Posted on 05/21/2015 10:47:19 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A very important movie about the Holocaust made its way to New York City for the first time this week at the end of a tortuous journey that began 70 years ago when Allied forces and newsreel cameramen stumbled into Nazi concentration camps. Called “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” it is as unadorned as its title, a document shot in the moment to capture forever evidence of the unimaginable.
Made under the auspices of the British Ministry of Information, produced by Sidney Bernstein, the founder of Granada Television, assembled with advice from Alfred Hitchcock, the movie was meant to ram home to Germans what had been done in their name in the land of Goethe and Hölderlin.
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Instead, after a rough cut of five of its planned six reels was shown at the Ministry on Sept. 29, 1945, it was buried for decades in the archives of Britain’s Imperial War Museum. Only recently was “Factual Survey” restored, digitized and completed by the museum’s staff with the incorporation of the sixth reel.
The documentary, shown at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, is therefore important not only for what it is — an overwhelming testament to Nazi depravity — but also for its strange history in which lessons lurk about shifting political priorities and shamed evasiveness.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Agreed. we butch our future citizens because the supreme court became the moral authority. We call it legalized abortion.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Nazi revisionists attempt to let the Wehrmacht off the hook by claiming that it was the SS who committed all the atrocities, when, in fact, the doctrine of cold blooded race superiority suffused the entire German culture. We can’t understand this sort of barbarity from the land of Beethoven and Schiller until we understand the power of certain irrational doctrines that took hold of the early Nazi movement and formed its creed of race superiority. The roots of Nazism can be found before WWI in the demented writings of the influential occultist, Lans Von Liebenfels (Google him) who published “Ostara” magazine in large numbers, a magazine that was avidly read by Hitler and his early cohorts. Liebenfels was heavily influenced by the notorious Theosophist Helena Blavatsky, “mother” of the present “New Age” movement. Blavatsky claimed that the fate of humanity is run by a clique of monkish priests known as the “Secret Chiefs” headquartered in hidden monasteries in Tibet. Himmler sent an Ahnenerbe SS expedition to Tibet in the 30’s made into a Brad Pitt movie: “7 Years in Tibet” where his character, Heirich Harrer, tutored the present Dalai Lama when he was a child.
Google:
Lanz von Liebenfels
Ostara
Helena Blavatsky
Secret Chiefs
Ahnenerbe SS
Savitri Devi
Pentecostals: the only religious groups specifically singled out by Hitler for extermination.
I was 8 years old when I saw the original photos printed in Look or Life. Left a life long impression since it was the same year I watched 4 people bleed to death in a terrible auto accident. Feeling—the world is terribly unsafe, and I must be in control at all times to protect myself. Fortunately, therapy helped and I am happy in my 70s. That being said, we also have the many thousands killed in slavery as part of our history, plus Pol Pot and his 4 million, South Sudan and hundreds of thousands, and it goes on now with ISIL/Daesh.
I have just read “Birds Without Wings” by Louis de Bernieres. The Armenian slaughter was just the tip of the iceberg. The author reports, “There was between 1821 and 1913 a prolonged and atrocious holocaust which we have chosen to forget, and from which we have learned absolutely nothing.” Boundaries and peoples were moving and slaughtering each other all over the area north, south, east and west of the area that became Turkey. At least 6 ethnic groups were savagely treated and all 3 religions, by more than 9 different countries. The barbarities committed were every bit as bad as what is being done today by ISIL/Daesh. Women especially were tortured, mutilated, raped and killed as slowly as possible. All Greeks/Christians were kicked out of Turkey, many murdered as marched to ports of departure. All Turks/Muslims were kicked out of Greek owned territory. ISEL/Daesh is acting exactly as did millions of murderers and thieves during that period, part of which was called the Balkan War.
Unfortunately, many British also harbored anti-semitic feelings which partly explains why Israel was abandoned by the British after WWII ended, and why problems there have continued to this day. When will we learn the lessons of history, and what exactly are they and the actions we should take based on them???
Slightly milder Hitchcock documentary , 2hrs+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm3DORB835Y
>> It was shameful because a civilised country (Germany) did it
Perhaps not completely civilized given indigenous tenacity.
Good post except for the nonsense of the last paragraph. But I have become used to incorrect and ignorant accusations of British anti-Semitism on FR.
what do you mean?
Didn’t know that. I did know that Jehovah’s Witnesses in the camps were the only voluntary prisoners. All they had to do was renounce their beliefs to be released.
But the Nazis wanted to convert the JWs, not kill them. Don’t know if the same may have been true of Pentecostals.
Didn’t know the Nazis specifically had a desire to kill Pentecostals. How many were imprisoned and how many survived? Do you have a reference for this story?
My understanding is that they also came down pretty hard on Quakers and some other pacifist groups.
Probably approximately true. Should be noted that lots and lots of people were murdered by the Nazis outside the camps, especially in the East.
American Indians were not treated honorably, I quite agree.
But let’s keep it in perspective. The numbers involved were immensely less than those of the other “genocides.” In fact, if there had ever been a concerted, determined effort to kill all the Indians, they would have all been killed.
That’s precisely what they did in Argentina, which fought Indian wars about the same time as ours. Argentina has no Indian problem because they killed them all in the 19th century.
In 1936, the Berlin “Free Pentecostal Mission“ led by Benjamin Schilling and Erwin Lorenz was forced to close (verboten) by the Nazis.
I’m glad you found most of my post interesting. By all means read the book I refer to. I found it startling how like these conditions the current ISEL/Daesh behavior is.
Regarding British anti-Semitism, I am well aware that plenty of British are not now, nor were then anti-semitic. However, do you know to what extent Jews were allowed in private clubs, important schools, and significant centers of employment including government and political office? I read a lot of this Wiki link, which has over 100 references listed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Palestine
I am going to list some of the pertinent quotes which are the kind of thing that has given me my impressions. Also, I was aware of the various questionable acts of the Stern Gang (Lehi), Irgun and Hagana, including the King David Hotel atrocity.
During the 1945 British election, Labour pledged that if they returned to power, they would revoke the White Paper of 1939, permit free Jewish immigration to Palestine and even the transfer of Arabs, and turn Palestine into a Jewish national home that would gradually evolve into an independent state.[18][19] However, the new Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, decided to maintain heavy restrictions on Jewish immigration. Before the war, Bevin had been the head of Britain’s largest trade-union, the TGWU and in this capacity had led a campaign to prevent German Jews being allowed to migrate to Britain.[20] Bevin favored the White Paper’s policy of turning Palestine into an Arab state with a Jewish minority that would have political and economic rights, and feared that the creation of a Jewish state would inflame Arab opinion and jeopardize Britain’s position as the dominant power in the Middle East. Bevin also believed that displaced Holocaust survivors should be resettled in Europe instead of Palestine.[21][22]
As the British withdrew during the closing months of the mandate, civil war erupted in Palestine between the Jews and Arabs. During this period, the British continued to act in favor the Arabs. As well as restricting Jewish immigration, they handed over strategic military and police positions to the Arabs as they abandoned them, and froze Jewish Agency assets in London banks.[58] However, the British generally stayed out of the fighting and only intervened occasionally.
Within Britain there were deep divisions over Palestine policy. Dozens of British soldiers, Jewish militants and civilians died during the campaigns of insurgency. The conflict led to heightened antisemitism in the UK and, in August 1947, after the hanging of two abducted British sergeants, to widespread anti-Jewish rioting across the UK.[4] The conflict caused tensions in Britain’s relationship with the United States.
The British government put diplomatic pressure on Poland, the source of a large number of the Jewish refugees, to clamp down on Jewish emigration, as Poland freely permitted Jews to leave without visas or exit permits, but their efforts proved futile.[24][25] In 1947, British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) launched Operation Embarrass, a clandestine operation to blow up ships in Italian ports that were preparing to take Jewish refugees to Palestine, by having operatives attach limpet mines to the hulls of vessels. From summer 1947 to early 1948, five such attacks were carried out, destroying one ship and damaging two others. Two other British mines were discovered before they detonated.[26]
My feeling is there is much for all sides to be ashamed of, and I don’t see much chance of resolution of the Israel/Palestine issue in my lifetime.
Thank you for your fair, open minded post. Usually UK-Israel posts are uninformed rubbish.
Perspective be damned! Mass murder of people under your control is always wrong. A thousand is not morally better than a million. The command is "Thou shalt not kill", the intent is not even one. I do not know the rationalization for killing during a war. Perhaps a case can be made for self defense.
Regards,
GtG
Sorry, I disagree. If the murder of one person is wrong, the murder of two is twice as wrong.
I think you’re echoing the quote commonly, though perhaps inaccurately, attributed to Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
My point is not that white Americans behaved nobly and morally in dealing with Indians. One of my great dissillusionments was reading the instructions of Jefferson to his negotiators with the Indians.
Jefferson, unlike Washington and Adams before him, never had the slightest intention of negotiating in good faith. His treaties were intentionally designed only to help keep the Indians quiet for a few years till he was ready to break them. Kind of a Hitlerian approach to treaties.
But even Jefferson never intended to kill all the Indians. He was into ethnic cleansing, not genocide. He wanted to assimilate Indians and bring them into our society.
There were relatively few mass murders of Indians by the US government. Sand Creek and Wounded knee are the two most commonly brought up. Sand Creek was launched without specific authorization. A number of soldiers and officers refused to participate, and when word got out of what Chivington had done, he was shunned by almost all.
An Indian warrior, OTOH, who perpetrated a similar massacre would have been glorified by his people. In fact, there were multiple massacres of whites by Indians that exceeded the number killed at Sand Creek.
You can even make a case that Chivington and his men were being politically correct. They were simply following the customs of those native to the land rather than imposing their own.
Even at its worst, nobody ever accused Chivington’s men of bringing back prisoners for slow death by torture.
Oddly enough, the part of the country in which probably more Indians were massacred by whites than any other is California, at least during the American as opposed to colonial period. Lots and lots of massacres and slave raids during and after the Gold Rush. But you never hear about them.
“Pentecostals: the only religious groups specifically singled out by Hitler for extermination.”
Besides Jews.
And Gypsies.
And Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And Freemasons.
And Seventh Day Adventists.
And Catholics.
And “people who opposed the Nazis on religious grounds”.
And actually not Pentecostals explicitly as a group, just any individuals who who showed anti-Nazi tendencies.
Under the Gleichschaltung process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany’s 28 existing Protestant churches.
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