I have no ancestors of that gifted people

I don't have to tell you about the holocaust son. But remember that pretty much the entire German population with very few very honourable exceptions supported or agreed or kept quiet whilst this was happening. It's unfair to hold them just up for scrutiny. Jews have been persecuted for centuries not least here in the UK. If you get a chance son, visit the Jewish museum in London. We've got tons of books on this, including a mildly controversial book, Hitler's willing executioners. Then you can read about how common people turned brutal. And it can happen anywhere. Eternal vigilance son.

But that's not the point which I wanted to bring out. It's the letter writing which I wanted to point to, son.
It's a letter of note. Polished English. And it's a highly intelligent put down. Very smart very very intelligent. Normally I don't recommend writing letters or emails when angry. Then you'll end up writing the best email you'll ever regret. Never do that. If you get upset over an email, by all means, draft a letter but DONT send it. Store it in draft and then send it next day after sleeping over it. Anger is very expensive son. Extremely expensive. It costs huge amounts, not just to you. It has a destructive ability that vastly overpowers the immediate benefit of hurting the other. See people who get angry and you know what their weaknesses are. You know how to control them by observing their anger.

So whilst I can appreciate the intellectual aspect of this letter, I disagree that he should have sent it. How will it change the mind of the publisher? He's going to get pissed and it doesn't help.

There's a time and place for anger. This isn't it. Then again, if he hadn't sent it, then I wouldn't have been able to share this with you :)

Love

Baba

Letters of Note: I have no ancestors of that gifted people

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-of-that-gifted.html

via Instapaper

can you make out what this is?

this is a wall

there are parallel marks on the wall

get it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

no?

this is the photo of the wall inside the Auschwitz Gas Chamber, when the inmates realised they are being gassed and they tried to escape the concrete walls.

Never again.

Leni Riefenstahl

This is the story of a remarkable woman. German. Very highly qualified and amazingly talented. Perhaps one of the best directors and a wonderful photographer. But as the downside and the book, hitlers willing executioner and loads of other researchers have pointed out, the common German was as complicit in the holocaust as the nazis, the SS etc etc. As the article shows, she wriggled around trying to explain her actions. 

This is why you have to be courageously strong in standing up for what's right and saying it so. Whether its due to religion or ideology or politics son, stand up for what's right. And most importantly be very suspicious of people promising the moon. Whether its hitler or a religious guru, prophet or pandit. 

But learn to distinguish art or speech from the artist son. You can admire Wagner or Leni and their work without letting their association with nazism bother you. Will you hate the Pieta because it was made by Michelangelo as he was gay? No. 

Love

Baba

 

 

Leni Riefenstahl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl

---

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German: [ˈʁiːfənʃtaːl]; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, photographer, actress and dancer widely known for directing the Nazi Party propaganda film Triumph of the Will. Riefenstahl’s prominence in the Third Reich, along with her personal association with Adolf Hitler, destroyed her film career following Germany's defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but released without any charges.^[2]

Triumph of the Will gave Riefenstahl instant and lasting international fame, as well as infamy. She directed eight films, two of which received significant coverage outside Germany. The propaganda value of her films made during the 1930s repels most modern commentators, but many film histories cite the aesthetics as outstanding.^[3][4][5][6] The Economist wrote that Triumph of the Will "sealed her reputation as the greatest female filmmaker of the 20th century".^[7]

In the 1970s, Riefenstahl published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Sudan in several books such as The Last of the Nuba. Active until her death at age 101, she published marine life stills and released the marine-based film Impressionen unter Wasserin 2002.

After her death, the Associated Press described Riefenstahl as an “acclaimed pioneer of film and photographic techniques”.^[8] Der Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin noted, “Leni Riefenstahl conquered new ground in the cinema”.^[9] The BBC said her documentaries “were hailed as groundbreaking film-making, pioneering techniques involving cranes, tracking rails, and many cameras working at the same time”.^[10]

The dwarves of Auschwitz

Dear Son

The cruelty that we show fellow humans can sometimes be extraordinary. That's why ensure that religions and/or the state never gets too powerful. This is what and where people end up. 

Dead and gassed and tortured and and and. 

Real tragic and that's why the world decided, never again the holocaust. Didn't succeed that much. We had Bangladesh. We had Rwanda. We had Jordan. Etc etc. still we don't forget! 

Love

Baba

The dwarves of Auschwitz | World news | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/23/the-dwarves-of-auschwitz

---

The Ovitzs (from left): Elizabeth, Perla, Rozika, Frieda, Franziska and Avram

‘I was saved by the grace of the devil,” Holocaust survivor Perla Ovitz told us. Again and again, she recounted in detail how she and her family were taken to the gas chamber and ordered to strip naked. A heavy door opened and they were pushed inside. “It was almost dark and we stood in what looked like a large washing room, waiting for something to happen. We looked up to the ceiling to see why the water was not coming. Suddenly we smelled gas. We gasped heavily, some of us fainting on the floor. With our last breath we cried out. Minutes passed, or maybe just seconds, then we heard an angry voice from outside – ‘Where is my dwarf family?’ The door opened, and we saw Dr Mengele standing there. He ordered us to be carried out and had cold water poured on us to revive us.”

The Ovitz family, from the village of Rozavlea in Transylvania, was the largest recorded family of dwarves: a dwarf father who sired 10 children, seven of them dwarves. Perla, born in 1921, was the youngest. In that remote part of Romania in the early 20th century, it was difficult for anyone to eke a living from the land and livestock, and impossible for someone standing less than 3ft tall.

Their mother, anxious for her children’s future, guided them towards a common skill, a profession in which they could together make a living and would be neither isolated nor ostracised. As the five sisters and two brothers were all good-looking and musically gifted, the stage seemed the perfect choice: for where else could they be applauded, courted, honoured?

How the British and Turks killed 768 people

I just heard and read about SS Struma. I quote:

The Struma was a ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to British-controlled Palestine during World War II. The engine gave out several times after the Struma set sail from Constanţa, on the Black Sea on 12 December 1941 and it was towed to Istanbul on 15 December 1941. On February 23, 1942, with its engine inoperable and its refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed the ship from Istanbul harbor through the Bosphorus out to the the coast of Şile in North Istanbul. Within hours, in the morning of February 24, it was torpedoed and sunk by the Soviet submarine Shch 213, killing 768 men, women and children, with only one survivor, a 19 year old man, making it the largest exclusively civilian naval disaster of the war in Black Sea

You know what I found ironic? This single survivor served in North Africa for the British Army in WW2. Sad.

Not the finest hour for Turkey or United Kingdom.

The Auschwitz Album

This old photo album really got me going. The power of a photograph reaches out despite decades having had passed since it was taken at Auschwitz. This album shows the people  arriving at the concentration camp, getting processed into those who would be workers and those who would be gassed immediately. The black and white photographs throw a seriously blunt light on this truly horrible time.

Here’s one example of the arrivals. The faces are numb. Look at the faces of the children, innocent and uncomprehending.

Once they arrived, they were then selected according to what the SS officers felt as to their working capability, old men, women and children were more than likely to be sent straight into the gas chambers. The piles of clothing in the right back were reprocessed. In the top far left is a line which has already been processed and are heading towards the gas chambers (see air picture below).

These are 2 boys. Notice the Star of David on the greatcoat of the boy on the right, the Jews were identified that way.

Old men being led to the gas chambers, again notice the Star of David.

The same fate awaited old women and children.

Women and men who were fit for forced labour were deloused, had their heads shaven and were then moved to the labour part of the camp.

A photograph of a line of prisoners being lead to the gas chambers. These reconnaissance photographs were taken by the allied forces. In many cases, they did not even know what this was, or rather what the camps really were used for (or at least that's what was being claimed then).

and how the Germans then tried to hide the evidence.

it is all bloody painful…
The above related to the victims, but what about the Germans? Here’s another photo album from the other side.

There are more photographs of how the SS officers enjoyed their lives, as if they were on holidays, eating blue berries with cream and singing along with accordions. I get into frequent arguments with TBS about why the Holocaust is considered so extra special. Well, it's the efficiency with which this large scale killing happened, the scale and scope, the rabid ideology, and and and, which all lead us to hope that it will not happen again. And despite this, we have seen Bangladesh, Rwanda, Cambodia, etc. Some said, we need to educate people more. In one of the next posts, I will be exploring why its the educated lot who actually drive or commit these monstrous crimes against humanity.

The Holocaust gets compared to the strangest things

This made me gibber a bit.

What did ordinary German Soldiers think about the Holocaust?

An absolutely fascinating research paper came to hand. I am taking the liberty to quote it liberally.

This article details research about the knowledge of German soldiers concerning the mass executions of Jews in Eastern Europe during the Second World War, as it can be discerned from their letters.1 It examines the soldiers' perceptions and justifications of criminal missions committed by their own comrades or in which they were actually involved, and their interpretations of the facts and rumours they heard about the extermination of the Jewish population.

....

Up here you see many prison camps assigned to do construction work and other things. There are Jews coming here, that is to say, to Auschwitz, seven or eight thousand a week who die a "hero's death" before long. You see, it's quite good to get around a great deal.

There's not much new to tell from here; during the last couple of days the ghetto got smoked out. Unfortunately some of the Jews managed to skedaddle; and from time to time we have some minor shoot-outs

You know our mood isn't improved very much by all these actions, nor by the lack of work. Currently a new action against Jews is making some impression on us; I prefer to spare you the details of what I saw today while walking past the affected quarters

In the old citadel 1000 Jews will be shot dead on this day. This is a reprisal for the 2800 Ukrainians who were shot in Bolshevik times. In return, 5600 Russians will now give their lives. Two officers, whom I sent out searching for wire and iron, reported that the Jews died without making any sound. After this human tragedy, which is unfortunate but a necessary measure to discourage the uprising insurgents, we experienced over the following days how a large section of the looters simply left their stolen goods on the street.

Here the Jewish issue is solved somewhat differently. The Romanians drove all the Jews together and shot them dead regardless of whether they were men, women or children. At the beginning it was the other way round.

The many hundred kilometres we have covered showed us the roughness and the cruelty of this battle. It is impossible to describe all the details, but it is a matter of life and death. The deeper we got into Russia, the more we met Jews. These guys are just as cheeky as in the most peaceful times. One should put even more of these guys against the wall than has been done so far.

One just notices here how beautiful our home country is. The social deficiencies are impossible to describe. Dirt and mud. A great percentage of inhabitants are Jews.

And then the "solution" follows:

All the more urgent was the solution of the Jewish question. It is now pushed forward energetically by the Hungarian government according to the German model. A complete elimination is just necessary to give the miserable Russian people better living conditions.

The thing a physician needs to accomplish must be the complete elimination of the Cholera, what our people need to accomplish must be the complete elimination of the Jews

I am concerned about the nutrition of our Polish civilians whose work efficiency is decreasing rapidly. We only get so much food for them as to provide for a meagre soup five times a week with 60 hours of labour. The extra supply they get from the city's civil service is absolutely insufficient. It is even worse for the Jews, some of them just collapse of hunger during urgent street construction. No flogging or shooting will solve that.

The people here do not mean well to us Germans. The city of Dünaburg is half in ruins. 75% of the population used to be Jewish. They themselves - mostly before the Germans arrived - blew up or burned down their houses. Subsequently 30 000 Jews were shot not far from the city. In addition we executed other people over nothing. For these reasons, the population don't like to see the Germans anywhere. People are suspicious.

In Bereza - Katuska, where I stopped at noon, they had just shot 1300 Jews the day before. They were taken to a pit outside the city, then men, women and children had to take off all their clothes and were finished by shots to the neck. The clothes were disinfected and then reused. I am convinced, if the war lasts longer, it will become necessary to make sausages out of the Jews and feed them to the Russian prisoners of war or the trained Jewish workers

Remember these are ordinary Germans. And in an email exchange I had with some Canadian Muslims, I found the similar feelings, if you were a Jew, you were automatically thought to be anti-Muslim or anti-Iran. Evidence to the contrary like the Iranian Jews was ignored totally. But sadly familiar, the Jews have indeed seen this before and are seeing it again. The tragedy is that these Muslims will face the same behaviour very soon from the Christians in the West.

Ironical and sad.

JO - Journal of Genocide Research
PB - Routledge
AU - Kipp, Michaela
TI - The Holocaust in the letters of German soldiers on the Eastern front (1939–44)
SN - 1462-3528
PY - 2007
VL - 9
IS - 4
SP - 601
EP - 615

Technorati Tags: Muslims , Jews , Genocide , Germany , Holocaust , World War II