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When Dad’s a Nazi Monster, How Do You Cope?
New York Times ^ | JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Posted on 12/02/2012 3:00:20 PM PST by nickcarraway

‘Hitler’s Children,’ a Documentary About Guilt by Blood

Quiet, simple and soaked in sorrow, “Hitler’s Children” takes a stripped-down approach to an emotionally sophisticated subject.

Tracking down five descendants of some of Hitler’s closest accomplices, the director, Chanoch Ze’evi, encourages them to talk about how their lineage has affected their lives. The coping mechanisms vary, but the shame and nagging guilt are shared. Monika Hertwig recalls the panic attack she suffered when a viewing of “Schindler’s List” revealed the full monstrosity of her father, Amon Goeth. For Bettina Goering, the great-niece of Hermann Goering, a kind of peace has been achieved by living off the grid in New Mexico and undergoing sterilization. “I cut the line,” she says with pained finality.

(Excerpt) Read more at movies.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: hitlerschildren; nazichildren
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To: Belteshazzar
it would be well worth our while, each of us, to consider the banality of evil

well said...

61 posted on 12/03/2012 6:05:20 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: Lmo56; yarddog; SteamShovel; Cathy; Sherman Logan
I don't have any Czech close friends, but do have Polish close friends and I'm sure the reaction is the same "The Germans started it, we finished it..."

The thing is, as I said above, the Czechs were smarting under hundreds of years of German occupation and they reacted against the Sudenten Germans in the inter-war years. This reacted in a worse counter-counter reaction by the Sudentenland Germans

And the Czechs reacted even worse when their turn came -- 7 years of hell

But, I'm sorry, this was 10,000 killed, small numbers compared to the German occupation

62 posted on 12/03/2012 6:13:04 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: erie lakawanna; Sherman Logan; Yehuda
The Nazis were evil, the communists were evil. Both equal horrors

Neither of them are/were "Christian"

The Nazis were the National Socialist party with its aims to nationalize a lot of industry, they were "leftist" in the sense of being anti-economic liberalization

Absolutely nothing can justify the evils of the nutzis.

Even if the holocaust did not happen, the very fact that Jews were slapped around, taunted, kicked and treated as sub-humans in the 20th century is unforgiveable

No civilised people can do this to another people -- whether to Jews or to (sorry to say this) lower culture Gypsies, or even if they did this to Jarawas -- no high culture group can do this to another group without debasing themselves

I can read this objectively -- anyone glorifying the Nazis or condoning them in any way is ignorant of history and should be made to watch "The Pianist" and "Schindler's list" together

The Nazis are not a description of "Western civilisation" -- they were a throwback to an earlier nordic bloodlust age.

63 posted on 12/03/2012 6:19:54 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: erie lakawanna; Sherman Logan; Yehuda

I notice that you, erie, are banned. Good.


64 posted on 12/03/2012 6:20:54 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: Lmo56
The thing is that in the case of the Sudentenland Germans, pretty definitely they were working with the Nazis if not being part of the Nazis

The highest recruitment rates were amongs the Sudentenland Germans -- the reasons being historical as I said above (these lands had been German nearly 100% German for centuries and were given to the Czechs after WWI despite them wanting to join Germany or at the least Austria)

This was a historical tragedy, but the Sudentenland Germans being victims of WWI's turnout did as a group "earn" the hatred post WWII.

65 posted on 12/03/2012 6:24:13 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: Cronos

I agree.


66 posted on 12/03/2012 8:30:10 AM PST by ffusco (The President will return this country to what it once was...An arctic wasteland covered in ice.)
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To: Cronos
I recommend David Remnick’s “Lenin's Tomb. The Last Days of the Soviet Empire’’. It reads like ‘’The Godfather’’. That's who and what the Russian Communists were, gangsters.
67 posted on 12/03/2012 12:19:40 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
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To: Cronos

The population drop you mention was no doubt a combination of many factors. As bad as the Mongols were, they weren’t invincible. They bled too.


68 posted on 12/03/2012 12:21:44 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
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To: Cronos
Weatherford in ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World’ states that ‘conservative scholars place the number of dead from Genghis Khan’s invasion of central Asia at 15 million within five years’, however ‘even this more modest total…would require that each Mongol kill more than a hundred people’.

That's in five years. The Mongol invasions lasted most of a century.

At one point Genghis decided to kill all Chinese to make room for more Mongol "ranches." A Chinese official working for him pointed out that it would be a lot more profitable to ranch Chinese on those lands than sheep.

RJ Rummel, pretty much the go-to guy on governmental murder, puts the Mongol deaths at 30M.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM

The Chinese have had historical cycle of a dynasty collapsing into civil war. Eventually one guy wins and sets up a new dynasty uniting the country.

They've gone through this cycle many times in the last 3000 years.

On average 1/4 to 3/4 of the population died during each "interregnum," though this may partly be due to the new dynasty being less efficient at the census process.

Which provides a slightly different perspective on the Chinese civil war and new Communist "dynasty." Probably less murderous than most of its predecessors. In percentages if not raw numbers killed.

69 posted on 12/03/2012 2:14:25 PM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Cronos

You are doubtless correct. I recall reading about Goering Street in an airline magazine, and their explanation was that he had been a missionary.

Wikipedia suggests that the elder Goering attempted to spark a gold rush by firing some gold coins at a cliff face.

And it served me right for believing what a traveling journalist writes without checking more critically.

Thanks again for the correction!


70 posted on 12/03/2012 5:27:15 PM PST by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: Cronos

But Germany ended up stealing the Austria-Hungarian national anthem!


71 posted on 12/03/2012 5:28:36 PM PST by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: Cronos

The bolsheviks were put into power by the Kaiser’s Germany, to include using German soldiers to fight against the White Russians.

The Weimar republic had German officers train in tank tactics in USSR. Hitler stopped that program, because he intended to have the tank training take place in Germany as he ignored the Versailles treaty.

Hitler and Stalin attacked Poland and Finland as allies.

Fortunately the Red Army’s relative incompetence in attacks on Finland, made Hitler drool. Churchill’s contacts with the Nazis in Portugal appeased Hitler, and rather than a hard fight with Britain over the sea lanes, he chose what he was sure would be an easier fight against Stalin.


72 posted on 12/03/2012 5:36:21 PM PST by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: donmeaker
"put into power by the Kaiser" is a bit of an exaggeration -- the Kaiser did see the Bolsheviks as causing chaos enough to disintegrate Russia, but the Bolshies did their own killing way to power

it would have made sense in the 1917-1919 period to support a crazy movement like the Bolshies which you would think would die out against a movement like the White Russians of Denikin etc. who said basically "the Russian Empire must be restored and expanded" -- which the Germans feared.

no one thought the Bolshies would survive and worse, spread...

hindsight is always 20-20...

73 posted on 12/03/2012 9:00:39 PM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: jmacusa
deviating from the topic -- I think for all who faced them, the Mongols WERE invincible

It took decades, if not centuries for anyone to defeat them

74 posted on 12/03/2012 9:24:47 PM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: donmeaker

really?


75 posted on 12/03/2012 9:25:19 PM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: donmeaker

Per Wikipedia:
Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (God Save Emperor Francis) was originally written as an anthem to Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and later of Austria. The lyrics were by Lorenz Leopold Haschka (1749–1827), and the melody by Joseph Haydn. It is sometimes called the “Kaiserhymne” (Emperor’s Hymn). Haydn’s tune has since been widely employed in other contexts: in works of classical music, in Christian hymns, in alma maters, and as the tune of Das Lied der Deutschen, the national anthem of Germany.


76 posted on 12/03/2012 9:45:04 PM PST by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: Cronos
It took decades, if not centuries for anyone to defeat them

Quite right. The Japanese repelled them, but largely because of storms, the famous Divine Wind (Kamikaze).

The Mamluks eventually defeated them in Palestine, but many decades after they started their rampages.

In their several invasions of Europe, they were never defeated by a European army. Each time they turned back for internal reasons.

They also failed when invading what are now Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, but that is fairly obviously more of a climate issue.

77 posted on 12/04/2012 5:35:02 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan
I think they would have been stuck further into Europe -- they were good on the steppes like the Avars, Magyars, huns before them, but get past the Carpathian basin and they'd be hit by mountains etc.

btw, do you know why the Mongols so badly wanted to attack the Magyars?

I was reading about their attack on Poland and that was just a diversion -- their real target were the Magyar and I dont know why

78 posted on 12/04/2012 5:49:27 AM PST by Cronos (**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)
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To: Cronos
but get past the Carpathian basin and they'd be hit by mountains etc.

Not a problem. The Mongols rolled through Central Asia, the Altai and such, without even slowing down.

Central Asian mountains make those of Europe look itty-bitty.

They would have been somewhat impeded by the forests of western Europe, but had they been intent on conquest I don't think anything would have stopped them. Except the English Channel.

What really saved Europe, of course, was distance. Given their tech, it was a LONG way from Karakorum to Rome. They had an amazing Pony Express system, but no empire could hold together over such distances, and indeed their's started coming apart almost immediately.

I have no idea why the Mongols had a bug up their butt about the Magyar. Perhaps they considered them the greatest threat as horse archers?

79 posted on 12/04/2012 5:55:50 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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