Holocaust: the facts

[danny la rouge]

I just started listening to this audiobook: Richard Evans' 'The Coming of the Third Reich' available on youtube for free. I don't know how good/accurate

He's very good. I have his Irving trial book (although I just went to my Nazi shelf to see the exact title and see it's missing, so I must have loaned it or put it somewhere daft). He's more on the functionalist side of the fence (along with most modern thought), and is very good on antecedents to Nazism.

 

[frogwoman]

He's very good. I have his Irving trial book (although I just went to my Nazi shelf to see the exact title and see it's missing, so I must have loaned it or put it somewhere daft). He's more on the functionalist side of the fence (along with most modern thought), and is very good on antecedents to Nazism.

Just hearing about antisemitism in the 1880s now, he's saying about how successful they ended up being and how integrated (something like 1/4 marriages of jewish people were between jews and christians in some areas) in Germany, and the overwhelming support of the jewish community for german nationalism.

it's really interesting, i never actually knew some of this stuff

 

[frogwoman]

some of the shit these german nationalists are saying is depressingly familiar

'the antisemites were riven by internecine disputes', lol.

 

[danny la rouge]

I am slowly working my way through ‘The Holocaust’ by Laurence Reeves. It’s very comprehensive, goes back to 1918 looking at how Hitler was able to use existing anti-Semitism to grow in power etc. Has testimony from Nazis as well as survivors and is really well put together. Would highly recommend from what I’ve read so far. Never actually read a historical book like this on the Holocaust, has only been documentaries and personal survivor testimony.

Rees. Yes, it came out just after this thread was started, I think. I haven't read it, but his documentary The Nazis: A Warning from History is excellent, and is recommended in the OP.

 

[frogwoman]

listening to this now is actually quite scary when you think of what's going on in the USA.

 

[krtek a houby]

I am slowly working my way through ‘The Holocaust’ by Laurence Reeves. It’s very comprehensive, goes back to 1918 looking at how Hitler was able to use existing anti-Semitism to grow in power etc. Has testimony from Nazis as well as survivors and is really well put together. Would highly recommend from what I’ve read so far. Never actually read a historical book like this on the Holocaust, has only been documentaries and personal survivor testimony.

It's excellent and accessible. Another recommendation from me.

 

[Don Troooomp]

listening to this now is actually quite scary when you think of what's going on in the USA.

It's sort of a fashion to link whoever to the Nazis, but I wonder who many parallels there are to the Nazi's early days and what that orange idiot is doing right now.
Creating hate as a norm is an obvious start, but I wonder how much more matches up.

 

[frogwoman]

It's excellent and accessible. Another recommendation from me.

is it upsetting? well obviously given the subject matter it would be but i find it difficult to read graphic accounts of gas chambers etc.

 

[frogwoman]

It's sort of a fashion to link whoever to the Nazis, but I wonder who many parallels there are to the Nazi's early days and what that orange idiot is doing right now.
Creating hate as a norm is an obvious start, but I wonder how much more matches up.

I wasn't necessarily thinking about trump or even antisemites in general tbh, more of the position of the jewish community and how it's described in the audiobook, but yeah

 

[krtek a houby]

is it upsetting? well obviously given the subject matter it would be but i find it difficult to read graphic accounts of gas chambers etc.

Argh, sorry. I got it mixed up with The Nazis - A Warning from History. Which is, in itself, upsetting but less on the graphic detail, I'm guessing.

I mostly avoided books and docs about the nazis for so long but after we visited Auschwitz, I just had to know more.

 

[butchersapron]

listening to this now is actually quite scary when you think of what's going on in the USA.

This book is the first part of a three volume set. The second two books are as massive and detailed as the first. Evans is criticised by a lot of modern historians for being a rankean throwback (that is, an old school collector of strictly sourced facts assembled in a chronological order with as little interpretive impact as possible). It's true that he is very old fashioned - even to the extent of being an old-school tory - but this approach works very well for this particular period, it's useful.

On pre-WW1 anti-semitism in Germany (or the lack of it in the popular classes and it's near ubiquity amongst the elites) the first 100 page section of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History by Arno Mayer is an excellent intro. There are many many more in-depth books on the subject but i would recommend that section before going there.

 

[frogwoman]

Argh, sorry. I got it mixed up with The Nazis - A Warning from History. Which is, in itself, upsetting but less on the graphic detail, I'm guessing.

I mostly avoided books and docs about the nazis for so long but after we visited Auschwitz, I just had to know more.

i'd 'like' to go there at some point but i get very upset about this stuff so i don't know if it would be good for me to go.

 

[butchersapron]

It's sort of a fashion to link whoever to the Nazis, but I wonder who many parallels there are to the Nazi's early days and what that orange idiot is doing right now.
Creating hate as a norm is an obvious start, but I wonder how much more matches up.

Or we could have a look at the thread title and intention and maybe not.

 

[frogwoman]

This book is the first part of a three volume set. The second two books are as massive and detailed as the first. Evans is criticised by a lot of modern historians for being a rankean throwback (that is, an old school collector of strictly sourced facts assembled in a chronological order with as little interpretive impact as possible). It's true that he is very old fashioned - even to the extent of being an old-school tory - but this approach works very well for this particular period, it's useful.

On pre-WW1 anti-semitism in Germany (or the lack of it in the popular classes and it's near ubiquity amongst the elites) the first 100 page section of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History by Arno Mayer is an excellent intro. There are many many more in-depth books on the subject but i would recommend that section before going there.

thank you! yeah in the preface he talks about how discussions of the nazis should be free from 'moral judgement' lol. i know he doesn't mean it in terms of being an edgey dickhead but it was a bit wtf.

 

[krtek a houby]

i'd 'like' to go there at some point but i get very upset about this stuff so i don't know if it would be good for me to go.

I was the same. We were in Krakow and our friend said it's important to see it but I was dubious about it. My better half said we'd regret it if we didn't, so we got the bus out to the location. They showed a documentaty on the bus, which was upsetting. I guess it was to make us ready for the experience.

It was when we got to the room with all the hair clippings, I finally caved in to all the building emotion. Afterwards, I said to my friend that I understood why she only visited it the one time.

Personally, I do feel (like Hiroshima and other places of infinite sadness) they are worth that visit. But you may need a drink after and someone to share your emotions with.

 

[frogwoman]

I was the same. We were in Krakow and our friend said it's important to see it but I was dubious about it. My better half said we'd regret it if we didn't, so we got the bus out to the location. They showed a documentaty on the bus, which was upsetting. I guess it was to make us ready for the experience.

It was when we got to the room with all the hair clippings, I finally caved in to all the building emotion. Afterwards, I said to my friend that I understood why she only visited it the one time.

Personally, I do feel (like Hiroshima and other places of infinite sadness) they are worth that visit. But you may need a drink after and someone to share your emotions with.

yeah i don't know if i can cope with seeing that sort of thing, i mean i can cope with watching stuff about nazis on tv or in books but i don't know if i could actually cope with seeing it. because of the fear of antisemitism/fascism as well tbh.

 

[krtek a houby]

yeah i don't know if i can cope with seeing that sort of thing, i mean i can cope with watching stuff about nazis on tv or in books but i don't know if i could actually cope with seeing it. because of the fear of antisemitism/fascism as well tbh.

Of course. I had to have my arm twisted for that particular visit. It's not for everybody.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I was the same. We were in Krakow and our friend said it's important to see it but I was dubious about it. My better half said we'd regret it if we didn't, so we got the bus out to the location. They showed a documentaty on the bus, which was upsetting. I guess it was to make us ready for the experience.

It was when we got to the room with all the hair clippings, I finally caved in to all the building emotion. Afterwards, I said to my friend that I understood why she only visited it the one time.

Personally, I do feel (like Hiroshima and other places of infinite sadness) they are worth that visit. But you may need a drink after and someone to share your emotions with.

I had a very similar experience. It was the piles and piles of children's shoes that got to me.

 

[mojo pixy]

I remembered someone this weekend, during a conversation with a friend, and I feel really driven to mention him here.

A very old man who used to play the violin outside the Dizengoff shopping centre in Tel Aviv, whom I gave money every time I saw / heard - his playing was astonishing, enough to make me wait for him to finish a piece one day and speak to him. He told me his name was Itzhak, and he'd played as lead violin in the Krakow Symphony Orchestra during the 1930s. I did believe him, he was definitely old enough. He still had a thick Polish accent, even I noticed as a foreigner speaking a strange language.

He said he'd been in Auschwitz and survived, then come to Palestine in 1946 (he even called it that, I remember) and never once left Israel since it had been declared. I asked him why he busked, I said I thought it was terrible that he had to work like that at his age. He laughed and said he didn't have to, he had pensions, but if he didn't go out to play on a day he just felt like dying.

Anyway, not many facts here, but he was real and almost certainly is dead now. But his story is one of thousands just like it, and probably belongs here.

 

[Grump]

I was helping out at a craft fair on Saturday, staffing a stall selling stuff made by people who come to classes put on by my wife's educational charity. It was a lovely day, live music, food, great weather and everyone enjoying themselves. The vicar from the church it was being held at came up and we had a chat about all the work he is doing locally and he then said he would buy a couple of items. Fumbling in his pocket he said, 'can't get my money out, you can see I am Jewish'. I am a long way from being a liberal snowflake but I was stunned. When he left my wife and I looked at each other and both wondered if we should have said something. Only trivial in one sense but it shows what darkness bubbles under and how important it is to never forget where such unthinking attitudes can lead.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Anecdote .last year or so, I went with mrs NBE to the Odessa region with the kids to get a handle on her Jewish background and see where they lived and stuff. We knew the UK side of the story but wanted to find out more about Jewish Kherson and Odessa. there is a Jewish museum which is basically one blokes flat. we spent some time there and did a bit of wider exploration. seems about whilst maybe 100K were slaughtered in the area ( many not actually from Odessa) , several tens of thousands were sent on winter death marches that were soley designed to kill them off en route. in the suburbs of Odessa, there is a park with a monument where as the march passed, many children and babies were pushed and thrown into the lines of watching locals to save them from death. most of the kids and babies were grabbed and hidden from sight by the locals, some were wrenched back from the onlookers and forced to rejoin the march.

some cunts regularly vandalise the monument with Nazi shite to this day

can you imagine abandoning your kids like this? any kids...it fucking kills me thinking about it now. like fucking tears in my eyes

 

[Pickman's model]

I was helping out at a craft fair on Saturday, staffing a stall selling stuff made by people who come to classes put on by my wife's educational charity. It was a lovely day, live music, food, great weather and everyone enjoying themselves. The vicar from the church it was being held at came up and we had a chat about all the work he is doing locally and he then said he would buy a couple of items. Fumbling in his pocket he said, 'can't get my money out, you can see I am Jewish'. I am a long way from being a liberal snowflake but I was stunned. When he left my wife and I looked at each other and both wondered if we should have said something. Only trivial in one sense but it shows what darkness bubbles under and how important it is to never forget where such unthinking attitudes can lead.

i suspect there is work he is doing locally of which you are unaware.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Anecdote .last year or so, I went with mrs NBE to the Odessa region with the kids to get a handle on her Jewish background and see where they lived and stuff. We knew the UK side of the story but wanted to find out more about Jewish Kherson and Odessa. there is a Jewish museum which is basically one blokes flat. we spent some time there and did a bit of wider exploration. seems about whilst maybe 100K were slaughtered in the area ( many not actually from Odessa) , several tens of thousands were sent on winter death marches that were soley designed to kill them off en route. in the suburbs of Odessa, there is a park with a monument where as the march passed, many children and babies were pushed and thrown into the lines of watching locals to save them from death. most of the kids and babies were grabbed and hidden from sight by the locals, some were wrenched back from the onlookers and forced to rejoin the march.

some cunts regularly vandalise the monument with Nazi shite to this day

can you imagine abandoning your kids like this? it fucking kills me thinking about it now.

Beyond grim.

 

[frogwoman]

most people don't realise how prevalent it still is until it affects them directly. Grump

 

[purenarcotic]

Rees. Yes, it came out just after this thread was started, I think. I haven't read it, but his documentary The Nazis: A Warning from History is excellent, and is recommended in the OP.

Yeah I’ve watched that - he also did a very good BBC one, titled something like The Final Solution which was excellent.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

This guys work taught me so much.

Only putting up this one as it's relatively short.



His book "bloodlands" (first about Stalin, then Hitler) should be on YT as an audiobook. It's very long and bleak but compelling and vital too.

 

[Ralph Llama]

It's sort of a fashion to link whoever to the Nazis, but I wonder who many parallels there are to the Nazi's early days and what that orange idiot is doing right now.
Creating hate as a norm is an obvious start, but I wonder how much more matches up.

This Newsweek article from a couple of years ago makes some interesting comparisons :

What makes the comparison between Hitler and Trump so poignant is not just the rhetorical marginalization of groups, lifestyles or beliefs, but the fact that both men represent their personal character as the antidote to all social and political problems.
Neither Hitler nor Trump campaign on specific policies, beyond a few slogans. Instead, both promise a new vision of leadership. They portray the existing political systems as fundamentally corrupt, incompetent, and, most importantly, unable to generate decisive action in the face of pressing problems.

Both use their personal biographies—or rather, the highly edited accounts of their personal biographies they present to the media—to conjure up a new style of politics, which is based neither on expertise nor on detailed policy proposals. Instead—they suggest—their own personal 'struggle' shaped them into—supposedly—authentic leaders, capable of overcoming adversity through sheer force of character. In this scenario, democracy has less to do with representative institutions than with a leader who is intuitively 'in tune' with the sentiments of the people.

Opinion: Just how similar is Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler?

 

[Fedayn]

Anecdote .last year or so, I went with mrs NBE to the Odessa region with the kids to get a handle on her Jewish background and see where they lived and stuff. We knew the UK side of the story but wanted to find out more about Jewish Kherson and Odessa. there is a Jewish museum which is basically one blokes flat. we spent some time there and did a bit of wider exploration. seems about whilst maybe 100K were slaughtered in the area ( many not actually from Odessa) , several tens of thousands were sent on winter death marches that were soley designed to kill them off en route. in the suburbs of Odessa, there is a park with a monument where as the march passed, many children and babies were pushed and thrown into the lines of watching locals to save them from death. most of the kids and babies were grabbed and hidden from sight by the locals, some were wrenched back from the onlookers and forced to rejoin the march.

some cunts regularly vandalise the monument with Nazi shite to this day

can you imagine abandoning your kids like this? any kids...it fucking kills me thinking about it now. like fucking tears in my eyes

1941 Odessa massacre - Wikipedia

The only Jew to survive the 1941 Odessa massacre

There was a short programme on 'Jewish Odessa' on TV a while back, it was on Eorpa I think. It wasn't too detailed but was rather interesting.

 

[Fedayn]

Just hearing about antisemitism in the 1880s now, he's saying about how successful they ended up being and how integrated (something like 1/4 marriages of jewish people were between jews and christians in some areas) in Germany, and the overwhelming support of the jewish community for german nationalism.

it's really interesting, i never actually knew some of this stuff

Was reading years ago that German Jews were some of the most integrated Jews in Europe, unlike other countries their 'Jewishness' was less obvious. The marriage stats seem to tie in with that

 

[not-bono-ever]

^^ that's the puppy right there- didn't realise the trees were planted to represent those who hid the jews