Remembering Auschwitz

Again, I'd urge people to look at the story of Pilecki. He was sending information out of Auschwitz from 1941.
There is evidence of this....he escaped in 1943.

ALEXA, if you can, please continue the Amnesty International letters and cards. When you read accounts from victims, after their release, they often say how helpful it was to get these messages, which in many cases hastened their release.
There are so many good thoughts on this thread today.

lemongrove You said I wonder if the Polish people feel a collective guilt about the camps?Many worked there and collaborated enthusiastically with the Germans
Just pointed out that it wasn't always enthusiastic and not cooperating brought terrible repercussions. Read about the Rabbits and their amazing survival thanks to other women in the camp www.rememberravensbruck.com/projects

I suppose none of us can even for one second comprehend what it was like in there.

Nor, can we predict how we would behave. What a cruel thing it was.

Of course it wasn’t always the case trisher but there certainly were plenty who were happy to co-operate with the Germans.Polish people do know this btw.

I will find the book you recommend on Amazon and read it Dee.

Of course there was a small gas chamber at the main camp of Auschwitz from quite early in the war. I have seen it and stood in it. It’s very sobering to stand and know what was done there. I was told it was used to kill the sick who could no longer work.

The huge gas chambers I was referring to earlier, built at Birkenau, the second and much larger Auschwitz camp, was where the Final Solution was carried out. There thousands of people could be killed at one time. They were built in 1943. What was done there is, in my opinion, the worst atrocity of all atrocities ever committed, and there have been a lot.

I still maintain that the allies were not truly aware of the magnitude of the crime till the liberation.

Lemon grove is correct, many Poles cooperated with the Nazis. A Jew on the run could be betrayed for a few bags of sugar, the Poles were kept near starvation level. Equally many Poles did not cooperate, and many helped Jews who were in hiding.

I think its very unfair to criticise what the people of occupied countries did during the war. We have no conception of what this must have been like. What would we have done to protect ourselves and our families.

There is no doubt that SOME Poles cooperated but many? and enthusiastically? If you resisted, if you were found in any way to be acting against the Nazis you and all your family suffered.
From Martha Hall Kelly who wrote Lilac Girls
Writing Lilac Girls, I had a great time researching the girl guides, a group instrumental to the Polish underground during WWII. In that war, the Polish resistance movement was the largest in all of Nazi-occupied Europe and Polish Girl Scouts (called Girl Guides abroad) joined in huge numbers. It was a natural progression for the girls, since it was an established social network. Frustrated by their Nazi oppressors who tried to wipe out Poland and Polish culture the Guides did important work to fight back

If we were being threatened with being shot, maybe so Sodapop but not for any other reasons.The truth is that the Poles who were happy to co-operate did so for material goods and because they despised Jews.The Poles who were good people, didn’t.

If you want to read more
marthahallkelly.com/you-wont-believe-how-many-girl-scouts-joined-the-polish-underground-in-wwii/

I agree that in many occupied countries, some people collaborated with the Nazi's, maybe through fear, maybe through a desire to be less likely to suffer at their hands.

I know anti semitism exists everywhere but there are records of pogroms and persecution of Jewish people in Eastern Europe throughout history. Russian Jews, Polish Jews, Hungarian Jews all forced to flee death threats towards their communities.

In August 1945 in Krakow, a number of Jewish people were killed, attacked, humiliated, their synagogues attacked. It seems anti semitic beliefs such as that Jews drank the blood of Christian children they had murdered were behind these attacks. Anti semitism was recorded in many Polish cities between 1945 - 1946 with the result many who had returned to their former homes when they were liberated from Auschwitz left Poland.

40% of the prisoners in Ravensbruck were Polish political prisoners. Why don't they get the recognition for their sacrifice? A Polish Boy Scout troop was executed by the Nazis. But the Poles "cooperated enthusiastically". Not to mention of course the Polish Free Forces who came to this country to fight leaving their families behind and who were not united at the end of WW2 because Churchill gave Poland to the Russians.

trisher, one of my sons in law had a Polish grandfather. He escaped a concentration camp and came to England, goodness knows how. He'd been an engineer and volunteered to work with the free polish forces.
What do you mean, why don't they get recognition? So far as I can see, they do. The Free Polish Forces are rightly admired and commemorated.

trisher....it’s not all one way you know! There were those who were happy to give up any Jews and those who weren’t.
Many Jewish Poles who felt unsafe in Poland after the war came and settled in my home town ( in the North.)
The brave Polish people do receive recognition btw but that doesn’t mean that a lot of Polish people did dislike/hate Jews.
Poland was /is a strongly Catholic country.

It was the ' dignity ' of those who give/gave their personal accounts that always resonates with me.

They ask only for what they suffered to never to be forgotten for the sake of the future generations.

I mentioned previously in my post a speech at the Auschwitz Memorial on Monday talking about the ' 11th Commandment ' and Auschwitz not ' falling from the sky ' and I have found an extract from Marion Turski and felt the need to post it. One of many I could post but he had a standing ovation.

Extract:-

Marian Turski, deported to Auschwitz from the Litzmannstadt ghetto, addressed in the introduction the generation of his daughter and grandchildren:

“When I meet the young nowadays, I realize that after 70, 75 years they seem to get bored, they are a little bored with this subject. The war, Holocaust, Shoah… and I do understand them. So I promise you, the young, that I’m not going to talk about my sufferings, I’m not going to talk about what I had gone through, about my two death marches, how I lived to see the end of the war with my body weight of 32 kg on the verge of death, exhaustion. I’m not going to talk about the worst: the tragedy of saying goodbye, the tragedy of leaving our dear ones, when you see after the selection, when you feel what fate they are awaiting. No, I’m not going to talk about it.'

‘I see that the President of Austria van der Bellen is here among us. Mister President, you remember, when you received me and the leaders of the International Auschwitz Committee, when we were talking about that time: you used such sentence: “Auschwitz ist night for himmelgefahlen”. Auschwitz had not fallen from the sky. It can be said, as we say it, it is obvious obviousness. Sure, it had not fallen from the sky. It can even seem trivial, but it is an extremely deep mental shortcut, important to be understood’, he said.

‘My Dear, here in Europe, the majority of us has Judeo-Christian origins, both believers and non-believers adopt the 10 commandments as their canon. My dearest friend, President of the International Auschwitz Committee Roman Kent, could not come here, but he developed the 11th commandment, which is the experience of the Shoah, the Holocaust, the experience of this cruel era of contempt: do not stay indifferent. I would like to tell this to my daughter’s and grandchildren’s peers, wherever they live, in Israel, in Western or Eastern Europe. Do not stay indifferent when you see historical lies, do not stay indifferent when you see that the past is adapted to current political needs. Do not stay indifferent when any minority is discriminated, as democracy assumes that the rights of minorities need to be protected at the same time. Obey the commandment. 11th commandment: do not stay indifferent. Unless you do so, in the blink of an eye, an Auschwitz will suddenly fall from the sky’, Marian Turski emphasized.

Iam64 read lemongrove's posts. She seems to think all Poles were anti-semitic and cooperated. They had the largest resistance group and were imprisoned but apparently that does not count. The Polish Free Forces have been acknowledged I agree. I just mentioned them because it was another way of resisting, and there was resistance.

Thank you for the information on Neuengamme Tickingbird.
I am shocked to hear some of the comments you have written about. How could anyone think the Holocaust should be forgotten?
I can't bear to read about the horrific experiments conducted by evil men and yet people had to suffer them.
Rowantree, I’m so, so sorry to hear about your grandparents.
I'm sure we could have taken more Jews, I don't know why we didn't.

We all know there are a lot of people especially innocent children suffering in many countries at the minute, and that it’s wrong to ignore it. And yet that's what's happening.
I don’t know how to make a big difference, Alexa. We can speak out in support of present day refugees, write letters and support Amnesty International. It is worth doing.
And we can lead by example in our own country and love our neighbour as Maddyone reminds us. Small steps help.

I believe that the Allies did know what was happening...In December 1942, Anthony Eden told the British parliament, in a statement on behalf of the UK, the US and the Soviet governments, that the Nazis were in the process of exterminating the Jews. Eden said that a similar statement was also being read out in Moscow and Washington at the same time.
“The German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule extends, the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people,” In March 1943, the Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, head of the Church of England, pleaded with the British government to accept Jewish refugees who were in danger of being massacred. There is other proof that the Allies knew the extent of the Holocaust already in 1942. Again, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial states in a report to the UN that “During 1942, reports of a Nazi plan to murder all the Jews – including details on methods, numbers, and locations – reached Allied and neutral leaders from many sources.”
Perhaps more could have been done in terms of accepting refugees at the time (30's)?

I suggest that it’s you that needs to go back and read my posts trisher...it’s simply untrue to say as you have that I ‘seem to say all Poles were anti- Semitic’.
You have read one book on the subject and that seems to have coloured your views entirely.Some were and behaved badly and others didn’t.
Let’s allow the thread to continue and if necessary, agree to disagree.

Rowantree ...that was a rotten experience for you, when you wanted quiet and peace.I have heard that the chattering groups of people are becoming more and more common, when you would expect a hushed and dignified ( nay, horrified) reaction.

Lots of European (Eastern) countries were deeply antisemitic before the war, Russia in particular, and many people were only too happy to hand Jews over to the Nazis. Lithuanians joined execution squads with enthusiasm as did many others,it wasn't just Germans who behaved atrociously. As for betraying Poland ? What else could we have realistically done? take on Stalin and drive back the Russians? on our own of course don't think America or France or anyone else would have been up for WW3! This country was in ruins, bankrupt, heavily in debt and completely on it's knees, food being airlifted to Holland in particular as the Dutch were literally starving owing to the slash,steal or burn policy of the retreating Germans. Yes,we did that! My mother was a war widow, my uncle in France, my 2nd cousin killed in North Africa so we certainly didn't want any more death in our family.

lemongrove all you had to do was admit it wasn't many and most weren't enthusiastic. I've posted about one book and indeed I think the story of the Ravensbruck Rabbits and their survival is a great story of women's solidarity, which is of course always under remembered. But the opposiion to the Nazis and the persecution people suffered often because of their poltical persuasions is somethng I have investigated. It's a pity you can't say the same.

They do say (re: history) First time tragedy - second time Farce. But is it farce that so much of the attitudes regarding Jews is now in force in UK with people of the Islamic faith?? Families drown at sea, the call is to send 'back' any that may make it here!! How many people in England at present would be quite content to see Concentration Camps being built for these refugees and (horrible thought) would even go along with a carefully orchestrated extermination programme??

trisher.....read Jabberwock’s post above....Poland was much the same.I do not need to ‘admit’ anything, having read quite a lot on this subject, many were enthusiastic.After the war, Poland naturally wanted this aspect to be swept under the carpet.
Now, please stop trying to turn the thread into a personal spat.