

We've learned lots as a species. But our natures have not changed much at all. We just use all that acquired knowledge to figure out how to kill others more effiiciently
 
We've not really learned anything as a species have we? There have been genocides since, and no doubt there will be more in the future. Imagine what ISIS or Al Qaeda would do if they could industrialise murder like the Nazis did?

Its only a matter of time before the holocaust pales into insignificance when a new atrocity happens, humans learn, the people at the top never learn as they inherit power - so we are doomed to repeat history, just with far better technology for killing on a mass scale.
 
Many of them saw nothing wrong with their actions even decades later.
Shows how powerful gov propaganda against target groups can be.

Yea very disturbing. He was a family man living next to the camp too liked the Jewish Orchestra!
 
I'm going to Saschenhausen next month. Not on the same scale as Auschwitz/Birkenau, but will be harrowing all the same.
 
I've never been but I'm determined to go once. It will be harrowing and disturbing but I feel as if I owe it to those who died to go there and at least learn more about what happened. I think I'll wait a few years and take my son so that I know he has gone too, as bad as it sounds we need to pass the horror onto future generations to try and make sure it is never forgotten.

He's 10 months old like so i'll not make him go yet, can wait a while; mind its horrible to think that others his age or not much older were dying there just for being jewish, they were babies for fucks sake. Cant imagine the horror parents would have gone through there (i know it was awful for everyone there but i just cant imagine seeing my son taken off me, pushed and kicked about when he tried to get back to me or his mam and then being dragged to a gas chamber for an agonising death whilst i was powerless to stop it, that feeling of helplessness would be worse than my eventual death by a long distance, awful to think that this actually happened to thousands :cry::cry:)
 
Been to Sachsenhausen just outside Berlin, mostly Political prisoners and Red army pows ,criminals, truly awful, museum and displays were terrible, there is a pit where the germans executed 12000 soviet prisoners with a shot in the back of the neck , went to Auschwitz-Birkinau , again awful , we didn't go on a tour bus with a guide, just wandered round, probably didn't get the explanations that the tour guides gave but we had more time to take it all in, tbh it didn't seem right that you had to pay to get in, nowt to do with the money side it just doesn't seem right, also I didn't like the little shop selling sweets and pop, it just didn't seem right in a place like that.

I was there in 2007 and you only had to pay if you went round with a tour guide or used one of the audio guides. Otherwise you're asked to make a donation. Whether you do or not is entirely up to your own conscience.
 
The Holocaust and Auschwitz in particular are unparalleled in history.

Yes other genocides have occurred before and since but never on the industrial scale of the Final Solution.

I find it sad that a lot of people in my generation are ignorant of what went on.
well said

for the record in rwanda, one million were hacked to death in month, a rate that nazis could only have dreamed of, yet it is the scale and industrialised nature and not just the barbarity of the holocaust that should stay with humanity forever
 
Have been to The Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh and S21 , to think it was the mid 70s the Khmer Rouge killed possibly 2.5 million .
 
Theres a a book called KL Auschwitz part of it is his memoirs, disturbing how normal he is.

His grandson was on tv the other day talking about how he would come home from "work" and play with the kids in the back garden. There was a photo of them on a bright sunny day, all smiles. Makes you wonder how all the people involved managed to somehow normalise and rationalise what they were doing.
 
I thought about the place for months after, thinking about if that was me, the wife and kids

Seeing all the kids stuff in Auschwitz was bad, walking down towards the gas chambers in Birkenau was horrible with all the pictures of family's walking the same route

We had a jewish lass as a tour guide, she was was excellent and many of us were in tears walking around the blocks in Camp 1

I also visited Schindlers factory and read lots about what really happened, what a top lad he was, sat in his chair in his office and thought for a while
 
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Do they avoid it in history lessons or what?

Quite the contrary. Thinking back about my history lessons in school, it feels like we haven't covered anything else but WWI and WWII.
It feels like it's too shameful to talk about it, in particular the involvement of your own family. You don't even talk about it within you own family.For example, I know that my mother's side of the family were ethnic Germans in Serbia and they've been eventually deported to work camps by the yugoslavian or russian army. My father's side of the family was based here in Germany during this time, but I have no clue whatsoever how anyone of them has been "involved". I assume that a couple of my relatives had to go to war and/or were party members, but it was never something we talked about. I don't even know if my great- /grandfather were in the army or not.

Basically, in school we were taught the doctrine that german history is shameful and we internalised this veeeeery well over the years. Although we are able to deal with our history a bit better nowadays, most germans will still be very cautious and rather avoid talking about this part of our history at all.
 
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