97yo convicted in Holocaust trial

[icowden]

There's merit in the argument that she, and many others like her, would not have had any real choice. Political repression in Germany from the mid thirties had been such that people that disagreed with the government had either left, were sent to concentration camps or were dead, so if you knew what was good for you you kept your head down and did as you were told. Sophia Scholl is an exception, but it takes an exceptional character to do what she did, and I myself don't think I would be that brave.

She might be an exception but she does fit with your previous rationale in that she was executed aged 21.

 

[The Crofted Crest]

@Fab Foodie
As an aside, the two architects who designed Auschwitz were Bauhaus graduates.

 

[matticus]

Political repression in Germany from the mid thirties had been such that people that disagreed with the government had either left, were sent to concentration camps or were dead, so if you knew what was good for you you kept your head down and did as you were told. Sophia Scholl is an exception, but it takes an exceptional character to do what she did, and I myself don't think I would be that brave.

Quite a story:
She did do what she was told - but then she also distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. No-one held a gun to her head, or sent her to a camp...

Nope - it was the guillotine for her. I didn't even know it was in use in Nazi Germany. <gulp>

 

[Beebo]

Quite a story:
She did do what she was told - but then she also distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. No-one held a gun to her head, or sent her to a camp...

Nope - it was the guillotine for her. I didn't even know it was in use in Nazi Germany. <gulp>

She grew up in an anti Nazi family who were passionate about their beliefs, so whilst her story is amazing, we can’t expect many people to follow her.
As CR said, the average citizen will just keep their head down and get on with it.

And no, I didn’t know they used the guillotine either. All three suspects were executed one after the other in the space of 5 minutes. You just can’t imagine that.

 

[Fab Foodie]

@Fab Foodie
As an aside, the two architects who designed Auschwitz were Bauhaus graduates.

Interesting, do you have a reference for a quick read-up? We're they aware of it's intended use?

 

[The Crofted Crest]

Take a butcher's here. It's a bit of a stretch when you're designing gas chambers and crematoria to suggest you're not aware of their intended use.

I read about it in the Bauhaus museum, top floor of the Bauhaus house. Dessau was also home to Junkers and Heinkel bomber factories and the place where Zyklon was manufactured. Lots of wailing in the museum that the factories got bombed during the war.

 

[C R]

Take a butcher's here. It's a bit of a stretch when you're designing gas chambers and crematoria to suggest you're not aware of their intended use.

I read about it in the Bauhaus museum, top floor of the Bauhaus house. Dessau was also home to Junkers and Heinkel bomber factories and the place where Zyklon was manufactured. Lots of wailing in the museum that the factories got bombed during the war.

I didn't quite articulate properly the social malaise that spread in Germany and allowed what happened to happen. This sort of banality of evil that reigned in Germany in the 20s, 30s and 40s. A good illustration of this is the book Friedrich, which tells the story of two boys growing up as friends. One of them, Friedrich, is Jewish, and the other boy, the narrator, who isn't. It is a difficult but illuminating read. It shows the descent into madness, but more terrifyingly, that there's nothing special about what happened, and that humans will somehow keep doing it.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Sophie Scholl and her White Rose movement were incredibly brave, genuinely heroic. As were the Hempels - leaving anti-Nazi postcards in phone boxes and around Berlin. Guillotined like the Scholls.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_and_Elise_Hampel

I suppose opposition was so ruthlessly crushed people were afraid to do anything other than passive resistance.

I read a couple of books by secretaries who worked for Hitler. Traudl June's book was the basis for the film Downfall. The other was by Christa Schroeder. Both pretty dull. The administration of an evil regime was surprisingly mundane. Both of them seemed to find Hitler fairly pleasant, to women anyway. He found time to have tea and cake with the secretaries most days. There was quite a bit of 'Well yes, I took the minutes and typed them up but I don't remember anything about the Jews'. It was clear though that you didn't have much of a choice about it all. Women could leave if they got married or feign family issues, but otherwise you went where you were told.

 

[albion]

Sadly, nothing has changed.
Trump was certainly heading somewhere that way. For him I cannot work out whether it is ego or skeletons in the closet.

What I find weird is how most of the other genocides happening seem quickly forgotten.

 

[C R]

Sadly, nothing has changed.
Trump was certainly heading somewhere that way. For him I cannot work out whether it is ego or skeletons in the closet.

What I find weird is how most of the other genocides happening seem quickly forgotten.

I am probably being antisemitic by the definition that says that criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but the way Palestinians in the occupied territories are treated bears some striking resemblance to the treatment of the peoples of the countries occupied by Germany.

 

[albion]

That is certainly part of the reason for the focus on Naxi Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history_(21st_century)

I still do not have fully authoritive info on the Uyghur genocide. I guess with China so bunkered down we might never know the fuller story.
Their Covid madness tells you anything can happen without democracy or accountability.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Most atrocities go hidden. I suppose it was only the opening up of Germany by the Allied forces that brought stuff into the open more quickly. The Internet makes it harder to suppress these things nowadays but probably wasn't that difficult years ago when you vouldxeadily keep out foreign journalists and suppress newspapers. Not just war stuff either. Look how long it took for things like the Magdalena laundries to be fully exposed.

 

[matticus]

TWO pages - and you lot are already on genocides that have NOTHING TO DO WITH HITLER! There should be a name for this tendency ...

 

[C R]

TWO pages - and you lot are already on genocides that have NOTHING TO DO WITH HITLER! There should be a name for this tendency ...

Reverse Godwin?

 

[C R]

Most atrocities go hidden. I suppose it was only the opening up of Germany by the Allied forces that brought stuff into the open more quickly. The Internet makes it harder to suppress these things nowadays but probably wasn't that difficult years ago when you vouldxeadily keep out foreign journalists and suppress newspapers. Not just war stuff either. Look how long it took for things like the Magdalena laundries to be fully exposed.

The plight of the Jewish people in Germany was well known in Europe and the US by the mid thirties. It is to the shame of many countries, including the UK, that severe limits on the numbers of German Jewish refugees accepted were imposed. Many lives could have been saved if those limits didn't exist. It is true that the extent of the extermination efforts may not have been known by the general public in the UK and the US until the liberation of the camps, but it would have been known by the governments.