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January 27, 1945

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
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Forty-four thousand pairs of shoes.

https://www.history.com/news/auschwitz-liberation-soviets-holocaust

shoes.jpg

Soviet troops enter the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

https://www.ushmm.org/information/e...bitions/special-focus/liberation-of-auschwitz

https://youtu.be/Upv02jl76c4
 
Have we learned anything?
 
Dad (Utah Beach and Battle of the Bulge) took us to Dacahu (among many other historic locations like US Cemetery in Luxembourg, Ann Frank's home, etc) when I was about 12-13 (He re-joined the Army after a 16 year break following WWII). Had huge impact on me and how I view the world even to this day.
 
Gliderman8 said:
Have we learned anything?
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We've learned a lot - and it ain't good.

We've learned that almost every human being can do horrible things to other human beings. Many people crave a strong leader, to tell them what to do, to fix all their problems, and to single out groups to blame the problems on.

And if we don't teach the young about what happened, to ask questions instead of "joining the group", it'll keep happening.
 
Don’t know of any other species that executes their own.
 
Basil said:
Dad (Utah Beach and Battle of the Bulge) took us to Dacahu (among many other historic locations like US Cemetery in Luxembourg, Ann Frank's home, etc) when I was about 12-13 (He re-joined the Army after a 16 year break following WWII). Had huge impact on me and how I view the world even to this day.
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I went to Dachau as well... sobering place and time.
 
Gliderman8 said:
It’s scary that the “experiment” was so easy to pull off.
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Hadn't really occurred to me before to associate the two; but my junior high school social studies class did something somewhat similar either that year or the next. We were looking not at fascism, but at the stock market crash of 1929 and why so many people were dramatically over-extended buying stock on margin. Given a small nest egg of "cash", we could buy stock either for cash or on as little as 10% margin (meaning that 90% of the value was borrowed from a bank, using the stock as collateral). Also various grades of stock to buy, from junk bonds to blue chips. Even knowing the market was going to crash, I think pretty much everyone wound up deeply in debt. The temptation to invest was just too great when the market was soaring.

Not really comparable, just an example of a somewhat similar social experiment. I don't think they do things like that any more; but I have to say that it was far more educational (and entertaining) than just reading about it from a book.

Probably one of those passing educational theories that sound good, but don't work out so well (in the fascism case anyway).
 
To show how this is fading from memory, on the local news last night the young lady reading it, who is probably no more than early 30s, kept mispronouncing A[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]uschwitz as "oh SHO wits", and didn't really when talking to the other anchor seem to understand exactly what it was and the scale of the crime. I learned about that period early on in history since the vets were then in middle age and everyone had family who served during WW2. So the picture was much clearer and closer for we who were young back then.[/FONT]
 
I had a first person "learning moment" when I worked for Social Security back in the 1970s.

An older gentleman came in to apply for Medicare. The law requires proof of age.

He gave me his passport, showing his birth in Poland in the 1920s. But the passport was only a few years old. I asked if he had some form of identification made closer to his birth.

He rolled up his shirt sleeve and I saw the number tattooed on his arm.

Silence. Horrible.
 
NutmegCT said:
I had a first person "learning moment" when I worked for Social Security back in the 1970s.

An older gentleman came in to apply for Medicare. The law requires proof of age.

He gave me his passport, showing his birth in Poland in the 1920s. But the passport was only a few years old. I asked if he had some form of identification made closer to his birth.

He rolled up his shirt sleeve and I saw the number tattooed on his arm.

Silence. Horrible.
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My father's first real girlfriend was Jewish and sent to Auschwitz - he never saw her again. Needless to say he never spoke of it.
 
Father survived Utah beach, the Ardennes in February, 1945, and made it until crossing the Ruhr, where he was knocked out of an anti-aircraft quad-fifty AA mount. by an 88 round. Mother lost her first husband in a P-38 crash. I was made aware of the atrocities early in life. As well as much of the history of the war and what led up to it. My in-laws all escaped the Russians and later the Nazis. Got many first-person accounts from those folks too, Mostly involving a bottle of vodka and Sunday afternoons. I miss those times, those folks.

mikephillips said:
I learned about that period early on in history since the vets were then in middle age and everyone had family who served during WW2. So the picture was much clearer and closer for we who were young back then.
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Yup. And TV shows like "The Big Picture" and others would give us insight to that history as well. Both European and Pacific theaters. I fear it has all been watered down to a point it truly IS just a few paragraphs in a classroom book. If at all.
 
NutmegCT said:
I had a first person "learning moment" when I worked for Social Security back in the 1970s.

An older gentleman came in to apply for Medicare. The law requires proof of age.

He gave me his passport, showing his birth in Poland in the 1920s. But the passport was only a few years old. I asked if he had some form of identification made closer to his birth.

He rolled up his shirt sleeve and I saw the number tattooed on his arm.

Silence. Horrible.
Click to expand...

That must have been a choked up moment.
 
I have to at least mention that it is absolutely mind numbing (and chilling) the amount of traction that holocaust deniers are getting and the general rewriting of history vis a vis Hitler.
 
There was a gentleman that worked at a luncheonette at the train station in the town that I grew up in. He had numbers tattooed on his forearm. One day a customer asked him “why don’t you have them removed?”
His one word reply was “NEVER”.
 
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