Auschwitz

[Damocles]

I keep wanting to believe that this is all some hoax or conspiracy.

I know it isn't, but I really really want it to be.

I'm not sure what that says about me as a person but it honestly keeps me awake sometimes wondering.

 

[r.soleofsalford]

Just to counterbalance this. My father served on the Russian convoys for a time during the war and the Russians treatment of the ordinary german POW was as bad as the death camps. Several times the British crews were confined to the ships after fights with the locals over their inhuman treatment

The Russians hadn't signed the Geneva Convention I believe so treated the German POW's badly generally. However, Germany had signed it and therefore should have treated Russian POW's well but they didn't. The Jewish ones were executed along with many others who were politically or racially suspect. Nearly 60% of Russian POW's (over 3m) were killed in German hands.

As Germany had taken and mistreated vast numbers of Russian prisoners long before the Russians captured large numbers of Germans, you could understand the rationale, even if you didn't agree with the brutality of the treatment.

In Bert Trautmann's autobiography, he talks about the brutality of the Eastern Front but then when he was captured by British soldiers, the first thing they did was offer him a cup of tea. He immediately felt they were his sort of people.

I can only say what my father told me. The Germans were basically worked to death in extreme cold conditions wearing just tunics. He wouldn't have anything to do with the Russians
80% of german POWs didn't make it home from Russia

I`m not saying it as if to excuse the Russians but they lost 20 million in the war against Germany. I wonder how we would have treated the Germans had they committed atrocities at that scale in our country against our civilians and armed forces

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Just to counterbalance this. My father served on the Russian convoys for a time during the war and the Russians treatment of the ordinary german POW was as bad as the death camps. Several times the British crews were confined to the ships after fights with the locals over their inhuman treatment

The Russians hadn't signed the Geneva Convention I believe so treated the German POW's badly generally. However, Germany had signed it and therefore should have treated Russian POW's well but they didn't. The Jewish ones were executed along with many others who were politically or racially suspect. Nearly 60% of Russian POW's (over 3m) were killed in German hands.

As Germany had taken and mistreated vast numbers of Russian prisoners long before the Russians captured large numbers of Germans, you could understand the rationale, even if you didn't agree with the brutality of the treatment.

In Bert Trautmann's autobiography, he talks about the brutality of the Eastern Front but then when he was captured by British soldiers, the first thing they did was offer him a cup of tea. He immediately felt they were his sort of people.

I can only say what my father told me. The Germans were basically worked to death in extreme cold conditions wearing just tunics. He wouldn't have anything to do with the Russians
80% of german POWs didn't make it home from Russia

I don't doubt it for one minute. Both sides treated POW's quite appallingly.

 

[foetus]

I went to Auschwitz & Birkenau a few years ago, Auschwitz itself was a strange place. Didnt feel respectful to me. Teenage girls posing for photos infront of bullet riddled walls used by firing squads, groups of people laughing and joking while they take photos of a mound of shoes of people that had died there. It was all really surreal, like some bizarre Disneyland.
Birkenhau was where it really hit me, the place was massive so easy to get away from the hoardes of people. I had a walk up one of the viewing towers and just looking at the sheer size of the place it was hard not have a moment

I went to Dachau when over for the game last year. There was a group of school kids laughing and spitting on their way round, pretty disgusting.

When I was in Krakow I joined a tour bus with a lot of other people from my (party) hostel. A lot of the lads were still drunk from the previous night. When boarding the bus, the guy in front of me yelled "let's party!". The tour guide's face turned to that of disgust (don't blame her). I felt so bad because I let out a little bit of a laugh (one of those times you know it's really inappropriate but can't help yourself). I wasn't laughing at the guy but more so how inappropriate and shocking the comment was. The video on the bus shut the guy up and to his credit was very respectful and asked questions once we arrived at Auschwitz.

Here's one of the pics I took inside...quite haunting imo

 

[uncle fester]

very slightly off topic

but my granddad was a Chindit captured in Burma by the Japs eventually transferred to Changi in Singapore (around 1942/43 I believe)

he said the treatment of the tommys was absolutely despicable

Hated anything Japanese with a passion

remember aunt buying a sanyo record player in the 70's and him going absolutely ballistic

 

[Manchester_lalala]

I think what says it all, is that as the Soviets were advancing towards Krakow and Auschwitz itself there was a mass exodus of all senior Nazi's at the camp. Now you don't do that if you know you've done nothing wrong? Granted the Russians were brutal. Mengele himself was the camp leader, some of the stuff he supposedly did can't even be wrote on here.
In relation to another comment earlier about the tour guides being great, I'd have to agree. They are. Credit to what we must do, never let the memory fade.

Mengele is probably the sickest person I've ever read about. Some of the stuff he did was just unbelievable, how do you do something so bad to another person? It's a shame he escaped and died a free man.

 

[marco]

I think what says it all, is that as the Soviets were advancing towards Krakow and Auschwitz itself there was a mass exodus of all senior Nazi's at the camp. Now you don't do that if you know you've done nothing wrong? Granted the Russians were brutal. Mengele himself was the camp leader, some of the stuff he supposedly did can't even be wrote on here.
In relation to another comment earlier about the tour guides being great, I'd have to agree. They are. Credit to what we must do, never let the memory fade.

Mengele is probably the sickest person I've ever read about. Some of the stuff he did was just unbelievable, how do you do something so bad to another person? It's a shame he escaped and died a free man.

Mengele i think departed for South America where he lived out his life but i'm sure that Nazi hunter bloke was on his case sometime around the late 70s, not 100% but i'm quite sure he was protected by the authorities,there is only one thing that could buy that protection and that's money, maybe some of the gold that was stolen from the Jews made its way over there

 

[acquiesce]

I think what says it all, is that as the Soviets were advancing towards Krakow and Auschwitz itself there was a mass exodus of all senior Nazi's at the camp. Now you don't do that if you know you've done nothing wrong? Granted the Russians were brutal. Mengele himself was the camp leader, some of the stuff he supposedly did can't even be wrote on here.
In relation to another comment earlier about the tour guides being great, I'd have to agree. They are. Credit to what we must do, never let the memory fade.

This is a big thing for me. Imagine having to do this as a job. I couldn't. All credit to them that do. Let us never forget.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Among all the focus on Auschwitz, many people don't realise that twice as many people as were murdered there were gassed at just four other camps. These were the three camps set up as part of Aktion Reinhard - Treblinka, Belzec & Sobibor in Eastern Poland - and one at Chelmno in Western Poland.

While Auschwitz started off as a prison camp and the extermination facilities added later, those four were set up specifically as extermination facilities to liquidate Polish Jews. Chelmno was slightly different as they collected Jews from Western Poland at a manor house and put them in gas vans, then drove them a few miles to a remote forest while carbon monoxide was pumped into the van's interior from the exhaust. The bodies were then buried in pits in the forest. To a large degree, this was the prototype facility.

The other three camps followed the more recognised model, with train transports being unloaded, the occupants gassed in fixed gas chambers, then incinerated. At Belzec at least 450,000 were killed, at Sobibor at least 170,000, at Treblinka around 900,000 and at least 180,000 at Chelmno. However those are estimates as no records were kept. The actual death toll could have been up to 2.5 million. There was also a smaller extermination facility at Majdanek that killed around 100,000 Jews and 200,000 non-Jews.

There were less survivors of these camps in 1945 than the 300 that gathered at Auschwitz yesterday as 99% of the arrivals were gassed immediately, with only a handful selected for work details, mainly the processing of the bodies. These were killed every few weeks. Only around 200 people in all survived these camps and the majority of those were due to escapes after revolts at Treblinka and Sobibor.

 

[Bembeltown]

What happens in Germany on days like this ? The new generations must want to be disassociated with their country's past.

I was in Munich today and it wasn't mentioned

Are you serious? the 70 years anniversary was all over the media/press over here.

Do you really think we would just close our eyes and ignore what happened back then?