Posted on 01/19/2014 7:01:29 PM PST by luvie
This is a link to a video of nearly an hour that depicts the horror that the British military discovered at Bergen-Belsen after the Nazis were defeted. It was partially directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is very hard to watch, but I believe, necessary so as not to forget what man can do to his fellow man.
Old technology, new terminology. It’s all video now. Just like we’d call the sound on an antique phonograph record, audio.
The difference is that the Nazis had the audacity to actually film their atrocities, they took so much pride in it, they wanted to chronicle it for their own posterity.
Bookmarked for later.
Memmory is for strangers. The way things are being teached in the schools and colleges this will not be seen by the students.
I watched it all. Very painful. It reinforces my belief that the entire German population knew what was going on. There were hundreds of camps. The tears of the locals in this film, in my opinion, were only because they were caught red handed and their ghoulish pleasure was ending.
Don’t forget the Abortion clinics in the USA. over 40 million unborn killed for the cause of the left and the demonkrats.
PBS broadcast this under the title of “Memories of the Camps” maybe a dozen or so years ago. I made a copy on video tape and showed it to my eighth-grade history classes for many years. I told them they were going to visit hell. The English teacher had them reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” at about the same time. She died at Bergen-Belsen about a month before the Brits liberated the camp. Her last moments in this world are what you see in this film. I figured my students would live most of their lives after the living memory of the Holocaust was over and they needed to remember what had happened. Every kid—no matter how “cool”—was moved by what he or she saw in this film.
Bookmark
Add to the list,
History repeats itself. And every time it does, the price goes up.
- unknown ( the poet )
You beat me to it. The filming is what really ratcheted things up.imho
Bookmark
Thank you for educating your students. I doubt if Common Core includes this type of history.
With respect to the persecution of the Jews and the labor camps, certainly. With respect to the death camps, less so - these were mostly in Poland and the Nazis did make deliberate efforts to cover them up, especially when it was obvious they were going to lose the war.
Then you have the strange ones, the outliers - one of these was so senior a Nazi that you'd figure there's no way he could possibly not have known, but apparently he didn't. That was Baldur von Schirach, companion of Hitler from the '20s, first head of the Hitler Youth. He was replaced there and given the very prestigious post of military commandant of Vienna (Hitler was Austrian and Vienna was and is incredibly historic). His first act was to round up 50,000 Jews and send them off to the labor camps. He wasn't ashamed, he said it was his proudest moment.
Then he did something really weird. He went to the camps to see what conditions were like - these weren't even the death camps, but the labor camps - and was so appalled that he (1) ceased rounding up the Jews, (2) went public with his protest, and (3) took it to his senior Nazi leader who he was just certain would help. That was, of all people, Heinrich Himmler, who, with Bormann and Heydrich, really was the architect of the death camps, and who must have wondered what planet this guy was from. How could he possibly not know?
He was told politely to shut up or be shot, but to give him his due, he actually did continue to interfere with the further roundup of the Jews in Vienna, which is why they didn't hang him after Nuremberg. But he was certainly no saint - he was an unrepentant Nazi to the end. And yet this one thing he couldn't do. Do you blame him for the 50,000? Absolutely, and he did 20 years for it. But you can account for his behavior in no other way than to conclude that he really didn't know.
Strange, strange man in a lot of other ways as well. Rudolf Hess was another one. I'm not sure you could consider either one of them entirely sane.
It doesn't take much away from your case, however - they knew, most of them, they had to. People being gassed and shoved into ovens. They knew. Some of them could do nothing, some were too frightened, but some of them, well, with some of them it was just fine.
If you want to show your students “Part 2”, lookup “Night and Fog” on youtube.
Very interesting post.
I, too, think most knew. Of course there was fear involved. But I hope we never live as a country that knows such atrocities are being perpetrated and can do nothing. The thought of that terrifies me.
Marked
I've "visited" ( and I'm not sure if that's the appropriate word..though it's better than "toured") Auschwitz and Dachau..it's overwhelming, and very hard to put into words what one feels. I don't believe in ghosts..yet these places are defintely haunted in some way.
FYI..one of the best descriptions of the evils of the camps, and how the German civilians acted, can be found in a novel, Leon Uris' Armageddon. It is simply brilliant and I recommend it to you..
Mr. niteowl77
bump for later
Easter this year falls on 20 April.
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