German poster campaign launched to find surviving Nazis

[crustychick]

I have seen these posters springing up everywhere in Berlin and I was a bit wtf?! good idea in theory, but they're going to be really really old now. why wasn't this done earlier? (Sorry, haven't read thread, apols if missed)

 

[maya]

When people use the "oh, they're too old" card, it reminds me of that nasty cnut Pinochet and how the Chilean bereaved, surviving relatives and victims of his atrocities were denied closure and a fair trial when the defence first whinged on and on about how poorly his health were a an old man, then deliberately dragged out the proceedings knowing that not only would he not get a prison sentence because of "health problems", he would also die with a smug grin on his face propped up in his luxury flat surrounded by his own relatives while the relatives of those he persecuted and killed would not get justice at all. If the system had had any backbone at all, and not rigged the trial in his favour because they clearly wanted him to escape punishment, they'd sentenced him to life imprisonment, and thrown him in a cell regardless of his health- at 90-something he didn't have long anyway. And perhaps it'd made him reflect at least a second on how he'd made countless people suffer. I doubt he ever regretted what he did.

...and the scary thing is that I bet many indoctrinated n*zis from WW2 will probably still secretly adhere to the ideology and lack empathy for their victims- I doubt all of them would automatically regret what they've done, regardless of being confronted with the evidence. Once you subscribe to an ideology which labels some people subhuman, you effectively removes compassion for some section of humanity, and you can't de-brainwash everyone once that callous seed clouds the mind.

 

[frogwoman]

and some not so secretly.

 

[maya]

and some not so secretly.

... Aye, unfortunately.

It's actually pretty shocking how lax german society were re: the purge of ex-nazis from public offices, years and years after the war lots of them were still in positions of power... This was partly what people like the Baader-Meinhof faction rebelled against, although I don't condone their methods, it's easy to see why young people felt alienated after the war... Something was rotten in the state of germany. And they labelled themselves "the fatherless generation" (since their fathers were nazis, they couldn't look up to, respect or identify with them- and had to look elsewhere for role models).*

(*An interesting new development to this is the third+fourth generation's reaction of denial: The book/research project "Opa was keine nazi"[?sp- i don't know german but think this was roughly what the title were: "grandfather wasn't a nazi!"] recounts numerous interviews with young germans who mostly couldn't even contemplate that their kind, loving grandparent could have been a nazi- Cue countless "explanations": fantastic stories of percieved subversion of the system, heroic deeds of resistance (including helping jews), and excuses like "but he couldn't have been a REAL nazi! i'm sure he was really secretly against it"... The author concluded with that if all these resistance stories about helping jews were to be true, the entire jewish population would've been saved... People repressed the nasty truth, simply unwilling to accept that their relatives had actively or implicitly taken part in such awful atrocities which they learned about in school as among the worst horrors of history... )

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

No it's a sign that your original argument came from a place of ignorance, though, in which case you could start to look like you're trolling..

Interesting idea. If on a thread I say, for instance, that 0 - 100 in the Celsius scale is the temperature that water freezes to the temperature at which it boils, and someone says, nah, I think you're wrong: and I google and then post a Wikipedia article that confirms what I already know - if I do that, does that mean my original comment [ie water freezing to boiling] came from a place of ignorance?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

3 million dead German servicemen on the Eastern Front (not including the casualties once the retreat entered Germany-proper in late '44-early '45). That's a bit less than half of all German servicemen who served on that front. I kind of think that if they were as prolific rapists as you're promoting them to be, they got theirs..

The question isn't whether they got their just desserts somehow, somewhere - it's whether or not large numbers of German soldiers were executed pursuant to German law, for rape. That isn't the case.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Of course, there's little evidence that they were as prolific at rape as you're claiming, despite almost 70 years in which evidence could have emerged.

Have you concluded that Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel, editors of "Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust" are spreading untruths or exaggerating? How have you reached that conclusion?

 

[frogwoman]

but it doesn't change the fact that many, especially working class, germans hated the nazis. they hated things like having to swear an oath to hitler every day at their place of work. they hated the fact that nazi party functionaries would come in and check whether they were working or not. sabotage and absenteeism among factory workers etc was widespread.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Hedgepeth is a professor of foreign languages and literature at Middle Tennessee State University. Saidel is a political scientist, author, and the founder and executive director of the Remember the Women Institute in New York City.

From left to right, are Rochelle Saidel, Nava Semel, Sonja Hedgepeth and Gloria Steinem in Brooklyn, New York.

These two women hope their book will spark serious discussion and exploration. But it resulted, at least in part, from an effort to keep them silent.

While running a workshop for teachers five years ago at Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial, the pair raised the subject of sexual violence against Jewish women. When Saidel -- author of the book "The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp" -- mentioned rape at that camp, a leading Holocaust scholar interrupted her.

"You can't say that. ... Where's the proof?" Saidel remembers the man saying. "He continued to repeat this every time I ran into him." Saidel declined to name him.

She and Hedgepeth had been meeting younger scholars tackling this issue around the world, in the United States, Israel, Austria and Germany. They knew rape testimonies were on record. They thought if some scholars objected to their work, there likely were reasons they should continue.

When it comes to the Holocaust, what's acceptable for study has been "institutionalized," Hedgepeth says. "Certain topics are sanctioned and some are not."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/06/24/holocaust.rape/index.html

 

[crustychick]

When people use the "oh, they're too old" card, <snip>

I don't think they're "too old" - it just saddens me that they haven't been brought to justice many, many years ago, when there would have been time for them to be able to receive the punishment they deserve, rather than living a long, long life and then spending only their final few years imprisoned or whatever...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Further research on sexual violence perpetrated by Germans during WW2:

In both camps and ghettos, women were particularly vulnerable to beatings and rape. Pregnant Jewish women often tried to conceal their pregnancies or were forced to submit to abortions. Females deported from Poland and the Soviet Union for forced labor in the Reich were often beaten or raped, or forced to submit to sexual relations for food or other necessities or basic comforts.

Pregnancy sometimes resulted for Polish, Soviet, or Yugoslav forced laborers from sexual relations with German men. If so-called “race-experts” determined that the child would not be “Germanizable, the women were generally forced to have abortions, sent to give birth in makeshift nurseries where conditions would guarantee the death of the infants, or simply shipped to the region they came from without food or medical care.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005176

Yet, the more well-known Nazis torture techniques were only one aspect of the suffering endured by Jewish women, for rape was also widespread, despite the existence of Nazis legislation forbidding sexual relations between Aryans and Jewish women. As one Warsaw doctor proclaimed, “One continuously hears of the raping of Jewish girls in Warsaw.”

Indeed, according to Helen Sinnreich, the director of Judaic and Holocaust Studies at Youngstown State University, “There is a strong connection between rape and genocide. Much of the recent scholarship focuses on rape as a tool for carrying out genocide. However, rape occurs during genocide not only as a systematic means of attack but also because it places its victims in physically vulnerable positions with limited or non-existent access to redress.”

http://unitedwithisrael.org/jewish-womens-suffering-during-the-holocaust/

http://www.academia.edu/1545832/And...out_Rape_of_Jewish_Women_during_the_Holocaust

Virtually all woman inducted into camps were sexually abused by being forced to stand naked in front of men, and by having their vaginas poked, prodded, and smeared with caustic disinfectant.

Sometimes soldiers in the Einsatzgruppen who shot Jews into pits in the East first raped young women. Others were forced into prostitution in bordellos or the private homes of soldiers or guards.

Some women were murdered and their bodies then sexually violated. And girls and women saved in hiding by non-Jewish “rescuers” sometimes had to pay with their bodies. In other settings, women were forced to provide sex for food and their means of survival, also a form of rape.

Occasionally a Nazi-appointed Jewish governing council in a ghetto(Judenrat) had to furnish Nazis with pretty young women to (temporarily) prevent the general population’s deportation.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/time-to-talk-about-sexual-violence-during-the-holocaust/

 

[SikhWarrioR]

When people use the "oh, they're too old" card, it reminds me of that nasty cnut Pinochet and how the Chilean bereaved, surviving relatives and victims of his atrocities were denied closure and a fair trial when the defence first whinged on and on about how poorly his health were a an old man, then deliberately dragged out the proceedings knowing that not only would he not get a prison sentence because of "health problems", he would also die with a smug grin on his face propped up in his luxury flat surrounded by his own relatives while the relatives of those he persecuted and killed would not get justice at all. If the system had had any backbone at all, and not rigged the trial in his favour because they clearly wanted him to escape punishment, they'd sentenced him to life imprisonment, and thrown him in a cell regardless of his health- at 90-something he didn't have long anyway. And perhaps it'd made him reflect at least a second on how he'd made countless people suffer. I doubt he ever regretted what he did.

...and the scary thing is that I bet many indoctrinated n*zis from WW2 will probably still secretly adhere to the ideology and lack empathy for their victims- I doubt all of them would automatically regret what they've done, regardless of being confronted with the evidence. Once you subscribe to an ideology which labels some people subhuman, you effectively removes compassion for some section of humanity, and you can't de-brainwash everyone once that callous seed clouds the mind.

What was even worse about pinochet was the way the now thankfully dead great witch thatcher stood up for and tried to apoligise for pinochet

 

[FNG]

JC the Einsatzgruppen were an SS formation not wehrmacht,ditto the concentration camp guards. It was the break down of discipline, desertions,non complience with orders and requests for transfers out of the Einsatzgruppen that lead to the wannsee conference.
Is there any point in posting up this sort of material without a trigger warning to establish a point that no one is arguing against?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Interesting idea. If on a thread I say, for instance, that 0 - 100 in the Celsius scale is the temperature that water freezes to the temperature at which it boils, and someone says, nah, I think you're wrong: and I google and then post a Wikipedia article that confirms what I already know - if I do that, does that mean my original comment [ie water freezing to boiling] came from a place of ignorance?

Mmm, because the two examples are comparable, what with one being a physical law, and the other a matter for historical research, aren't they?

 

[ViolentPanda]

The question isn't whether they got their just desserts somehow, somewhere - it's whether or not large numbers of German soldiers were executed pursuant to German law, for rape. That isn't the case.

No, your assumption, outwith a great deal of historical evidence, is that it isn't the case. You posted 2 links IIRC, that gainsaid the current historical narrative, but didn't present much in the way of evidence to support the theses presented.

 

[frogwoman]

I'm sure there was widespread rape of Jewish women during world war 2. However I don't think you can go from that to arguing that Goldhagen's theory has any merit in it

also, people who were personally anti-semitic often ended up assisting the jews, hiding them etc - in other words they had their views changed by events during the war

 

[ViolentPanda]

Have you concluded that Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel, editors of "Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust" are spreading untruths or exaggerating? How have you reached that conclusion?

I'm not saying anything of the sort, I'm saying that the weight of historical evidence currently available doesn't reflect their narrative as solidly as they might like.
Now, whether that's due to patriarchy, poor record-keeping, a conspiracy to cover up rape by German troops or something even more baroque like their narrative being somewhat value-laden, I don't know. What I do know is that German records reflect prosecutions for rape of Jewish and "Russian Slav" women, and that without the uncovering of new historical evidence to the contrary, claims as to widespread prevalence of rape by German troops cannot be sustained on the evidence alone, only on anecdote.

 

[frogwoman]

if you start saying that the Germans have something intrinsically anti-semitic within the culture then that comes dangerously close to accepting Nazi views about the jews not being able to live in Germany because they are a foreign body in the nation and that sort of shit.

goldhagen's theory has no merit to it, it is simply bollocks, and insulting to the many german people who fought the Nazis

 

[ViolentPanda]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/06/24/holocaust.rape/index.html

For someone with your education, you're coming across as either ignorant of academe, or disingenous. We both know that the foundation on which history is built, outwith "commonsense" narratives, is fact. If you can't provide data to support your theses, then they stay theories.

In the quote you posted, someone asked "where's the proof?". Proof is an essential part of sustaining historical theories. The proof presented is mostly anecdotal, and extrapolates mass abuse from individual anecdote. If an undergrad or a doctoral candidate did this, they'd be laughed out of their academic institution. That two academics have done it is scary.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Further research on sexual violence perpetrated by Germans during WW2:




http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005176



http://unitedwithisrael.org/jewish-womens-suffering-during-the-holocaust/

http://www.academia.edu/1545832/And...out_Rape_of_Jewish_Women_during_the_Holocaust




http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/time-to-talk-about-sexual-violence-during-the-holocaust/

Loadsa links with the words "many", "some" and "often" used liberally, but little attempt at quantification.

can you see what I'm getting at here, Johnny, or are yuou going to insinuate that I'm some kind of misogynist, hmm?

 

[frogwoman]

the Nazis did some horrible horrible stuff in world war 2, to jews and others, i don't think we need to say otherwise or deny that this shit went on (not saying you're doing that). there was the auschwitz brothels and other swamps of moral degeneracy. i don't think scum who forced Jews to use the torah scrolls as toilet paper and shot them when refused to do it or scum who had a whole industry devoted to producing forged death certificates for the disabled children they murdered and had guidelines about each cause of death telling them which one was most "useful" to send out in the form letters to the parents, scum who had jars of gold teeth they'd extracted from the mouths of their victims on desks would have any problem with raping anyone. in the concentration camps and aktion-t4 killing centres they wanted and recruited psychopaths. however the nazis officially at least, viewed the crime of rape quite seriously because of "German blood and German honour" - ie not that rape was bad but the fact that sex wuth "non aryans" was bad. they were trained to view it as disgusting and many of them did. after krystallnacht there were quite a few arrests for rape. not because it was wrong but because its showed they didn't care about "german honour". in other words the Nazis mostly viewed their victims as too disgusting to rape or have any physical contact with.

however the SS and the T4 "doctors" were among the lowest form of scum that have ever inhabited the earth frankly. goldhagen's thesis, that the german national culture promoted a genocidal anti-semitism that most of the german population went along with, is extremely offensive to germans who fought the nazis or participated in every act of resistance they could, let alone jews who live in germany today. it is basically equating the mass of the German people to absolute scum and saying they are like this and could do it again. what does that say about him johnny?

 

[frogwoman]

I don't think that the Nazis were a normal example of a German society, I think that the conditions of the Third Reich enabled shit to rise to the top and attain positions of power it would never have attained even under the normal circumstances of a capitalist state, the Nazi state also placed people in positions of power and control over others who should never, ever have been there, even in the "desk jobs" and the machinery of mass murder and then legitimised it with its ideology. Its ideology was justified by circumstances that had already occurred, for example the "cost-saving" measures in asylums that had already occurred or the the growth in anti-semitism following the first world war and especially the crash of 1929. Once you say that thing like that are in built into the culture you end up excusing it. Under normal circumstances these people would have never have reached these positions of power or if they had they would have been constrained in what they could do, or the circumstances would have meant they were never able to do it.

 

[weltweit]

When Bergen Belsen was liberated, the people in the local town, including the Mayor claimed they had no idea the camp was even there.

There is quite an interesting Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Resistance_to_Nazism

 

[weltweit]

When I lived in Germany, my street was named Von Moltke Strasse after this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_James_Graf_von_Moltke

 

[frogwoman]

When I lived in Germany, my street was named Von Moltke Strasse after this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_James_Graf_von_Moltke

I'm related to him.

 

[Pickman's model]

... Aye, unfortunately.

It's actually pretty shocking how lax german society were re: the purge of ex-nazis from public offices, years and years after the war lots of them were still in positions of power... This was partly what people like the Baader-Meinhof faction rebelled against, although I don't condone their methods, it's easy to see why young people felt alienated after the war... Something was rotten in the state of germany. And they labelled themselves "the fatherless generation" (since their fathers were nazis, they couldn't look up to, respect or identify with them- and had to look elsewhere for role models).*

(*An interesting new development to this is the third+fourth generation's reaction of denial: The book/research project "Opa was keine nazi"[?sp- i don't know german but think this was roughly what the title were: "grandfather wasn't a nazi!"] recounts numerous interviews with young germans who mostly couldn't even contemplate that their kind, loving grandparent could have been a nazi- Cue countless "explanations": fantastic stories of percieved subversion of the system, heroic deeds of resistance (including helping jews), and excuses like "but he couldn't have been a REAL nazi! i'm sure he was really secretly against it"... The author concluded with that if all these resistance stories about helping jews were to be true, the entire jewish population would've been saved... People repressed the nasty truth, simply unwilling to accept that their relatives had actively or implicitly taken part in such awful atrocities which they learned about in school as among the worst horrors of history... )

i think it was hans-joachim klein, out of the revolutionary cells, whose mother was in ravensbruck.

 

[frogwoman]

if anyone wants a nice cheerful read i've uploaded michael burleigh's "death and deliverance" about aktion-t4 and the killing of mental patients during the third reich

i haven't uploaded any of the sources or the index though which is all at the end (I dont understand why people do that, i prefer to have it at the end of each chapter), if people want i can do that as well

http://www.mediafire.com/download/529ajjqw65ky6d6/burleigh1.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/af6ablbt8g6a8yu/burleigh2.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/98iwa9d5h9koh5f/burleigh3.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/3ew23vwacrq2535/burleigh-4.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/xi6l227dm13m3av/burleigh-5.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/mas4l4fps2y13id/burleigh-6.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/833mdgro37cgtc8/burleigh-7.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/yktswj12dhsa2t5/burleigh-8.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/download/7n26vllopncyjfz/burleigh-9.pdf

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Mmm, because the two examples are comparable, what with one being a physical law, and the other a matter for historical research, aren't they?

It's about knowledge.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Loadsa links with the words "many", "some" and "often" used liberally, but little attempt at quantification.

can you see what I'm getting at here, Johnny,

Yes, you're doing the same thing that the scholar did to the author: you're disbelieving her, and the testimony of the survivors who were raped or otherwise sexually abused, or who witnessed these things.

I'm not suggesting that you're a misogynist, but you appear to be taking an inflexible and doctrinaire approach to a topic that has been either downplayed or overlooked, and which is now finally receiving the attention it deserves.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The Germans murdered and tortured their way across Eastern Europe. It doesn't seem much of a stretch to realize that they also committed rape and other sexual violence on a widespread scale. As the author says, and as we've seen in other more recent examples, genocide and rape/sexual violence go hand in hand.