Auschwitz

*blue eyes 37*You needn't worry that the Germans will ever forget what happened to the Jews and everything else. As I said in a previous post they live now with the consequences. A third had to live under a communist regime for 40 years.

But I have 3 GCs whose great grandfather was an 'also ran' i.e. Nazi office Staff. I know now that, should they visit the UK on a school trip they will be confronted with The War which is still TV entertainment in the UK.

It is shocking for them to learn of these atrocities but my husband and children do not feel themselves to blame. Why? Because they were not to blame. Whatever you expect from Germany, it is not that the present generations that should go on apologising for what they didn't do.

They have made provision that these atrocities should not be forgotten and other nations can go looking round the concentration camps if they want to, but they can't do anymore.
70 years on, they deserve to be accepted for what they now are. A peace loving nation.

I am a natural sceptic and I have never been completely won over by any orator - not even Nelson Mandela - I remembered Winnie with her 'football team' and the burning tyres. I suppose Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech was the most persuasive I have ever heard, although of course I was already completely in agreement with what he had to say. Perhaps we need to train children to analyse and criticise anything they are told, whether by politicians, religious leaders. people offering to show them puppies and the press!
I remember my brother telling me that, having talked to many men, he had come to the conclusion that all the Nazi camps could have been staffed by British men (and women). Thousands of girls are subject to a lifetime of suffering every year by the barbarity of female genital mutilation. This is glossed over on the grounds that it is 'traditional' and 'cultural'.
I have just watched 'The Big Question' and was shocked, but not surprised, by the vicious nature of some of the Evangelicals and to a lesser extent to the liberals.
The Holocaust will always have a special place in the annals of man's inhumanity to man, but it is not unique. Fortunately, it seems the urge to cherish and protect, which I believe to be part of genetic evolution, seems to over-ride the urge to hurt in the vast majority of humanity.

blueeyes37 Are you aware that the concentration camp is a British invention?

Don't these 2 statements contradict each other blueyes37?
And what about the genocide of other countries- both before the Holocaust and since?

I believe that this should never be wiped from the history books the German people should have to live with this for ever. Hitler was mad and his people followed him blindly there is no excuse for that. I do not think that we should force our children to relive those horrible memories.

Has anybody read "Escape from Camp 14" about a man born in a camp in N Korea who actually escaped? It is harrowing reading and THOSE CAMPS STILL EXIST.

Absent I went on a visit to Auschwitz earlier this year and found it an extremely moving and thought provoking experience. We had an excellent guide and learned about all the different groups who ended up in the camp and how they were treated (eg resistance, clergy, gypsies, homosexuals as well as the Jews)

I think visiting (if you can) and passing the word on are important - it had the most enormous impact on me. I know of youngsters who have been aged around 16 plus. I think this is fine but wouldn't recommend it for younger than that as it's an extremely emotional experience. But important for older teenagers to understand what happened and appreciate the freedom that they live in today, and to better understand that atrocities still happen in the world and must be fought against.

One of the things that stayed with me from the visit was the fact that Auschwitz itself (the main camp which is not where most of the prisoners were kept - this was sister camp Birkenau which we also visited) consisted of relatively decent brick buildings (at Birkenau the accommodation was very different) and there were gardens and even a swimming pool. When the Red Gross visited at the height of the holocaust the nazis picked out the healthiest looking prisoners and had them all swimming and enjoying life as though it was a holiday camp. The Red Cross went away satisfied and the atrocities continued. This has made me very much more mindful of things going on in the world today and the fact that we must not ignore that they are happening

Crowd psychology is fascinating - the description of someone with no fascist leanings being moved by a great orator (albeit nuts) and the force of a crowd is quite extraordinary. It still happens - weird religious sects and extreme political parties. It makes us realise how vulnerable we all are, as we are just human.

I have no militaristic leanings but find brass bands very moving. There was once a psychological study done on the musical intervals and harmonies that can stir people into obedience and action - they are all there in military music - no wonder the dictators used it to their own ends.

I have always asked myself how it could have been possible that a whole nation (with notable exceptions) could be seduced by a madman, but the underlying psychological make-up is there in all of us.

It makes me realise how brave those people were who stood up to all this at great risk to their own lives.

Flickety, I agree with your every word. I have never wished to visit Auschwitz myself and when my GD asked if I would like to take her there, I said, 'No'. She was surprised but I know enough about the holocaust and seeing where it was carried out might bring it home to me further, but what's the point?
Your last paragraph says it all. Thank you.

My parents were travelling in Europe in the summer of 1939 (and my mother used to call me irresponsible) and when in Germany they attended a public rally of some sort at which Hitler spoke. In her diary my mother said that she found her feelings being aroused and felt very stirred by what he said at the time, but the next day, she couldn't remember a single word. I would point out that my mother was never tempted by Facism or any extreme right-wing politics. She was remarking quite honestly about the man's public personality and ability to stimulate and move the emotions of a crowd.

Near our home in Normandy is a German War graves cemetery. When I visit it and read the names and ages of those buried there I remind myself that these men are of my father's generation and came from homes very similar to those of the Americans who fought and killed them (we are in the American sector) shared religious beliefs and in many cases shared German ancestry and it occurs to me that the dividing line between accepting fascism and rejecting it is very fine. Most British people would have behaved just like Germans if roles had been reversed.

Towards the end of the war there were many members of the Hitler Jugende sent to Normandy, boys of only 15, 16 or 17 and our next door neighbour, who was a child at the time and lived in the house we now own told us how some of these young lads were billetted with them and their tears and distress when they got letters from home telling of them of family members killed in the bombing or missing on other fronts.##

I see no value in just trailing children round concentration camps. Children need to learn about the dangers of dehumanising individuals and groups that leads to genocide. They need to know that the Holocaust was only one example of genocide albeit it was the largest and it was done on an industrial scale but since then we have had Pol Pot in Cambodia, Rwanda and Srebernice.

What we need to teach children is to understand that humans do not cease to be individuals with lives and family like them just because they form part of a group with a different culture to them, Jews, Gypsies, Serbs, Tutsis, we should not fear them or demonise them.

There are fascists in every country in Europe. It remains attractive to some people as it was attractive then in the thirties. There is the love of uniform. I remember Dirk Bogarde writing in his memoirs that when he appeared in his SS uniform in Vienna for a film shot, the onlookers cheered! He expected to be spat upon.
Not everyone in Germany was a member of the NZ party, nor were people forced to appear to be a member. Hitler was seen as gentle person. A caring animal lover, vegetarian. Women loved him and men were fascinated by him. Imagine today. Such a man would have large following anyhwere.

Their experience of war in the first few years was quite bearable and afterwards they had lost one third of their country which is now Poland and the Germans who lived there had to leave which meant in 1945 when there was nothing - no money or food, they had millions of German refugees from Poland to feed and house. Then followed the Russian troops who raped anything in skirts. These women are now in their 80s and 90s and in care homes and scream when any one tries to undress them or change them.

In the small town where I live there are tiny 3" square brass plates let into the pavements in front of the houses where Jews had lived, who had been deported. It makes heart breaking reading and I can't believe that their neighbours didn't know they had been sent to their deaths. But in the final months and years when the men were all at the Russian front anyway. What could these women have done? Risk their own children's lives?

I agree, Nanaej that the whole thing has to be taught. I don't think it would be possible, though, to teach about the holocaust without starting with the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, and the 12 years of the Third Reich.

Greece and the Golden Dawn present a frightening aspect of modern racist fascism. Right now, people are comparing modern Greek economics with the economic horrors of the Weimar Republic. The parallels are frightening.

I think that schools would know which of their students are emotionally mature enough to deal with such a visit. The holocaust is an important part of recent history and young people need to know about the horrors. But I think it is more important is to teach how it was possible for the nazi /fascist politics to grow and take power. The fear of rise of neo-fascism is the one thing that keeps me awake at night.
My father's family were refugees from Paestine as a result of Zionism so the story does not end with the end of WW2

Some people did resist the Nazis in Germany, risking their lives as they protected their Jewish or otherwise dissident friends, but it was infinitely safer to just keep your mouth shut. Sophie Scholl was a good example of resistance: she was a student and part of a movement called The White Rose. She distributed anti-Nazi tracts and ended up being executed.

Germany has brutally faced up to its Nazi past, and generally speaking has not tried to deny it or soften it in films about that era. I researched how the era is portrayed in modern German film for my BA Honours thesis.

We don't have to worry about Germany and Austria forgetting the holocaust, but the rest of the world will, unless schoolchildren are all taught about it. Whatever program works is fine by me, because this knowledge is our best weapon against modern racism, and other hatreds.

My son has been to Auschwitz twice; I'l ask him what he thought. As for people doing nothing, I fear that, had I lived in Germany at the time I wouldn't have been brave enough to risk my life or that of my family to speak out against what was happening [that is, if I'd known about it]and have had conversations with my daughter about it over the years. Did anyone see that wonderful series, Heimat many years ago? Showed the war from the perspective of ordinary Germans living at that time.

Absent, your comment is indeed a grave untruth. I recently visited Poland and the two camps at Auschwitz with my husband and son who is 22 now.
We all found it a profoundly moving experience with no hint of theme park, it is not even a museum really. There are some exhibitions and some photographs but mainly the remains are left to speak for themselves.

I personally think that every secondary age child should see the site, to try and ensure that it can never happen again on that scale in their lifetime.

Going back to the whole business of whether these visits are good educational tools, I wonder what other aspects of this time are put into place concerning the Final Solution. This is a genuine query. When I was at school "modern history" ended somewhere before the Great War, so I have no idea how these much more recent events are taught.

When I first learned about the Final Solution, I found it incredibly difficult to believe that NOBODY DID ANYTHING. Forgive me, I was still a child. I had no idea that many ordinary German families had no idea either. Then I had no idea that by the time some of them realised, standing up to be counted would be an act of immeasurable courage and those who were parents had hostages to fortune. I briefly attended an adult-learning German class and our teacher, roughly contemporary, was German and had deeply interesting family experiences to tell. Her own father never returned fro the Russian campaigns and at the end of the war, her grandmother, terrified of the Russian advance, moved away from home and took refuge in Dresden on exactly the wrong date. None of them had ever heard of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen or any other of these horrific places.

It is important that our young people understand that. I don't see how this almost-theme-park approach does that.

I think you can - if there are genuine differences I don't see the problem. As I said I regularly took Sixth Formers to Sachsenhausen because it was close to Berlin. It was a work and product testing camp not a death camp but also housed prisoners of war as well as interning all the categories the Nazis deemed "degenerate". We actually knew a well known "escapologist "RAF officer who was a friend of FIL and MIL who had managed to escape from Sachsenhausen. I can't remember the exact figure, but the Russians took over the camp after "liberating" it and many tens of thousands of prisoners died there under their governance.
I also visited Bergen-Belsen which my father had entered as one of the first groups of Allied soldiers to liberate the camp. I don't think it is invidious to state the differences between camps as not all camps were designated extermination camps but of course it is not as if anybody is saying one is more or less evil than another.

MargaretX Of course. I was just agreeing with your comment about Dachau in a very long-winded way with my references to Buchenwald. I remain unconvinced that it is an appropriate way to educate young people by wheeling them through a museum that must, inevitably in this day and age, have a slight hint of theme park. (As I say, I have never visited Auschwitz so perhaps that comment was a grave untruth.)

You can't compare one camp with another. They are above comparisons.

MargaretX I have never been to Poland, let alone to Auschwitz, but have been to Buchenwald – a construction that contradicts its setting if ever one did. It was not an extermination camp but is reckoned that over 50,000 people were either killed or died of starvation and disease. It was unique in two ways, I think but am not sure. First – and I am certain of this – it was the only concentration camp to house some 350 Allied prisoners of war. Second – and somehow this just adds to the feeling of disbelief, following the war it was used as a "special" prison by the Soviet NKVD (predecessors of the KGB) until some time in the 1950s. So another, different piece of modern history.

The motto on its gate, which can be read only from inside the camp, is Jedem das Seine. While literally meaning "'to each his own", it implies "everyone gets his just desserts. I find this more chilling than the famous Arbeit macht frei of Auschwitz.

My question is - Why Ausschwitz? Why not Dachau? You can't make a scheme out of one concentration camp. A vist to Dachau could be combined with a visit to the wonderul city of Munich and then you might learn that todays Germans are a quite normal people like you and me.

Its pointing a finger at another nation, and especially a very industrious successful nation. Compared to the Germany today the Brits are doing badly so lets have good luck at what their great grandfather's did!

There is nothing to be gained by dragging children or young students to look at concentration camps. Germany will see to it that the Nazi horrors are not forgotten. Which is more than Japan, Russia or China have done with their mass murderers.

Don't governments always find a group of society to blame when times are hard [usually a group that's easy to pick out]. Will the elderly [aka 'us] be the ones to be blamed in this country. Or is it happening now, anyway. Part of human nature [I'm thinking of that experiment with the blue eyed/brown eyed people.

Let us hope that our chikdren and gchildren who are now being brought up in a multi-cultural society will be even more perplexed than us at the condemnation and persecution of one race for no apparent reason.

Keep this stuff till secondary school - give them time to absorb some sound values before being confronted with all this. They can use these values to try to make sense of it all - not good to present it to them too early.