Auschwitz

I went to Krakow a couple of years ago on a business trip, there and back in a day and we had around 5 hours spare between flights so my business partner suggested we get a taxi to Auschwitz. I really didnt know how to feel about this, it almost felt wrong to visit something so harrowing as a "tourist", its difficult to explain in words why it didnt sit well with me. However, I am glad I did as you can never really appreciate the scale of evil unless you have seen it first hand. It is just such a sad place that has to be maintained in order to keep the memory of the lives lost. As many have already said, how one race can decide to treat another in such a way is just beyond belief. Sadly I think we are experiencing this mentality again, just on a smaller scale (for now)
 
I went to Auschwitz about 18 months ago and it knocked me sick, I honestly don't know how humans can do that sort of stuff to other humans. They made fucking clothes and things out of the hair they stole. They took their glasses, gold teeth, and all their possessions. Absolutely barbaric and subhuman.
 
I went with school last April, just after the away game at Liverpool. Auschwitz 1 itself has been a round for years before the holocaust so to put it simply, you were quite lucky if you were sent there as it was the labor camp part of Auschwitz Birkenau. Some of the worst buts as others have said were the hair, shoes etc etc. The buildings didn't really bother me, but that was too far.
The second part, or Auschwitz 2 is the famous railway track were Mengele seperate the in comers. It was either straight to the chambers, or to the wooden barracks. The literally constructed Auschwitz 2 as a death camp. There were hundreds of the barracks. One thing that struck me was how cold it was, a real bitter howling wind and this was in the Spring. Just imagine how cold it must have been for the prisoners.
A real harrowing place it must be said, but to be honest the area around such as Krakow was beautiful and well worth a visit.
 
We had a weekend in Krakow last year, and visited Auschwitz-Birkenau for a day. It was well worth the trip, but possibly one of the most harrowing days I can recall. I couldn't get some of the images or facts out of my head for weeks afterwards. The "restored" first gas chamber/crematorium at Auschwitz was chilling, as you can walk through it, and come out at the hatches to the furnaces, where small metal trollies were built to speed up the process of feeding bodies into the fire.... And then you head over to the Birkenau camp (famous for its arched gateway over the railway line, and the real "German efficiency" approach to murder hits you like a hammer, as the site is absolutely enormous and was built for nothing other than to murder and dispose of huge numbers of people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Shocking.
 
Did anyone catch this last week? Still on BBC iplayer. Well worth a watch.

In a disarmingly frank interview, Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller (now in his 90s) tells his personal story of being a young Jewish man during World War II. Speaking directly to camera and accompanied by extensive archive footage, he relives his past and draws on intense memories to navigate the extraordinary adventure of his early life. Freddie's story is a dramatic - and often surprisingly funny - real-life account.
It takes us from his family life in 1930s Vienna through the German occupation of Austria and his flight to Belgium. Then on to Nazi-occupied Paris, where Freddie lived and worked in red-light Pigalle, entertaining German officers and socialising with dancing girls, before an interrogation by the Gestapo meant he had to move on again. After a brief spell in the Resistance, the war eventually caught up with him and his life in Auschwitz began.
Click to expand...

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b050cvdd/surviving-the-holocaust-freddie-knollers-war" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ollers-war</a>
 
I Watched The Hidden Holacaust last night on Sky

It covered Auschwitz but also the Germans retreat from the USSR Belive me they murdered anything And Everything,
im not Squemish but some of the Camera Footage was Vile to say the least

IT MUST NEVER,EVER HAPPEN AGAIN
 
what in can't get my head around is that as normal thinking people 'you and me' we all know how wrong this was but yet thousands of German military carried out these war crimes as if it was the normal thing to do even without second thought they sent these prisoners into the gas chambers, you get misfits in society such as Hindley and Sutcliffe etc but surly not such a massive outfit as a whole army which were made up of a large number of conscripted solders 'just normal country men and woman', how did they pull it off and make it as if it was right thing to do? did they literally brainwash people
 
From above:-

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30953301" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30953301</a>
 
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