1 in 5 German Youth unaware of Auschwitz

[Whiskey_Lord]

Is there any cop-out more pathetic than the 'life isn't fair' excuse?

 

[Domen]

World*. No, this is the most pathetic. But also the only one which is universally true.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

It actually strikes me as a more modern and also more callous, more malicious way of saying 'let them eat cake.'

 

[Takhisis]

It's a 'let me eat cake' because people who are on the rough side of the unfair world don't just srug and say 'life is unfair' they try to fight it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The most numerous slurs on this forum are slurs against Poles.

Would you prefer the term African European?

 

[Masada]

Don't know how hair exactly was used or not used. I just remember a documentary covering the skin lampshades and vaguely remember that hair somehow was made use of.

The common claim is that hair was used for u-boat socks. Which doesn't make all that much sense. Skin however was used for lampshades.

Judging from the rest of your post and your attitude to these matters in general (which you have displayed plenty of times) i have some idea where this is going...

Please educate me: Is that an individual thing. Does domen's family have to be affected by German or Russian crimes to justify slurs on his part? Or is merely being a citizen of Poland enough?

And for a German or Russian to be a valid target of such slurs do they have to have a family history that includes war criminals or does them being Germans or Russians alone make them fair game?

We seem to have missed each other on the train line somehow. I'll take the bullet for that one. The basic point being that the Poles do think this stuff matters. You might think, as a German, that this is unfair, that it happened a long time ago and that it doesn't therefore matter - as much. That's a fair point from a German perspective. To the average Pole it's not reasonable. Germans murdered about 16 per cent of the Polish pre-war population; the highest national rate. The most galling thing is that most of those deaths are attributable to civilian non-combatants killed under the German occupation. That's almost unique outside of the Soviet Union. Taken together these higher relative (and in civilian terms absolute) casualties combined with the civilian profile of the casualties helps to explain Polish angst. That it might be misplaced when applied to modern Germans is kind of beside the point; we aren't dealing in objective space to begin with but in emotive space, the nature of which is subjective. To argue that all it needs is time, is true, but how long that should take isn't a science.

Strategic bombardment ("dehousing the civilian population"): ~500,000
POW deaths in captivity due to forced labor and starvation in the USSR: ~400,000
Civilian deaths due to deportation into forced labor captivity: >350,000
Deaths as a result of the expulsion of Germans from the eastern territories: >500,000
Deaths as a result of (pretty much deliberate) starvation of the civilian population in the American, British and French occupation zones: >1,000,000

I am confident that your curiousity regarding the hurting was somewhat rhetorical.

This is part of the problem.

Also, the starvation thing is half true. The Western Allies did feed Germans last but that was because of German policies that starved the rest of Europe for the benefit of German civilians during the war. The net result of which was that the German people had been, on balance, better fed that the rest of Europe. The Western Allies therefore diverted food elsewhere. So while Germans starved; lots of other Europeans didn't. Furthermore, something like two million people died as a result of being displaced in the aftermath of the war. The Eastern German experience wasn't unique.

 

[metatron]

[...]

 

[kochman]

Is there any cop-out more pathetic than the 'life isn't fair' excuse?

Here I thought we might get some awesome, thought out post, and we get a strawman that addresses nothing other than say it is "pathetic"... it may be, but until you build a time machine, we cannot change the past, and I'd say the world has learned from WW2...

 

[Terxpahseyton]

You know people, I see the need for historic responsibility of nations, which
- can go a long way in fighting bitterness and hard feelings, in order to prevent the seed for future conflict (public apologies)
- forces us to reflect the past, so we can draw some lessons from it (public education)
- and may at times even make the world a better place, by supporting those which history wasn't very kind to (reparations)

But it needs to be accompanied by the insight, that it is still silly to look at the failings of nations exclusively in national terms. That would come down to the same logic as racism, which is that it is in the "nature" of some people to be x or do y, while in reality it always is circumstantial. And I think the implications of such are equally undesirable as they are in the case of racism. The establishment of bogeymen and following self-righteousness and blindness to own failings (like the so-called Israeli version of apartheid).
To illustrate: Yes, historically, the holocaust was a German, a Jewish issue. But what it teaches us about most of all, is the human condition, not some vague and with passing time increasingly dubious image of the German or Jewish condition. It teaches us that all nations need to be aware of the wrong people and nations can do and still do to this day. That IMO would go a way longer way in preventing future unnecessary failings of nations, than the need to contain such in their historic occurrences.
But of course, it is way more convenient to choose those simple images.

 

[Yeekim]

Spoiler :

You know people, I see the need for historic responsibility of nations, which
- can go a long way in fighting bitterness and hard feelings, in order to prevent the seed for future conflict (public apologies)
- forces us to reflect the past, so we can draw some lessons from it (public education)
- and may at times even make the world a better place, by supporting those which history wasn't very kind to (reparations)

But it needs to be accompanied by the insight, that it is still silly to look at the failings of nations exclusively in national terms. That would come down to the same logic as racism, which is that it is in the "nature" of some people to be x or do y, while in reality it always is circumstantial. And I think the implications of such are equally undesirable as they are in the case of racism. The establishment of bogeymen and following self-righteousness and blindness to own failings (like the so-called Israeli version of apartheid).
To illustrate: Yes, historically, the holocaust was a German, a Jewish issue. But what it teaches us about most of all, is the human condition, not some vague and with passing time increasingly dubious image of the German or Jewish condition. It teaches us that all nations need to be aware of the wrong people and nations can do and still do to this day. That IMO would go a way longer way in preventing future unnecessary failings of nations, than the need to contain such in their historic occurrences.
But of course, it is way more convenient to choose those simple images.

Well said!

 

[Takhisis]

Since we're at it, will the Allies from WWI ever apologise for all the hardships they unnecessarily but deliberately caused which led to the rise of Hitler?

 

[Dachs]

Since we're at it, will the Allies from WWI ever apologise for all the hardships they unnecessarily but deliberately caused which led to the rise of Hitler?

but but but that's not in living memory

 

[Quackers]

Isn't it inaccurate to say that the TOV led to hitler anyway?
I heard that the Nazi's popularity declined quite a lot untill the economic depression hit Germany and that propelled the Nazi's to electoral success and that the TOV wasn't so painful for yer average sausage guzzler..
Most of my "i heards" are wrong anywayz ;p

 

[Takhisis]

but but but that's not in living memory

Ah, so since everyone who suffered through that is now dead it's not wrong anymore.

Isn't it inaccurate to say that the TOV led to hitler anyway?
I heard that the Nazi's popularity declined quite a lot untill the economic depression hit Germany and that propelled the Nazi's to electoral success and that the TOV wasn't so painful for yer average sausage guzzler..
Most of my "i heards" are wrong anywayz ;p

Yes, you've also heard that Southampton are better thn Pompey.

 

[Quackers]

Sigh I think Dachs is being sarcastic takhasis /finger wagging.....
well we are!

 

[Takhisis]

Sigh I think Dachs is being sarcastic takhasis /finger wagging.....

Don't explain the joke. I was beign sarcastic as well.

well we are!

WHo's playing in a higher division? Who's won any trophies lately? QED.

 

[Masada]

Afraid it's more than half true. The implication of your statements is that it was in some way impossible or impratical to prevent the starvation, due to a general shortage of food in western Europe.

There was a shortage of food in Western Europe. The Hongerwinter in the Netherlands is one extreme example; but food shortages were the norm and not the exception. This arose as a result of German expropriation and the cumulative effects of the loss of fertiliser, feed and gasoline over time; all critical to modern farming. In the East the situation was far worse. For instance, the Soviet harvest in the Ukraine in 1946 was about 2 times lower than it had been in 1940; the net effect of which was that Soviet citizens were starving between 1946-48. Much of this 'food gap' was filled out of American supplies much as it had been during the war. The Soviets weren't alone in this either; Britain, still rationing in 1945, depended on American food supplies; so for that matter did much of Western Europe.

I do at least dismiss it in part. True. But i don't consider it entirely unfair, no. And not on the grounds that you attribute to my potential dismissal.

Well on what grounds do you dismiss it?

But collective guilt is by definition a generalisation.
When you and domen demand it, critisizing generalisation as in a verbal statement, that is ...a bit problematic to say the least.

Btw: what does one have to do to qualify for collective guilt anyway.

I haven't. And if Domen's decided he wants to that his thing; it's an emotive issue and not an objective one.

Secondly it is somewhat problematic to asign collective guilt unilaterally.

Nah, it isn't. In this the other side won't reciprocate because there's nothing redeeming in German conduct in Poland to latch onto. That isn't Poland's fault; it's just a comment on how wicked the whole thing was.

...if all of that is that way, why and how should i feel that i am - figuratively speaking - a Nazi in comparisan to you as a non-Nazi and assign collective guilt to myself?

Go for it. I'm not asking for that though. I am however suggesting that Germans should be more aware that the world (well those who care about it still) doesn't much care if Germans have moved on for whatever reason. The Poles still think it's an important issue. You just need to accept that.

How would you determine who is eligible? Who would be considered a German in your book in this specific context?

It was meant to be read in the past tense. The point being that perhaps Germans wouldn't be forgetting things if the costs had been higher.

 

[kramerfan86]

Honestly this news doesnt shock me all that much. As i am sure someone has mentioned in the last 10 pages, Americans regularly are ignorant of basic history and scientific fact, why should it be shocking that the same thing in fact occurs in other countries?

 

[metatron]

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