OT: TRAVEL REPORT to Auschwitz/Plaszow!!!

[Kuniworth]

Tomorrow I leave for a week in Poland. My aim is Krakow and Oswiecim to visit the concentration camp of Auschwitz and talk to survivors still alive. On this tour will also include a trip to the Plasow-work camp(depicted in the movie Schindler's list).

I'll keep you all posted about this during next week if I get computer access.

[ November 14, 2005, 12:56 PM: Message edited by: Kuniworth ]

[Blashy]

I envy you.

First time I go to Europe.

Vimy Ridge, Paschendale, Ypres and Normandy. No way I'm doing anything else UNTIL I've paid my respect to my heroes.

[JerseyJohn]

Have a great trip, Kuni. I also envy you. Except with regard to talking to survivors, I've known scores of them who moved to New York City after WWII. I found they seldom talked about things when prodded too strongly. With me they'd always open up about it unexepectedly and I never asked directly; it would come out, normally, if we weren't discussing it.

However you arrive at the topic, here's hoping those you meet will discuss these things openly during your visit.

[Liam]

Kewl, let us not forget about the Armenians during WW1<still denied by many of the Turks>

The Chinese as well.. Plus in current times Rwanda, Indonesia and Yugoslavia all ignored by the World community because of Politics and the usual weakness of Western Leaders

In other words we don't care too much and we haven't learned our lesson. Seems as if genocide is as much a part of the human race as warfare, greed and everything else?

[Kuniworth]

well the world at least in some sense changed it's view on fascism during ww2. For people all over the world fascism and nazism is negative stuff that has to be erradicated. Thats something ww2 taught us.

[JerseyJohn]

All of Poland and Western Russia is, in a sense, a memorial to nazi barbarity and slaughter. Nobody even knows the number of towns and villages that were wiped out, their inhavitants usually rounded up and slaughtered. Contrary to public belief most of those operations were carried out by the regular German Army and not the SS.

The extermination of the Jews was only the first phase, what was planned to come next would have been several times larger; the extermination of all Poles and Slavs.

An excellent book on the subject is Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944 Richard C. Lukas 1986, revised 1997.

[Kuniworth]

Jersey;

As usual you make history easy to understand for people. I appreciate very much your style in which you with small comments explain and describe events without getting into too much details, but at the same time add excitement with some interesting trivia. You are an excellent storyteller and it's very clear that you know what you are talking about. Keep up the good work!

[JerseyJohn]

Kuni,

Appreciated and I can truthfully say the same for yourself.

One of the best things about the SC forums is the historical discussions we're able to get into.

Here's wishing you a safe and great trip like the one you made to Russia.

[jon_j_rambo]

This is the smartest thing Sir Jersey has ever said at BF.

Nobody even knows the number of towns and villages that were wiped out, their inhavitants usually rounded up and slaughtered. Contrary to public belief most of those operations were carried out by the regular German Army and not the SS.

[jon_j_rambo]

"In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power, it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the state and with it that of the whole nation and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem...but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevising of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!".

Adolf Hitler - Speech to the Reichstag - 30th January 1939

Is it just me? Or would I move if I was a Jew in Europe & heard that?

[Stendhal]

Where would you move to ?

[jon_j_rambo]

Idaho

[JerseyJohn]

Appreciated, Brother Rambo.

Regarding Hitler's speech to the Reichstag, of course it was too late for over 99% of the European Jews to move out of Europe by 1939. The United States wasn't admitting them and neither were most other countries. There's the famous story of that German ship leaving Hamburg with a full load of Jews who only wanted to get out of Europe. The United States wouldn't admit them so they went to Cuba, where under United States political pressure they were forced to remain onbard while the vessel reprovisioned. It then sailed back to Europe and the Jews were then admitted to Holland, where most of them were later arrested and killed by the nazis.

There were many inconsistencies in all of this. For example, in 1905 a Jewish doctor in Linz performed a radical operation on Hitler's mother and she died in agon with Hitler present, watching it. Hitler had insisted on the proceedure against the advice of the doctor who said he could only make her comfortable. Thirty three years later that same doctor was present in Linz, Austria when Hitler got on a balcony and made a speech about the Anschloss. The man was sure he would be the first to be rounded up by eager Austrian nazi goons. Instead, he and his family were among the last who were allowed to move to the United States.

[xwormwood]

Originally posted by jon_j_rambo:

[QB] This is the smartest thing Sir Jersey has ever said at BF.

I do know some countries where regular army units did things like this as well.

Cruelty or ignorance is not a germany specialty only. Sad but true.

[JerseyJohn]

Sorry if I implied that, it wasn't intentional and not the reason I'd written it.

When I say regular German Army units, in many cases we're talking about auxilleries. The Germans used a lot of Ukranians in anti-partisan roles and they were particularly brutal with Polish partisans.

In many of the nations conquered by the Reich, the locals outdid the Germans in murdering Jews, communists and others. In some instances German officers tried to stop those activities and were told by superior officers to not get involved. The worst cases along those lines occurred in the three Baltic States, where former commisars and their families, along with local Jews, were often rounded up, marched to an open field or square, and beaten to death with pipes.

The SS also used numerous non-German auxilleries and often German SS officers complained that those troops were not only worthless in combat, but used their weapons to kill every civilian in sight in order to loot their homes. Many of those units were disarmed and disbanded by the regular Waffen SS, not because of their excessive cruelty, but because they became a liability and their German overlords were in fear that eventually they'd turn their guns on the Germans.

-- As for it not being a German monopoly, of course it wasn't. The Soviets were as bad as the nazis, but in most cases that came as the Russians crossed into German territory, or areas colonized by so called German Nationals, and at that point their own commanders told them to remember what the nazis had done in Russia. It was deliberate and the effects calculated; the Russians would then withdraw and allow the German army to retake the area so they could photograph slaughtered German civilians. Germany thought showing those pictures would stir their own people to fight harder. Perhaps it did, but it also started the largest and most aimless mass migration in history when most of Eastern Europe began fleeing west to escape the Soviet Army.

-- On the other side of the world the Japanese were fully the equal of either the Germans or Russians and, in some ways much worse. In many instances Japanese troops, especially in China, simply went on killing sprees for the fun of it.

-- After the war, Chinese, Communist and National as well, indulged in the same slaughter. There was the Khmir Rouge in the seventies, and later the two groups of Central Africans, sorry, I don't want to speculate on the tribal names, who slaughtered each other in the hundreds of thousands.

There isn't a single nationality or race that can claim it hasn't done these things. The British did it over and over during the colonial period, as did the French and the SS -- they had a fine example to follow, one that they actually cited -- The United States government sending cavalry units out during the late 1860s-early 1870s to kill as many Plains Indians as possible, sometimes slaughtering villages exactly the way it was done decades later, but on an infinietly larger scale.

[xwormwood]

You are right, as always.

And it wasn't your statement that made me writing.

YOU know history, we all can see and read this here and in every else major history thread of the last years.

The german mass murderers are unique when you look about how and why they killed (even though Stalin or Mao killed probably even more).

My point was not guilt, or who started or did the worst things in a war.

It is about the mad horror of killing innocent, helpless civilians to win or shorten a war.

I am not sure what kind of reason was / is exactly behind bombing or strafing civilians. But what i know is that creating a firestorm in a city filled with civilians to break the fighting spirit of an army / country (didn't work) is at least "the little brother" of "surrounding a village and kill everyone within" to break the fighting spirit of partisans/ an army / a country (didn't work as well, just the opposite is true).

[Liam]

Well, let's put it simple folks, the Germans and other races in Europe, "Strong Races." Look at the rest as inferiors. If you didn't have a strong military, strong national spirit and technology along with skilled men you were left in the dust.

Eradication was the spirit as mentioned above we wiped out the American Indians to make way for progress. In a way the Germans peered in on the Russians, Poles and Slavs as little more than that. Plains Indians in the way of progress...

Along with this the Russians peered in on the Cossacks, intellectuals, jews and other minorities at various intersections with the same feelings...Yiddish in WW1 sounded a lot like German, so they were isolated in Poland and forced to retreat where for aide? Germany, LOL Germany embraced them... sad state isn't it? Fact is many of these so called lesser races in which Russians were that category to many of the Western Nations they actually proved to be far superior in many regards even though brutal. The hatred, the bloodbaths, all go in with human spirit. Wipe out your enemy, steal his children and educate them as your own, rape his women to leave your seed in his homeland<in some cases eradicate all of his people so there is no son, grandson, or anyone else to carry the torch> is it logical? What would 9000 German soldats do during Roman Era after being slaughtered by Romans Legions, 100 survivors go home, breed, create 9000 more in 20 years and boom...

and odd enough at the time they were probably percieved much as undesirables<barbarians> Humanity, an odd thing is it not?

[JerseyJohn]

Originally posted by xwormwood:

I am not sure what kind of reason was / is exactly behind bombing or strafing civilians. But what i know is that creating a firestorm in a city filled with civilians to break the fighting spirit of an army / country (didn't work) is at least "the little brother" of "surrounding a village and kill everyone within" to break the fighting spirit of partisans/ an army / a country (didn't work as well, just the opposite is true).

The only explanation I have is that, at the time, nobody understood that reaction. During the 1920s and 30s, all the major nations thought the next war would be dominated by city flattening and creating hordes of homeless civilians. That philosophy carried all the way trough WWII and even through Vietnam. The North Vietnamese finally proved that those tactics only lead to a hardened enemy.

I had an example of thise a few hundred feet from my house. On 9/11 I went to the water and saw the Manhattan skyline right after the two buildings crumbled. At the time everyone watching assumed tens of thousands of people had been killed in them. The normally complacent people of the town I live in were suddenly filled with bloodlust. A few hours later two Arab men were badly beaten because they were in a jovial mood. The police arrived and it turned out of the men had just become a father that morning. It was the wrong day for an Arab to be happy about anything.

-- And the thing is, that heightened feeling of rage lasted for a long time, and is still evident despite having been foolishly squandered -- oops, sorry, I hadn't meant to become political.

Thanks for what you said, Mr X. Likewise, I've always enjoyed reading your views and posts.

[JerseyJohn]

(Continued from above post)

Liam,

Adding to what you've said, the persecution of Poles by the nazis was so bad in 1939-40 that many of them began wearing a Jewish Star on their arms (in areas that Jews were still allowed to live in) because there was less likelihood of a Jew being arbitrarily killed than a Polish civilian. That was before the deportations to the camps, of course.

Even in the earliest days German soldiers on the lowest level appear to have regarded the Poles, all of them, as marked for extinction. In Sept of 1939, for example, there were rumors that Polish boy scouts were acting as couriers for what remained of the shattered Polish army. A colonel in the regular German Army saw a group of boy scouts in uniform in a Polish town and had all of them, boys between 12 and 17 years old, rounded up, put against a wall and shot. No explanation was given.

The actions were so arbitrary and so brutal that German civilians relocated to Poland complained that the German government there was going out of its way to create untold thousands of partisans.

There are German records that actually record the intent to annihilate all the Poles as they ceased being needed for labor. About 1/3 of the Polish population was killed during the war, less than half of them were Jews.

[Kuniworth]

DAY 1 - TRAVEL REPORT

I now have arrived in the beautiful city of Krakow. Unfortunately I cant post any pics but will do when I get home.

Today we(me and my traveling buddies) toured the city and especially the prior jewish part of the city called Karzimier. In this area most jews lived before transported to the getho in south of the city and thereafter deported to Plaszow labour camp and then Auschwitz.

I must say it was a bit chocking see the jewish quarters and what bad state the cemetaries and synagouges are in. The resaon for this is of course the mass-slaughters of jews during the war and now there are not enough jews left to take care of their heritage. Tragic.

Poland had 3,5 million jews before the war now it's around 5000. Krakow had 65 000 jews before the war(25% of the inhabitants of Krakow) and today barely 182(!) old jews live here. So sad to see that they cant nor afford shaping up the jewish facilities.

During our walk through Karzimiers we met a jew who is one of only 2 jews still living in Krakow that belonged to the ones Oscar Schindler saved. His name was Jan Lieban, 81 years old and he told him that the nazis were just abiut to hang him when Schindler saved him. He then worked in Schindlers factory producing ammunition for the rest of the war.

During the afternoon we visited the castle of Wavel(the hq of polish nazi guvernor Hans Frank) and we also visited the building were Oscar Schindler lived. It is all still here.

Not much more to write right now. Tomorrow we'll visit Tarnow east of Krakow and also some executin spots and remembrance-places. On wednesday its time for Auschwitz 1 and on thursday Auschwitz 2(Birkenau). Stay tune.

TRIVIA: Did you know that Poland is the only country in the world that mentions another nation in their national anthem. The polish anthem contains some lyrics praying for the people to be rescued from the Swedes. Yes it's true - it is referring to the swedish invasion and slaughter of Poles in the 1650's in which the swedes brought a holocaust over the country worse than the nazis.

till next time

/ Kuni

[jon_j_rambo]

Any plans to visit Disney?

[hellraiser]

Disneyschwitz?

LOL JJR, let the man express his feelings and touring impressions ...

Regarding the above posts - a lot of other ppl were mass murdered with few of us rememebering that. It's the good PR the jews got that made their suffering so well known for anyone else on this Earth.

We have to understand that it was a war where everyone killed everyone or at least tried to.

Of course the jewish race was chased and killed all over occupied Europe/Russia because those freaks running the Reich had it as a state policy.

The great suffering of the jews, poles, russians, gipsies, etc only show us what happens when the world is run by idiots and sick people.

Unfortunately humankind never learns from its history and mistakes. And if they , somehow, manage to learn from a mistake, this is just to open up the path for a bigger and more tragic future mistake ...

[JerseyJohn]

Hellraiser. You mentioned (in a locked thread memorializing Simon Wiesenthal) that the Holocaust wasn't a unique tragedy, and you reinforce that here. Absolutely true, but that was already mentioned and has been mentioned consistently the whole time I've been posting here. In fact, read my earlier post in this thread.

If the Third Reich had triumphed they'd have probably killed about 100,000,000 in a decade.

The Final Solution, planning on killing 10,000,000, was a prototype for future slaughters. Those other slaughters were also underway while the war was going on, but it was done as a byproduct compared to how it would have happened in peacetime.

The slaughter of civilians in eastern Europe, in and out of battles, was a deliberate extermination, as was the ruthless pillaging of farms that left nothing for the farmers themselves to eat during the winter. That was planned out a year before Barbarossa was launched. It was the first thing that was discussed, not the last. Goering, overjoyed with himself, slapped his hands together and said, "I wouldn't like to be a Russian come next winter."

-- Disney wanted to turn Manasas, site of two Civil War battles, into a theme park. Goofy guiding tourists to a hill, telling them about Jackson's Brigade and the Union assault, rolling his eyes, "And they call me Goofy! Yuk-Yuk."

-- Gettysburg is almost like a themepark in early July.

[hellraiser]

xkooze me for repeating myself - it was not for you but for people who maybe missed that old thread

Not to mention the responsibility of other countries (you well said that about no1else caring for the j00z) - UK, the USA, basically no1 wanted them not even in their dominions/colonies/whatever.

If you notice that Germany is led by a psycho dude who's aim is to get rid of the j00z, even by wiping them off the face of the Earth, you just say: 'oh, no, sry can't let you go to Palestine, only in packs of 15k/year at most'. Do you trust that whacko bunta leader to come to his senses? Or prevent stuff from happening?

My point is: AH was THE AntiChrist, 100%! But the other leaders of so called democracies were as evil, stupid and blind and deaf to ppl's suffering (especially jews) and deserve to rot in hell for that matter.

Sure, after the war is over, you come and say: OMGWTF look at what the germans did to the jooz and gipsies, etc but never say: I could have prevented this sh*t from happening if I had the slightest intention to do so. They didn't do squat to help those who suffered - and you could spot the madness coming from several years before - and here i fully 2nd Sir jersey. The hunger for power and world dominance takes always precedence, right?

On Kuni's topic now:

Several years back, i managed to talk about 'life in Auschwitz' with a jewish lady bearing the famous Auschwitz tatoo. She was a close friend to my grandma, they spent a lot of time together.

The things that lady told me make any horror movie appear as a cartoon...

She lived in Oradea, a romanian town placed on the border with Hungary. Her drama began in 1944, when suddenly hungarians corraled some 130k jews and sent them to Eichman's exquisite resorts in Poland ... For starters, her family was shot dead, immediately upon arriving in Auschwitz...they took up a lot of space, apparently, and bunta SS maitre du hotel decided to have a clean place over there ... She was a very beautiful woman and was used as an 'entertainer' to SS guys in the camp. Sometimes, being beautiful helps a lot ...

The humiliations she endured cannot be described in words nor the torturing, killing for fun and many other cookies that were served by the SS folks to those in the camp. This are collateral things to the big killing machine (owens, gas) which was cranking out several k of ash bowls per day.

But the lady did not hate the germans as a people. She was a very wise woman, educated although very young at that time. She told me: they were sick people, nothing more. We have a lot of them back home who would have done exactly the same if they had the chance.'

Another thing that impressed me a lot was said by a customer of mine, an old jew from Greece, a very rich person now who also benefitted the 'Arbeit macht frei' special treatment: 'after what i saw and lived myself in Auschwitz, any other thing, no matter how worse, that may happen to me, I consider a gift from the God'.

I think this sums up about everything about this Auscwhitz topic.

[jon_j_rambo]

Here's the casualty numbers from WW-2:

http://www.worldwar-2.net/casualties/world-war-2-casualties-index.htm