Auschwitz museum criticizes use of death camp in politics
apnews.com
apnews.com
> "(AP) The law would establish a state commission for investigating Russian influence in Poland and on national security with the powers of prosecutor and judge."
Given that the adoption of totalitarian powers is more-or-less required for the initiation of genocidal programs by a state (i.e. elimination of separation of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial branches, implementation of secret decision-making, removal of citizen's rights to a fair trial, etc.), pointing out the similarities isn't some crime against the memory of the Holocaust. Nipping such behavior in the bud is what prevents it from happening again.
Well, except that one nuclear armed nation state in the middle east.
Besides that... I think your interlocutors are trying to point out that boogey-man politics leads people the wrong way, as evidenced by 20th century European wars.
German fascists thought that all Jewish people were in cahoots with the USSR, which was Definitely trying to conquer all of Europa.
Polish fascists think all ethnically Russian people are in cahoots with the RF MoD, which is Definitely trying to conquer all of Europa.
It is a similar situation and we shouldn't succumb to historical revisionism.
That's not what they think. As you know. This kind of intentional blurring and hyperbole is really quite tiresome.
This is easily proven false on the grounds that not all Jewish people had any connection to the USSR. You have to accept a falsehood for this conclusion.
> Polish fascists think all ethnically Russian people are in cahoots with the RF MoD, which is Definitely trying to conquer all of Europa.
All ethnically Russian people could have a connection to Russia, many are likely to. This means you don't have to accept a falsehood for this conclusion.
Let's not try to equate completely disparate situations, or we'll have to treat the Flat Earth movement with the same level of comparability.
The Nazis believed all Jewish people to be connected to a conspiracy, even though the necessary precondition wasn't given. This is NOT the same with Russian people, which the previous poster claimed.
I am not claiming all Russian people should be treated one way or another, but I cannot stand the historical revisionism comparing the plight of the Jewish people DURING WWII to Russian people today!
Claiming that anyone is doing the kind of historical revisionism are opposed to is something of a strawman argument, isn't it?
Anyways, I'm sure the European fascists will be right this time, and nothing will go wrong.
It's the exact same situation. Literally.
Also, this was in Polish. I imagine if you don't speak Polish, a lot will be lost in translation.
Context and subtext both get largely lost in attempts to explain what went down in some other language to people who weren't there.
I think the fact that there had been no outrage reaction to his public demonstration of extreme violence and a call for his resignation means that people no longer remember what a great technological bathroom invention the German people developed in the early 1940s called “The Shower Chamber” which was provided free of charge to travellers exiting the trains upon arrival at Auschwitz.
Therefore, it is my opinion that this spot is a great way to reboot and restart the holocaust education of young and old people everywhere to ensure no person utters such Hateful words to another human being on earth.
Not a politician but a journalist...
> the following phrase: “Gas chamber for President Duda and Premier Kaczynski.”
... except he wrote it in Polish, not English, using the word "komora" that means both a [prison] cell and a [gas] chamber.
He also clarified later that he meant a [prison] cell, deleted his tweet, and apologized.
All of this is clearly outlined in TLA, which unfortunately you didn't bother to read.
The US has engaged in concentration camps and separation of families in immigration in the last decade, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Trump was a totalitarian leader in everything except competence.
Propaganda is becoming shockingly effective when married to social media, and the next election cycle will likely see frightening AI-powered media "weaponry".
I find it more scary that the statement has traction rather than anything about what they are actually trying to say. The post and it being upvoted is a reflection of the plausibility of fascism.
Why that important part of title was left of?
Also this is a few after the ruling party introduced a law that essentially recreates Stalinist cangaroo courts
https://metro.co.uk/2017/01/19/powerful-images-that-show-why...
Someone actually wrote a paper on it with examples
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17506980221101111
The real problem is vast majority of society has long forgotten and doesn't want to remember the final horror of fascism "othering" minorities, anti-diversity, etc. and that's why it appears in politics.
I did a tour of Auschwitz recently and even after half a day of a tour that showed the horrors that occurred there people were taking selfies.
The holocaust was very much a political event, and to treat it otherwise is to excuse the broad public support that political movement had, and the widespread public participation involved.
Yes, the use in mass political* advertising can trivialize the crime by repetitive imagery, and I presume this is the origin of the stance of the museum. But it can also call out the rising risk of such a movement gaining power again.
If the memory souls who perished can be salved at all, it is to ensure that people understand the dynamics that led to what happened and ensure that it will happen nie wieder. So far the record since the end of WWII has not been encouraging in this regard.
* I do think the use of these images in non-political, non-historical contexts should be considered beyond the pale.
Ideally, we would prevent such people from perpetrating such atrocities in the first place. The Nazis were Nazis before they killed millions, and they said they would do it before they did.
When people, especially politicians, come out and say, "we must eliminate [demographic group]," we need to believe them and understand that genocide is their goal.
If you want to use the Holocaust to draw a comparison, it should have substance. Without substance, anyone can make shallow comparisons.
I didn't say the museum should not have objected. I feel they could have used the episode for greater value/understanding.
What I mean is different than accuracy. You could write an essay or book comparing something to Nazism, and be right or wrong, but at least you're making a case.
If you're just claiming a comparison without presenting a case, you can also be right or wrong, but you're not doing anything more than throwing a name around and making an ad hominem attack.
It simply pollutes the discourse and makes it more difficult to actually learn valuable lessons from the Holocaust
Was it a political event tho? It wasn't something the Nazis were openly announcing they were doing. Sending them to camps was one thing, pretty much every country ended up creating camps to keep people during that time. If they were humanly treated in the camps there wouldn't be so much of an issue. It's that they went to extents that the German masses weren't aware of is what makes the holocaust a wtf. Lots of people use it for political purposes, but was it actually a political event when it was happening or did we just politicise it?
The holocaust to me was something they did in secret to their own population. Otherwise we need to group in all interment camps at the time.
Yes there was some uncertainty of what happened at the camps. But it was well known even at the time that nazi’s camps meant death.
Maybe if you make your claims more solid - who knew what, and when - and provided at least one link to evidence.
There seems to have been a lot of suppression of knowledge about the camps on the allied side too (looking at how the Vrba-Wetzler report was received), something that I don't understand at all.
Furthermore, if you read any of the books written by Germans who lived through that time they'll often say they didn't know what was happening and in one book about a kid who went through the ranks of the Hitler youth, I believe he thought they were fine in the camps and thought people just moved away.
Now, in other countries such as the Netherlands the story was different but victims often know the full truth instead of getting told a story. Rewriting history isn't that cool.
Furthermore, the majority of victims of the holocaust weren't Jewish, they were civilians. [1]
[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documentin...
From what I've read, the Holocaust was a pretty open secret in Germany. Wikipedia [1] cites studies suggesting that 30-50% of German adults during WWII were aware of the Holocaust, and I'm inclined to believe the higher estimates (especially if you include people who could reasonably suspect that extermination was going on but didn't want to think too hard on it lest they realize their own moral culpability).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Holocau...
And an open secret pretty much means it wasn't public policy or politics. And higher estimates don't really make sense, why were the allied forces in the dark? Why were the death camps in Poland and not Germany?
People who were living nearby, I will never be convinced they didn't know. But expecting someone in Fankfurt am Main to know about the mass executions happening in small towns in Poland during a time where the country was at war and trying to keep things hush hush so the allied forces don't find out.
> Johnson suggests (in disagreement with his co-author) that it is more likely that about 50% of the German population were aware of the atrocities being committed against the Jewish people and other enemies identified by the Nazi regime.[46]
To me this reads as someone wanting to say a high number to make things sound bad. There are always people who are going to do that. And I think this thread is exactly that. Frame it in the worst possible way to make a point. But the realities are different. To disagree with experts in the field to say they're wrong and it was something different from what they say is arrogance at the highest order. Especially, when basic logic and reasoning say it wasn't politically motivated. It was motivated by a deranged lunatic who hatred of Jews dates all the way back to when he lived in Vienna and whose hatred of Jews got in the way of everything else which is shown by the fact he increased the killings at the end of the war.
The fact, the holocaust as we know it didn't really start until well after political decisions were made. So really, I think it's a fair question to ask was an event that happened well after politics was important a political event or are making it one to fit our narrative? So far the answers have been that it was a clear policy which has been refuted and instead it was an open secret with numbers of people who knew being refuted by the very source that is giving them.
Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Oranienburg, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen...
You can argue about the semantics (i.e., death camps versus concentration camps), but massive executions happened in both, and some of these were established throughout Germany almost immediately after the regime change in 1933.
That said, see the points below about Holocaust.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths is semantics? That is a disgusting point of view. I wanted to ignore this entire conversation because there is no postive side to it. But quite simply it is disgusting to minimise the horrors that happened at camps like Auschwitz by comparing it with camps such as Dachau and it really highlights the fact that the opinions that oppose the opinion of the Auschwitz museum as held by people who are fundamentally deatched from what actually happening and having the correct perspective.
Saying that the difference between death camps versus concentration camps is "semantics" is extremely problematic point of view. This is like arguing that the difference between an electric car and an electric chair is "semantics", since both "use electricity". It completely misses the intent.
The Khmer Rouge, for example, murdered about two million of their own population, from 1975 to 1979, with 60% of them by direct execution, over a vast territory — places known today as "killing fields" (mass graves which today are a morbid place of remembrance).
Compare that to Treblinka, where the Nazis managed to murder about one million, in about one year, and all that in an area of two football fields — while leaving almost no traces.
So, the Nazis were about 4 times more "effective" with regards to rate, thousands of times more "effective" with regards to area, and indefinitely more "effective" with regards to not leaving traces.
This is because Treblinka was built by using the Nazi industrial complex, as a modern factory, but instead of producing as much stuff as possible in the most effective way, they have planned and built it to murder (and burn) as many people as possible in the most effective way.
The intent is what differentiates the concentration camps (basically, a prison, and a very terrible one!) and the extermination camp (basically, industrial complex for killing people).
It was a library book, so I don't remember the name or the author. But it was using the letters of Germans during WW2 to look at what the general German population felt about the war as it went on.
By the time that the regime starts opening up the extermination camps, it's pretty clear to the public that the goal is to kill all the Jews, even if this is being described with euphemisms. And from time to time, the officials would actually admit that they now have industrial-scale mass murdering camps, and the reaction is essentially "... they're saying the quiet parts out loud."
> Why were the death camps in Poland and not Germany?
Oh, that's an easy one. Most of the Jews were in Poland, and not Germany.
Former Nazi Germany concentration camps are located on Poland's current territory. When they were built however, the land was occupied by German Nazi Reich.
Death camps were built in Germany, then-ruled by a meth addict coprophile.
Kids being indoctrinated in youth camps is a different matter entirely.
The Holocaust is defined in the first sentence as "the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators."
I don't think you really meant to claim that "majority of victims of the holocaust weren't Jewish".
I think this is the link you are talking about.
Under the "number of deaths section":
> Jews: 6 million
> Soviet civilians: around 7 million (including 1.3 Soviet Jewish civilians, who are included in the 6 million figure for Jews)
>Repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials: at least 70,000
etc
So yes, I think you are right, non-jews were killed as apart of the holocaust, but it is defined as "The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators."
I agree it doesn't really seem fair to ignore the other 50% of people that were killed and only ever define it as the killing of Jews.
Persecutions are a terrible thing — and Nazi persecution especially so — but it (and others) just fall short on the scale of atrocities, when being compared to the Holocaust.
Either you don't understand what exactly the Holocaust is, or you're spreading a modern version of Holocaust denial, where by "modern version" I mean not "this didn't happen" but "this did happen but so what".
I would say it's more likely you don't understand. The Nazis committed genocide againist multiple groups at the exact same time using the same people, same locations, and same methods. To say the horrors committed on 8 million plus people fall short of the same horrors comitted to 6 million just because of their race is fundamentally racist. However, the reason you have the opinion you have is almost certainly related to the cold war, where those 8 million people plus became victims of the enemy of the west and the west focused on the 6 million Jews. Also, the overall rise of power included far more antisentism than anything else. It's understandable why you think the way you do, however, it's not acceptable to not educate yourself when given valid sources.
There is a reason Auschwitz came out with the statement. And they'll also tell you of all the other people other than Jews that died at Auschwitz. They know their history.
You seem to not understand the term "genocide", thinking it means "mass murder".
It doesn't mean that.
The difference between "mass murder" and "genocide" is that genocide (as postulated by USHMM) is a. systematic, b. bureaucratic, and c. state-sponsored, while "mass murder" is either none of that, or at the very least not all of that.
The "final solution to the Jewish question", as suggested, planned, and implemented by the Nazis, started with an intent to eliminate the Jews, regardless of their sex, age, or beliefs, to the very last one of them — and planning to the point of realizing that intent, complete with sparing no effort at all, to see that intent to full implementation.
The only other ethnical/racial group targeted in the same manner was the Sinti/Roma people. Their prosecution and murder, which is also undeniably an instance of genocide ("killing of a nation"), is known as Porajmos.
This is not meant in any way to diminish the terrible suffering of other groups who were targeted and prosecuted by the Nazi regime — Soviet civilians, Polish civilians, prisoners of war, German homosexuals, the mentally disabled, Jehovah witnesses, and others (the list is very long). But the Nazis never had an intent, planning, bureaucracy, or effort to eliminate these groups until the very last one of them — in the way they had with regards to Jews or Roma/Sinti. They never asked the occupied France to deliver French homosexuals, of whom they never cared to begin with. They never asked Hungary to turn over their mentally disabled so they could be sent to extermination camps, the way they did ask for Jews. And they never sent a huge war ship to a remote Greek island for a single Jehovah witness living there — but they did that to pick one Jew.
The Holocaust, as any genocide, is not "just" mass murder. It's an intentional, planned, and duly executed mass murder of an entire people, when the complete and utter elimination of that ethnical/racial group is the declared and practical end goal.
First hand documents (letters and memoirs) of polish jews show that rumors of death camps in germany were common as early as 1942, and some had word of mouth knowledge that later turned out to be almost completely accurate. By 1944 accounts from jews all over europe show routine knowledge of death camps in germany & hungary.
Pogroms had been going on for years at that point. People knew what the final solution was intended to be. Jews a country away certainly did anyway, why would germans not?
Wrong. We've made a pretty big deal over Manzanar and other Japanese-American internment camps, despite their being "more humane".
The German POW camps were brutal and left POWs looking like walking skeletons, but we barely mention them. Holding people in camps wasn't the problem, killing them en masse was. many of the victims of the holocaust didn't even make it to camps. The majority of the victims of the holocaust were "soviet" civilians who weren't Jewish. It wasn't the camps, it was the killing people.
That's consistent with what I said. You said "if they were humanly treated in the camps there wouldn't be so much of an issue", to which I provided a counter-example where people were treated more humanely (which you seem to agree with). Nonetheless, I remember learning about Manzanar as a kid multiple times - we do make a big deal out it, and it is properly contextualized as "very bad, but less bad than Auschwitz", at least where I grew up.
Sounds like you just want to be up on a soapbox.
Haven't read this book but Kershaw's European history which is great.
"Kershaw concluded that the majority of Bavarians were either antisemitic or more commonly simply did not care about what was happening to the Jews.[11] Kershaw also concluded that there was a fundamental difference between the antisemitism of the majority of ordinary people, who disliked Jews and were much coloured by traditional Catholic prejudices, and the ideological and far more radical völkische antisemitism of the Nazi Party, who hated Jews" (Wikipedia)
https://books.google.de/books/about/Hitler_the_Germans_and_t...
EDIT: Many downvotes for a direct quotation...