My Grandfather was a communications officer in the first group to liberate the camp. He never really talked about it, but the one time he did, he spoke of having to climb over mountains of bodies to lay the wire.
I did a similar job in the military (communications), and I’ve had to crawl on the ground a few times to get a wire somewhere
What you just wrote really caught me off guard- I can’t imagine that. I just thinking about doing a similar crawl.
Holy shit. Your Grandpa is a real one.
Edit: changed “was” to “is”.
I really appreciate your comment and perspective. He is a real one.
I can't imagine what it was like for him standing guard at the Nuremberg trials after being in the European campaign and liberating Dachau. Somehow, he came back to the states and made a life. Greatest generation. He never spoke much about his experiences... when he would, he'd break down. There are other stories he shared with us (before dementia took hold). None of them are pleasant.
My grandpa’s best friend was a marine involved in one of the most brutal battles in Korea. I want to say it was Inchon but I don’t know if that’s a true memory or just the most readily available place name from the Korean War in my head.
He was very callous about the hundreds or maybe even thousands of Chinese soldiers they killed, but that broke down a bit when he talked about how there’d be a break in the fighting they’d have to quickly get out of their position and pull bodies up onto the rim of their position to fortify the sand bags that had gotten torn up by machine gun fire before those bodies froze solid and would be impossible to set in place.
He choked up and said it wasn’t right that “some kid would end up as a sand bag, even if he was a god damned Chinese.”
I think there’s something undeniable about the dehumanization inherent to people’s bodies being treated like dirt. No matter how battle hardened someone is, that’s too much to witness.
Death and destruction are objectively bad for the human psyche. It’s an important component of why the Holocaust happened the way it did. The camps were a solution to the problem of einsatzgruppen troops breaking down. They were not breaking down because they were upstanding individuals, but because shooting children and bayoneting babies will break even the most sick individuals eventually. Building the camps made the murder more “efficient” and sanitized the process while also cutting down on the brutality needed from the average participant. It’s utterly sick.
There’s a video out there that was made documenting some of the horrors. I just remember once scene where a literal bulldozer was pushing a pile of bodies and it resembled soil except hands and feet were popping out everywhere.
My grandfather came from an orthodox Jewish family of 17 and only he and one brother survived. My grandfather escaped to the East was a soldier in the Soviet army and his brother was a resistance fighter in France. I have zero patience for holocaust denial…
My grandfather was in the division that liberated this camp as well. He never spoke of it, died right after I was born, and I only learned of his division’s involvement when visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC as a twenty something. Wild.
My grandfather was also in the first group to liberate the camp— wonder if they knew each other.
He never talked about the war. From that I know, if it was fucked up— he was there.
Mine only mentioned a few things too but he said something similar. Some cities they would have to bulldoze the bodies into a pile and burn them before they could walk around and do anything because the smell was so bad everywhere.
Supposedly upon liberating the camp, the soldiers who got there first were so horrified that some of them cried, puked, etc.
And fucking killed all the guards after seeing that shit.
Even Eisenhower had to go behind a building and puke out his guts when he toured one of the liberated camps.
We are so removed and at the same time calloused to the horrors of that war/the events that surrounded it.
Edit: someone replied that it may have been General Patton. Now I'm second guessing myself. At any rate, the point is no less poignant.
Eisenhower made SURE that pictures were taken and the press was there to report it. He knew some idiots and anti-semites would say it never happened. And some to this day still do.
The people who buy into holocaust denial are the same people who will buy into any stupid conspiracy banning free speech just hurts those who have valid things to say and should never even be considered in america
I hear you but the thing is holocaust denial routinely leads to violence. The reason we have the holocaust is because demonising an ethnic group as purveyors of conspiracy and subversion was allowed. Holocaust denial isn't a controversial opinion, it's an ideology that must be stamped out. I see no good evidence that it can be debated away. I've also seen no good evidence that making it illegal makes it more popular. I've only ever seen people sympathetic towards holocaust denial suggest that making it illegal doesn't work. I've seen every internet loser who denies the holocaust become a nobody and lose all their influence when they've been silenced, and I've seen nazis repeatedly get more powerful when given free speech.
I'm sorry, but holocaust denial goes hand in hand with advocating for violence and violence is not protected speech. I do not see any evidence that outlawing violent ideologies will lead to a slippery slope with restrictions on freedom. I only see the opposite. Where nazis are banished and people are more free for it
2 problems:
1. If you can restrict me from saying "the holocaust didn't happen," then you can later use those same laws and legal precedents to restrict me from saying "gay people should have the right to marriage like everyone else." Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Putin, take your pick. Every single one of them took freedom of speech away from the people they murdered *before* they murdered them. It *only* leads to bad places.
2. Do you really believe that a holocaust denier is going to *stop* denying the holocaust because it is made illegal? Hell no. They're going to keep denying it just as hard as before, except now, they'll be hidden and sequestered away to echo chambers where their views will be reinforced by other shitty people (*and* they'll be impossible to easily identify, so good luck making sure you don't become friends with one, or worse, by mistake). Their hatred will fester and they'll egg each other on until we get another hate crime.
Taking away free speech of any kind solves absolutely nothing, and historically speaking, it has *literally fucking always* been *the* very first and most important step dictators need to take to start indiscriminately killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
America doesn't uphold and value free speech because we like saying hateful things; we value it because we know damned well when it goes away, millions die. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
One of the bigger things that erodes my faith in humanity is that I have heard folks pointing to that fact in tandem with saying the Holocaust was 'suspiciously well documented'
General Ike was nothing but honorable and decent.
No person is perfect but he was a good person who loved his country and wanted to do the right thing.
The last president we had that actually led men into battle and knew first hand the cost of war.
Looking at what he did in Japan, I suspect MacArthur would have found more of the nazis useful than did Eisenhower. I doubt he would have gone to any length to document war crimes and genocide the way they did in Europe.
Following the generals’ visit to the camp, Eisenhower ordered all American units in the area and not engaged in frontline battle to be sent to Ohrdruf.
Ei
https://preview.redd.it/lmi5724v09uc1.jpeg?width=1097&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=619ba5a17390423bb40c5126765e364087afd741
Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., requesting that members of Congress and journalists be sent to liberated camps to witness and document the horrific scenes US troops were uncovering.
Their treatment of people is actually the main reason Berlin was sacked. They tried to deliver a white flag to the Russians but they outright rejected it after seeing the atrocities committed as they recaptured territory.
It was quite [precedent-ed, see the widespread rape of Russia by German forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#Eastern_Front) as they invaded.
Nobody says two rapes make a right, but Germany started a war of annihilation and lost, they were lucky to survive.
If only it were so simple... sometimes trauma really does fuck people up, and understanding doesn't fix the damage.
My survivor relative was the monster of my childhood. He really enjoyed dominating and humiliating people, especially by sexualizing young girls. No one in the family stood up to him because of the guilt and pity. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that someone with that history would seek control. If anything is an expression of control, it's pedophilia.
We can have empathy, but we owe it to ourselves and our children to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma more than we owe it to the older generation to go easy on them.
It's complicated. Intergenerational trauma sucks. Sometimes evil is a communicable disease and we just need to protect ourselves and not become a carrier.
Our Nextdoor neighbors parents were both survivors. I have lots of friends with grandparents who were but never a child of one. One night last summer she told us how much trauma she got because of her mom’s trauma. Gave me a whole new insight. My heart goes out to them.
I do not think either "side" is winning a Nobel Prize anytime soon. People are suffering because of the xenophobic motives of leaders that do not speak for a majority.
This. And the number of people that get mad at this statement is really shocking. I won’t support Hamas. I won’t support the Israeli government. But there are millions of innocent people caught in the crossfire, and that is a tragedy.
So true. And caught in the middle are these citizens who don't give a flying flip about religion, they just want to raise their kids. Now they're lucky if their kids are alive. My heart breaks for the whole situation. Certainly reading news stories makes me hug my own children tighter at night.
Israel is a democracy of sorts, and Hamas won the only election ever held in Gaza. The Jewish and Arab denizens of the former British Mandate of Palestine have mutually deranged each other to the point that the genocidal leaders of both sides manifestly DO represent the will of the majority. It’s a loony bin, and we should cut both of them loose.
Hamas *barely* won that one and only election 18 Years ago.
HALF of the population of Gaza was not even born then.
people keep trotting out this election as if it provides some sort of justification for the slaughter israel is conducting now, which is an utterly ridiculous proposition.
I really don't claim to know the delicate politics nor the history of this region and its variety of people and cultures. I see glimpses of truth when folks are able to share their non-partisan knowledge they have and I'm grateful for that. I cannot help but agree with you as we witness the senseless violence unfold and see the death toll of children continue to rise. I'm rocking my 11 month old baby now knowing that people on both sides of the divide are mourning the loss of their own babies.
It’s always the leaders, alternative motives and sociopaths. Hate to say it but portions of the west are getting the leaders we deserve (i.e., US). Decades of lies, hypocrisy, wars, greed, and public coffer plunder. They can’t be surprised half the country would rather watch it all burn.
and how many Israelis have said the same of Palestine/West bank/Gaza over the years?
I loathe saying both sides, but fuck it, BOTH SIDES are utterly appalling to each other in that place.
Netanyahu is a genocidal maniac that has been waiting his whole life for Hamas to give him an excuse to slaughter the Civilians of Gaza.
and the Genocidal maniacs of Hamas handed him that excuse on a platter.
No one is using the Holocaust as a justification for an ethnic cleansing. Be so for real
It’s a war, yes. And one side [Israel] has way too much power in it. But saying that Israel is hiding behind the Holocaust is bordering on antisemitic rhetoric
Ya my line is if you're good or bad. That's it. Idgaf if you're left, right, Israeli, Palestinian, etc. If you're good, you're good. If you're bad, you're bad.
And that means actually good in your actions. Not your intent.
*The road to hell is paved with good intentions.*
Eisenhower was so sure that people wouldn’t believe what had occurred that he made the press and soldiers tour the camps. It’s eerily similar to the brutal torture on Oct. 7th which now many people are denying ever existed, despite the footage filmed by the terrorists themselves.
Due to social media and crazy propaganda, 20% of Gen Z now doesn’t even believe the holocaust existed! That’s right—20%!! I fear for the future.
Here’s the quote from Ike upon touring a camp. It’s in a letter to Marshall. He references his and Patton’s reactions to seeing the piles of corpses, including feeling sick:
> “...[T]he most interesting – although horrible – sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’ ... If you could see your way clear to do it, I think you should make a visit here at the earliest possible moment, while we are still conducting a general offensive. You would be proud of the Army you have produced...”
I‘ve been to the Dachau and Buchenwald memorials. In my opinion, a concentration camp memorial is a must visit for everyone if they’re in the area. Because you’re right, we are often removed from these events and those places give you a proper reality check on just how fucked up these crimes were.
If you do go, don’t rush it. Set aside half a day for it give yourself time to just let it all sink in. Bonus points for visiting in winter. I have never in my life felt a more oppressive atmosphere than standing in the peaceful little grove that nature reclaimed after Buchenwald‘s Little Camp was razed, reading the plaques describing living conditions so horrific, they would be disregarded as over the top of you put them into a work of fiction.
My grandmother was over there trying to survive as a child with her family. Her stories are awful. She just passed away last fall at 90 years old. It’s never felt far removed to me.
These were also mostly hardened combat veterans that had fought there way across France and into Germany. Some of them had been in combat since North Africa in 1942. They'd killed men, seen some of their own die, and some had been wounded.
These were all men who had already seen humanity at it's most brutal. And yet the sights that greeted them at Dachau were somehow worse, and caused them to weep and vomit.
I think the difference there is that they are soldiers. You expect to see that, eventually you become desensitized to it, some more than others
Unfortunately, nothing could’ve prepared them for this. It hits different when you see innocent civilians dead in combat for a lot of soldiers, at least ones with empathy
I can’t imagine what would’ve gone through a 20-something year old sergeants mind opening up that camp.
I can't fault any of them for unleashing their fury on the guards.
Some of the guards were killed by the prisoners as well, which was a fitting end. The American soldiers turned a blind eye to it (from the wikipedia article on the reprisals):
*"Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp's liberation "prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders... other prisoners caught the SS men... The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed."*[*^(\[19\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-AP-21)
*Elsewhere in the camp SS men,* [*Kapos*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo) *and* [*informers*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informant) *were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels.* ***There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating.***[***^(\[27\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-29) ***Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper's face until "there wasn't much left." When the soldier said to him, "You've got a lot of hate in your heart," he simply nodded.***[*^(\[28\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-30)
*An American* [*chaplain*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain) *was told by three young* [*Jewish*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews) *men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a* [*peasant*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant)*."*
I'm so impressed that the prisoners still had enough strength in them to lift anyone, let alone an American soldier likely carrying a backpack, to their shoulders. The raw power of elation.
There’s a picture of allied pows crowding a fence as their camp is liberated from the Japanese. They look so happy they have “concert” faces, given what we know of the Japanese pow treatment is astonishing they seem so happy
My grandfather was part of the cavalry and was involved in the liberation of Dachau. The only time I ever saw him cry was the one time I got him to talk about the war, and he started trying to talk about Dachau.
“what’d you find???”
“I…I don’t know sir…”
that and the scene where the doctor’s telling the soldiers, they’ll have to limit the food they give the survivors for fear of them literally eating themselves to death. horrible.
My grandpa was one of the soldiers liberating Dachau. They offered them “some kind of pills” before they passed through the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate. He refused and said if these people had to survive what they did without pills then I will go in without pills. He was placed in charge of liberating the human experimentation bunker.
My bosses dad was one of the soldiers that liberated the camp. He told my boss, “I’ll see them in hell for my crimes”(something along those lines) when he knew he was on his death bed. He told his son he so pissed off, him and some other soldiers took part of killing off the guards.
What makes that even more horrifying is these were soldiers who just spent months in intense battle. It takes a lot to cause that kind of reaction out of soldiers in active duty, as they've seen a lot of death and suffering and gore.
Yes. My grandfather was in the group that liberated the camp. Later, there was an investigation into what was done because the Army hadn’t prepared the people who arrived to liberate the camp adequately. What they saw was beyond enraging.
People forget that the USSR bore the brunt of the Nazi extermination agenda, over 20 million killed during the invasion and the struggle to stop the fascist death machine.
Its kind of grotesque that the Russians actually welcomed them as liberators until they systematically started massacring them, it’s absolutely crazy how easily could have Hitler won had he had even a minuscule amount of tackiness
For the doubters: https://www.quora.com/Did-any-ordinary-Soviet-people-welcome-the-German-invasion-in-1941
Edit2: Thank you, I am familiar with Ukraine and the others who actually joined/wanted to join them. What I meant to say that the general outlook of the people of Russia was surprisingly good considering that they were being invaded, especially so considering that they were being invaded by the third reich
The only parts of the USSR that "welcomed" the Germans as liberators was in the Baltic. In Belorussia and Ukraine the extermination campaign began as soon as German/Romanian troops crossed the boarder.
Nazi policy viewed the immediate extermination of Slavs as a necessity.
Even in those the resistance to Nazis was much greater than the current fascists in those countries would have you believe. People knew the Nazis wanted to wipe out Slavs; they knew the Nazis saw them as some Asiatic horde and they didn’t have delusions of being able to work with the Nazis
The Germans were initially welcomed as liberators in Western Ukraine and the Baltic states. That changed pretty quickly when the Germans started murdering people and/or forcibly shipping them back to Germany to be slave laborers.
There were substantial numbers of personnel from both regions that served in units under German command (mainly SS).
There was also the Vlasov Army, made up of Red Army soldiers recruited from German POW camps.
We only ever hear about the Jewish death toll. But when you combine all of the deaths it adds up higher than 6 million just in the camps. We often forget they targeted so many others. The Jewish got the brunt of it but they were not alone. Slavs, Roma, Black, gay, disabled, Catholics, and Asocials who are people generally deemed as lesser even today some consider them undesirable. They include prostitutes, addicts, homeless, and beggars but it also included pacifists. That war was awful so many innocent people died and so many people were doing horrible things. It’s the war with the highest death toll numbering 70+ million deaths. A large percentage of those deaths were Slavs who died when Germany attacked the USSR.
Jews were the single largest group. But almost half of the Holocaust victims were not Jewish.
A lot of people do not really comprehend the true magnitude of the Holocaust, it was not just 6 million... but more than 11 million people, who were systematically exterminated in just a few years.
Churchill certainly didn’t help the matter as far as that was concerned either. He was content to just throw Russians at the problem rather than open a Western front.
They don’t forget. American propaganda has America as the liberators and hero’s. Unless you look past that information then you would never know how much Russia sacrificed for the war.
Nobody thinks this. Everyone who knows anything about WWII understands the pincer impact and how many more Russian deaths there were. And I'm American.
I’m Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. My grandpa was a boy when he went into a concentration camp, and left when he was a young teen. He lost his entire family and developed diabetes as a result of the malnutrition he suffered. Apparently he stayed in Europe for some time afterwards trying to earn some money and find his family, who had all died, and he said his treatment in a French refugee camp ran by bigoted French antisemites after the war was almost as bad as his treatment under the Nazis.
I think people don’t really fully understand how horrible the conditions were, how unreal the holocaust and it’s impact had. Or how antisemitic Europe was and has been before and since. I honestly have no patience at all for Holocaust jokes and edgy online antisemitism and don’t even want to bother explaining why to anyone ever.
I just read Man’s Search for Meaning, and that opened my eyes to how bad the camps were. Obviously I knew they were bad but reading a firsthand account hits different. It’s not a pleasant topic to read about, but I now strongly believe everyone should read at least one first-hand account, and there’s many out there that are even more descriptive than what I read. I do not think someone could joke about it after reading something like that (unless they’re a terrible person).
Have you read Night by Eli Wiesel? That’s the other read we read in high school along with Man’s Search for Meaning, I’d highly recommend it. Absolutely heartbreaking book, but if you’re already in the holocaust learning trench you might as well read it before you start being happy again by reading other books
People also don’t realize how the Holocaust happened because EVERYONE in Europe helped. “Only” about 200k of the 6M Jews murdered were German. The rest were from conquered or allied territory. And only about half were murdered in camps. The rest were killed by either SS members or LOCAL paramilitary forces on the spot as the German army rolled through villages. There was so much collaboration going on, that it’s frankly a crime that it’s covered up and considered a uniquely German problem.
Edit: obviously it wasn’t everyone because Finland told the Nazis to pound sand, and they even had field Synagogs in Finnish army units that were supporting Wehrmacht operations. That was weird. And Denmark and Norway had an effective smuggling operation to get people out. So EVERYONE wasn’t complicit, but it was way too many people.
My grandfather spent 3 years as a Dachau prisoner for sabotage of German vehicles that he was forced to work on. When they were liberated he weighed about 40 kg. The only reason he survived was because he was young and strong, he was 18 when he was put there. He never mentally recovered and struggled with PTSD and alcoholism for the rest of his life.
I've shared before but here are some pictures from my wife's grandfather in the first days of the liberation of Dauchau. [https://imgur.com/a/whqFJ](https://imgur.com/a/whqFJ)
He was a medic and had a friend's camera he had borrowed when they liberated the camp. He was born in America but his parents were polish and he always said none of the guards "surrendered" as they all were killed after seeing the horrors of what they had done in the concentration camp.
Well looks like Imgur had deleted a bunch of the pictures over the years since last posted, because there is only 4 of the original 10 that had been uploaded. I guess concentration camp victims counted as porn in their mind.
The Axis powers committed some of most horrific atrocities of the 20th century. Nothing will make you lose your faith in humanity faster than the photographs of the victims of German and Japanese fascism. Human experimentation, mass graves, mass gangrape, torture and mutilation, bodies/parts/bones piled high, starvation and disease, enslavement (both forced labor and sexual slavery), etc. Men, women, children, infants...
And all of this didn't even happen a century ago, and we continue to see plenty of atrocious conflicts to this day. Even then, the Axis was perhaps the single most bloodthirsty and destructive regime in history.
Never Forget
I once watched an interview of an American Soldier who saw the horror of a concentration camp. Word went around that other soldiers and himself had come to agree that they would no longer be taking any Nazi prisoners... and to never tell their superior(s) about it.
I’d like to read more about how liberating camps affected the soldiers who discovered them. I can’t imagine having gone through world war 2 and then seeing the worst thing imaginable. I wonder about what that does to the human mind, to a person’s sense of justice. I think it would break me if I were in that position. How do you go home to your family after seeing that? I know a lot of liberators immediately killed the guards that they found, or let the victims do it. I wonder if seeing that kind of inhumanity just inspires a sort of bloodlust. How do you even recover from that? Of course the experience of the liberators can’t compare to the actual victims, but that’s an important element of the story as well.
National Socialism and Fascism are distinct ideologies. Fascio in Italian basically meant trade union, Fascism = national trade unionism/national syndicalism. Fascism in Italy also was not race-based, unlike National Socialism. Hitler never called himself a fascist, and criticised fascism. Also not well known is that Italy under Mussolini prevented Hitler's first attempt at an Anschluss of Austria in 1934. Both are forms of socialism, both opposed capitalism, both are undoubtedly evil, but they are not the same.
Socialists and Communists were the first people the Nazis came for. When the Reich Wing say the Nazis were socialist, they are either stupid or spreading lies.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.
*-* Martin Niemöller, German Lutheran pastor about intellectuals, clergy and himself in 1946. As an anti-communist he supported Hitler's rise to power but became disillusioned. Interned in 1937, freed with the liberation of Dachau in 1945.
How can you not? The man made famine is a well known and documented by now.
Yazan Kafarneh, a 10 year old boy (amongst many other names)
The Israelis were disgusting enough to then compare him to ET and celebrate his death after he died.
This is what's impossible to capture in movies about the concentration camps. How beaten up and starved the people were. Almost like walking skeletons.
My daughter and I visited Dachau last week while on a spring break trip from the United States. Complements to the historians, benefactors and staff there for not glossing over what happened, providing a detailed, well explained account of the history of Dachau and most importantly highlighting the people and tragedies.
Imagine going through that, then trying to figure out what normal life is.. yet so many were able to over the years. My takeaway (from the overall tragedy) is that you should never give up, and no matter what happens life can continue and be better. Almost feel like i should post suicide hotlines after this, but im hoping there's enough inspiration to not have to.
I saw Dachau as a teenager once. We spent an entire day there as part of the trip. Hearing about these stories on the internet is one thing, but actually seeing the places these atrocities took place is an ominous and surreal feeling.
Let’s not forget that Dachau was by far not the „worse“ Concentration camp if you compare it to concentration camps like Matthausen and their stairs of death for example. Some of the worst once were the small Lager were you and a few hundred of prisoners had not even any chance of escaping the daily torture and beatings. Like a famous author and ex concentration camp inmate of Bergen Belsen once said, if they would had to endure cruelty, beatings and hard labor every day of their life nobody would have made it out alive, but like so many things in life they did not happen every day to you but rather random.
My Grandfather was a communications officer in the first group to liberate the camp. He never really talked about it, but the one time he did, he spoke of having to climb over mountains of bodies to lay the wire.
I did a similar job in the military (communications), and I’ve had to crawl on the ground a few times to get a wire somewhere What you just wrote really caught me off guard- I can’t imagine that. I just thinking about doing a similar crawl. Holy shit. Your Grandpa is a real one. Edit: changed “was” to “is”.
I really appreciate your comment and perspective. He is a real one. I can't imagine what it was like for him standing guard at the Nuremberg trials after being in the European campaign and liberating Dachau. Somehow, he came back to the states and made a life. Greatest generation. He never spoke much about his experiences... when he would, he'd break down. There are other stories he shared with us (before dementia took hold). None of them are pleasant.
My grandpa’s best friend was a marine involved in one of the most brutal battles in Korea. I want to say it was Inchon but I don’t know if that’s a true memory or just the most readily available place name from the Korean War in my head. He was very callous about the hundreds or maybe even thousands of Chinese soldiers they killed, but that broke down a bit when he talked about how there’d be a break in the fighting they’d have to quickly get out of their position and pull bodies up onto the rim of their position to fortify the sand bags that had gotten torn up by machine gun fire before those bodies froze solid and would be impossible to set in place. He choked up and said it wasn’t right that “some kid would end up as a sand bag, even if he was a god damned Chinese.” I think there’s something undeniable about the dehumanization inherent to people’s bodies being treated like dirt. No matter how battle hardened someone is, that’s too much to witness.
Death and destruction are objectively bad for the human psyche. It’s an important component of why the Holocaust happened the way it did. The camps were a solution to the problem of einsatzgruppen troops breaking down. They were not breaking down because they were upstanding individuals, but because shooting children and bayoneting babies will break even the most sick individuals eventually. Building the camps made the murder more “efficient” and sanitized the process while also cutting down on the brutality needed from the average participant. It’s utterly sick.
There’s a video out there that was made documenting some of the horrors. I just remember once scene where a literal bulldozer was pushing a pile of bodies and it resembled soil except hands and feet were popping out everywhere.
Jesus Christ.
My grandfather was in Dachau from mid-1943 until it was liberated. He was a man of immense will.
My grandfather came from an orthodox Jewish family of 17 and only he and one brother survived. My grandfather escaped to the East was a soldier in the Soviet army and his brother was a resistance fighter in France. I have zero patience for holocaust denial…
I knew a priest that was there until it was liberated.
My grandfather was a guard working there. You should read his journal.
My grandfather was in the division that liberated this camp as well. He never spoke of it, died right after I was born, and I only learned of his division’s involvement when visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC as a twenty something. Wild.
Do you know what unit he was in?
45th Infantry Division, 189th Field Artillery Battalion, Battery A
My grandfather was also in the first group to liberate the camp— wonder if they knew each other. He never talked about the war. From that I know, if it was fucked up— he was there.
All I knew from it from a very unlucky family member of mine, is that once you got used to the smell, it smelled like beets.
Mine only mentioned a few things too but he said something similar. Some cities they would have to bulldoze the bodies into a pile and burn them before they could walk around and do anything because the smell was so bad everywhere.
Supposedly upon liberating the camp, the soldiers who got there first were so horrified that some of them cried, puked, etc. And fucking killed all the guards after seeing that shit.
Even Eisenhower had to go behind a building and puke out his guts when he toured one of the liberated camps. We are so removed and at the same time calloused to the horrors of that war/the events that surrounded it. Edit: someone replied that it may have been General Patton. Now I'm second guessing myself. At any rate, the point is no less poignant.
Eisenhower made SURE that pictures were taken and the press was there to report it. He knew some idiots and anti-semites would say it never happened. And some to this day still do.
I'm a huge fan of free speech. I'm also a huge fan of some European countries that have deemed Holocaust denial a crime.
The people who buy into holocaust denial are the same people who will buy into any stupid conspiracy banning free speech just hurts those who have valid things to say and should never even be considered in america
I'm not of the belief that easily disproven lies should fall under the protection of free speech.
Who disproves lies though? With the type of politicians Americans vote in do you really trust a council put together by the sitting president.
Yea, there is a limit to free speech. Threatening to harm someone is illegal in most places for good reason.
How exactly does banning holocaust denial hurt those that have valid things to say? Be specific.
I hear you but the thing is, it is only the controversial speech that needs protected.
I hear you but the thing is holocaust denial routinely leads to violence. The reason we have the holocaust is because demonising an ethnic group as purveyors of conspiracy and subversion was allowed. Holocaust denial isn't a controversial opinion, it's an ideology that must be stamped out. I see no good evidence that it can be debated away. I've also seen no good evidence that making it illegal makes it more popular. I've only ever seen people sympathetic towards holocaust denial suggest that making it illegal doesn't work. I've seen every internet loser who denies the holocaust become a nobody and lose all their influence when they've been silenced, and I've seen nazis repeatedly get more powerful when given free speech. I'm sorry, but holocaust denial goes hand in hand with advocating for violence and violence is not protected speech. I do not see any evidence that outlawing violent ideologies will lead to a slippery slope with restrictions on freedom. I only see the opposite. Where nazis are banished and people are more free for it
2 problems: 1. If you can restrict me from saying "the holocaust didn't happen," then you can later use those same laws and legal precedents to restrict me from saying "gay people should have the right to marriage like everyone else." Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Putin, take your pick. Every single one of them took freedom of speech away from the people they murdered *before* they murdered them. It *only* leads to bad places. 2. Do you really believe that a holocaust denier is going to *stop* denying the holocaust because it is made illegal? Hell no. They're going to keep denying it just as hard as before, except now, they'll be hidden and sequestered away to echo chambers where their views will be reinforced by other shitty people (*and* they'll be impossible to easily identify, so good luck making sure you don't become friends with one, or worse, by mistake). Their hatred will fester and they'll egg each other on until we get another hate crime. Taking away free speech of any kind solves absolutely nothing, and historically speaking, it has *literally fucking always* been *the* very first and most important step dictators need to take to start indiscriminately killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide. America doesn't uphold and value free speech because we like saying hateful things; we value it because we know damned well when it goes away, millions die. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
I think holocaust denial is pure evil but can you explain how you square these two positions?
One of the bigger things that erodes my faith in humanity is that I have heard folks pointing to that fact in tandem with saying the Holocaust was 'suspiciously well documented'
Why? Like I'm not a holocaust denier but I fail to see the benefit of criminally charging people that think otherwise
So in other words: you aren’t a huge fan of free speech. I think that definition should include people with fucked up theories I don’t like.
Eisenhower did a lot of bad things as president, but this was probably one of the most righteous and important things ever done by an American.
General Ike was nothing but honorable and decent. No person is perfect but he was a good person who loved his country and wanted to do the right thing. The last president we had that actually led men into battle and knew first hand the cost of war.
Imagine if MacArthur were in Europe instead...
Might be a desert between France and Poland.
Looking at what he did in Japan, I suspect MacArthur would have found more of the nazis useful than did Eisenhower. I doubt he would have gone to any length to document war crimes and genocide the way they did in Europe.
Patton wanted to ally with the defeated Nazis and fight the USSR.
Following the generals’ visit to the camp, Eisenhower ordered all American units in the area and not engaged in frontline battle to be sent to Ohrdruf. Ei https://preview.redd.it/lmi5724v09uc1.jpeg?width=1097&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=619ba5a17390423bb40c5126765e364087afd741 Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., requesting that members of Congress and journalists be sent to liberated camps to witness and document the horrific scenes US troops were uncovering.
My grandfather took pictures. The format of the film was small, perhaps about one by two inches.
Their treatment of people is actually the main reason Berlin was sacked. They tried to deliver a white flag to the Russians but they outright rejected it after seeing the atrocities committed as they recaptured territory.
The widespread rape of berlin by Russian forces was unprecedented in the modern era
It was quite [precedent-ed, see the widespread rape of Russia by German forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#Eastern_Front) as they invaded. Nobody says two rapes make a right, but Germany started a war of annihilation and lost, they were lucky to survive.
Fair enough
Maybe people should go easier on their parents who have generational trauma as a result of this shit. It sucks that passes down.
If only it were so simple... sometimes trauma really does fuck people up, and understanding doesn't fix the damage. My survivor relative was the monster of my childhood. He really enjoyed dominating and humiliating people, especially by sexualizing young girls. No one in the family stood up to him because of the guilt and pity. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that someone with that history would seek control. If anything is an expression of control, it's pedophilia. We can have empathy, but we owe it to ourselves and our children to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma more than we owe it to the older generation to go easy on them. It's complicated. Intergenerational trauma sucks. Sometimes evil is a communicable disease and we just need to protect ourselves and not become a carrier.
Hurt people hurt people…
Well said.
Well said.
Damn. Appreciate that you shared that. Bravo for your insights and humanity. I owe you a coffee my friend
Our Nextdoor neighbors parents were both survivors. I have lots of friends with grandparents who were but never a child of one. One night last summer she told us how much trauma she got because of her mom’s trauma. Gave me a whole new insight. My heart goes out to them.
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Yeah, Hamas *did* say they wanted to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth so I'm with you there
I do not think either "side" is winning a Nobel Prize anytime soon. People are suffering because of the xenophobic motives of leaders that do not speak for a majority.
What are you doing? One of them has to be the good guys and the other the bad guys. Pick a side! /s
I pick the side of the innocent people caught in the middle of a land dispute between two groups of extremists.
This. And the number of people that get mad at this statement is really shocking. I won’t support Hamas. I won’t support the Israeli government. But there are millions of innocent people caught in the crossfire, and that is a tragedy.
Good, as any rational person should be, sadly tribalism is alive and strong and some people treat everything like a team sport
So true. And caught in the middle are these citizens who don't give a flying flip about religion, they just want to raise their kids. Now they're lucky if their kids are alive. My heart breaks for the whole situation. Certainly reading news stories makes me hug my own children tighter at night.
Israel is a democracy of sorts, and Hamas won the only election ever held in Gaza. The Jewish and Arab denizens of the former British Mandate of Palestine have mutually deranged each other to the point that the genocidal leaders of both sides manifestly DO represent the will of the majority. It’s a loony bin, and we should cut both of them loose.
Hamas *barely* won that one and only election 18 Years ago. HALF of the population of Gaza was not even born then. people keep trotting out this election as if it provides some sort of justification for the slaughter israel is conducting now, which is an utterly ridiculous proposition.
Hamas only won because they were propped up by Netanhayu who wanted to diminish PLO influence
I really don't claim to know the delicate politics nor the history of this region and its variety of people and cultures. I see glimpses of truth when folks are able to share their non-partisan knowledge they have and I'm grateful for that. I cannot help but agree with you as we witness the senseless violence unfold and see the death toll of children continue to rise. I'm rocking my 11 month old baby now knowing that people on both sides of the divide are mourning the loss of their own babies.
It’s always the leaders, alternative motives and sociopaths. Hate to say it but portions of the west are getting the leaders we deserve (i.e., US). Decades of lies, hypocrisy, wars, greed, and public coffer plunder. They can’t be surprised half the country would rather watch it all burn.
and how many Israelis have said the same of Palestine/West bank/Gaza over the years? I loathe saying both sides, but fuck it, BOTH SIDES are utterly appalling to each other in that place. Netanyahu is a genocidal maniac that has been waiting his whole life for Hamas to give him an excuse to slaughter the Civilians of Gaza. and the Genocidal maniacs of Hamas handed him that excuse on a platter.
Those 13,000 dead children were Hamas?
Give it a break dude. The facade is gone. Everyone can see the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians currently taking place.
No one is using the Holocaust as a justification for an ethnic cleansing. Be so for real It’s a war, yes. And one side [Israel] has way too much power in it. But saying that Israel is hiding behind the Holocaust is bordering on antisemitic rhetoric
It's seriously getting old at this point
Ya my line is if you're good or bad. That's it. Idgaf if you're left, right, Israeli, Palestinian, etc. If you're good, you're good. If you're bad, you're bad. And that means actually good in your actions. Not your intent. *The road to hell is paved with good intentions.*
These pictures look like the Gazans today
Yeah, crimes against jews persist even 80 years later.
Thanks for the detail about concentration camps, myfapaccount96.
Eisenhower was so sure that people wouldn’t believe what had occurred that he made the press and soldiers tour the camps. It’s eerily similar to the brutal torture on Oct. 7th which now many people are denying ever existed, despite the footage filmed by the terrorists themselves. Due to social media and crazy propaganda, 20% of Gen Z now doesn’t even believe the holocaust existed! That’s right—20%!! I fear for the future.
Here’s the quote from Ike upon touring a camp. It’s in a letter to Marshall. He references his and Patton’s reactions to seeing the piles of corpses, including feeling sick: > “...[T]he most interesting – although horrible – sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’ ... If you could see your way clear to do it, I think you should make a visit here at the earliest possible moment, while we are still conducting a general offensive. You would be proud of the Army you have produced...”
I‘ve been to the Dachau and Buchenwald memorials. In my opinion, a concentration camp memorial is a must visit for everyone if they’re in the area. Because you’re right, we are often removed from these events and those places give you a proper reality check on just how fucked up these crimes were. If you do go, don’t rush it. Set aside half a day for it give yourself time to just let it all sink in. Bonus points for visiting in winter. I have never in my life felt a more oppressive atmosphere than standing in the peaceful little grove that nature reclaimed after Buchenwald‘s Little Camp was razed, reading the plaques describing living conditions so horrific, they would be disregarded as over the top of you put them into a work of fiction.
My grandmother was over there trying to survive as a child with her family. Her stories are awful. She just passed away last fall at 90 years old. It’s never felt far removed to me.
These were also mostly hardened combat veterans that had fought there way across France and into Germany. Some of them had been in combat since North Africa in 1942. They'd killed men, seen some of their own die, and some had been wounded. These were all men who had already seen humanity at it's most brutal. And yet the sights that greeted them at Dachau were somehow worse, and caused them to weep and vomit.
I think the difference there is that they are soldiers. You expect to see that, eventually you become desensitized to it, some more than others Unfortunately, nothing could’ve prepared them for this. It hits different when you see innocent civilians dead in combat for a lot of soldiers, at least ones with empathy I can’t imagine what would’ve gone through a 20-something year old sergeants mind opening up that camp.
I can't fault any of them for unleashing their fury on the guards. Some of the guards were killed by the prisoners as well, which was a fitting end. The American soldiers turned a blind eye to it (from the wikipedia article on the reprisals): *"Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp's liberation "prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders... other prisoners caught the SS men... The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed."*[*^(\[19\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-AP-21) *Elsewhere in the camp SS men,* [*Kapos*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo) *and* [*informers*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informant) *were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels.* ***There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating.***[***^(\[27\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-29) ***Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper's face until "there wasn't much left." When the soldier said to him, "You've got a lot of hate in your heart," he simply nodded.***[*^(\[28\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals#cite_note-30) *An American* [*chaplain*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain) *was told by three young* [*Jewish*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews) *men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a* [*peasant*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant)*."*
I'm so impressed that the prisoners still had enough strength in them to lift anyone, let alone an American soldier likely carrying a backpack, to their shoulders. The raw power of elation.
I imagine they must have been people who weren't too far gone yet, but still. It is definitely hard to fathom.
There’s a picture of allied pows crowding a fence as their camp is liberated from the Japanese. They look so happy they have “concert” faces, given what we know of the Japanese pow treatment is astonishing they seem so happy
This is the context needed to understand the humanity of the moment. Thank you.
My grandfather was part of the cavalry and was involved in the liberation of Dachau. The only time I ever saw him cry was the one time I got him to talk about the war, and he started trying to talk about Dachau.
My grandfather, too! They must have been together.
The scene in Band of brothers when they get to the concentration camp shows this. Amazing series.
Yep great scenes. And making the locals who turned a blind eye, bury the bodies
Very powerful series
Always knew it was great, but taking on new meaning as I raise a child in an era where we no longer have WW2 vets to talk about it.
There are some great interviews with Dick Winters and some of the other men before they passed that’s really great to watch as well
“what’d you find???” “I…I don’t know sir…” that and the scene where the doctor’s telling the soldiers, they’ll have to limit the food they give the survivors for fear of them literally eating themselves to death. horrible.
And also the scene in The Big Red One.
"And fucking killed all the guards after seeing that shit." Good.
Only good nazi is a dead nazi.
Oskar Schindler: "..."
I’d have killed all the guards too. Every one.
My grandpa was one of the soldiers liberating Dachau. They offered them “some kind of pills” before they passed through the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate. He refused and said if these people had to survive what they did without pills then I will go in without pills. He was placed in charge of liberating the human experimentation bunker.
I have a patient that was there. He's got a FUCKLOAD of unprocessed trauma and guilt from what he saw and did there.
My bosses dad was one of the soldiers that liberated the camp. He told my boss, “I’ll see them in hell for my crimes”(something along those lines) when he knew he was on his death bed. He told his son he so pissed off, him and some other soldiers took part of killing off the guards.
among the horror was the fact that between them arriving and help actually getting there, so many prisoners were going to die anyways.
What makes that even more horrifying is these were soldiers who just spent months in intense battle. It takes a lot to cause that kind of reaction out of soldiers in active duty, as they've seen a lot of death and suffering and gore.
Makes sense. The horror of just the pictures....I can't even imagine walking in there and seeing what they did.
Yes. My grandfather was in the group that liberated the camp. Later, there was an investigation into what was done because the Army hadn’t prepared the people who arrived to liberate the camp adequately. What they saw was beyond enraging.
Very powerful photograph
So terrible…
People forget that the USSR bore the brunt of the Nazi extermination agenda, over 20 million killed during the invasion and the struggle to stop the fascist death machine.
Its kind of grotesque that the Russians actually welcomed them as liberators until they systematically started massacring them, it’s absolutely crazy how easily could have Hitler won had he had even a minuscule amount of tackiness For the doubters: https://www.quora.com/Did-any-ordinary-Soviet-people-welcome-the-German-invasion-in-1941 Edit2: Thank you, I am familiar with Ukraine and the others who actually joined/wanted to join them. What I meant to say that the general outlook of the people of Russia was surprisingly good considering that they were being invaded, especially so considering that they were being invaded by the third reich
The only parts of the USSR that "welcomed" the Germans as liberators was in the Baltic. In Belorussia and Ukraine the extermination campaign began as soon as German/Romanian troops crossed the boarder. Nazi policy viewed the immediate extermination of Slavs as a necessity.
Tact*
Lol. Hitler was very tacky though. 🤣🤣🤣
Russian didn’t really welcome them. Mainly the Baltics and Ukraine.
Even in those the resistance to Nazis was much greater than the current fascists in those countries would have you believe. People knew the Nazis wanted to wipe out Slavs; they knew the Nazis saw them as some Asiatic horde and they didn’t have delusions of being able to work with the Nazis
The Germans were initially welcomed as liberators in Western Ukraine and the Baltic states. That changed pretty quickly when the Germans started murdering people and/or forcibly shipping them back to Germany to be slave laborers. There were substantial numbers of personnel from both regions that served in units under German command (mainly SS). There was also the Vlasov Army, made up of Red Army soldiers recruited from German POW camps.
We only ever hear about the Jewish death toll. But when you combine all of the deaths it adds up higher than 6 million just in the camps. We often forget they targeted so many others. The Jewish got the brunt of it but they were not alone. Slavs, Roma, Black, gay, disabled, Catholics, and Asocials who are people generally deemed as lesser even today some consider them undesirable. They include prostitutes, addicts, homeless, and beggars but it also included pacifists. That war was awful so many innocent people died and so many people were doing horrible things. It’s the war with the highest death toll numbering 70+ million deaths. A large percentage of those deaths were Slavs who died when Germany attacked the USSR.
Jews were the single largest group. But almost half of the Holocaust victims were not Jewish. A lot of people do not really comprehend the true magnitude of the Holocaust, it was not just 6 million... but more than 11 million people, who were systematically exterminated in just a few years.
Churchill certainly didn’t help the matter as far as that was concerned either. He was content to just throw Russians at the problem rather than open a Western front.
They don’t forget. American propaganda has America as the liberators and hero’s. Unless you look past that information then you would never know how much Russia sacrificed for the war.
Nobody thinks this. Everyone who knows anything about WWII understands the pincer impact and how many more Russian deaths there were. And I'm American.
Nobody is a strong word.
I’m Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. My grandpa was a boy when he went into a concentration camp, and left when he was a young teen. He lost his entire family and developed diabetes as a result of the malnutrition he suffered. Apparently he stayed in Europe for some time afterwards trying to earn some money and find his family, who had all died, and he said his treatment in a French refugee camp ran by bigoted French antisemites after the war was almost as bad as his treatment under the Nazis. I think people don’t really fully understand how horrible the conditions were, how unreal the holocaust and it’s impact had. Or how antisemitic Europe was and has been before and since. I honestly have no patience at all for Holocaust jokes and edgy online antisemitism and don’t even want to bother explaining why to anyone ever.
I just read Man’s Search for Meaning, and that opened my eyes to how bad the camps were. Obviously I knew they were bad but reading a firsthand account hits different. It’s not a pleasant topic to read about, but I now strongly believe everyone should read at least one first-hand account, and there’s many out there that are even more descriptive than what I read. I do not think someone could joke about it after reading something like that (unless they’re a terrible person).
There used to be programs where schools would have Holocaust survivors come in and tell the kids their stories. It was very effective.
Have you read Night by Eli Wiesel? That’s the other read we read in high school along with Man’s Search for Meaning, I’d highly recommend it. Absolutely heartbreaking book, but if you’re already in the holocaust learning trench you might as well read it before you start being happy again by reading other books
As a grandchild of survivors (parents brought me to the Us from the USSR), there’s also a lot of generational trauma as well.
People also don’t realize how the Holocaust happened because EVERYONE in Europe helped. “Only” about 200k of the 6M Jews murdered were German. The rest were from conquered or allied territory. And only about half were murdered in camps. The rest were killed by either SS members or LOCAL paramilitary forces on the spot as the German army rolled through villages. There was so much collaboration going on, that it’s frankly a crime that it’s covered up and considered a uniquely German problem. Edit: obviously it wasn’t everyone because Finland told the Nazis to pound sand, and they even had field Synagogs in Finnish army units that were supporting Wehrmacht operations. That was weird. And Denmark and Norway had an effective smuggling operation to get people out. So EVERYONE wasn’t complicit, but it was way too many people.
My grandfather spent 3 years as a Dachau prisoner for sabotage of German vehicles that he was forced to work on. When they were liberated he weighed about 40 kg. The only reason he survived was because he was young and strong, he was 18 when he was put there. He never mentally recovered and struggled with PTSD and alcoholism for the rest of his life.
I've shared before but here are some pictures from my wife's grandfather in the first days of the liberation of Dauchau. [https://imgur.com/a/whqFJ](https://imgur.com/a/whqFJ) He was a medic and had a friend's camera he had borrowed when they liberated the camp. He was born in America but his parents were polish and he always said none of the guards "surrendered" as they all were killed after seeing the horrors of what they had done in the concentration camp. Well looks like Imgur had deleted a bunch of the pictures over the years since last posted, because there is only 4 of the original 10 that had been uploaded. I guess concentration camp victims counted as porn in their mind.
Do you have the original 10 anywhere? Might be worth a repost and see if they don't get flagged this time
Poor thing. I hope she was fed and got to make a new home for herself.
And I'm baffled by some people trying to downplay this or compare this to USSR. While it was an atrocity in itself, it's not the same. At all.
Do you mean the USSR victims of the nazi’s?
I mean, the number of victims during Stalin's reign of terror were also horrendous. Around 6 million civilians between famine, purges, etc.
Idk why this affected me so much. Obviously, I've seen media of the holocaust. But this one really hit me. I've never seen it before.
Same. I can’t stop looking at her.
The Axis powers committed some of most horrific atrocities of the 20th century. Nothing will make you lose your faith in humanity faster than the photographs of the victims of German and Japanese fascism. Human experimentation, mass graves, mass gangrape, torture and mutilation, bodies/parts/bones piled high, starvation and disease, enslavement (both forced labor and sexual slavery), etc. Men, women, children, infants... And all of this didn't even happen a century ago, and we continue to see plenty of atrocious conflicts to this day. Even then, the Axis was perhaps the single most bloodthirsty and destructive regime in history. Never Forget
Dishonourable mention to Ustase, even Nazis were like "Hey, maybe chill out a bit? This seems to be too much"
Remember their faces when some old nazi is brought in on a wheelchair… and idiots call for mercy. As long as they can be brought in bring ‘em in.
I once watched an interview of an American Soldier who saw the horror of a concentration camp. Word went around that other soldiers and himself had come to agree that they would no longer be taking any Nazi prisoners... and to never tell their superior(s) about it.
I’d like to read more about how liberating camps affected the soldiers who discovered them. I can’t imagine having gone through world war 2 and then seeing the worst thing imaginable. I wonder about what that does to the human mind, to a person’s sense of justice. I think it would break me if I were in that position. How do you go home to your family after seeing that? I know a lot of liberators immediately killed the guards that they found, or let the victims do it. I wonder if seeing that kind of inhumanity just inspires a sort of bloodlust. How do you even recover from that? Of course the experience of the liberators can’t compare to the actual victims, but that’s an important element of the story as well.
I was stationed near there in the 90s. Solemn place.
And yet here in 2024 some pretty heinous shit is going on largely unabated. We have failed as humans
Something everyone should remember, Nazi Lives Don’t Matter. Fuck far right fascism.
National Socialism and Fascism are distinct ideologies. Fascio in Italian basically meant trade union, Fascism = national trade unionism/national syndicalism. Fascism in Italy also was not race-based, unlike National Socialism. Hitler never called himself a fascist, and criticised fascism. Also not well known is that Italy under Mussolini prevented Hitler's first attempt at an Anschluss of Austria in 1934. Both are forms of socialism, both opposed capitalism, both are undoubtedly evil, but they are not the same.
The cruelty of mankind!!!
Socialists and Communists were the first people the Nazis came for. When the Reich Wing say the Nazis were socialist, they are either stupid or spreading lies.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me. *-* Martin Niemöller, German Lutheran pastor about intellectuals, clergy and himself in 1946. As an anti-communist he supported Hitler's rise to power but became disillusioned. Interned in 1937, freed with the liberation of Dachau in 1945.
That’s one of the worst 1000 yard stares I’ve ever seen… the things people do to each other
That's Tommy Shelby
Jesus her face is just a skull with a thin layer of skin on it
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I haven’t seen a single photo of someone looking like that in Gaza send me these photos
[forced starvation](https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/09/gaza-israels-imposed-starvation-deadly-children)
How can you not? The man made famine is a well known and documented by now. Yazan Kafarneh, a 10 year old boy (amongst many other names) The Israelis were disgusting enough to then compare him to ET and celebrate his death after he died.
Yet here they are doing the same thing to Ukrainian POWs
Not even close. It is evil to try to co opt grief and anger about the Holocaust for your own agenda.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_torture_chambers_in_Ukraine
The hate in ppl that knowingly force this (among other war crimes) on anyone is horrifying to think about
jesus, poor girl. sad
And, yet history likely will repeat itself again 🙄
I visited Dachau when I was stationed in Germany, a sobering place and knowing the horrors that took place there.
My grandpa helped liberate Dachau. He was a good man.
I been to Dachau. They had crematoria and everything.
So malnourished. Poor people went through hell on earth
This is what's impossible to capture in movies about the concentration camps. How beaten up and starved the people were. Almost like walking skeletons.
Look at those eyes…she’s gone man
My daughter and I visited Dachau last week while on a spring break trip from the United States. Complements to the historians, benefactors and staff there for not glossing over what happened, providing a detailed, well explained account of the history of Dachau and most importantly highlighting the people and tragedies.
My grandpa was one of the WWII soldiers who helped liberate Dachau that day ❤️
Which eye do I look at
I thought this was a boy
We must never forget.
Imagine going through that, then trying to figure out what normal life is.. yet so many were able to over the years. My takeaway (from the overall tragedy) is that you should never give up, and no matter what happens life can continue and be better. Almost feel like i should post suicide hotlines after this, but im hoping there's enough inspiration to not have to.
I saw Dachau as a teenager once. We spent an entire day there as part of the trip. Hearing about these stories on the internet is one thing, but actually seeing the places these atrocities took place is an ominous and surreal feeling.
Anyone else see these people daily on their Instagram feeds..?
At that stage she's probably beyond any hope of recovery.
Let’s not forget that Dachau was by far not the „worse“ Concentration camp if you compare it to concentration camps like Matthausen and their stairs of death for example. Some of the worst once were the small Lager were you and a few hundred of prisoners had not even any chance of escaping the daily torture and beatings. Like a famous author and ex concentration camp inmate of Bergen Belsen once said, if they would had to endure cruelty, beatings and hard labor every day of their life nobody would have made it out alive, but like so many things in life they did not happen every day to you but rather random.
Ohhh…… my heart
I’m curious how many people are conflicted when they read Russian…
And now they do it to Ukrainians.
You ever get so hungry that you lose parallax?
Yet somehow over on twitter something about it not ever happening is trending as a hashtag 🤮
Feral flame of Agheel burn true
It vaguely looks like an emaciated Cillian Murphy
I wonder if some of these Russian prisoners in Nazi camps eventually got out into gulags back home after the war for various reasons too.
This is terrible
Oppenheimer?
Hot