6 Million people died in the Holocaust, and somebody did something.

woops you said this in a quote already my bad

[edit on 1-1-2009 by lightworker12]

I hate to so arrogantly quote myself but it seems important in this case.



I can understand people quoting what happened 10 years ago but past this we need to learn to move on.

If we live in the past we cannot move forward.

Thanks to all who posted you are helping with my understanding!

I blame God or perhaps the mask of God. It's like waking up every day and discovering that you are a monster. The monster of humanity.

Americas God = Guns, Oil, Drugs

How far back in history are we allowed to go? Should I head off to Italy to reclaim my homeland? Only if I can conquer and hold that land.

In order to conquer a land you must suffer the horror that comes with victory! What are you willing to do to ensure victory!

I remember as a young man studying the ancient burial grounds of Native Americans and visiting the Toltec ruins feeling a deep spiritual connection with the ancients.

There is a scene in the film Red River where John Wayne:

"With only a couple head of cattle, Dunson and the boy enter Texas by crossing the Red River and Dunson proudly proclaims all the land about them as his own. Two Mexican men appear on horseback and inform Dunson that the land already belongs to their boss. Dunson dismisses this inconvenient fact, kills one of the men, and tells the other man to inform his boss that Dunson now owns the land."

John Wayne simply explained to the Mexicans that you stole the land from someone else and I am stealing it from you because I can. Simple as that!
Now we Americans are accustomed to John Wayne portraying American heroes but I thought this a rather honest moment for Hollywood at the time. We took the land because we wanted it and we could. Simple as that!

Israel is another moment in history where they took the land because they wanted it and they could! Sure the events are complicated and justified with a lot of pious platitudes. But sure as shootin they took it because they wanted it!

That's why you almost appreciate the honesty of the Likud or the ultra orthodox position. This is ours because we say so! With a thin veneer of civility but a distinct disdain for soft humanist philosophy.

I don't like religious states as a rule. Does that include Tibet??? Maybe...

It definitely includes the Muslim states and Israel. But then again why should I care? I am an American and my tax dollars and weapons make Israel possible.

So go ahead Israel clean up, clear out, kill em all and let God sort em out!
But remember the horror of victory cause you won't forget it!

Shame Shame Shame. To minimize the Jews persecution is reprehensible.

My uncle lost 3 sisters and his parents in Treblinka. He is now the President of the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, IL, a haven of holocaust survivors in the US.

Whatever anti-zionists might feel or believe, this happened.

I believe it happened but you miss the point. If we live in the past we cannot move forward! You can go on about this for the next 400 years, please tell me ho wthis will help the future. It should be recognised not have billions meditate upon it.

By your thinking i can claim against the English people for treating my Irish ancestors so badly. Oh but wait i consider myself English, why is that? Maybe it's because i see the past as the past.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

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"you can go on about this for the next 400 years, please tell me ho wthis will help the future"

But, but I'm a victim of the Irish Potato Holocaust.

You mean to say I can't use it to justify my crimes against humanity?

*If you say I'm not a victim, you are only minimizing my suffering....Anti-Celtite.

Hitler, one of the Top 5 worst humans ever, was still an interesting psychological study to me, and this is the only place I would dare say something like that.

I have a big fear though. Hitler started gaining support just as the entire world was struggling with the infamous economic depression. Everything was bad - everywhere. And here's a guy, who's a great speaker, knows how to rally the troops, is confident, good looking (eh, I beg to differ) and literally becomes a "German Idol." And over the course of several years, he runs amazing propaganda media campaigns "we honestly care for you; we feel your pain" type. And these lowly struggling German souls finds someone who's willing to bring about a "change." And he starts a major public works program. They start building super highways (autobahns), bridges, the young are excited to join the military, everyone young and old now has good jobs because of war-type activities. The middle-class becomes prosperous and happy once again. And his ideas seemed pretty good to the German people - he was a strong proponent of a national health care program, cleanliness, elimination of diseases; he placed all women in a very high status - staying home taking care of the children was an honor, especially to groom nice young men for his military. The government took good care of people who needed help (welfare). So they blindly follow him wherever he wanted to go, because look at all the "good" he did for the "Motherland." We now know the ugly ulterior motives.

My mom always says history repeats itself. Does this make anyone else nervous, given that we're heading towards ugly times like in the early 1930's? Anyone else think we're vulnerable to a Hitler-like figure emerging within the next several years?

reply to post by themamayada

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"Anyone else think we're vulnerable to a Hitler-like figure emerging within the next several years?"

Next Several Years?

He is already elected. Change is Coming.

Change Change Change!

The time is now...

Many groups and individuals did know about the mass exterminations, the majority did not admittedly. Events in the east were given some press coverage but mainly it was utilised for black propaganda purposes and twisted to suit the aims of Churchill's group.

In 1941 Francis Aldor, escaped from Poland and published a book in London describing the killing fields in the east and of the way in which people were being dumped in the frozen wastelands of Lublin while facilities were being prepared for their death. Nobody wanted to believe it and even then nobody, on an individual basis, could have done anything to stop it. No individual citizen can stop something like that happening. Even the Nazis themselves, couldn't stop it once the wheels had been put in motion.

My point was that the Allied governments could have stopped it by accepting Hitler's invitation to negotiate a peace. Though the lives of the slavs could not have been saved, they had been decimated between 1939 and 1941, Britain could have stopped the Jewish Holocaust. Defeating Nazi Germany was more important to them though. Keeping the war in motion was more important. Had Britain accepted Hitler's highly favourable terms in early 1941, even temporarily, at least 3 million jewish lives could have been saved, most of them women and children. In fact had peace been acheived at that point, approximately 20-30 million people, mostly civilians would not have lost their lives.

You see my point is, that when it comes to governments and the genocide of civilians in the course of war, our governments will withold the truth from their citizenry because they don't want us to know that people like us are being slaughtered for no good reason other than they are in the way or are a burden to the economy (as in the case of the Reich Jews).

Of course none of it is necessary now, we're used to it. We have all sat back and watched as children have been killed in Iraq for no other reason that they are Iraqi. The second world war was the first war in our modern human history when civilians were specifically targeted and annihilated to expediate war. We have been doing it ever since. And, while we can claim that we never knew the holocaust was going on because of a lack of information, we can make no such claim now.

Raul Wallenberg's family owned Enskilda Bank one of the main investors and profiteers of Nazis Germany. At best he was salving his conscience, at worst engineering a cover story, either way his motive were by no means pure.

Are you An Anti-Semite and not aware of it yet?

This will help you figure out why you have been getting called that lately. Some of you may be confused at the illogic of it all. This will help you understand your evil ways:

Sobibor was a death camp and was only in operation for approximately 15 months or so. The train would arrive and the occupants would strip down, have their hair cut and then be led into the gassing facility, they were then removed by the Sonderkommando and their corpses burnt. Tomas Blatt was a member of the Sonderkommando at Sobibor. He escaped and because of him we knew about Sobibor, there are no such survivors from the other death camps (Action Reinhard camps) and our knowledge is very limited therefore. The SS removed all trace of those camps and at the end of the war they fell into Soviet territory, their secrets safe.

Auschwitz was in operation from late 1941 until its liberation in (I think) April 1945. Over 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz alone. Only about a third of that number died as a result of mass exterminations, the majority died as a result of neglect and disease, the rest died by slave labour (for commercial concerns, cheifly IG Farben) and in use in medical experiments (again mainly for private gain, again IG, the torture inflicted by Mengele was minor by comparison).

I personally can't differentiate which mode of death would be worse, which camps was the worst etc, they all took innocent lives and all life has value.



How many 'heartless' people are there sitting back and watching (on live TV!!!) innocent men, women and children being slaughtered and cheering for the guys doing it because they are wearing the uniforms of the country that by complete chance they happen to have been born into? As long as it isn't us, we don't care, or we certainly don't care enough to stop it.

Had the british and french made the concessions to the wiemar republic that they made to hitler no jews would have killed as hitler would never have come to power. Hind sight eh?
What i've found most interesting about this thread is the "competitive victimisation" of various races. Poles vs Jews, someone even mentioned ireland's potatoe famine. "To hell or to connacht!" is a more salient comparison with palestine. The britsh have hunted people from their homes to make room for their chosen settlers on more than one occasion.
Friends, human nature has always been about might being right and we could write all day about who actually is the "christ of nations" but i think on balance that title has to go to poland. It's relevance to 2009 is questionable. Learn from history but don't make it a creed.

The thing is though, that the people of Israel are not even semites, they are northern european and mediterranean in origin for the most part. That was always the Arab (semite) complaint, prior to the mass immigration of the European Jews. They had no quarrel with the Jewish people, they had complaint at losing the semite culture, which in fact they are. They were concerned that mass immigration would lead to conflict, and funnily enough, they were right.

It is the Israeli government and army that are the fervent anti-semites not the other way round.

For the most part you are correct. What puzzles me, is why so many polarize what Germany did. What happened was beyond terrible. But, we need look no further than our own history to see the tapestry of wickedness we have weaved. We have everyone beat, hands down. Yet, a majority of "Americans" don't look down upon the homeland for the 10's of millions that were killed throughout history right here. But Germany, history tells us they were demons in the flesh, and that we the US should stand behind Israel for the wickedness that they endured. Yet, in the same breath let the Native Americans go to waste. I have yet to figure that one out. Its time for Americans to admit we have just as much dirt under our nails as most everyone else, and quit looking down our nose at other nations because of their history.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by Kanati]

The history of oppression of the native Americans and the exploitation of the land and resources of the US is shared by many countries. The initial damage was caused by the Spanish, the Portugese, the British, French and the Dutch. For that reason there is a lack of a collective sense of responsibility. There is always someone else to point at and say that they were worse than you. It is the same with the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the appalling legacy of that trade.

It seems to me that there is an inherent nature to much of the US population, a need to look down on someone else. When the Irish came in droves it was the Irish who sat at the bottom, then the Chinese, then the Jews, then the Poles, then the Vietnamese and the Mexicans...there always has to be someone at the bottom, those who are elevated and supplanted in the gutter by the new 'scum of society' then go on to pass the misery they experienced back down. And so it seems to perpetuate right through the 'white' history of the country.

A generalisation of course. I was interested in a thread recently asking members where they were from, most of the Americans who contributed qualified themselves with their original european (or otherwise) heritage. I found that quite illuminating, that most don't feel simply being an American is good enough.

In terms of US/German relations go, up until US involvement in the war most of the US was divided on 'which side' to take. Many Germans had emigrated to the US after the first war, a significant proportion of those were recruited by the Abwehr to spy for Germany. Just a Britain recruited agents sympathetic to their aims and the 'Communists' theirs. They were all able to do this because of the lack of fealty to their new homeland . Whether they still hankered for the Fatherland or homeland or were embittered by the way they were being treated in their new home is debateable. Does seem as though the US needs to have someone to hate, at home and abroad. Generally, I by no intend to apply this everyone. And, other countries foster the same divisions too.

Just saying quickly: Mein Kampf really isn't evidence that Hitler was going to commit eventual genocide. The path the Nazis took that ended in the mass-murder of innocent people was a long and complex one. It seemed Hitler and those running the show in the Nazi party were very functionalist. It was learning about the Nazis and their pragmatic nature that actually made me realise how #ed up our world is today, 'cos you can see it's just all happening all over again.

But in reference to the OP, it is nice to know there were many people who did something during the Holocaust. At the same time though, it isn't hard to see how so many people just allowed it to happen. In the years leading up to the war it was actually incredible what Hitler managed to do with Germany. It is no suprise that the German people viewed him as a god, and listened to what he said with such willingness. And you've gotta remember how people may have always wondered if their interference could have made things, e.g. getting shot as punishment for trying to help. There is still never a fair reason for genocide though, and the fact it was allowed to get so out of hand to the point of humanity's worst moment should serve as a very painful lesson learned, but an important one.

We have the opportunity to at least try and stop things before they get even worse. It's just a shame most people don't think like that. And that is why genocide and atrocities will continue to occur.