“In the end, though, he was convicted on charges of aiding and abetting
the murders of 1,000 Jews
and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released after serving five years.”
I saw that in the NYT a couple of days ago. The banality of evil.
Makes you sick.
Why shouldn’t they have sang, danced, and otherwise lived normal lives? Just because they were posted to a concentration camp? Because people near them were suffering a little more than they were? (It was wartime, you know.)
Is anyone who celebrates while others near them suffer, to be considered evil? (Look around–any homeless near your house?) Or is their celebration itself to be celebrated as a triumph of the human spirit?
SJ - look at who’s in the pics. Nice guys like Mengele.
I can’t say I personally find anything wrong with the pictures. They were people none the less with feelings and all so is it appalling that they had photos taken whilst enjoying what they could? No, not really.
And is it not said that Germans were convinced that Jews were not human beings or something? So why should they be expected to think otherwise then and be mourning Jews instead of having a good time?
I mean we are lead to believe that SS officers were monsters and murderers, so the addition of this album is supposed to provoke a response, that’s the only reason folks are talking about it.
If Germany had won the war, we would be looking at this photo album in a completely different light perhaps.
All I can say is look at it with an open mind for if one doesn’t then one is simply another victim of propaganda.
[quote=“nyt”]For example, one of the Höcker pictures, shot on July 22, 1944, shows a group of cheerful young women who worked as SS communications specialists eating bowls of fresh blueberries. One turns her bowl upside down and makes a mock frown because she has finished her portion.
On that day, said Judith Cohen, a historian at the Holocaust museum in Washington, 150 new prisoners arrived at the Birkenau site. Of that group, 21 men and 12 women were selected for work, the rest transported immediately to the gas chambers.[/quote]
What’s disillusioning is we’ve failed to understand or even have a clue as to what the real moral lesson of the Holocaust is.
[quote=“sulavaca”]I can’t say I personally find anything wrong with the pictures. They were people none the less with feelings and all so is it appalling that they had photos taken whilst enjoying what they could? No, not really.
And is it not said that Germans were convinced that Jews were not human beings or something? So why should they be expected to think otherwise then and be mourning Jews instead of having a good time?
I mean we are lead to believe that SS officers were monsters and murderers, so the addition of this album is supposed to provoke a response, that’s the only reason folks are talking about it.
If Germany had won the war, we would be looking at this photo album in a completely different light perhaps.
All I can say is look at it with an open mind for if one doesn’t then one is simply another victim of propaganda.[/quote]
Good points. Is it really surprising to see them enjoying themselves? After all, they were away from Auschwitz at a retreat. Truly abhorrent would be pictures of them laughing and singing in the camp as they carried out what they carried out. It must also be noted that by that time there had been 11 years of Nazi brainwashing and some of the younger functionaries were probably in their early teens when the Nazis came to power and knew no better by the time they became adults of working age. This comment doesn’t apply to the higher-ups such as Hoess, Hoecker, Mengele et al.
Everyone should go to Auschwitz at least once. It is humbling.
I wonder if anyone knows of any photos of civilian life in the town of Auschwitz (Oswiecim in Polish) taken as this was going on. I have never seen any.
BroonArbeit
[quote=“BroonAle”]
I wonder if anyone knows of any photos of civilian life in the town of Auschwitz (Oswiecim in Polish) taken as this was going on. I have never seen any.
BroonArbeit[/quote]
sure that wasn’t quite a laughing summer retreat.
i think sulvaca misses the point. there’s nothing “appalling” in the photos themselves, or that they were enjoying a happy holiday. what is scary is what the say about the human animal, that even in the midst of all that horror, a happy weekend was still enough of a happy weekend to laugh over and enjoy. don’t know if i’m getting that across clearly but not sure how else to describe it. i don’t agree though that if germany had won the war we would really be looking at this differently. nothing like that could have ever stood up to the light.
[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]Why shouldn’t they have sang, danced, and otherwise lived normal lives? Just because they were posted to a concentration camp? Because people near them were suffering a little more than they were? (It was wartime, you know.)
Is anyone who celebrates while others near them suffer, to be considered evil? (Look around–any homeless near your house?) Or is their celebration itself to be celebrated as a triumph of the human spirit?[/quote]
Oh you are being so White-Aryan again…
[quote=“sulavaca”]I can’t say I personally find anything wrong with the pictures. They were people none the less with feelings and all so is it appalling that they had photos taken whilst enjoying what they could? No, not really.
And is it not said that Germans were convinced that Jews were not human beings or something? So why should they be expected to think otherwise then and be mourning Jews instead of having a good time?
I mean we are lead to believe that SS officers were monsters and murderers, so the addition of this album is supposed to provoke a response, that’s the only reason folks are talking about it.
If Germany had won the war, we would be looking at this photo album in a completely different light perhaps.
All I can say is look at it with an open mind for if one doesn’t then one is simply another victim of propaganda.[/quote]
I don’t understand that reasoning. That the perpetrators and enablers of horrific mass murder could take a day off from their labors and behave as if everything is completely normal clearly says something about the capacity of humanity for depravity.
One day, when Vegans rule the earth, they’re going to point to photos of smiling McDonalds patrons as proof of our depravity.
Hey, vegetables are people too. Or, as I like to point out to Vegans, if meat is murder then V8 Juice is genocide.
I found this book to be thought-provoking:
amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Per … 1568521332
What about the people that whooped it up and supported a conflict for no real purpose that has erased over 100,000 lives, mutilated hundreds of thousand more, has left more than 2 million homeless and rising and there’s no signs of it stopping anytime soon, and all the while enjoying fine food, travel and not a skerrick of danger? I mean isn’t it just a case of scale?
HG
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]What about the people that whooped it up and supported a conflict for no real purpose that has erased over 100,000 lives, mutilated hundreds of thousand more, has left more than 2 million homeless and rising and there’s no signs of it stopping anytime soon, and all the while enjoying fine food, travel and not a skerrick of danger? I mean isn’t it just a case of scale?
HG[/quote]
Well, that’s “a small price to pay” for . . . well, I’m not sure what it’s a small price to pay for – quagmire? something – but it’s not really much to pay.
Hey isn’t that what the Nazis thought too? You know, what price racial purity?
My spider sense is tingling, I suspect we are about to be hit by the el kabong death blow of “moral equivalence.”
And isn’t it funny how all fans of mass murder claim the moral upper hand? I guess it helps then sleep at night.
Yipee yi-o ki-a,
Galloping all the way
Here comes Quick Draw McGraw.
Yipee yi-o ki-a,
Galloping all the way
Great big star on his chest.
Outdraws all of the rest.
Fastest gun in the west.
Yipee yi-o ki-a,
Riding around your way,
Here comes Quick Draw McGraw.
The high-falutin’est,
Fastest shooin’est,
Cowboy you ever saw.
That’s Quick Draw McGraw.
HG
Some interesting…and revealing…comments on this thread.
But its just the internet.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]
I think sulvaca misses the point. there’s nothing “appalling” in the photos themselves, or that they were enjoying a happy holiday. what is scary is what the say about the human animal,…[/quote]
I agree with the photos showing nothing appalling, but I don’t really find the human to be a scary thing, well at least not in a surprised sense anyway. For example I have never understood the meaning of the word ‘humane’. It’s like we rank our standards higher than any of the animal kingdom or something, which seems daft to me quite frankly, and how do we quantify ‘humane’ exactly? I mean humane last week was shooting a horse in the head after it became lame and useless, which was a fast and painless way of putting it out of its misery, but today it would go along the lines of providing it with a titanium leg, built by a team of NASA engineers which costs three kazillion dollars, which are provided by taxpayers and then having rehabilitation sessions at a horse hospital before being retired at a ranch all by itself, but for a companion mare called Daisy who would share its birthday parties with cake until it dies of old age. And by tomorrow even that might be a little ‘inhumane’ for us, so whatever next?
Are we simply fooling ourselves by pretending that one day we can all be the messiah or something delusional by rescuing cute animals whilst blowing up small parts of the world into kingdom come all in the name of ‘good versus evil’ etc etc…?
Humans as I see it are simple stupid animals that give themselves far too much credit where none is deserved. If you ask me we are still no better than the Nazis and we’re just kidding ourselves if you think we are. Hitler, camps, war, death, warped ideas of purity and good. Bush/Blair, war, camps, warped ideas of purity and good. Sure technology may have moved on, but the principles are still the same and always have been. Of course we are in the place that the Germans were though all those years ago either supporting the Furor or one of those that doesn’t agree, but is too lazy or scared to do anything about it. The only thing in our favor is technology which means that we don’t have to lock and load and get on a boat, we only have to provide the money for F16s and Abrahams whilst judging the moral standards of those who use them from the comfort of our computer desks. It’s not our fault that we pay tax after all, and it’s certainly not our fault that some crazed leader takes advantage of it in order to take on his own style of ethnic/religious cleansing, sorry I mean terrorist cleansing. Heavens forbid that we ever stop paying tax as a method to stem the swell of power to the select few that are fucking things up this time around, we’d have to go to prison for that and have our families torn apart by the system. Oh, but its a democracy this time isn’t it, so things are quite different these days right?