Video & Multimedia
Related: About this forumCivilians of a town, Wiemar on a forced visit to the Buchenwald concentration cam...HD Stock Footage
Though short... some parts are not for the weak of stomach
DFW
(54,378 posts)In my town, it was common knowledge that the local Nazis had killed people and then buried them in the woods outside town. After the war ended, the former town bosses were forced to march to the burial site, with the rest of the population watching, and made to dig up their victims and carry their remains back to the town cemetery for proper burial.
The town Gestapo headquarters building was transformed into an elementary school. My daughters both went there. It was named the Anne Frank School. Her life and death are still part of the school's curriculum. Never forget.
rpannier
(24,329 posts)Sometimes we forget that it wasn't just the men/women in uniform that were horrible and sociopathic
The lampshade of human skin was at the request of the wife of an SS Officer
There is a photographic record of the events in our town, too. But it is one town among thousands that didn't have a major concentration camp nearby, so what happened there isn't famous to world history. All natives of the town know about it, though, and plenty of those who moved there later (like me) are completely aware of it, too. There is a book, on sale at the town's local museum, that documents the town's history from its founding in the Middle Ages right up to the present. The Nazi era and its aftermath are given plenty of page space, both in text and photo history.
Interesting side note: My wife's parents, who met after the war, had very different experiences. Her dad was a farmer until he was drafted at age 17 to be cannon fodder at Stalingrad. He got a leg blown off by a Soviet artillery shell, and returned to a life where he was useless as a farmer. Göring, in an interview after the war, once said, Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?" My father-in-law WAS that "poor slob on a farm." Her mom, on the other hand, a few years younger, was caught up in the Hitler Youth girls program, the BDM, mostly to rebel against her parents (she was about 14 when she joined, around 1941), who were anti-Nazi. She was deeply ashamed later on for letting herself get indoctrinated, but at least she owned up to it. She used to tell, in matter-of-fact terms, how, on the way to school, they used to routinely jump into roadside ditches to not be killed by RAF planes on routine strafing runs. It's amazing what one can get used to as daily reality.
Her dad, my wife's grandfather, hated the Nazis, and listened constantly to British radio during the war, an offense punishable by death at the time. Their next door neighbor, who was a loyal Nazi, but also had known them all their lives, told him outright, "I know you listen to British radio, but you were always my friend, so I will not turn you in." After the war, when the tables were turned, he pleaded with my wife's grandfather not to denounce him to the occupying forces (British, in their case), reminding him that he had saved his life by not denouncing him to the Nazi authorities. He agreed.
TygrBright
(20,759 posts)Denying the humanity of others- even those whose beliefs we find appalling, even those who enthusiastically dehumanize those who frighten them or threaten their privilege- makes us more willing to act inhumanely toward them.
As much as the thirty-some percent of Americans who espouse racist, authoritarian views distress me, I have to still see them as human beings. Frightened human beings who lash out in vile and disgusting ways, but human all the same, like me.
As much as those Americans who believe I am less human than they are because of my gender/race/sexual orientation/religion/etc. fill me with anger, they remain human and I cannot descend to dehumanizing them.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
sadly,
Bright
DFW
(54,378 posts)Maybe a tiny percentage of them would even rethink their view of the world.
zaj
(3,433 posts)If it's during, why is the government forcing people to witness their horrors?
If it's after, why are there still prisoners there, and bodies everywhere?
But only days (or hours?) after. The occupying forces wanted the townspeople to see an unadulterated version of what had been going on right under their noses. There hadn't been time to start cleaning up or feeding and caring for the prisoners in the vast numbers that were there. Remember, the invading American forces had no earthly idea of what they were going to find there. They were as shocked as anyone to find what they did. It was their officers who had the presence of mind to require the townspeople to never be able to say they had no idea of what their country was doing. As much as they might have been able to say so before their little "tour," they had no way to say so afterward.
magicguido
(6,315 posts)50,000,000 DEAD
musclecar6
(1,686 posts)Ex evil national disgrace was, is and always will be a would be totalitarian completely amoral dictator. The 2020 election was a fight to the finish and fortunately, good won out over unbridled evil. Barely.
sanatanadharma
(3,705 posts)...and compare with the faces of folk at the end of the video.