Holocaust Memorial Day today 27th Jan

You can believe me or not believe me but I would have taken my chances with those going to the camps. There are flaws in my character as much as there are in anyone' else's character but "whoredom" is not one of them

Many of them knew nothing about any camps. They'd already been brutalised, starved, beaten. Some of the jewish council men thought they were saving lives.

Many of them knew nothing about any camps. They'd already been brutalised, starved, beaten. Some of the jewish council men thought they were saving lives.

Probably but only their own.

Ill bare that in mind.

I thought the topic was remembering the holocaust and slipping in that our kids aught to shed a tear yearly and sit in silence and remembering the plight of the Jews?

The OP didn't mention the Jews.

Go to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website http://www.hmd.org.uk/about/

You will see that the Jews aren't even mentioned on the main page.

So who is forcing you to remember the Jewish Holocaust victims above everyone else?

Your move.

John X

i never said you did,.... get your facts right

i brought degaulle into it to show that there were frenchmen that actually fought the germans unlike him ,a point i'm sure you will no doubt argue against

Right so to protect the French Resistance from the 'dishonour' of people accurately discussion their significance to the war effort besmirching De Gaulle

Much as I dislike De Gaulle for his actions when leading the 'free french' and later France it's simply not true to say he didn't fight the Nazis. The division he commanded was one of the few to acquit itself well during the initial landwar in the West which is a major reason he later rose to such prominence.

Many of them knew nothing about any camps. They'd already been brutalised, starved, beaten. Some of the jewish council men thought they were saving lives.

Many of them were not beaten or brutalized. At the beginning of the film before Spilman's family was sent to the ghetto a friend of his attempted to recruit him into the police force the Germans were setting up. Spilman refused however. I'm taking this as being the truth as Spilman survived and lived for many years afterwards. The film must have been based very accurately on his experience.

As for the Jewish police saving lives I've seen several other films over the years dealing with this subject. The Jewish collaberators in the camps or "kapos" I think they were called were almost as bad as the SS guards

A Jewish pilceman first saved Spilman, Polanski directed the film.

I would suggest that in a brutal, dehumanising regime you will always get radically perverse human behaviour.

There were 'good' kapos and harsh capos: some of the sonderkommandos were so abusive and cruel that they could be even worse than their Nazi counterparts. While this seems almost impossible, it is actually a common reaction under severe forms of captivity. Psychologists refer to a phenomenon called, "identification with the aggressor"2 , a defense mechanism which was first described by Sigmund Freud. More recently with regard to captivity it has been referred to as "The Stockholm Syndrome" 3

http://www.shoaheducation.com/sonder.html

Given the cruelty of some of the kapos, it is easy to attribute traits to them such as betrayal, disloyalty and abandonment. One needs to remember though that there is a difference between choosing to turn to betrayal, and falling into it as a psychological escape. When a situation becomes so oppressive and unbearable as the world of a Death Camp, it is impossible to predict who will and who will not succumb to distorted methods of spiritual/emotional survival. It is important to remember that most kapos were selected for duty against their will, and it was a time when moral questions became deeply challenged and undone. In day to day survival, while there were astoundingly noble actions and moments even martyrdom on the part of some individuals, most persons most of the time were focused only on survival: they longer one survived, in any way possible, the better chance of the war ending and freedom coming.

The Nazis were experts at playing with people's hope. They would divide, deport some and leave others, do the opposite the next day, make people believe that if they were helpful, they might be spared etc.. On the whole they did try to kill all those who witnesses the crimes, so being a Jew in a Ghetto wasn't the best place to be, policeman or not.

If you read Sophie's Choice the nazis even made mothers choose which of their children must die. Even the capos knew they would die, the work detail clearing the crematoria were murdered every two months or so. People would never have made such a choice under normal conditions, but Nazis were masters at pushing people into making desperate choices and divide communities.

The French resistance contributed much to helping the allies. The brother of my father in law was a tail gunner aboard a B-17 that was shot down over France. He and a fellow crew member were taken in and hidden by members of the resistance and eventually smuggled across Pyranees into Spain. I'm sure that there were many other allied aircrews that were saved from captivity also.

Amongst other things the resistance did was to sabotage trains and lines of communications just before D-Day and they were active in the liberation of Paris

The OP didn't mention the Jews.

 

Go to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website http://www.hmd.org.uk/about/

 

You will see that the Jews aren't even mentioned on the main page.

 

So who is forcing you to remember the Jewish Holocaust victims above everyone else?

 

Your move.

 

John X

The article in the op said this:

Holocaust Memorial Day marks the day the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp was liberated on January 27 1945 - bringing an end to the horrific state-sponsored genocide in which an estimated six million Jews were massacred.

No other victim groups of the Nazi holocaust or any of the numerous other genocides of the 20th century were mentioned. Which is precisely the problem and just typical of such coverage, the Nazi-holocaust is all too often given undue prominence far above and beyond all other genocides and one specific set of victims from that one genocide is again given undue prominence utterly eclipsing all others.

Holocaust Memorial Day has been extensively criticised for this in the past and it's good to see that the website is finally giving some prominence to other genocides.

Ahem:

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) commemorates the tragic loss of life in the genocides of World War II, in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.

http://www.hmd.org.uk/

The article mentions Auschwitz specifically because it's the 65th anniversary of liberation of the camp, 27th Jan!