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Dimitrys "Conspiracy" post rang a bell about a show I saw a couple years ago. I'm just wondering if anyone remembers it and it's title as I don't. It was on PBS or HBO I think. I caught it about half way through when I was channel surfing. It's basic premise was that the average German had to know about the Holocaust. This program stated that there were some 300 slave labor camps where people were worked/starved to death throughout Germany. Far more than the few famous death camp names we've all heard. The show went from town to town interviewing older citizens who lived and worked in town during WWII. They showed locations of banks/markets/slave labor camps and showed clearly it was impossible to live in the town and not know. Yet all the people interviewed never saw,heard,or knew anything. This show also included the most gruesome footage I've ever seen. There was one case that stands out where hundreds of people were locked in a large barn which was then set on fire. The film and still photos of this event were much harder than the usual holocaust victim footage to watch.Has anyone else seen this show and remember the title ? I sometimes refer to this program when discussion re: Holocaust comes up. I would love to be able to tell people the title.
Thanks
Steve
Follow Ups:
The HBO special on the Wannsee conference is not the first one. I remember from college days a film that reenacted the conference in "real time."The link below (if I added it correctly), may be what you are referring to.
I am not sure about the documentary you watched, but there is a film that deals with this very subject - ignorant bliss of German people living right next to a concentration camp.
It is called THe NASTY GIRL and is most probably available on video.
Basic premise is exactly the same as you descibed.
A young lady living in a peaceful town somewhere in Germany circa 1986-90 writes an essay for a contest about her town in the WWII and little by little she digs up a lot of disgusting things about her fellow townsfolk, inluding the "lack of knowledge" about a camp that was just outside the town walls, and even denial of any wrong-doings on the part of all the people who either worked in that camp or had some business affiliations with the camp. She goes through the usual red tape and becomes a "crazed scape goat" when it's time to forgive and forget. I don't want to disclose the whole film, it is more interesting to watch it than to read what I wrote about it...
It is actually one part of a trilogy that includes
THE WHITE ROSE and MY MOTHER'S COURAGE.
A while after I saw it, I happened to see the follow-up documentary. This woman was ousted from her town because of her questions and consequently left Germany. Naturally she was labeled a left-wing communist psycho. A moving scene is the one where the camera shows the memorial erected after the war, with the names of the ones who died in the camp. All the names were erased right after the memorial was built in the 1940s. The memorial iteslf is covered by some thick bushes, so noone can see it. Yet, officially it exists. Some people who died in the camp were from that town, some people who killed them were also from that town. She is doing research in Washington and writing a book about the way her little pretty town lived during the war.
---------------
Another film that you will find interesting is titled THE TRIAL OF ADOLPH EICHMANN
--------------Steve, one well-known barn burning was in Khatyn', Beylorussia(now the country known as Belarus). Khatyn was a village that was torched by the Germans with its inhabitants, men, women and children. I believe only one man survived. If I remember correctly it was discussed here a year or so ago. All-together 136 villages in Belorus were torched.
I wonder how many villages were torched in Vietnam and in Afghanistan...
Dimitry: It was in April I believe that additional documents were apparently released, it made the international news, concerning the incredible number of "concentration camps," a catch-all phrase including extermination/death camps, work camps, etc. Perhaps someone taped it? In any event, memory serves to recall the number was over 500 camps during the brief German occupation of western Soviet territory and the death toll during little more than a year was quite incredibly, over 5 million according to Soviet sources!! (No pacification/labor attempts in these camps, just a quick extermination of all...since all Soviets, soldiers and non-combatants, were deemed too dangerous to live.)
.
I could have sworn this thing was just two hours long, and I only saw about 1 hour. Maybe they were showing it in 2 hour chunks ? Jeez if that thing was 9 hours at that intensity it would be unwatchable.
Thanks for the response.Steve
What we typically call Holocaust refers to extermination of Jews, Gipsies, gays, and few other groups. There is mixed evidense as far as the widespread knowledge of THAT aspect. Although I myself tend to say that someone was definitely buying the human hair mattresses and lamp shades and handbags made of human skin with tatoo.However, this is altogether different from every German citizen having slaves - the untermenshen, as was promized. It is my impression that slave labor was generally acknowledged, widespread, well known and considered a good thing.
Jews usually didn't make it into the labor camps, as they were sorted out before the prisoners were send there.
This hour or so I saw of Shoah,or whatever it was went from town to town showing photos and maps of small towns where the labor camp was right across from the only market,or 200 meters from the post office. The entire town could not have missed what was happening,yet when interviewed the older citizens asked Camp ? What Camp ? It made the stories I've heard throughout my life about innocence and ignorance on the part of the common German civilian pretty tuff to believe.
Steve
I don't want to lump all Germans into one big ball of slime; there were many many noble souls. Here are the words of one of them-
"I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."
I appreciate that Dimitry and I don't do that. However there was alot more knowledge,maybe not complicity,but knowledge of atrocity.
I think the common German man lost control of his country in the mid 30's. I am not a German history expert but wasn't it about 1934 that Hitler was voted into office ? From then on it was impossible to stop.I have become a big Mozart buff in the last year and as such have listened many hours to his German language operas and concert arias. I found myself very put off at first. When listening to Bastien und Bastienne or Zauberflote where there is substantial spoken German I got uncomfortable. My whole life has been in the shadow of WWII with war films galore. Germans are evil, German is an evil tongue. Well as a very plesant offshoot of my Mozart study I've been able to loose that feeling. I even have a "Learn German" set of CD's I'm about to start on.
I think I would just like more honesty as in the man you quote. Yes I saw and I knew but I couldn't stop it.
Steve
Well, I agree with you 100%.
Hitler became a Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
There is a thing called fear. Noone wants to die; people saw what happened to their neighbors in Germany and in Russia during Stalin's purges. Perhaps their denial is not simply because they are Nazi-sympathizers or monsters. Perhaps it's on a more Freudian, subconscious level? I don't know.
My great-grandfather and grandfather perished in that abyss.
Never being in a situation like that, I honestly cannot say if I'd be strong enough to go the way of the martyrs...
But I hope I would be.Quote that you saw in a previous post belongs to Oscar Schindler.
***However there was alot more knowledge,maybe not complicity,but knowledge of atrocity.That is a VERY difficult question. I used to believe it was much simpler - either you knew or you didn't - until I started talking to many of those who lived through the communist attrocities in the USSR (as we know they killed many more people than Hitler did).
Then I discovered that the third possibility existed - that of blocking the truth, of simply refusing to see it. As a self-preservation reaction, perhaps. As I kept mentioning the "obvious" things that "everyone should have noticed" I kept drawing blank stares from many people I respect. Decent people by any measure.
I still don't have answer to that. Apparently things that are "obvious" today might not have been all that obvious then.
I didn't consider that possibility Victor. Even in a peaceful world we can get into work or relationship situations where the "truth" becomes invisible for a time.Dimitry.... I have seen Nasty Girl. It is very good but almost certainly not the one that is sticking in my mind. I'll try to see it again and make sure. I'll also have to find Shoah. Thanks to both you and Dimitry for your insights.
Steve
One more thing.
11,000 non-Jews are honored as "righteous people" in Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem for saving lives of Jews during the WWII.
When you find the documentary you are looking for, let me know. I'd like to watch it too.
...the people in this forum can discuss issues infinitely weightier than 'tubes versus solid state' or 'DSD versus PCM' with seemingly infinitely more civility than the folks in those other discussions? It's a paradox. I need to spend more time here than in those other places. BTW, Victor, I traded a few messages with you last year when several of us were questioning BAT's decision to "wait and see" regarding hi res digital. Though I've since sampled both new formats (and don't regret it) I'm not quite so ignorant as I was then and now understand your position much more clearly. I buy many more $1 LP's and $7 CD's than $20 SACD's or DVD-A's!On a personal note related to the discussion above, though the name I carry with me is 'Bennett,' the other ones on both sides of my family are 'Huber,' 'Strassel,' and 'Vogel.' ("Bennett" was originally "Bernhardt.") Even though all of them came here around the turn of the century (...the previous one - weird that we now have to use that qualifier), as a German American one can not help but feel somehow related to what happened over there. Not responsible but still somehow related. I once read an interview with Boris Becker (an aside - he was given the name 'Boris' because his father thought it might be helpful for him 'when the Soviets invaded West Germany,' how times have changed...) in which he stated roughly the same thing. A pall of guilt still hangs over Germans who were born two generations after the Holocaust.
One thing should also be remembered besides what has been pointed out by Victor and Dmitry. Many German Americans provided heroic service during the war, including my father and my uncle. My uncle Leo Bross, a gentler soul you've never met, worked his entire life in a greenhouse. At the age of 36, after just having married and with a child on the way, he enlisted. He went in with the first wave on Omaha Beach. He received a battlefield promotion for bravery under fire, served till the end of the war and went back to growing flowers for the rest of his life. My father was a meteorologist who never saw battlefield action, but he did what he could. I'm sure neither of their stories were unique among German Americans. If their parents had never emigrated to this country, perhaps they would have been among those 'who didn't notice.' And maybe my name would be 'Vladimir'....
"My uncle Leo Bross, a gentler soul you've never met, worked his entire life in a greenhouse."Parallels in life are sometimes quite amusing.
The great American poet Theodore Roethke(a German American)was born in 1908, so that makes him your uncle's contemporary. He grew up in Saginaw,Michigan, where his father owned a greenhouse!!!
I Knew A WomanI knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods could speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand,
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay;
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).
I've heard of Roethke but hadn't previously read anything by him. I'll have to find a volume of his work. Kind of runs counter to the stereotype of the emotionless, technocrat, war mongering German. Thanks for the story about his father. My family are all originally from central and southern Ohio - not all that far from Saginaw, MI. Rick
...yet.clark
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b
> > Many German Americans provided heroic service during the war < <I have wondered why there are no films about this. Japanese Americans served during WWII and have been honored both in a motion picture, "Go For Broke", and an excellent video documentary, "Beyond Barbed Wire." They are also the subject of a special section of the excellent Home Of Heroes website (see below).
> > as a German American one can not help but feel somehow related to what happened over there < <
I am a second generation American of Japanese ancestry (both my parents and grandparents were interned during WWII), but have also felt somehow related to the aggression and attack on Pearl Harbor, and more remotely, with the war atrocities committed against the Chinese and Koreans. I yearn for an official apology from Japan for the latter, but unfortunately realize that things change very slowly over there (except for Prime Ministers).
There is indeed very big difference in how Germany and Japan handled their shameful pasts. While Germany had gone out of its way to acknowledge it and compensate the victims, Japan is simply taking an opposite course. That is shame.On a similar note, there is only one way for the Russian regime to clenser itself of ITS attrocities. Thay MUST tear down the Lubianka jail, where so much blood was spilled, where millions perished, and errect a memorial in its place.
With Putin being the scumbag that he is, there is no chance of that. Until then, that horrible building shall remain there, complete with the memorial board bearing Dzerzhinski's ugly face - you can see it between the third and forth windows from the left on the ground floor.
...and you want it torn down? Shame!clark
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