Holocaust / Shoah

JackRT

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A holocaust survivor once told me that on the morning of his liberation he awoke to find the camp gates wide open, the towers unmanned, the soldiers gone. At the age of 16 he was probably the only one in the camp still strong enough to walk to the main gate and out onto the road. He felt exhausted and sat down on a large stone at the side of the road across from the gates. He enjoyed the bright warm spring day and listened to the birds singing. The birds were singing!!! He had not heard them the day before or the day before that. He realized that because he was a prisoner that, even though they sang, he did not hear them. He was free, he could hear the birds again! He then heard the footsteps of his liberators. The first Russian troops were approaching the camp.

The first Russian soldier to see him sat down beside him on the rock, handed him his canteen with fresh water, pulled a long loaf of fresh bread out his pack, broke off two pieces. They shared a silent meal for a few moments. Then two civilians, a young man and woman approached, both blonde haired, Aryan in appearance and well fed. The Russian soldier leveled his weapon at them and ordered them to stop. He walked up to the young man and tore the sleeve off his shirt exposing his SS tattoo. He then came back and handed his weapon to the survivor and indicated that he should shoot them. The survivor shook his head no and handed back the weapon. The Russian shot them both dead in the middle of the road.

He also told me that it was 25 years before he could even speak of the horror of his experience in the concentration camps. His own wife did not know till 15 years after their marriage. He said "for 25 years I could not speak of it, now I cannot stop speaking of it". He now spends much of his time telling his story before school groups. His effect on these groups is deeply profound.

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There is an old veteran in my town who has some experience with the holocaust. He enlisted in the British army early in WWII as an infantryman. He was seriously wounded in North Africa and was sent back to England for treatment and rehabilitation. He was then not deemed fit to be an infantryman so he retrained as a medic. It was in that role that he entered Bergen-Belsen when the camp was liberated by elements of the British 11th Armoured Division and the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division. Six thousand prisoners were found inside, most of them seriously ill, starved and debilitated . Another 13,000 corpses lay around the camp unburied. The scenes that greeted these troops were famously described by the BBC war correspondent , who accompanied them: “Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.” The veteran mentioned earlier said that the survivors were terribly infested with lice, ticks and other vermin so they were treated with DDT just as soldiers were. He then broke down crying and said “My God, we didn't know! We killed a thousand of them. Over the next 24 hours they dropped dead in front of us of toxic shock. We just didn't realize that they were so debilitated that they would react in this way.” Whenever I encounter a holocaust denier I think of this and similar stories I have read by those who were there.
 
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frienden thalord

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I wonder how many holocaust survivors are still alive today?
They killed so many people and all in the name of peace.
Throughout history this has been the case. Some leader stands
in a generation that knows not the past
bringing the same line of a way to have unity and peace.
And here we go again. WORLD PEACE , INTEFAITH and UNITY ...........
this will end with billions dead. I too try and warn of what I see coming
but just like in every generation , so few hear.
 
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JackRT

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I wonder how many holocaust survivors are still alive today?

Not very many. Mostly now those who were teens or younger.

They killed so many people and all in the name of peace.

No, not in the name of peace. In the name of racial purity and hatred.
 
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frienden thalord

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Not very many. Mostly now those who were teens or younger.



No, not in the name of peace. In the name of racial purity and hatred.
well, that was the real name, it was hatred. But hitler came under the guise of Peace
in a thousand yr reich. they always use that line. peace and prosperity.
 
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miamited

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Hi frienden thalord,

I wonder if you are a real person? How anyone could say that anything Adolph Hitler did was either in the name of peace or supposed to appear to be in the name of peace, wouldn't be the words that I would expect to hear from a thinking, breathing human being. Have you ever watched and listened to any of Adolph Hitler's political speeches. He didn't speak of peace, but prosperity for the German people who had recently been impoverished because they lost WWI. His was a message of "We're going to go get even for what the world has done to us for losing the war'. Germany, as a nation, was suffering because of all they had spent in WWI and the concessions they had to make as part of the peace negotiations after WWI. Adolph Hitler never, as far as I know, spoke of peace. His was a message of defiance and taking back control of the government.

God bless you,
In Christ, ted
 
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frienden thalord

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Hi frienden thalord,

I wonder if you are a real person? How anyone could say that anything Adolph Hitler did was either in the name of peace or supposed to appear to be in the name of peace, wouldn't be the words that I would expect to hear from a thinking, breathing human being. Have you ever watched and listened to any of Adolph Hitler's political speeches. He didn't speak of peace, but prosperity for the German people who had recently been impoverished because they lost WWI. His was a message of "We're going to go get even for what the world has done to us for losing the war'. Germany, as a nation, was suffering because of all they had spent in WWI and the concessions they had to make as part of the peace negotiations after WWI. Adolph Hitler never, as far as I know, spoke of peace. His was a message of defiance and taking back control of the government.

God bless you,
In Christ, ted
Whew you are overthinking. HE said peace
BUT it was EVIL. I know it was evil as can be. But this is how evil works
It comes in as a good idea, as one with all the answers to ills.
 
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frienden thalord

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Surely you did not think I would approve of such evil.
sometimes we all make mistakes in assuming. Heck I have done it too.
But by all means this holocaust was very evil.
I was just trying to make a point that its about to happen all over again.
INTERFAITH , WORLD PEACE < WORLD UNITY
History will repeat . and all I can do is warn and say, shun that wicked interfaith
and any idea with it , right to the darkness where it belongs.
Its all a guise.
 
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Quid est Veritas?

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The Nazis engineered their own morality. In Nazi eyes, the holocaust was moral. It was the destruction of vermin, as we would think it a good thing to kill all the rats in a building to stop disease.

The point of the Final Solution was indeed peace, as conceived by the Nazis. They thought a free German reich would be impossible so long as it had a disease like Jewry eating away at it from within. This was why they wasted so much materiel that they could have used for the war effort. In their minds, it was a part thereof.
Their goal was to have superior Aryan man create a 1000 year empire of peace and prosperity - for Germans.

This is the danger of the modern world. Once we start to decide morality is relative and not absolute, then the slow steady decline to the gates of Auschwitz start. I expect many persecutions and genocides in the 21st century as well as we have not learnt our lesson or learned the wrong one. Many say "the Nazis were EVIL" as if they were some Other, but they were an ordinary collection of humans - educated Westerners. We mustn't forget the banality of evil, how each and everyone of us can deteriorate to that level. The Nazis didn't begin with the holocaust in 1933; it was a steady process from sterilising genetic disorders to euthanasia of the mentally ill to isolating German Jewry to Genocide. Each step built on the previous one, Sin begets Sin, until the gates of hell stood open. That doctors who swore to do no harm experimented on inmates; accountants calmly tallied their belongings; guards kept them in; while billowing acrid black smoke of the crematoria came from the smoke stacks.

The Nazis were ordinary people, not particularly different from the rest of us. This should be a lesson to us all, how easily we can become devils ourselves.
 
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blackribbon

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I cared for a holocaust survivor in my hospital. She was over 100 years old and I felt honored to care for this amazing woman. She had gone to South American after the experience as a young woman so she spoke Spanish but her she shared some stories through her daughter who could translate.

My best friend's dad was a survivor. He was in his mid-teens when he escaped a Polish camp. He had a German grandmother so he also spoke German (along with Polish & Hebrew) and was able to hide out in the woods until he figured out how to get to Israel. He met his wife there (she was American) and they moved to America. He died a number of years back in a refinery explosion.
 
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Erik Nelson

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The Nazis engineered their own morality. In Nazi eyes, the holocaust was moral. It was the destruction of vermin, as we would think it a good thing to kill all the rats in a building to stop disease.

The point of the Final Solution was indeed peace, as conceived by the Nazis. They thought a free German reich would be impossible so long as it had a disease like Jewry eating away at it from within. This was why they wasted so much materiel that they could have used for the war effort. In their minds, it was a part thereof.
Their goal was to have superior Aryan man create a 1000 year empire of peace and prosperity - for Germans.

This is the danger of the modern world. Once we start to decide morality is relative and not absolute, then the slow steady decline to the gates of Auschwitz start. I expect many persecutions and genocides in the 21st century as well as we have not learnt our lesson or learned the wrong one. Many say "the Nazis were EVIL" as if they were some Other, but they were an ordinary collection of humans - educated Westerners. We mustn't forget the banality of evil, how each and everyone of us can deteriorate to that level. The Nazis didn't begin with the holocaust in 1933; it was a steady process from sterilising genetic disorders to euthanasia of the mentally ill to isolating German Jewry to Genocide. Each step built on the previous one, Sin begets Sin, until the gates of hell stood open. That doctors who swore to do no harm experimented on inmates; accountants calmly tallied their belongings; guards kept them in; while billowing acrid black smoke of the crematoria came from the smoke stacks.

The Nazis were ordinary people, not particularly different from the rest of us. This should be a lesson to us all, how easily we can become devils ourselves.
sobering warning

Shouldn't we all use the Hebrew term Shoah ??

According to Etymonline.com, the term "Holocaust" derives from 1942 British reporting about German anti-Jewish policies, and the word was first used in its modern sense in 1957.

But doesn't the British term invert the Biblical Hebrew definition of the term, as a "burnt offering unto God" ? Who could call the Shoah a burnt offering (of human beings!) to God ?!

So isn't the Hebrew term (far far far) more appropriate ???

Holocaust (sacrifice) - Wikipedia
 
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Quid est Veritas?

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sobering warning

Shouldn't we all use the Hebrew term Shoah ??

According to Etymonline.com, the term "Holocaust" derives from 1942 British reporting about German anti-Jewish policies, and the word was first used in its modern sense in 1957.

But doesn't the British term invert the Biblical Hebrew definition of the term, as a "burnt offering unto God" ? Who could call the Shoah a burnt offering (of human beings!) to God ?!

So isn't the Hebrew term (far far far) more appropriate ???

Holocaust (sacrifice) - Wikipedia
I prefer Holocaust personally, as it already had such implications thanks to its use for the Armenian Genocide and the pogrom in York in the 13th century. The idea of a holocaust as a sacrifice to God, has a nice ring of martyrdom to it, I think. Besides, you can't use Shoah except when speaking of the Jews, but the Holocaust included Gypsies, some Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
 
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Erik Nelson

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I prefer Holocaust personally, as it already had such implications thanks to its use for the Armenian Genocide and the pogrom in York in the 13th century. The idea of a holocaust as a sacrifice to God, has a nice ring of martyrdom to it, I think. Besides, you can't use Shoah except when speaking of the Jews, but the Holocaust included Gypsies, some Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
can't we just use the term "martyrs" then?

holocaust human sacrifice to what God ?

God of Abraham stopped human sacrifice 4000 years ago ?
 
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