Would you have done anything?

chris_bass

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36560416

He knew people were being killed in Auschwitz and didn't do anything to stop it. What was he supposed to do? If he said anything to anyone he would probably have been arrested, locked up, killed, all 3?

would you have done anything in his situation?



Disclaimer - the holocaust was one of the most horrific things to have ever happened in history and I am not trying to belittle it or in anyway make it a trivial topic.

Ben6899

Chris Bass wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36560416

He knew people were being killed in Auschwitz and didn't do anything to stop it. What was he supposed to do? If he said anything to anyone he would probably have been arrested, locked up, killed, all 3?

would you have done anything in his situation?



Disclaimer - the holocaust was one of the most horrific things to have ever happened in history and I am not trying to belittle it or in anyway make it a trivial topic.

I wouldn't have put myself in his position, in the first place.

And I'd argue that the Holocaust was *the* most horrific thing to have ever happened in history.

veronese68

Chris Bass wrote:

would you have done anything in his situation?

I don't know, it says he was an SS guard. What did you have to do to end up in the SS? If you could just be called up to do your national service and put into the SS maybe there wasn't much he could do about it. If you had to volunteer for the SS and would have had an inkling that it was a little more extreme that being a regular soldier then he is partially responsible for the fact that he was in that position. Again, if you got put in the SS for being a particularly nasty little thug he is partially responsible. I think I'd be so bad as a soldier I'd never be in such a position.
Once in that position it would take a mightily strong man to object, but does he bear some of the responsibility for getting himself there?

drlodge

Its a good question. I understand the postiion he was in, but one has to question the motives of this guy. Was he put in this position through no choosing of his own, or did he somehow choose to be there and support the regime?

Motive is everything when it comes to sentencing, perhaps this is reflected in the 5 year sentence, which initially seemed quite light to me, but he is 94 and so not long to live.

finchy

I think that the SS guards had an initial choice of whether or not to take jobs in concentration camps. If I had volunteered for the job, got there and then found that actually, mass murder was far worse in reality than the imagination and I didn't want anything to do with it, I probably would have shut up if I couldn't get a transfer. No point in ending up dead yourself just to have someone else replace you and carry on the killing.

When you think about why he joined the SS in the first place, he was subjected to anti-Semitic propaganda from the age of 11 or 12. Unless they've been particularly sadistic sh1ts, I try not to judge the lower ranks, and put the blame on the top Nazis instead. Just as it would have taken a big man to refuse to participate, I don't know how many of us on here would have been able to mentally resist years of Nazi propaganda at school, especially if we came from families or communities with strong support for the Nazis.

fenix

Awful times. It's not like he could have gone to HR and told then what was going on.
The Nazis dehumanised the Jews. We need to be constantly aware that things like this don't happen again...

ddraver

Without wanting to belittle anyone or thing, the tone of this referendum and how the refugee crisis has been dealt with in the UK shows how easy it is, and how powerful it can be to subtly, but deliberately, slur a group of people. Finchy is right that most of the guards had been force fed propganda from kindergarten about how these people were no more than rats, had aided in the humiliation of the Fatherland during The Great war etc. and simply did nt see the people as human beings.

Everyone likes to think they would be the hero that refused to comply and went to the gallows with their head held high but history shows us that most people are not. Never underestimate how good humans are at compartmentalization and self-justifying their actions too

There is a good BBC series which is on netflix which chronicles the story of Auschwitz and has interviews with several guards who are very honest about how they felt (and feel now) about what they did.

andcp

Fenix wrote:

Awful times. It's not like he could have gone to HR and told then what was going on.
The Nazis dehumanised the Jews. We need to be constantly aware that things like this don't happen again...

Similar things are still happening - Palestine, Syria, the Kurds.......in the west we're good at ignoring things when it suits us.

sungod

it's not "in the west", it's global

Pross

Ben6899 wrote:

Chris Bass wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36560416

He knew people were being killed in Auschwitz and didn't do anything to stop it. What was he supposed to do? If he said anything to anyone he would probably have been arrested, locked up, killed, all 3?

would you have done anything in his situation?



Disclaimer - the holocaust was one of the most horrific things to have ever happened in history and I am not trying to belittle it or in anyway make it a trivial topic.

I wouldn't have put myself in his position, in the first place.

And I'd argue that the Holocaust was *the* most horrific thing to have ever happened in history.

Very easy to say you wouldn't have put yourself in that position when you've grown up in a safe democratic environment. I like to think I wouldn't have done but if I'd been subjected since my formative years to propaganda and fear I don't think I can be certain of that.

verylonglegs

ddraver wrote:

Without wanting to belittle anyone or thing, the tone of this referendum and how the refugee crisis has been dealt with in the UK shows how easy it is, and how powerful it can be to subtly, but deliberately, slur a group of people.

I was talking about this the other day to someone. It was always hard to fully appreciate how the Nazis came to power and were able to do what they did when you only hear about it in school many years after the event. It's very easy to think 'surely some people would have seen how crazy things were.' The referendum and Trump have given me the first real experience of that phenomenon in my own lifetime, where lies and totally exaggerated claims are continously fed and have formed into a very real belief for many. It's about the only positive thing to come out of the recent months around politics for me, it's given me that extra insight into that particular period of history and enhanced my understanding.

DeVlaeminck

I am not sure I'd have put my life at risk to make a stand if I had found myself in his situation but I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have volunteered for the SS in the first place both ideologically - contrarian tendencies and I have never been wedded strongly to any particular ideological tribe - and for reasons of self preservation - some may call it cowardice !

chris_bass

Whether this is true or not is probably debateable but he said he was injured in an explosion so couldn't fight in the war so they told him to join the SS. Also, he was only 18 at the time.

As others have said I'd like to think i'd have done something but i guess i'll never really know (hopefully!)

orraloon

Each of us would do what we need to do to survive, and if that means some other poor baxtard gets it, so be it. Is called survival.

None of us in W Europe in the past 70 years have been put into such extreme stress, so we can intellectualise. Rather different if you were in Sarajevo in the 1990s, Iraq in the 2000s, Syria now. And on.

This month been researching the lives of 2 family members who died on the Somme in 1916, 100 years ago. Their lives were normal, their ends were horrific.

I/we have been fortunate. Can only hope that our descendents enjoy similar lives.

DeVlaeminck

Chris Bass wrote:

Whether this is true or not is probably debateable but he said he was injured in an explosion so couldn't fight in the war so they told him to join the SS. Also, he was only 18 at the time.

As others have said I'd like to think i'd have done something but i guess i'll never really know (hopefully!)

I thought he volunteered for the SS, was then injured and so was assigned duty at the concentration camp, his joining the SS was purely voluntary.

finchy

We talk about whether we would have the courage to stand up against Nazi war crimes, and I think that most of us would accept that it is impossible to judge from the comfort of a 21st century democracy what we would have done in Nazi Germany, but let's think about a tamer example. Would any of us here have acted to stop Allied war crimes against Axis soldiers/civilians?

DeVlaeminck

As you say it's impossible to know but I would expect most would answer that they would hope they would have. Being honest yes I think I'd have done something if I could but history probably suggests the numbers who actually did do something are smaller than those who claim they would have.

andcp

sungod wrote:

it's not "in the west", it's global

Agreed, but it seems to me that the west have the resources and finances to help but for some reason choose no to.....

Pross

Don't forget the SS were also an elite regiment in the army, in effect they were similar to Guards regiment in that they were formed as a sort of body guard unit, and often people joining armed forces want to join the 'best' regiment they can. So it's certainly possible someone might have joined for non-ideological reasons.

socrates

My view is that he joined the SS as many did knowing that the concentration camp duties were favourable to fighting especially later on the Russian front. He knew what the camps were for. Therefore deserves all and more of what he got.

DeVlaeminck

Agree with you Pross he may have just been trying to join what was seen as the best fighting unit possible though the connections to the Nazi party were explicit so he would have known that in doing that he was joining not just a military but also a political unit.

Socrates - not sure that the SS can be seen as a soft option - if he had been trying to avoid fighting on the Russian front I couldn't really blame him but the SS weren't just backroom boys and this guy had apparently been injured in active service and taking his word for it he had wanted to return to the front rather than the camp.

BelgianBeerGeek

One of the original aims of the SS was to run concentration camps where undesirables were sent, mainly political enemies to start. The whole ethos of the original SS was that they were politicallly educated troops. Eventually they grew a much more military arm, the Waffen SS. And yes, some people were conscripted into the Waffen SS, especially those from minorities. Hitler was keen on Muslim SS units formed in the Balkans, for example. This was much later in the war.
The regular German army had much disdain for the SS, which is why they formed fighting units comparatively later on.
The question of this man being somehow beguiled into joining the SS is a well-tried tactic to deflect the blame. A few years ago in a similar case, an Auschwitz SS man said he had only been a clerk, and never actually done any of the unpleasant work. Bad news, there is such a thing as guilt by association. They deserve all they get.

finchy

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

One of the original aims of the SS was to run concentration camps where undesirables were sent, mainly political enemies to start. The whole ethos of the original SS was that they were politicallly educated troops. Eventually they grew a much more military arm, the Waffen SS. And yes, some people were conscripted into the Waffen SS, especially those from minorities. Hitler was keen on Muslim SS units formed in the Balkans, for example. This was much later in the war.
The regular German army had much disdain for the SS, which is why they formed fighting units comparatively later on.
The question of this man being somehow beguiled into joining the SS is a well-tried tactic to deflect the blame. A few years ago in a similar case, an Auschwitz SS man said he had only been a clerk, and never actually done any of the unpleasant work. Bad news, there is such a thing as guilt by association. They deserve all they get.

But can you really judge someone who was exposed to vicious propaganda from the age of 11 or 12 by the standards of behaviour that you would expect from someone living in 21st century Britain? Would you or I have seen through the lies if that's what we had been constantly bombarded with?

Frank the tank

Hindsight is great and passing judgement upon someones motives for being where they were 70+ years ago is open to question.

He obviously as a young man grew up in a Germany that was a political cauldron fermenting a lot of hatred of all kinds of people, be it their political beliefs, ethnicity or religious beliefs. When you have a whole nation being brainwashed people get lead down a particular path and make decisions when looked back on seem wrong. All I know is I wouldn't want to have lived in Nazi Germany because you had to make sometimes "bad" choices in order to preserve your life in the short term.

Garry H

Weren't a lot of young Germans who were actively involved with the Nazi Party and the SS given a pardon by the Allies, due to their age and being easily impressed upon?

Garry H

"Of course, the horrors, of which I heard in connection of the Nuremberg trials; the fate of the 6 million Jews, their killing and those of many others who represented different races and creeds, shocked me greatly, but, at that time, I could not see any connection between these things and my own past. I was only happy that I had not personally been guilty of these things and that I had not been aware of the scale of these things. However, one day, I walked past a plaque on the Franz-Joseph Straße (in Munich), on the wall in memory of Sophie Scholl. I could see that she had been born the same year as I, and that she had been executed the same year I entered into Hitler’s service. And, at that moment, I really realised that it was no excuse that I had been so young. I could perhaps have tried to find out about things."

Traudl Junge (Hitler's secretary)

BelgianBeerGeek

That's the point. Live by the sword, die by it. Yes, you could argue from a safe point that some may have not had much choice, but lots of kids had to join the Hitler Youth and did not become die hard Nazis. I stand by my last post.

mamba80

Easy to say we d do this or he should have done that, i dont know if he was a man caught up in it all or whether there are witness statements to say he tortured and enjoyed sending people to their deaths.

But all i can say is that we all stood by and did nothing whilst the Genocide took place in Rwanda, our military would have faced no 1st world army/airforce and no superpower confrontation possible and yet we still did nothing

DeVlaeminck

finchy wrote:

But can you really judge someone who was exposed to vicious propaganda from the age of 11 or 12 by the standards of behaviour that you would expect from someone living in 21st century Britain? Would you or I have seen through the lies if that's what we had been constantly bombarded with?

If my aunty had balls she'd' be my uncle. You may be right that he was a victim of his upbringing but the same could be said for many unpleasant people.

pblakeney

There is shit happening all over the World today.
What are we doing about it? Heads in sand. Anybody want to do anything?

Pross

It's pretty easy to see even in this day an age how easily some people buy into nasty political propaganda. Just look at people who regurgitate anything their told by one side or the other in the referendum and I'm sure I'm not the only one over the last few years who has had words with friends for sharing Britain First's crap on Facebook.

Who knows, maybe this guy is a vicious sadist who had a hatred for Jews or maybe he didn't have the intellect or maturity to think for himself.