BBC Flys Drone over Auschwitz
- Thread starter nathajw
- Start date
If you think about it, it can't be.
Let's say they raze all the buildings and plow up the fields. Would you want to buy the land? Live on the land? Eat crops grown in that soil? Turn it into a park and let your kids play there? It is difficult to imagine anything useful that could come from destroying it.
It is better to keep it intact and use it for education of future generations. More respectful to the victims, IMO.
I would rather that memory not fade for anyone other than the survivors. I wish it could be etched into the minds of every living human from not to forever.
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It should stay as a reminder and for people not to forget the evil mankind is capable of. Same with the Killing Fields and other places where many innocent lives were taken.
What if they just built some nice new condos where the Alfred P. Murrah building stood or maybe just threw up a new skyscraper where the twin towers previously were? I don't see it being any different.
This post was edited on 1/30 12:48 PM by nathajw
What if they just built some nice new condos where the Alfred P. Murrah building stood or maybe just threw up a new skyscraper where the twin towers previously were? I don't see it being any different.
This post was edited on 1/30 12:48 PM by nathajw
They did kinda do that with the twin towers, but you are absolutely right.
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A monument of some kind would be nice. The memory of that will never completely vanish, but why not honor those who did suffer by not leaving it up. Leaving it, intact, just seems odd to me. But, I can see why leaving it as is would be a good call to.
I was really just surprised it hadn't already been removed.
I was really just surprised it hadn't already been removed.
Personally, I hate the idea of doing anything along those lines. I have been to Yad Vashem (The Holocaust museum in Jerusalem) and to other Holocaust museums in the U.S. Visiting those places is an incredibly powerful, emotional, visceral experience. I am Jewish, so I am sure it hits me harder than many people who are not. However, when you actually visit one of those places, the extent of the atrocities committed really sinks in, and it is not just about Nazis and their Jewish victims. You gain an understanding of what human beings are capable of, and how a small number of monsters can be capable of fooling a huge population into going along with them, following them blindly, and participating in horrible actions. These places serve as a warning to the rest of us, and Auschwitz does the same thing. We can't have too many reminders on this planet, IMO. The more individuals that experience them, the better.
I still can't go to the Murrah Memorial. I can't imagine going to Auschwitz. Couldn't do it. I couldn't stomach it.
I frequent Kraków and recently visited Auchwitz. In the English speaking tour there were two other American guys in their late twenties. They joked and laughed the whole time and even posed for pictures against the execution wall. I've never been so embarrassed and disgusted.
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WC Poke - " Also disturbing are those who think that the Holocaust didn't happen."
And thus the reason why Auschwitz should be preserved exactly at it stood at the end of the war. So that 100 yrs in the future there can't be much plausibility in the denial of the holocaust. Tearing it down would not serve a useful purpose, it should stand as a reminder and a "teaching" tool to show what racial/ethnic/religious hatred can do and how low man can sink. I know it doesn't register on a lot of people, but I'm certain it's an impact on enough that it does its job being a living representation of what can happen when you allow hate to overcome all.
And thus the reason why Auschwitz should be preserved exactly at it stood at the end of the war. So that 100 yrs in the future there can't be much plausibility in the denial of the holocaust. Tearing it down would not serve a useful purpose, it should stand as a reminder and a "teaching" tool to show what racial/ethnic/religious hatred can do and how low man can sink. I know it doesn't register on a lot of people, but I'm certain it's an impact on enough that it does its job being a living representation of what can happen when you allow hate to overcome all.
As short sighted and with the lack of attention span that most folks, young and old, have today, I think it would be an absolute travesty to tear the place down. We, the human race, need these reminders of how evil can kill millions of people so easily. I understand that it doesn't make you feel good when you visit it. Is it supposed to? I understand that it creeps a lot of folks out. Don't we need that? I just think a lot of folks want what is easy and comfortable. When they see something that they know caused much human suffering and pain, they want it removed. Is that really though the best thing for younger generations? I think not.
You cannot bring back the dead that were killed here. Pure unadulterated evil removed them from the earth far too early. However, if leaving the place where their deaths occurred as a reminder helps remind people how evil can take over if we are not careful, then I think you have to look past the pain that it might cause those folks who survived it, and understand the bigger picture.
You cannot bring back the dead that were killed here. Pure unadulterated evil removed them from the earth far too early. However, if leaving the place where their deaths occurred as a reminder helps remind people how evil can take over if we are not careful, then I think you have to look past the pain that it might cause those folks who survived it, and understand the bigger picture.
There is a show on HBO about those damn killers. Hard to watch. All the dead bodies. Starved to death. Such evil. And the crematoriums.....pure hate. Pure evil. Made me sick to watch.
All from one of the most 'modern' and advanced societies, by most such definitions. A cradle of great literature, science, theology, music, technology. Disturbing. Everyone should read Jean Amery. Both survived death camps and wrestled with the experience until committing suicide as old men.
Jean Amery was actually an Austrian philosophy student placed named Hans Mayer. After the Anschluss he fled to France then Belgium to join the Resistance, which is why he ended up in a Belgian camp. They beat him near to death, before realizing that he didn't have any worthy info. So they 'demoted' him to a Jewish prisoner and shipped him to Auschwitz. He was so ruined by the mental and physical torture in the camp that he French-ified his name and ceased speaking or writing in German.
This post was edited on 2/1 9:46 AM by Anodyne
I feel really bad that I can't remember the survivor's name but he spoke to my HS in Bartlesville in the late 90s and usually an auditorium full of hundreds of freshman and sophomores would be acting a fool but you could hear a pin drop when he was speaking. He spoke about all the experiments they did on him and how he laid in the middle of a pile of 30 plus dead bodies for 3 days before making his escape. He was hung upside down and dunked over and over again tanks of ice water to see how long a human could go before passing out in the extreme cold. He said to that day he couldn't feel cold weather. He lived in I think Minnesota or the Dakotas and his wife had to constantly remind him to not go and out and get the paper in his robe and slippers when it was 20 degrees below zero because he couldn't even tell it was cold no matter the temperature. Really really wish I could remember who he was. If I wasn't a dumb punk kid at the time I probably would be able to
This post was edited on 1/31 11:37 PM by nathajw
This post was edited on 1/31 11:37 PM by nathajw
nathajaw,
I was a junior in high school and one of my best friends was taking a French course. One day, we had some extra time to kill during the lunch hour and we wandered into the French teacher's room so he could use some flash cards to warm up for his exam later in the day.
Our school's French teacher was a native of France, then probably in her late 40's. She came over and was talking to us, when I couldn't help but notice that she had a fairly rough looking tattoo down the side of one arm, which was comprised of a series of numbers and letters. She was barely a teenager when she was taken captive by the nazis after Paris fell and was sent to a variety of work camps and finally to a concentration camp, where she was liberated by allied forces.
My friend spoke to her about her experience, but I never had the courage to bring the topic up, although my friend kept telling me that she would not be upset of or offended by my prying as she wanted to serve as an example of a survivor. If she is still alive, she would be about 80 now. I regret not talking to her to gain a first hand account from someone who went through so much before the age of 16.
I did get an interesting perspective from my aunt's father (she was a German native, who my uncle married while stationed in Germany in the early 50's). He had been a postal worker before the war, during and following. He told me point blank that most of the Germans in his neighborhood who spent time trying to convince the allies that they were completely innocent, hated Hitler and had never done anything wrong were some of the highest ranking and influential Nazi party members around. He told me that many of them (brown shirt members) had looted one Jewish house and/or business after another and many had doubled or tripled their wealth in short order. He also said that he was convinced that many Germans may not have known the exact details of the concentration camps or what was going on in them. But the reality was that they knew something bad had happened to all their Jewish and "undesirable" neighbors, but most supported their removal from society and didn't care about their fate, they were just glad they were gone.
I was a junior in high school and one of my best friends was taking a French course. One day, we had some extra time to kill during the lunch hour and we wandered into the French teacher's room so he could use some flash cards to warm up for his exam later in the day.
Our school's French teacher was a native of France, then probably in her late 40's. She came over and was talking to us, when I couldn't help but notice that she had a fairly rough looking tattoo down the side of one arm, which was comprised of a series of numbers and letters. She was barely a teenager when she was taken captive by the nazis after Paris fell and was sent to a variety of work camps and finally to a concentration camp, where she was liberated by allied forces.
My friend spoke to her about her experience, but I never had the courage to bring the topic up, although my friend kept telling me that she would not be upset of or offended by my prying as she wanted to serve as an example of a survivor. If she is still alive, she would be about 80 now. I regret not talking to her to gain a first hand account from someone who went through so much before the age of 16.
I did get an interesting perspective from my aunt's father (she was a German native, who my uncle married while stationed in Germany in the early 50's). He had been a postal worker before the war, during and following. He told me point blank that most of the Germans in his neighborhood who spent time trying to convince the allies that they were completely innocent, hated Hitler and had never done anything wrong were some of the highest ranking and influential Nazi party members around. He told me that many of them (brown shirt members) had looted one Jewish house and/or business after another and many had doubled or tripled their wealth in short order. He also said that he was convinced that many Germans may not have known the exact details of the concentration camps or what was going on in them. But the reality was that they knew something bad had happened to all their Jewish and "undesirable" neighbors, but most supported their removal from society and didn't care about their fate, they were just glad they were gone.
Amazing videography. The place seems largely frozen in time. For the record, I think it should definitely not be torn down. Without a physical, tangible reminder - the collective memory would fade for sure. Once survivors die off completely, this will be an important tie to the history of the holocaust and humanity's capacity for evil.
Important historical sites should always be preserved.
Important historical sites should always be preserved.
If any of you are Amazon Prime members and want to binge watch a show, watch the documentary, Auschwitz (sometimes called "Auschwitz: The Nazis and their Final Solution") narrated by Linda Hunt. I had to watch it for an Org Leadership class while finishing my doctorate a couple of years ago, and it was well worth it (we studied it from a bureacracy perspective) although it is certainly tough to get through. It was made in 2005, so they had quite a bit of amazing survivor stories to share.
I will also gladly sign up for the vote to say keep it as it is. It's amazing the buildings/structures seem to be in as good a shape as they are (feel odd saying it's in "good" shape), but there's no question being able to make a physical connection to that place would do far more for establishing a sense of realism than a museum. The grounds, the signs, the buildings, gates, to say nothing of the smells--all of that combined put together one hell of a visual example/artifact of how it looked.
I will also gladly sign up for the vote to say keep it as it is. It's amazing the buildings/structures seem to be in as good a shape as they are (feel odd saying it's in "good" shape), but there's no question being able to make a physical connection to that place would do far more for establishing a sense of realism than a museum. The grounds, the signs, the buildings, gates, to say nothing of the smells--all of that combined put together one hell of a visual example/artifact of how it looked.