This is what we woke up to and it snowed all day from there. Mitch was up early and cleaned the whole 14 inch high driveway and the wide berm the old fashioned way--with a shovel! What a job. I think Mitch is a purist. Mitch had a friend pick him up from Susanville so they could check out a house to rent.I settled in for a great movie day. Netflix had delivered the second to the last DVD of "War and Remembrance". Horror scenes in Auschwitz! Later I watched more of the PBS Auschwitz series and learned some new things.
Nazi leaders were concerned at how this "Final Solution" was affecting the SS in charge but according to survivor SS soldiers they preferred this assignment to the Front. They had ample food and drink and actually were not affected by the horrors they committed. Few were the least bit sympathetic. They had been indoctrinated from childhood that the Jews had caused them great harm and even the children needed to be killed. They understood and accepted this.
In one instance at the beginning 4100 children were taken from their mothers (who were killed) and sent to survive for themselves with other political prisoners in a concentration camp. Later they were all put in a cattle car and taken many miles to be gassed.
A study done later has reflected on the fact that the morals of a society can best be judged by the way it treats it's children.
The Nazis learned to keep the children with the parents and went to great lengths to deceive them as to what was going to happen to them. They made the entrance appear to be a pleasant train station with signs. They were lined up and some were chosen to be preserved to work themselves to death and others with children or the old and weak were sent for disinfection. They were told to put their clothes with valuables in pockets in neat piles or on hooks. They were herded to showers, which were actually gas, and then they fell to their deaths while wedged closely together naked. It was a learning procedure as the Nazi's learned just the right amount to kill them quickly. I won't soon forget those images.
The lengths the Nazis went to for secrecy is amazing. They even falsified a whole community for a Red Cross inspection from Denmark to show that the Danish Jews were being treated very well. The inhabitants (after the great show) were later sent to camps to be gassed.
They tried different methods of disposal until they built the ovens and then had the ashes sent down the river to the Baltic Sea. Nazis were rewarded for their lack of compassion. One of the most ruthless SS was a 20 year old farm girl. After the war she was executed as a War Criminal. Where had she learned to be so evil growing up on a farm???
So hard to conceive of a people so full of hate! The money, jewels, diamonds, etc. that were found in the pockets was all meticulously recorded and sent to Berlin. The Nazis gained great wealth and property from the Jews. I was surprised that the Jews were taken from all over Europe, even the English Channel Islands. Such deception. The unbelievable thing is that when news first came out about what the Nazis had done it was not believed. It was buried in the back of newspapers so they would not look foolish as they were duped into publishing it. Even U S military officers who tried to get the truth out were demoted because they were pushing propaganda. It was too unbelievable... what was being leaked out as fact.
One question unanswered is why the US would not bomb Auschwitz crematoriums, etc in June 1944 when proof was furnished from escapees and they asked the US to bomb so the killings would have to stop. In another incident Eichmann offered to sell 1 million Jews for 10 trucks and England and the allies would not do it and a note on a memo said, "They might want to sell more and what would we do with them?" The Hungarian leaders cooperated with the Nazis on furnishing Hungary Jews.
Not enough was done by others who could have helped even when the truth was known.
There was about 1% of the people who were sympathetic to the homeless children and a few were taken in to live as an invisible person with a family until the end of the war. It is remarkable that there were as few as there were but they were all frightened for their own survival so intense was the rounding up of the Jewish people.
As they realized the war was lost, the remaining prisoners were put in cattle cars and then left in remote places to die!!! There were about 2000 children who were saved by by the liberating Russian soldiers. Most of them wre twins who Dr. Carl Menger had been experimenting on.
Another horror of the liberation is that the slave labor Jewish women were raped over and over by the Soviet soldiers who were supposedly saving them!!!
There were possibly no lessons to be learned from Auschwitz except to what depths of evil and horror the human being is capable of. And even though it was said, "Never Again" there has been genocide in the world since then and the world community did nothing (Ruwanda and Darfur, etc) The PBS series "Auschwitz" is very educational and yet sickening to hear the truth.