Holocaust Memorial

Sometimes whitewave I wonder if I'd be brave enough. I'd like to think I would but......?

We need to show passion and anger when we see division and hate. We must never be afraid to defend our principles no matter how hard. We must always point to what we see as an injustice wherever it is taking place.

Sadly we don't seem to learn from the past. I too watched the Antiques Roadshow and I too had tears on my face. It was so incredibly moving and hearing what families had to say made it so very real. I really liked the 'boys' tapestry. What a wonderful idea. Also I didn't know that some fleeing parents were told to suffocate their children if they cried in case the Nazis in the locality heard and caught them all. It's so very hard to believe the cruelty that went on - and that cruelty in various forms is taking place today.

From the past

This is a subject very close to my heart.

If you are interested, please read "If this is a man" by Primo Levi (Se questo è un uomo). It is one of the most important books of the 20th Century and written by a man who lived through the horrors , survived and felt he owed a duty to tell the story of those who did not.

This is the preface:

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Medititate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.

One of the very sad truisms of History, is that mankind does not always learn from the last.

My DH's Parents fled Austria in 1939, my FiL had witnessed dreadful scenes in the streets before WWII after the Nazis annexed Austria. DH's Uncle also came to the UK at around the same time (I haven't accessed his records yet). My FiL also had to apply for his & MiLs Passports to be amended from German Nationality back to Austrian. Both my DH & BiL were born in UK.

I too watched Antiques Roadshow & recorded it as I want to watch again, such a moving programme

I visited Belsen over 45 years ago yet the utter silence stays with me. It was wintertime and the ground was covered with snow, somehow making the desolation beautiful, yet that is not a word I'm comfortable using in this setting. What amazed me was there were no footprints in the snow of birds, rabbits or anything else, only the human visitors who all kept to the footpaths. I'd previously poo-poohed the notion that the birds don't sing in that place - how could the birds possibly be affected? - yet it was as if the rest of the world had stopped at the gates.

Like so many of you I watched the programme with a lump in my throat and with tears rolling down my cheeks. Of course I've seen reports and read of the atrocities throughout my life but I think I will make a point of watching/reading about it at least once a year. Lest we forget.

*Cari *Yes I watched it too and was moved beyond words, tears or anything. Literally transfixed.

This is part of our family history , DH lost family in both the Russian Pogroms and the death camps , I lost loved ones in the camps , we are unable to visit these camps because it would be too painful .. but it is good to know that some of you have . We dont believe that the world will ever learn from these sacrifices and horrors , the sadness sometimes overwhelms me .

I found the Antiques Roadshow memorial very moving too, when they held up the yellow stars of David it brought a lump to my throat. I have visited Oradour sur Glane, a French village in the Limousin near where I live. All the villagers were massacred by the Waffen SS including the children. President de Gaulle decreed the village should be left just as it was after the massacre, childrens toys around, bullet holes in the church where people were shot, and the cemetery where whole families are buried who died on the same day. I can't tell you how moving it is and how respectful all the visitors are.
What lessons have we learned ?

realise

We visited Dachau many years ago and the experience has never left me.

I still visualise it all many years later and wonder at the horror of what humans can do to each other.

I also don't understand those who deny history. I reallise that 'history' is written by the victors but there has been much recently that undermines events in these camps. In time, will people forget or disbelieve?

There is a quotation from Santyana at Dachau: 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. So true.

Now the unspeakable David Irving claims he has many young followers on his Ho!ocaust denying website. Something has to happen to address this but I don't what.

Cari The book is called The Holocaust: A New History. It is by Laurence Rees. The reviewer gave it a 5 star rating.

I am so relieved to read that when GNs have visited these sites the atmosphere has been respectful. I have seen photos on social media where people have taken grinning selfies so hopefully these were in the minority.

I maywell have lost relatives in the holocaust but I have no way of knowing. I have been to visit Dachau and Bergen Belsen but simply couldn't go all the way in because the aura for me was to great The Nazi regime managed to kill another 4 million as well as the 6 million Jews but Stalin killed 20 million during his infamous reign. Yet there are still deniers in the face of all the evidence. There have been genocides committed since and no doubt there will be others in the future as long as people are prepared to turn a blind eye

Yes * blinko* I so agree

I watched and recorded this programme and like others, I was in tears for most of the programme. We visited Auschwitz last year and found it a very moving and respectful visit, not a touristy thing at all. My 10 year old grandson has recently covered WW2 at school and was interested in the subject. I think he would find the programme interesting but will suggest he watches with his mother rather than me since she knows how the school taught it. He was very moved by a visit to the War Museum asking questions about how people could do this to each other.

The Holocaust is also part of my family history. My mother was at Auschwitz and Belsen and research has shown that the next generation has been deeply affected by their parents' experiences, so it doesn't all end with the second world war.

I don't see opening up camps for visitors as touristy at all. It is essential for educational purposes and to preserve the memory of what happened.

Some misguided people suggest that the murder of as many as 6 million Jews never happened and that Hitler knew nothing about what went on. I have never understood why they deny an event for which there is plenty of evidence or why they would wish to make out that Hitler was actually a well-intentioned person!

Keeping the camps open for visitors helps to counter this propaganda.

I too have bee to Austwitz with DH, D and sil. We found the whole experience deeply moving. There were bus loads of Jewish school children visiting at the same time. Some of them were less than respectful. Maybe they were just too young to really understand what happened there. I took some photos but only for my own memories. I would never show them publicly

As has been pointed out, the Holocaust is not the only such atrocity in recent memory. In order to 'learn lessons' (and how often do we hear that phrase?), surely we also need to understand why and how this can happen.

We identify and empathise with the victims, but to learn lessons must we not also be able to relate to the perpetrators?

We are all human beings. what is it that makes us become these monsters, who can mete out such harm to fellow human beings?

That surely is the lesson we should be considering.

I have been to Aushwitz/Birkenau and the whole visit was very respectful .I saw no one taking a selfie and our guide admonished a group of school children who were a being a little loud .Most people are reduced to contemplative silence .Very little chatter And you wear headphones for the guides commentary so that doesnt intrude either .You would have to be totally lacking in human feeling not to be horrified and moved. It isnt at all like a standard tourist attraction
We felt impelled to go on our visit to Krakow but I have no need /desire to visit another camp .Equally instructive are the Schindler museum in Krakow and the Jewish museums in Paris,Vienna and Berlin .A Jewish friend visted the latter recently He knew his deceased mother (left Germany on the Kindertransport as did his father)had left her papers to the museum but he did not expect to find material in her own handwriting .She never talked about the privations they'd suffered before getting out ,nor what happended to her parents
Said friend lost all four grandparents in the camps. He has a huge zest for life. I sometimes think I he feels he owes to them to live his own life to the full .

I saw last night's programme too and it was very moving.
It is all very relevant to my family history too: I never knew my grandparents because they were murdered at Auschwitz. Two gentle people, one who was a nurse in WW1 and always thought of other people, and a teacher who had earned the Iron Cross in WW1.
My father was one of the Kinder who was lucky enough to escape death and come over to Britain to start a new life. I am so proud of him for his courage and determination but it was incredibly hard and his family were, like so many others, torn to shreds and those who survived were scattered over the world.
Sadly persecution and genocide is still very much with us; we allow it to continue.Israel is one of the perpetrators and they should know better. My father is very sad about that, as will so much more.
I have never visited Auschwitz and hope to later this year; it's where my grandparents, and others of my family, ended their days, and I feel the need to see it.