How the Holocaust Began

[mexico1970]

World at war
5 chimneys
The violinist of Auschwitz

I don't need to see or read anymore suffering to educate myself of the horrible evil of the Nazis and the terrible suffering of their victims.

Saying that I believe that the human race will never change its spots.

 

[Tommy_Catons_Perm]

Schindler's List is on BBC4 Thursday 26 January at 9.00 pm. I'm not sure if I could watch it again. I watched it many years ago and was depressed for days afterwards.

 

[niall'sdiscoshorts]

Go to Auschwitz and birkenau. It is truly harrowing, this is one of the Chambers with shoes that had been taken, the other was full of hair shaved off to lay them bare. Belittled to be made to feel worthless.
I've been once and never going back. This is the place kids should go to learn, the square with the chairs right outside the pharmacy, schindlers factory less than a ten minute walk from the square.

This should be a lesson to all but here we are with Russia and Ukraine and .any others.

 

[PinkFinal]

The frightening thing is that any society, if they have the mindset, can be brutal against people they regard as threatening.

It's an age old playbook that has been well documented throughout history. Foreigners are to blame for your misfortune, and they must be punished.

Experiments were carried out in the 1950's when normal people were asked to take part in an excercise that wanted an understanding of why the holocaust happened.

US citizens were placed in an environment where they were told from people wearing white coats in a clinical environment they were protecting the country, there was a communist wired up and ready to receive electric shocks, and every single person involved in that experiment delivered, under extreme pressure, what they thought was a fatal dose of power to their intended victim.

Afterwards, under questioning, they gave the response they were just obeying orders.

They didn't all give "fatal" shocks but most went quite close to the end of the experiment. Even many of the 37% who refused to complete it.
Peter Gabriel did a song about it

 

[Djibrilshairdo]

Schindler's List is on BBC4 Thursday 26 January at 9.00 pm. I'm not sure if I could watch it again. I watched it many years ago and was depressed for days afterwards.

It’s also on iPlayer. Watched the film on its release (93?) at the english language cinema in Munich. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house and I didn’t hear a murmur from the audience for the entire 3 hour duration nor when exiting.

 

[Fiftyyearsandcounting]

Sadly, it was quite common. There were several massacres of Jews when Simon de Monfort rose against Henry III. Then, before Edward I expelled the Jews, he executed about half the Jewish male population for alleged coining. Both his mother and his wife hated Jews with a passion. The expulsion was a sweetener to Parliament - IIRC Edward got a subsidy (taxation) in return.

It would be nice to think that we English were above such things, but we weren't. In fact, anti-Semitism was common in this country even in modern times. One of the golf clubs near me only exists because one of the other would not admit Jews.

There is also a much more base reasons for their persecution. A lot of Jews came over from France with the Norman invasion and encouraged to starts businesses. Kings used the Jews to finance their wars and simply wrote off their indebtedness by murdering their creditors.

 

[johnnytapia]

British killed millions in India and other colonies. BBC needs to come out of its colonial mindset and stop the propaganda and show the atrocities committed by the Empire.

I'd argue that while Gilbert's book (which I have) is harrowing and a necessary read, it's not definitive. It's more of an account of the human side I'd say. David Cesarani's 'Final Solution' tells a much fuller story, bringing in the background, the political side, the increasing pressure on the German Jews and then the path, often unplanned and a result of events, to the mass exterminations.

Is there a best book on those events? Some will be more “factual”, others more “prosaic”. Who could ever truly depict such horror? Who could truly depict “the” horror (such was its magnitude)? One book (and there are many) that paints it in all its hideous glory:

 

[BrianW]

There is also a much more base reasons for their persecution. A lot of Jews came over from France with the Norman invasion and encouraged to starts businesses. Kings used the Jews to finance their wars and simply wrote off their indebtedness by murdering their creditors.

There were all sorts of dodgy practices. A knight mortgages his manor to the Jews to buy armour and a horse - to go on crusade perhaps, or to the king's wars. The debt falls due, but someone like the queen 'acquires' it by one means or another. She then takes the manor.

Obviously, if you owed a fortune to a Jew one way out was to kill him. This happened. But the Jews were under royal 'protection'. (Think Mafia.) The king inherited their debts, so you could easily end up owing the king instead.

All very dodgy and disreputable. Of course, Jews were banned from almost every trade so money lending was just about their only option.

 

[Nethermoor]

I did wonder why the hatred towards Jewish people. It's not just the Nazis, in fact it still happens and it happened before the Nazis too.

 

[Grassland Blue]

Is there a best book on those events? Some will be more “factual”, others more “prosaic”. Who could ever truly depict such horror? Who could truly depict “the” horror (such was its magnitude)? One book (and there are many) that paints it in all its hideous glory:
View attachment 67040

Go to Auschwitz and birkenau. It is truly harrowing, this is one of the Chambers with shoes that had been taken, the other was full of hair shaved off to lay them bare. Belittled to be made to feel worthless.
I've been once and never going back. This is the place kids should go to learn, the square with the chairs right outside the pharmacy, schindlers factory less than a ten minute walk from the square.

This should be a lesson to all but here we are with Russia and Ukraine and .any others.

There were 2 Ukrainians where I used to work.
They never spoke to each other.
One of them had been a prisoner in a P.O.W. camp, the other worked as a prison camp guard under nazi supervision.
Some people survived the war by chance, others by being complicit and accepting the authority of the nazi party.