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Since we're on the topic of Germany WWII. I read a couple books about Treblinka over the weekend. The atrocities that happened there were sickening. To read abo

Since we're on the topic of Germany WWII. I read a couple books about Treblinka over the weekend. The atrocities that happened there were sickening. To read about what these people were forced to do there in this death camp is painful. The Germans and Ukrainians who did these horrific acts of murder and torture were unaffected by it, as told by two authors who survived. It leaves me with more questions than answers. How can people do this to others, it takes so little to motivate people to turn into savage murders, and why did then not teach us about these death camps in school. Everyone knows about Auschwitz but they skipped over the pure death camps and focused more on the rah-rah we're winning battles than observing the suffering that took place. It all makes me sad. It makes me sad knowing what some people in America the "free" country were going through during this time too.

arethuza 6y ago
A few years back we did a tour of Auschwitz - the excellent Polish guide gave us his personal view that there is nothing about Germans that made them prone to such acts and that many countries to this day routinely plan for far greater acts of slaughter and somehow we think this is normal.
- hsod 6y ago
  Interesting. I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the author makes the opposite case: the German people, due to their founding mythology and geopolitical history, were susceptible to ideas of authoritarianism and racial superiority. Hegel and Nietszche provided a popular philosophical backing for the supremacy of the state and the view of individuals as primarily agents of the state rather than free actors in their own right. Hitler saw this and built a political movement around it.
kazen44 6y ago
i don't know where you are from, but the education about the holocaust i received was especially memorable because it went through great detail explaining how the holocaust was different from the millenia of bloodshed and genocide that happened before. (European history is drowned in blood and suppresion sadly). The holocaust is especially horrifying because it turned killing into an abstract process that made apathy the "silent killer" so to speak. The holocaust was possible because step by step, the dehumanization and abstraction of the process resulted in people being able to be apathetic to it.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "The holocaust was possible because step by step, the dehumanization and abstraction of the process resulted in people being able to be apathetic to it." Abstraction of the process is not required nor is a process of dehumanization if it's already culturally ingrained. It is rarely spoken of but the Japanese occupation of Asia immediately preceding and during WWII caused nearly triple the deaths of the Holocaust (the vast majority being civilian) with as much or greater brutality in many cases and was not neatly confined to camps but widespread across all of Japan's occupied territories.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Speaking of dehumanisation and abstraction, Roberto Begnini's "math problem" scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhuGKejDq8&t=116 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhuGKejDq8&t=116 came to mind during March-era discussions of possible Covid responses.
wazoox 6y ago
In Indonesia in the 60s several hundred thousands people categorized as communists were deported, tortured killed and often massacred (with the active support of the USA). Nobody was punished for that or asked for repentance, ever. There is a documentary were some old guys tell and show, while laughing, how they throated children, raped women, etc. They're happy old people still boasting about their horrible crimes 55 years later. Almost nobody knows about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing
pjc50 6y ago
Arendt and the "banality of evil" is the often-quoted exploration of this question; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah...
frudenstein92 6y ago
I'm not familiar with the role of Ukrainians here but I'd expect them to be particularly vengeful given the events in the preceding decade. The opportunity to exact revenge upon Bolsheviks who systematically genocided tens of millions of your people through starvation would be impossible to resist. Some resorted to exchanging children with neighbors so that they would not have to kill and cannibalise their own. Imagine those Jews are now caged up, having picked their next fight with the wrong people. I can't say I'd do any less.
chewz 6y ago
If you are interested in the topic read - Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland > Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/647492.Ordinary_Men https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/647492.Ordinary_Men https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84 https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti... > The first mass murder takes place in a Polish town called Jozefow. The commander of the unit was teary-eyed and choked up when he gave the order to his men. Accounts hold that he even gave them a way out, stating that if any man didn’t think they were up for the challenge (of murdering thousands of Jews on that day), they were free to step down. About twelve men (among hundreds) decided to step down and opt out of the killing. > Ultimately, these bakers, salesmen, and police officers were directly responsible for the deaths of 38,000 men, women and children through mass-shootings, and another 45,200 through collecting people from the ghettos and forcing them onto trains for Treblinka (a Nazi extermination camp). > Browning offers up a variety of reasons that these ordinary men participated in genocide, some more pertinent than others. Among those reasons are deference to authority, psychological need for conformity, fear of a brutal regime, fear of looking “weak” in front of other members of the battalion, detachment from the people they were killing, and indoctrination via the Nazi propaganda machine. None of these individual reasons would have been enough to drive ordinary men to mass murder, but altogether, the reasons became enough for many of them. Also Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust is a good detailed telling of logic of events that lead to invention of extermination camps (it was easier on the consience of Einsatztruppen) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16891.Masters_of_Death https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16891.Masters_of_Death PS. Also reading president Weizsäcker's speech kep in mind that Germany and Austria actively opposed justice upon perpetrators of Holocaust and other war crimes in the East.
dang 6y ago
It's extremely difficult to look at that suffering. The mind can't handle it, so we put filters between ourselves and it. I recently read a memoir by a woman who survived Auschwitz and eventually became a psychotherapist in the US. (Hint: if that sounds like Viktor Frankl, it's not by coincidence.) Her story is astonishing. But the chapters about the camp and the death march after it are not easy. I had to pause a lot. https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Dr-Edith-Eva-Eger/dp/150113079X https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Dr-Edith-Eva-Eger/dp/150113079...
markvdb 6y ago
You may want to read the wartime letters of the German writer Heinrich Böll. A rather unique perspective on WWII by a conscripted soldier who would later become a Nobel prize winner. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll

arethuza 6y ago

A few years back we did a tour of Auschwitz - the excellent Polish guide gave us his personal view that there is nothing about Germans that made them prone to such acts and that many countries to this day routinely plan for far greater acts of slaughter and somehow we think this is normal.

hsod 6y ago
Interesting. I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the author makes the opposite case: the German people, due to their founding mythology and geopolitical history, were susceptible to ideas of authoritarianism and racial superiority. Hegel and Nietszche provided a popular philosophical backing for the supremacy of the state and the view of individuals as primarily agents of the state rather than free actors in their own right. Hitler saw this and built a political movement around it.

kazen44 6y ago

i don't know where you are from, but the education about the holocaust i received was especially memorable because it went through great detail explaining how the holocaust was different from the millenia of bloodshed and genocide that happened before. (European history is drowned in blood and suppresion sadly). The holocaust is especially horrifying because it turned killing into an abstract process that made apathy the "silent killer" so to speak. The holocaust was possible because step by step, the dehumanization and abstraction of the process resulted in people being able to be apathetic to it.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "The holocaust was possible because step by step, the dehumanization and abstraction of the process resulted in people being able to be apathetic to it." Abstraction of the process is not required nor is a process of dehumanization if it's already culturally ingrained. It is rarely spoken of but the Japanese occupation of Asia immediately preceding and during WWII caused nearly triple the deaths of the Holocaust (the vast majority being civilian) with as much or greater brutality in many cases and was not neatly confined to camps but widespread across all of Japan's occupied territories.
082349872349872 6y ago
Speaking of dehumanisation and abstraction, Roberto Begnini's "math problem" scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhuGKejDq8&t=116 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhuGKejDq8&t=116 came to mind during March-era discussions of possible Covid responses.

wazoox 6y ago

In Indonesia in the 60s several hundred thousands people categorized as communists were deported, tortured killed and often massacred (with the active support of the USA). Nobody was punished for that or asked for repentance, ever. There is a documentary were some old guys tell and show, while laughing, how they throated children, raped women, etc. They're happy old people still boasting about their horrible crimes 55 years later. Almost nobody knows about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing

pjc50 6y ago

Arendt and the "banality of evil" is the often-quoted exploration of this question; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah...

frudenstein92 6y ago

I'm not familiar with the role of Ukrainians here but I'd expect them to be particularly vengeful given the events in the preceding decade. The opportunity to exact revenge upon Bolsheviks who systematically genocided tens of millions of your people through starvation would be impossible to resist. Some resorted to exchanging children with neighbors so that they would not have to kill and cannibalise their own. Imagine those Jews are now caged up, having picked their next fight with the wrong people. I can't say I'd do any less.

chewz 6y ago

If you are interested in the topic read - Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland > Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/647492.Ordinary_Men https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/647492.Ordinary_Men https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution-ebook/dp/B01G1F0F84 https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Soluti... > The first mass murder takes place in a Polish town called Jozefow. The commander of the unit was teary-eyed and choked up when he gave the order to his men. Accounts hold that he even gave them a way out, stating that if any man didn’t think they were up for the challenge (of murdering thousands of Jews on that day), they were free to step down. About twelve men (among hundreds) decided to step down and opt out of the killing. > Ultimately, these bakers, salesmen, and police officers were directly responsible for the deaths of 38,000 men, women and children through mass-shootings, and another 45,200 through collecting people from the ghettos and forcing them onto trains for Treblinka (a Nazi extermination camp). > Browning offers up a variety of reasons that these ordinary men participated in genocide, some more pertinent than others. Among those reasons are deference to authority, psychological need for conformity, fear of a brutal regime, fear of looking “weak” in front of other members of the battalion, detachment from the people they were killing, and indoctrination via the Nazi propaganda machine. None of these individual reasons would have been enough to drive ordinary men to mass murder, but altogether, the reasons became enough for many of them. Also Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust is a good detailed telling of logic of events that lead to invention of extermination camps (it was easier on the consience of Einsatztruppen) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16891.Masters_of_Death https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16891.Masters_of_Death PS. Also reading president Weizsäcker's speech kep in mind that Germany and Austria actively opposed justice upon perpetrators of Holocaust and other war crimes in the East.

dang 6y ago

It's extremely difficult to look at that suffering. The mind can't handle it, so we put filters between ourselves and it. I recently read a memoir by a woman who survived Auschwitz and eventually became a psychotherapist in the US. (Hint: if that sounds like Viktor Frankl, it's not by coincidence.) Her story is astonishing. But the chapters about the camp and the death march after it are not easy. I had to pause a lot. https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Dr-Edith-Eva-Eger/dp/150113079X https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Dr-Edith-Eva-Eger/dp/150113079...

markvdb 6y ago

You may want to read the wartime letters of the German writer Heinrich Böll. A rather unique perspective on WWII by a conscripted soldier who would later become a Nobel prize winner. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_B%C3%B6ll