Community Chat

[kutira]

I grew up with this, especialy in Hebrew school (middle school age).  I had a teacher that was intent on burning the facts into our brains: he would scream at us & show us all the concentration camp movies over & over.  I remember hating everything German.  No one I know would buy anything imported from Germany.  Pretty extreme but seared into our minds to "Never Forget."  My own family left Russia after the pograms before WW 1.

I had some other teachers who were survivors & had amazing stories to tell.

[dulwich]

These horrendous crimes should never be forgotten.  

My Father was among the troops that were first into the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  He said it was the worst experience of his life to witness such cruelty he never forgot it.

[suzyQ3]

I grew up in what was a Jewish community at the time -- the Fairfax area of Los Angeles. Many of my friends were the children of survivors. I think that these parents were still in shock. It was just a few years after WW2.

One memory among many: When Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs, was captured in 1960. My girlfriend, whose parents were survivors, and I took Newsweek and stomped on the cover photo of him until it was obliterated.

But the sad and tragic truth is that we can't obliterate those determined to elevate hate into unthinkable actions. All we can do is foster knowledge and facts --  and shine that light. Cockroaches cringe at the light.

[Sushismom]

If anyone truly thinks "Never again", then you need to really look at this world.

[luvmybeetle]

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@Porcelain wrote:

Never forget, lest it happen again. It could happen here because it could happen anywhere.

We need to remain aware of the amazing human capacity for great heroism and love, as well as the worst depravity beyond a reasonable person's comprehension.

From the United States Holocaust Museum website

"As with other efforts to deceive the German population and the wider world, the Nazi regime benefited from the unwillingness of the average human being to grasp the dimensions of these crimes. Leaders of Jewish resistance organizations, for example, tried to warn ghetto residents of the German intentions, but even those who heard about the killing centers did not necessary believe what they had heard. “Common sense could not understand that it was possible to exterminate tens and hundreds of thousands of Jews,” Yitzhak Zuckerman, a leader of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, observed."

And from the 2018 Time Magazine article, What Americans in the 1930s Really Knew About What Was Happening in Germany

"To wit, one item that’s part of the USHMM exhibition shows public opinion polls demonstrating that while half of U.S. respondents in 1943 thought the fact that 2 million Jewish Europeans had been murdered was just a rumor, by 1944 about three-quarters believed concentration camps were really part of the Nazi plan — and yet they still couldn’t fathom the number of victims involved.

(A Gallup poll that year shows that most people who dared to guess thought the number killed would be in the hundreds of thousands, or less.) Today, the fact that 6 million Jews were killed has been “seared in our collective understanding of the Holocaust,” Greene says, but at the time, that number was hard to process."

Humanity's basic decency (and I think our propensity to shut down as a reaction to incomprehensible horror) was used against us to make us unable to completely comprehend the evil we were dealing with. We must remain on guard against that.

If anyone dehumanizes another human being to you, calls them an animal or subhuman, they are already down that path -- and trying to take you with them.

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Thank you for this.  Our children and their children need to pay attention now so this doesn't repeat itself.  God bless and keep all those wonderful people who perished.

[suzyQ3]

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@suzyQ3 wrote:

I grew up in what was a Jewish community at the time -- the Fairfax area of Los Angeles. Many of my friends were the children of survivors. I think that these parents were still in shock. It was just a few years after WW2.

One memory among many: When Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs, was captured in 1960. My girlfriend, whose parents were survivors, and I took Newsweek and stomped on the cover photo of him until it was obliterated.

But the sad and tragic truth is that we can't obliterate those determined to elevate hate into unthinkable actions. All we can do is foster knowledge and facts --  and shine that light. Cockroaches cringe at the light.

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I need to add something here. I made it sound as if we are dealing only with monsters. But the most unnerving aspect is how many ordinary people were heavily involved.

[grandma r]

@Sushismom. Sadly, you are correct.  History does tend to repeat itself.  I truly believe that is why those who don't remember WWII should have knowledge of what happened in Germany and how that little man rose to power.  The more a lie is told, the more people start to believe it.  Lies and fear instilled allowed him to gain power.  We know where that led.

[CAcableGirl2]

I visited a former concentration camp "Dachau" while I was in Europe in 2019 on a group tour and it was very moving and incredibly sad and unbelievable how a group of people could treat another group of human beings.  

I couldn't believe that it wasn't that long ago, and should be a requirement for all high school graduates to take a semester class about it.  I remember in my high school years, it was barely mentioned in history class.

To put the time frame in perspective, only a few years after the concentration camps were liberated, we were starting to watch I Love Lucy on TV.  

[AKgirl2]

@grandma r ~ My parents were both survivors.  They, especially my dad told me many (horrific) stories.  He had photos showing what he told me about.  Talk about heart breaking and gut wrenching. May all their souls RIP🌹  

[Foolywooly11]

Well said, @suzyQ3 .