75 Years Ago

Good Evening; Just finished another exhausting evening of TV docs by our multicultural channel SBS comprising 1 hour of Eva Braun and whether she was aware of of what was going on. Followed by a 1 hour doc on the WW2 battles over Narvik and its iron ore, scores of warships sunk by both the Allies and Gemans and the horrendous winter working conditions suffered mainly by Russian PoWs building the railway to transport millions of tons of ore.
Horrifying!
Now showing, a prog. about Albert E. and Stephen H. After 2 hours of stressful viewing, which I feel was my duty to watch, I've put them on recording for later, whilst I compose myself with GN. OoRoo
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75 years ago I was due at Christmas and my father was away fighting. He never said a word about the war and it was never taught at school until recently so I still know little about it.
I have never watched films or read books about any war. I think war is wicked and shameful and best forgotten. Atrocities always happen on all sides and the biggest losers are the women and children.

Well said, Ginny42. We must never forget.

I am not a historian, but I believe that History is a very important subject in the school curriculum.

I visited Auschwitz - it was late afternoon on a dismal day. My daughter and I were the last two visitors to leave. Our hearts were breaking and we were stone cold silent all the way back to our hotel ??

M0nica have you read 'The Lilac girls" by Martha Hale Kelly? It's the sttory of 77 Polish women who were known as the 'rabbits' and subjected to horrific medical experiments by the Germans in Ravensbruck. It is a harrowing but uplifting read and the power of sisterhood and women working together runs through it. It was something I was relatively unaware of. nypost.com/2016/05/11/this-story-of-a-secret-sick-nazi-experiment-was-almost-never-told/

DD studied Schindler's List at A level and found it boring. I then picked it off the table one evening while I was standing up. 5 hours later I was still standing where I stood, immersed in the book.

But I understood DD's problem. SL is written in a very low key wa in order to illustrate the banality of evil and the casual way people lived or died from day to day.

I went down to my local library and borrowed a couple of the more graphic and explicit books on the Holocaust that I could find. To DD's credit, she read them - and then came back to SL and understood it.

The problem was not that she did not know about the Holocaust, but teachers naturally do not go into details of what was done to individuals during the Nazi period, in case some children were distressed, but children of my generation did. there were countless books, war crime trials reported in the newspaper, so we knew.

A younger generation need to know that the Nazi's were not 'just' mass extermination but also vile tortures and medical experiments, that disabled children were killed off, also homosexuals. If they really knew what horrors the Nazi regime perpetrated, they would probably be less obsessed by them and want to avoid them as bestial beyond belief.

Why on earth do you watch these things?
Bradford: I'm not one for preaching, but I think your comment was uncalled for and unnecessary. It must be obvious "why".

Because people need to know the truth. We read histories of other wars and conflicts from the past, so why not know the truth of what happened at that time?

It's important to remember that those atrocities committed against unknown numbers of human souls were only prevented from including the people of Britain too, by the courage of that generation. We must never forget that. There is nothing mawkish or gruesome about learning the truth. Respecting the memory of those who perished is an honourable thing and peace is to be treasured.

Why on earth do you watch these things?

Have you discussed the Holocaust with your own DC and DGC?
We host, mostly young, travellers from different countries, but usually from Europe and I have been made aware that the Germans are sick of living with the guilt. One girl, aged 20 who we are very fond of as she has stayed with us several times, says we in the UK are obsessed with the war, war films and where the Germans are constantly shown as the baddies.
I hope you are not right if you think that Brexit, if it happens, will cause a wave of misplaced patriotism and the rise of the extremists.

Everything we can do to avert this happening is good including encouraging multi cultural youth groups, United Nations, organisations such as Town Twinning, cultural exchanges, teacher and student exchanges, whatever it takes. to develop and encourage international friendship and understanding.

Some of the groups I am or have been involved with are;

servas.org/
www.helpx.net/
woodcraft.org.uk//

I recommend all of them.

I would imagine that fear played a part in many ordinary Germans not voicing their opinions against the actions of Hitler and the Nazi Party - they would likely "disappear" if they said anything.

trisher, your first paragraph is an awful warning to those who voted Brexit. promises of jam tomorrow are never what they promise.

Some of our own 'landed gentry' also thought highly of Hitler.
To be fair, in the 30s, before WW2 started.

I had some years ago German friend whose mother had been a huge supporter of Hitler. She said the poverty for Germans after WW1 was terrible and it was Hitler's promise of wealth and success for people and the country that drew people like her mother to him.
The concentration camps were terrible and I have seen the programme. But we should also remember that the signs of what was happening in Germany were largely ignored by other countries. Hitler was seen as the solution and some actively supported the actions he took against socialists, seeing him as a block to communism. If some action had been taken when he first started killing those who did not fit in his Aryan race, including the disabled, the camps might not have happened. It's a lesson that the signs of fascism shouldn't be ignored.

small majority who voted for the folly of Brexit
Annodomini; "The Law of Unintended Consequences" at work again! I didn't think about Brexit at the time and that this thread could be hi-jacked; silly me!
It's been all over our TV News , that is until displaced by H.K. My excuse is that we are over 12,000 miles from the action! Whilst I'm here, could I put in another factor relating to the longevity of peace;? namely nuclear weapons!

That looks a very interesting read Fennel and I see it gets 4+ stars out of 5 in reviews. I’ve made a note of it for future Kindle ordering.

This book is written by someone who interviewed many German women who had lived through WW2. I found it fascinating. Opened my eyes to the complexity of the times:
www.goodreads.com/book/show/708735.Frauen

Oh gawd.

I don’t think it’s at all hard to see how the German people got carried along on a wave of patriotism it is the same adoration of xenophobia that Trump, Farage, and Tommy Robinson fans exhibit
When Brexit first started out Three years ago a shop not far from my town and happily run by an Eastern European for years was targeted it was thrashed, windows broken, goods stolen thrown and smashed, slogans of Go home xxxxx etc painted on the walls who could imagine that would happen in U.K. in 2013 but they were revved up by false news and xenophobia it’s not hard to see how it could happen again
it terrifies me and one of the main reasons I want to stay with the EU

Yes, TwiceAsNice, I too was deeply affected by that film. My own children, a boy and a girl, were a similar age to those in the film. I was numb and traumatise for a week after and yes, I too can still see the unthinkable agony so effectively conveyed by Meryl Streep.

I too feel real horror and sadness over what happened although I was born after the war. Only fiction but I remember watching Sophie’s Choice years ago and I felt traumatised. I can still see that mother forced to make a choice between which child she saved or both would die. She felt hat choosing one child would have a slim chance of life. Can’t bear what she must have gone through

I have watched several films about this subject and my husband can not understand why i do as they always upset me. But as i explained to him, we must never forget how these poor people suffered and how lucky we are.
Also hopefully younger people will make sure it never happens in the future. That of course is is they are taught about it in school or watch films and documentries on the subject, which somehow i do doubt.

What I find very difficult to understand is how the German people seemed if not complicit at least to turn a blind eye.

To this end I am reading “Alone in Berlin” at the moment written by Hans Fallada.

Not an easy read and hardly conducive to the upcoming season, but the writing is excellent and vividly descriptive of life in Berlin’s apartment blocks under the Third Reich.

I love Berlin, but I can see in my minds eye as I read this book how it must have been during that period for the ordinary German.

Highly recommended if you don’t mind depressing reality, so very well written.

M0nica is right about the link with leaving Europe. Memories of what happened in WW2 was the main reason for the EU being set up.
Some of the stories are so horrific, maybe that's why many people don't want to know.

I have visited Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek in Poland. I cannot describe what it feels like to be in those places. The exhibitions movingly and graphically portray the horrors which took place, but even more deeply affecting, is the unthinkable inhumanity, pain and suffering which is almost palpable as you walk round the landscape.

Let us be united in Europe against this ever happening again.

In the lifetime of many of us here, ordinary people with mothers, fathers, children, were somehow brought down to participating in these atrocities.