Holocaust

sarah2 · 05-15-2007, 03:12 PM

I know this is a broad and deep topic but,

I just watched The Pianist with my sponser and it blew me away, firstly because it was a really good film and secondly, it just showed..the humanity of the percecution on Jews..etc in Nazi Germany.
You know, you can know all the facts, names, dates, places and numbers, but for me, it's the real human stories that break my heart.

It just puts everything we complain about in perspective! You know?

It does makes me wonder, how does the world keep on turning, how do we keep on living when all this has happened, while things like this are still happening?
I'm not saying the holocaust was the first genocide, or the last, but it's an example of how cruel we really can be isn't it?

Well. I was wondering what all your views were on the subject?

Tommeh!!! · 05-15-2007, 04:51 PM

well what i think is funny is the theories that it wasn no where near as big as it was made out to be and as there is no solid proof, everyone has gone with better judgement. but there is a possibility as small as it may be that it wasnt on such a grand scale, they certainly didnt find that many bodies, adn the piles of shoes could be a number of things.

naturally im not agreeing with this, i just find it bizarre that people can deny the holocaust.

on that note, denying the holocaust in germany is an arrestable offence....you can go down for 16 years!!!

sarah2 · 05-15-2007, 06:23 PM

Seriously? Well you learn something new everyday.
Hm, it's not that bizarre, though it's still really shocking. I mean, people deny stuff like that all the time, like the Japanese president, for some reason refuses to apologise for all the horrific sex crimes and sex slaves Japanese soldiors captured and raped during the war, and previous Japanese gov. have pretty much denied a lot of what they did during the war. To admit something is to truley believe you really did it. And for a lot of people, in those kind of situaions, it must be a pretty hard thing to do.
Still wrong in my eyes though. Shouldn't deny stuff like that really.

fading-away · 05-15-2007, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tommeh!!!
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

on that note, denying the holocaust in germany is an arrestable offence....you can go down for 16 years!!!

It's the same in Austria, some complete arse of a right wing British historian got arrested for denying the holocaust while he was giving a speech there and got thrown in Jail for a while.

Tommeh!!! · 05-16-2007, 10:23 AM

there was also the novelist who was doing a book signing in germany....and because in his book it denied the holocaust....he was banged up.

youd think they would know
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Markme · 05-17-2007, 04:28 AM

I think people can live on and "forget" things because they are threatened (e.g. jail or death) or they just want to put it in the back of their mind so that they dont remember the hardships that went on.

Humanity, you gotta love it and hate it at the same time.
Hitler, Sadam, Osama, george bush..
All have done terrible things, lots of people believe the things that each of these men were "correct". In the end of this, i guess it just depends on how you get affected by things in life and your tolerance level.

Betsybug0 · 05-27-2007, 03:59 AM

Elie Wiesel - Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech:

"Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. And yet, I sense their presence. I always do — and at this moment more than ever. The presence of my parents, that of my little sister. The presence of my teachers, my friends, my companions…

I remember he asked his father: "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?"

And now the boy is turning to me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe. "

!-nessica-! · 08-16-2007, 12:21 PM

i've only just read this...
but i think no matter what scale its on, whether a million people were killed, or 100 people were killed, what happened to many people cant be given a name other than torture.
its things like this that in ways.. bring people together. everyone says they're against this kinda thing.. but when it comes down to it.. whenever bad things happen in a place that has a dictator, people will ALWAYS follow, to keep themselves safe.
its horrible, but its interesting. id really like to learn more about the topic.

Markme · 08-16-2007, 12:54 PM

Carl Jung: “There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

!-nessica-! · 08-17-2007, 05:06 AM

thats pretty true... some people are so wise..
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Okta20 · 09-18-2007, 07:57 PM

This is going to be long. I hope some people will read what I have to say on that matter anyway. I'm sorry for all the drama. I can't talk about this without drama.

I'm German. This darkest part of the history of our country still haunts our minds. It's not like we think about it constantly. Most people don't think about it much in their everyday lives. But it is in fact everywhere. If you lead a serious, honest conversation with friends or family it my come up. When you talk to people from abroad. It's in the news, in movies, literature and magazines. Just now a tv moderator got sacked because she said in her book that she admired Hitlers family care system.

The collective memory still catches up with us everywhere we go, and when it hits, some of us (quite a lot, in fact) get this special feeling in our chests. It's not sadness, exactly - more like a kind of weariness with the world. Weltschmerz is the proper expression. Only German people could invent such a word.

[lengthy description]
I want to tell you about the time I visited the concentration camp Dachau some years ago.
Every 10th grade goes there, usually in winter (for the effect).
It was very cold that day, the sky was cloudy. They showed us the place were the prisoners slept, told us what the guards did to them, how and where they were punished and how and where they were killed. I don't need to tell you that it was horrible.

Dachau was the first concentration camp the Nazis built. It was not like Auschwitz. People weren't brought there to be killed, but to work in factories in the vicinity. Nevertheless many people died there.

What I thought to be really interesting is that not too many Jews were in Dachau, but many Social Democrats, Communists, Gay people or Sinthi and Roma.

They had one of those "showers" in Dachau. We went in there. Though our guides told us the chamber had never been used, our stomachs clenched in there. I think I saw some of my friends crying. I just wanted out of there.

We saw the place where they burned the corpses. We felt the cold air of German Winter. We saw the rooms without windows, so small you could not even turn.

In the end they showed us a movie with pictures from Dachau at the time the Americans came. There were piles of corpses of starved or murdered prisoners.

We were silent in the bus on our way home.
I had nightmares for days after that trip.

[/lengthy description]

A few things I've left to say.

1) Never tell a German a joke about Hitler or Nazis. Never call a German a Nazi. Don't wave like *that*.

2) Watch Schindler's List. It's a good movie. Though commercial, very impressing.

[/rant]

If anybody stayed with me, thank you for reading.

Lisa

!-nessica-! · 09-19-2007, 05:39 AM

iv watched Schindler's List, tried to read the book too but i couldnt follow it that well. it was a whole lot different to what i thought.

why do they show you those movies? because i could imagine it would be very hard for a lot of people.

Okta20 · 09-19-2007, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !-nessica-!
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

iv watched Schindler's List, tried to read the book too but i couldnt follow it that well. it was a whole lot different to what i thought.

why do they show you those movies? because i could imagine it would be very hard for a lot of people.

Well, yes. It's hard. Of course. It's about a very dark part of European history. But it's not meant to be entertaining. I think, it's meant to remind people of how cruel and how compassionate humans can be. In Germany, the need to be reminded is even bigger than elsewhere. We need to remember that Germans in that time did horrible, unspeakable things, but also, that they weren't all monsters and mass-murderers

And from an artist's point of view, I just think they made a beautiful movie.

!-nessica-! · 09-20-2007, 01:31 PM

its just that, we dont learn much about our bad history and that over here, and when we do, its not that deep. i just thought that, because its such a big thing for the country of germany, you'd be able to learn about it without having to go through that kind of thing at school ?

theres good and bad in every country, its just people remember bad things more than good.

Okta20 · 09-20-2007, 03:43 PM

We learn about all that stuff at school in history lessons (about three times over the years, depends on what school you're on). And of course you'd be able to learn about it elsewhere, if you're interested, but that's the point: if you're interested. Most people aren't. And the 3. Reich is something that we cannot allow to be forgotten, ever. Because History has proved to repeat itself over the centuries.
Also it's necessary to understand your country's history in order to understand what it's like today and why it's the way it is. And the 3. Reich is the part of history that influences us most, along with the division of Germany after the war and the reunification in 1990.