[Misc] Holocaust Memorial Day

[AmexRuislip]

There were some good programs on to mark this. The Windermere Children is something I’d only vaguely heard of before but there was a good documentary about them as well as a dramatisation on BBC I think.

Good shout, I watched this afternoon.
Very good viewing and I have learnt a bit more on thses atrocious events

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I'm half Hungarian.
Many years ago I met one of my fathers friends, he was an elderly Hungarian man and he sat hunched in an oversized suit, like he was willing the chair to swallow him up.
He sat with us for a couple of hours but hardly said a word then abruptly stood up and left.
After he left my father told me that he was in fact the same age as him my father then being in his early 50's then and that they were old friends.
One day towards the end of WW2 (when Hungary was run by the facist Arrow Cross) he was visiting relatives when he was suddenly bundled into a cellar and told to hide in an old wooden box and told not to come out until someone came for him.
He stayed in the box for hours and eventually when no one came he snuck out.
His whole whole family was gone. I guess he must have been about 10 or 11.

Between 14th May 1944 and 9th July 1944 434,351 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz. 80% of them were gassed on arrival the remaining 20% were used as slave labour or used in medical experiments.

I lit a candle for him and his family.

Choose love, understanding and kindness folks. It is the only way.

Nearly 40 years ago I started my PhD. One of the professors in my department was Rudi Vrba. One of the most amazing people I ever knew. He once told me 'never explain'. There was a context, and he was right. 'Never forgive' was another of his. If you read his story you can understand why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba

 

[AmexRuislip]

Nearly 40 years ago I started my PhD. One of the professors in my department was Rudi Vrba. One of the most amazing people I ever knew. He once told me 'never explain'. There was a context, and he was right. 'Never forgive' was another of his. If you read his story you can understand why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba

Thank you

 

[portslade seagull]

There were some good programs on to mark this. The Windermere Children is something I’d only vaguely heard of before but there was a good documentary about them as well as a dramatisation on BBC I think.

I watched a couple on one of the Sky history channels last night. Harrowing those poor children

 

[joydivisionovengloves]

Nearly 40 years ago I started my PhD. One of the professors in my department was Rudi Vrba. One of the most amazing people I ever knew. He once told me 'never explain'. There was a context, and he was right. 'Never forgive' was another of his. If you read his story you can understand why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba

Wow, what a person to have known, I knew of his name because of the report.
It just all leaves me speechless really.
We met these people, this happened during their lifetime. Like it was only yesterday.

 

[Is it PotG?]

https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/news/2464013/albion-support-holocaust-memorial-day

 

[GrizzlingGammon]

If you're on Twitter, follow the Auschwitz Memorial. Each day they tweet people who were born on that date, their country of origin, nationality and generally the reason they were sent to Aschwitz/Birkenau. It started with Poles, then Jews, Soviet soldiers and then onto other categories of people.
https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum

The children are particularly painful to read about, but necessary to remember.

[tweet]1354389019484975105[/tweet]

To highlight the Auschwitz Memorial twitter account again.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

The story of Sir Nicholas Winton who helped children to escape the Holocaust.

[tweet]1486628317117693952[/tweet]

 

[vegster]

Such a terrible tragedy, we must never forget and, we should remember the heroism of those who did what they could to try to save people.

Although this was probably the most shameful episode in " Human " history there were some shining lights who did all they could to save people.

 

[Brovion]

Should have stayed Holocaust only - including all genocide weakens the message. Same as people condemning 'all violence' when they're just avoiding directly criticising specific violence.

I'm forced to agree. And no that doesn't mean I 'don't care' about the Armenians, Rwandans, the Holodomor, etc etc, it's just that this day was always in remembrance of the suffering inflicted by the Nazis (and not just to the Jews). Saying 'we should remember all genocides', is like the people who when asked if they're opposed to antisemitism say they're opposed to 'All forms of discrimination', or the people who say 'All lives matter'. It's a cop-out.

Trying to process all the suffering caused by the Holocaust is bad enough, but when you add all the other examples of human barbarism to the mix and it just becomes a generic, almost incomprehensible pit of mixed-up misery where no lessons can be learned. (Other than that humans can be complete ********).

 

[cunning fergus]

I have the boxset of A World At War

Obviously each episode is hard viewing

But the one that covers the holocaust is particularly harrowing

There are no words

Utter madness

Those poor people

Never forget

Very true.

If you are interested I would recommend the film “The sorrow and the pity” which evidences the depth of collaboration in France post 1940. In some parts of France the French rounded up French jews without any requests or demands by the Germans. Really shocking, and it was banned by De Gaulle.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/17/france-admits-deporting-jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_and_the_Pity

Terrible episode in human history, we should never forget.

 

[GREASED WEASEL]

Very true.

If you are interested I would recommend the film “The sorrow and the pity” which evidences the depth of collaboration in France post 1940. In some parts of France the French rounded up French jews without any requests or demands by the Germans. Really shocking, and it was banned by De Gaulle.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/17/france-admits-deporting-jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_and_the_Pity

Terrible episode in human history, we should never forget.

A very dark period of history for the French
That resonates even to this day
Thanks for the link,will have a look at that

 

[rippleman]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60088598

The video interview of one of the survivors at the end of the article is well worth a watch.

A candle in the window tonight at 8pm to remember those murdered in the holocaust and in genocides that followed.

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

Very true.

If you are interested I would recommend the film “The sorrow and the pity” which evidences the depth of collaboration in France post 1940. In some parts of France the French rounded up French jews without any requests or demands by the Germans. Really shocking, and it was banned by De Gaulle.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/17/france-admits-deporting-jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_and_the_Pity

Terrible episode in human history, we should never forget.

And to a lesser extent it wasn't exactly the finest hour for the Allied Forces

Newly accessed material from the United Nations – not seen for around 70 years – shows that as early as December 1942, the US, UK and Soviet governments were aware that at least two million Jews had been murdered and a further five million were at risk of being killed, and were preparing charges. Despite this, the Allied Powers did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary to those in mortal danger.

Indeed, in March 1943, Viscount Cranborne, a minister in the war cabinet of Winston Churchill, said the Jews should not be considered a special case and that the British Empire was already too full of refugees to offer a safe haven to any more.

 

[jakarta]

And to a lesser extent it wasn't exactly the finest hour for the Allied Forces

Newly accessed material from the United Nations – not seen for around 70 years – shows that as early as December 1942, the US, UK and Soviet governments were aware that at least two million Jews had been murdered and a further five million were at risk of being killed, and were preparing charges. Despite this, the Allied Powers did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary to those in mortal danger.

Indeed, in March 1943, Viscount Cranborne, a minister in the war cabinet of Winston Churchill, said the Jews should not be considered a special case and that the British Empire was already too full of refugees to offer a safe haven to any more.

Well to be fair, in March 1943 how exactly we were going to get Jews out of Germany?

 

[Thunder Bolt]

And to a lesser extent it wasn't exactly the finest hour for the Allied Forces

Newly accessed material from the United Nations – not seen for around 70 years – shows that as early as December 1942, the US, UK and Soviet governments were aware that at least two million Jews had been murdered and a further five million were at risk of being killed, and were preparing charges. Despite this, the Allied Powers did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary to those in mortal danger.

Indeed, in March 1943, Viscount Cranborne, a minister in the war cabinet of Winston Churchill, said the Jews should not be considered a special case and that the British Empire was already too full of refugees to offer a safe haven to any more.

Sir Nicholas Winton was only allowed to get children out, not their parents.

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

Well to be fair, in March 1943 how exactly we were going to get Jews out of Germany?

They could have also bombed the railway lines that went into the camps and disrupted the flow of people into them but they chose not to for various reasons

 

[Hugo Rune]

Genocides unfortunately has been a common thing among humans for a very, very long time. We're most likely talking hundreds of thousands of years.

I’d not be surprised if evidence comes to light that the extinction of the Neanderthals was due to genocide 40,000 years ago.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

They could have also bombed the railway lines that went into the camps and disrupted the flow of people into them but they chose not to for various reasons

Wasn’t Poland out of range, especially when there were armament factories which needed bombing in Germany?

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

Wasn’t Poland out of range, especially when there were armament factories which needed bombing in Germany?

I'm just going by various TV programs I've seen and I suppose they had a lot of difficult decisions to prioritise as to which would be most effective in ending the war, but it does seem to me that the Jews and others in the concentration camps got the short end of the stick.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing