Remembering Auschwitz

we were all taken to majdanek concentration camp when I was 15, me and my 6 younger siblings. It was eerie, this was in 1963, no cars or coaches and a long walk into the camp. No birds singing at all. We all remember it as if it were yesterday

Heartbreaking, thank you for posting it.

Did anyone watch Holocaust: Night Will Fall the other night? It was on More4 channel. Truly horrific. A difficult watch but fascinating how the footage was put together.

The capacity of men (and women) to behave in an inhuman way towards other men has always been apparent through history, but the holocaust must truly have been the worst atrocity ever.
I have visited Auschwitz twice, it is unbearingly sad. It is also quiet, almost like an eerily silent scream. There really are no words.

There are indeed no words.

And how easily it could happen again ....
Heartbreaking and unbelievable

There have already been instances BlueBelle, Rwanda, Cambodia, and others. But whilst each and every one is an unbelievable horror, there is a unique quality of awfulness about the mechanised murder, thousands at a time, that was the holocaust.

I wonder if the Polish people feel a collective guilt about the camps?Many worked there and collaborated enthusiastically with the Germans.
It must never be forgotten.

lemon grove, I don’t know if you’ve visited Kraków. I went a couple of years ago, beautiful city with a fascinating history. We visited auswitch as well as the Schindler museum. I don’t know about collective guilt but the way they have preserved and commemorated the Nazi occupation is impressive and very moving.
The Jewish quarter is growing again, lots of good tourist accommodation, restaurants and a small Jewish community. My Jewish friends who lost family in Austwich would not stay in the city.

A good description of Krakow Iam, I love that city, it’s beautiful. Warsaw is not particularly beautiful, but is incredibly interesting re WW2.
My Jewish friends have said they’ll absolutely never visit Germany and they dislike Germans. I can’t blame them really for what their families suffered during the holocaust. However I like Germany, and again there’s so much history, WW2 and the Cold War era. Berlin is another very interesting city.

Before we start apportioning blame perhaps we could think about this point I heard on the radio. How many of us would be guilty of looking the other way , of doing nothing when we knew ?

westendgirl, in similar vein, a comment that I heard this morning resonated with me. We must never forget that these atrocities were committed by ordinary people. People like you and me.

westendgirl, I couldn't agree more. The situation in the US with the migrant children living in inhumane conditions springs to mind. HOW could people there have stood by and not protested? Children!

Sorry, should have said, children incarcerated in cages, removed from their parents.

We were not guilty of looking the other way then, that’s why Britain bankrupted itself, to liberate Europe. We only finished paying off our war debts in 2006, I think, 200? anyway.

It’s awful Gaga, but we were not able to do anything about it as it happened in another country.

I know maddyone, but enough to cut ties with the US, surely? Plus my comment was mainly aimed at US voters.

I expect some will have heard of the Stanley Milgram psychology experiment some years ago where he was testing obedience in an attempt to explain how so many German officers could have behaved in such an horrifically brutal way.

Although we took a certain number of child refugees courtesy of a few brave private individuals ( not a government initiative) the U.K. refused to take adult Jewish refugees, so many parents who sent their children on the kindertransport were then murdered. So we could have taken in families but didn’t. I feel sad about that.

Our government has just voted to refuse entry to unaccompanied refugee children. Friends who have volunteered in the refugee camps in Iraq, Greece and France are united in their belief we have to take in these children.

As for the holocaust, this country took some children from the kinder transport but refused to take adults, most of whom were then murdered in the camps. We didn't go to war to stop the holocaust we did it to stop Nazi domination of the world. Thank goodness we did.

Yes how much better to have taken the parents as well. How much more humane for those that died and their children who grew up without them.

“All it takes for evil to flourish is that good men do nothing “

Desperately sad listening to the reports on the radio today. What is tragic is that it hasn't really stopped and people are suffering today in many parts of the world. I think that it's important to remember the past but we are bad at learning from it.

But Britain didn’t do nothing did it? Britain fought Nazism for six solid years. Britain took over a thousand children on the KinderTransport. But Britain couldn’t have ever imagined the depths the Nazis would sink to. Later it was known, but it was thought that the best way to help was to defeat the Nazis. Britain put itself into debt in order to liberate Europe, which it took till the year 2000+ for us to pay off. No one should denigrate Britain for what it did during the war.
Currently we do our fair share of accepting refugees and asylum seekers, and they are treated well here, as it should be. Britain did, and does it’s share.

maddyone, I don't think anyone has disputed that Britain 'did nothing' . Most of us will have had parents who fought in WW2 and we certainly grew up with it (and WW1) as a backdrop to our childhoods and young adult lives. This country fought a just war ,thanks to all those brave men and women.
I don't entirely agree with you that 'we do our fair share of accepting refugees and asylum seekers and they're treated well here'. I don't believe we do take our fair share, neither do many other countries. WE have an international disaster as a result of wars in Africa, Syria, Lebanon etc. I idon't have any simple solutions and I do understand the fears expressed by some that we lose our identity, cripple our already stretched public services if we operate an open door policy. I wish there was more international co=operation and also, that we didn't support the arms race by selling arms.
Lesbos is a small Greek island which survived reasonably well with tourism. The refugee camps on that island is wrecking their economy. If we're talking about fair shares, they seem to have many more than their fair share.