Let us not forget.

I couldn't make it past the halfway mark of reading. There is probably a special hell just for those who committed those atrocities. Deep enough words escape me.

I'm always disturbed when the number is given at 6 million, as though the other 5 million deaths don't matter as much.

Victims Killed
Jews 5.9 million
Soviet POWs 2-3 million
Ethnic Poles 1.8-2 million
Romani(Gypsy) 220,000-1,500,000
Disabled 200,000-250,000
Freemasons 80,000-200,000
Slovenes 20,000-25,000
Homosexuals 5,000-15,000
Jehovah's
Witnesses 2,500-5,000

Its a lesson worth studying. Especially in this country in these times.

Nobody ever recognizes that they are racists or grasps the damage they do out of that paranoid hate, they really and truly believe they are smarter and able to see things "as they really are."

If you don't believe me, just ask a hater/ racist, as defined by their own words of paranoid hate.

They always angrily deny.

This from WIKI.

Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.[31] Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings ; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."[32] In 1940, Heinrich Himmler wrote admiringly of Luther's writings and sermons on the Jews.[33] The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and their Lies to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der St�rmer, on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.[34] It was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by Dr. E.H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks.[35] On December 17, 1941, seven Lutheran regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge, "since after his bitter experience Luther had [strongly] suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory."
Michael states "Luther wrote of the Jews as if they were a race that could not truly convert to Christianity. Indeed, like so many Christian writers before him, Luther, by making the Jews the devil's people, put them beyond conversion". He notes that in a sermon of September 25, 1539, "Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently, and in several passages of The Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert.

I've been several times and was always okay until I got to the shoes. SHOES! Piles of black, brown, cloth, leather, worn and badly repaired shoes. Baby shoes.

It starts out quiet there and you become aware of your own breathing; then your throat tightens and you're gasping for air. It's then you hear the sobbing and you have to stop looking at the display and move on because it's so gut wrenchingly poignant.

It's estimated 5 Million are dead in the grab for minerals & what?

"Following the US government's refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany, however. Jewish organizations (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the passengers: Great Britain took 288 passengers; the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers, Belgium took in 214 passengers; and 224 passengers found at least temporary refuge in France. Of the 288 passengers admitted by Great Britain, all survived World War II save one, who was killed during an air raid in 1940. Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France." (Holocaust Encyclopedia)

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act (Pub.L. 68, 139, 43 Stat. 153, enacted May 26, 1924), was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, according to the Census of 1890. It superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, among them Jews who had migrated in large numbers since the 1890s to escape persecution in Poland and Russia, as well as prohibiting the immigration of Middle Easterners, East Asians, and Indians. According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity".[1] Congressional opposition was minimal.

Actually, persecution of the Jews goes back many centuries before the 20th. At one time, Jews were cast out of England, I believe in the 12oo's. And the Intifada in Spain, and the sufferings of Jews at the hands of the Cossacks in Russia, and on and on and on.

Hitler and his minions persecuted Christians, Catholics and Protestants alike, because, in part, they considered it an outgrowth of Judaism, and, in part, because they believed in the superiority of the ancient, Nordic, pagan cults which pre-dated Christianity.

Pol Pot, the Khmer rouge - remembering, for those who are Asian.

"Never again will the world remain silent" didn't mean everyone. It didn't even mean most.

It was during Khmer rouge that I began to question what that phrase,"Never...." actually meant, in the big picture, it was shocking to silly young me that nothing and nobody was doing anything meaningful at all to save those poor people.

We need always remember Hadamar Euthanasia Center where medicine collaborated to rid us of those who needed to be sterilized or Euthanized.

If you have never seen it SHOA is a very informative documentary. Even a after the drama of Nuremberg trials so many were released after a few years.

IG Farben was the most powerful German corporate cartel in the first half of the 20th century and the single largest profiteer from the Second World War. IG (Interessengemeinschaft) stands for "Association of Common Interests": IG Farben included BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

They ordered up human guinea pigs by the dozen like they were purchasing lab animals.

"You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine."
- Yvaine, "Stardust"

Stardust (2007) IMDB

Genocides in history Wikipedia

Contents

1 Alternative meanings of genocide
2 Timeline of genocides
2.1 Before 1490
2.2 1490 to 1914
2.2.1 Americas
2.2.1.1 Argentina
2.2.1.2 Haiti
2.2.1.3 Mexico
2.2.1.4 Peru
2.2.1.5 United States of America
2.2.2 Antipodes
2.2.2.1 Australia
2.2.2.2 New Zealand
2.2.3 France
2.2.4 German South-West Africa
2.2.5 Ireland
2.2.5.1 War of the Three Kingdoms
2.2.5.2 Great Irish Famine
2.2.6 Philippines
2.2.7 Qing empire
2.2.8 Russian Empire
2.3 1915 to 1950
2.3.1 Ottoman Empire/Turkey
2.3.1.1 Armenian
2.3.1.2 Assyrian
2.3.1.3 Greek
2.3.1.4 Dersim Kurds
2.3.2 Soviet Union
2.3.2.1 Decossackization
2.3.2.2 Holodomor
2.3.2.3 Poland, 1937-38
2.3.2.4 Deportation of Chechen people
2.3.2.5 Deportations of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians
2.3.3 Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe
2.3.3.1 Croatia
2.3.3.2 Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
2.3.4 Dominican Republic
2.3.5 Partition of India in 1947
2.3.6 Republic of China and Tibet
2.4 1951 to 2000
2.4.1 Expulsion of Germans after World War II
2.4.2 Australia 1900-1969
2.4.3 Zanzibar
2.4.4 Guatemala 1968-1996
2.4.5 Pakistan (Bangladesh War of 1971)
2.4.6 Burundi 1972 and 1993
2.4.7 North Korea
2.4.8 Equatorial Guinea
2.4.9 East Timor under Indonesian occupation
2.4.10 Laos
2.4.11 Dirty War in Argentina
2.4.12 Sabra-Shatila, Lebanon
2.4.13 Ethiopia
2.4.14 Iraqi Kurds
2.4.15 Tibet
2.4.16 Brazil
2.4.17 Democratic Republic of Congo
2.4.18 West New Guinea/West Papua
2.4.19 Somalia
2.4.20 Sri Lanka
3 International prosecution of genocide
3.1 Ad hoc tribunals
3.1.1 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995
3.1.2 Rwanda
3.1.3 Cambodia
3.2 International Criminal Court
3.2.1 Darfur, Sudan

WORLD HISTORY, TEACHING & GENOCIDE

Topic Directory WORLD HISTORY, TEACHING & GENOCIDE

The History Place - Genocide in the 20th Century

Woodnymph, that's not the problem. The problem is they DO know it happened, and they also believe in that same cliche you posted. It can't happen again if people believe it really happened and that it wasn't part of the Allied propoganda machine. THAT'S the scary part. and there IS a concerted effort to discredit it for just that reason.

God Bless Elie Weisel for the efforts he's put out to make sure people never forget.

IG Farben was the most powerful German corporate cartel...

IBM was involved as well.

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

That authoritarian idiot, Berlusconi, once again exposed himself to the world with his praise of Mussolini during Holocaust Remembrance Day; he excused il Duce's alliance with Hitler as a practical matter.

A simple search on the Southern Poverty Law Center site will give a searchable map of the many "hate" groups that are anti-anyone that are not like them. And just imagine how many of them are "locked and loaded".

Look at the map, real eye opener...

I brought this OP to HT to remind people not just of the past atrocities and genocides but the recent and current ones. Those the perpetuate genocide know well enough that the world looks away and is unable to intervene in most cases until the horrors are well along.

While I agree fully with the treatment of Muslims to date being worse than substandard, I also fully believe that their pick for that site was just as symbolic as how it was taken by the "anti Muslim" community. You don't rub salt in an open wound, and I fully believe that's exactly what they were doing, just because they thought they could. As much as I detest the way Muslims have been treated, I'm just as much against that mosque being built where it was proposed today, as I was then.

I'm within walking distance (1-2 miles) of one of the hate groups:

Bare Naked Islam
Anti-Muslim
Marina Del Rey

Another one in the respectable neighborhood of Sherman Oaks: Jihad Watch, Anti-Muslim.

They're not over there, somewhere else; they're our neighbors.

It isn't pleasant to think about or talk about but we have to and continue to. Patricia has pointed out one of many reasons why.

Nancy, can't forget Kellogg's. They were cuckoo for more than CoCo Puffs...forced labor too.

---------------

December 9, 2008

An Open Letter to World Leaders,

We are survivors of the genocides that have forever stained our nations, torn apart our communities and
families, and lacerated our souls. We call upon you, our leaders, to direct your highest purpose toward
ending forever the agonies of mass atrocity crimes.

We approach you on behalf of our beloved dead; in their millions of voices. Brutality and violence are
muting the voices of our sisters and brothers in places like Darfur, Somalia, Burma and Congo, yet we can
hear their pleas for protection, and we must speak for them too. We speak for the world�s children and for
generations yet to come; for unless we take responsible action now, they too, in countless numbers, will
pay the ultimate price.

Sixty years ago, on December 9, 1948, the world, through the United Nations, committed itself to prevent
and punish the crime of genocide.

In 2005 this obligation was unanimously reaffirmed by the international community in the World Summit
Outcome Document, which states that when nations manifestly fail to protect their populations, we, as an
international community, "are prepared to take collective action."

These words and our responsibility could not be clearer, yet over and over again we have witnessed the
tragic failures of the international community to protect its most vulnerable populations.

We speak from Rwanda, from Cambodia, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Armenia, from the Diaspora
of the Holocaust, and from the flames of Darfur. We speak because we know that until the world makes this
commitment absolute, we are destined to repeat the most shameful chapters in human history.

Sincerely,
Niemat Ahmadi
Darfuri survivor
At large member of the Darfuri Leaders� Network

Adriyan Bagciyan
Armenian survivor

Ruth R. Cohen
Holocaust survivor

Arsalos Dadir
Armenian survivor

Marcel Drimer
Holocaust survivor

Ania Drimer
Holocaust survivor

Onorik Eminian
Armenian survivor

Hingeni Evernsel
Armenian survivor

Beba Hadzic
Srebrenica survivor
Founder and director of BOSFAM

Benoit Kaboyi
On behalf of the umbrella organization representing survivors of the Rwandan Genocide (Ibuka)
Rwandan survivor
Ibuka Executive Secretary

Perouz Kalousdian
Armenian survivor

Charlotte Kechejian
Armenian survivor

Gina Lanceter
Holocaust survivor

Louise Lawrence-Israels
Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands

Hatidza Mehmedovic
Srebrenica survivor
President of the "Srebrenica-mothers" in Srebrenica

Margit Meissner
Holocaust survivor

Salih Mahmoud Osman
Darfuri survivor
Sudan Organization Against Torture
Recipient of the Sakharov Prize

Jacqueline Murekatete
Rwandan survivor and Human Rights Activist
Jacqueline's Human Rights Corner

Socheata Poeuv
Child of Cambodian survivors
Executive Director, Khmer Legacies

Theary Seng
Cambodian survivor
Executive Director of the Center for Social Development

Alice Shnorhokian
Armenian survivor

Sichan Siv
Cambodian survivor
Former US Ambassador to the UN

Jonas Weiss
Holocaust survivor

Susan Weiss
Holocaust survivor

This letter was coordinated by the Genocide Prevention Project.

Bill, not again please. As we stated when we first had that conversation, that is not correct and it is still incorrect. All the reasons and the factual history was covered already so I am not going to repeat it here.

It is not on the site of the WTC so it can't rub salt in any wound. As someone who lost too many family and close friends on that site, I am more offended at some of the mementos they are selling on the site and some of the other businesses in that area than having Park 51 located blocks away.
It has since been opened.

Park51 Islamic Center Opens Its Doors Near Ground Zero

NEW YORK � An Islamic cultural center near the site of the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center held its first exhibit Wednesday evening, the enthusiasm at the opening belying its troubled beginnings.

As a small orchestra played traditional Middle Eastern instruments, people crowded into the center, where a photo exhibit of New York children of different ethnicities lined the walls.

Sharif El-Gamal, the center's developer, said the biggest error on the project was not involving the families of 9/11 victims from the start.

"We made incredible mistakes," El-Gamal told The Associated Press in an earlier interview at his Manhattan office.

The building at 51 Park Place, two blocks from the World Trade Center site, includes a Muslim prayer space that has been open for two years. El-Gamal said the overall center is modeled after the Jewish Community Center on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where he lives.

"I wanted my daughter to learn how to swim, so I took her to the JCC," said the Brooklyn-born Muslim. "And when I walked in, I said, `Wow. This is great.'"

The project has drawn criticism from opponents who say they don't want a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The center is open to all faiths and will include a 9/11 memorial, El-Gamal said. He called opposition to the center � which prompted one of the most virulent national discussions about Islam and freedom of speech and religion since Sept. 11 � part of a "campaign against Muslims."

Last year, street clashes in view of the trade center site pitted supporters against opponents of the center.

When the center was first envisioned several years ago, activist Daisy Khan and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, played a major, vocal role. But they soon left the project because of differences with the developer.

El-Gamal, 38, confirmed Wednesday that they parted ways because "we had a different vision." He declined to elaborate.

The couple said they had discussed plans for Park51, as the center is known, with relatives of 9/11 victims, first responders and others, including the possibility that it could become a multifaith center focusing on religious conflict. But El-Gamal wishes victims' families had been involved earlier � before the center became a point of contention.

"The biggest mistake we made was not to include 9/11 families," El-Gamal said, noting that the center's advisory board now includes at least one 9/11 family member.

At first, "we didn't understand that we had a responsibility to discuss our private project with family members that lost loved ones," he said, and they did not "really connect" with community leaders and activists.

But today, "we're very committed to having them involved in our project. ... We're really listening," he said.

Pointing to the inclusivity of a center that critics feared would be polarizing, El-Gamal noted that the featured photographer in the "NYChildren" exhibit is Danny Goldfield, who is Jewish.

The Brooklyn photographer was inspired to create the exhibit by the story of Rana Sodhi, a Sikh who emigrated from India and settled in Arizona. His brother Balbir was killed in a retaliatory hate crime four days after Sept. 11.

Sodhi made the trip to New York for the opening and wore a tie decorated with heart-shaped American flags. He still runs the gas station where his brother was killed.

"My heart is so warm when I hear Danny is doing this exhibition in Park51," Sodhi said.

Goldfield said he has photographed children with roots in 169 countries since 2004. He hopes to find subjects representing 24 other countries to complete the project. Some of the photographs had been exhibited elsewhere, but the opening marked the first time all were shown together.

He said there was a synergy between the themes and spirit of his project and those of the center, particularly with regard to community participation and openness.

"They want to build a center for everyone that's represented on the walls here," he said.

Recalling the controversy over the center, he said he didn't want to pass judgment on its opponents. But he said he'd like them to see the show "more than anyone."

Afsana Khundkar, a native of Afghanistan whose 12-year-old son, Waseem, was one of the children photographed for the exhibit, said her family was honored to participate in the project.

"It's promoting good things in the world," she said. "The most important thing is to involve the children in the good things."

The space had been cleared out and the walls painted a stark white for the exhibit. The renovations were funded with $70,000 raised on the website Kickstarter. The modest first-floor space is intended to function as a temporary center until groundbreaking on an entirely new building.

El-Gamal told the AP that fundraising is under way to complete a 15-story building that will also include an auditorium, educational programs, a pool, a restaurant and culinary school, child care services, a sports facility, a wellness center and artist studios.

The mosque is especially needed in lower Manhattan, he said, because thousands of Muslims either work or live in the neighborhood, "and in our religion, we must pray five times a day."

At the opening, an ebullient El-Gamal told reporters the project had been framed by others throughout the debate over its existence.

"Today, for the first time, everyone gets a little bit of a glimpse into the future of what Park51 is going to offer New York," he said.

Epi, thanks for posting this article.

Both you and labrea devoted a lot of time educating us on the realities of the Burlington Coat Factory building when this topic was first introduced on HT.

It sure is.

We discussed them back when the Park 51 controversy was in full swing but I didn't realize that the 9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero are still around. They are on the SPLC's list unlike Park 51 and they are located closer to the WTC. I wish as many people were as outraged and would spend their time protesting against them as did the center. It is groups like them that make continuing the conversation important and necessary.

That's rich. The LEFT wing is the one that brings it up, and then blames the taste of the vomit on the right wing media. Go figure. As for that small mosque, it was already there. No significance. I don't care how any of you see it. Planning that new mosque that close to the site was salt in the wound, and they knew it. If you're too freakin blind to see it, that's not MY problem.

The City of New York disagreed with you and so far so good.

A community center in Lower Manhattan doesn't rub any salt in my wound and since there hasn't been any protests by anyone since the initial kerfuffle instigated by the r/w media, it seems that it isn't bothering any other NY'ers or tourists either.

Keep shouting Joe. Sometimes it's warranted.

After winning about a third of the vote in Germany's 1932 election, Hitler convinced ailing President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint him chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933 - setting Germany on a course to war and genocide.

"This path ended in Auschwitz," said Andreas Nachama, the director of the Topography of Terror.

I see it scratching around the edges of the far right and far, far left.

Hopefully, we "sane" citizens can keep it out of the main stream.

It is no secret that Ford was an anti-semite and if it wasn't for a handful of outspoken people with connections to the top we would have done nothing.

After the past few elections and seeing the lies that were disseminated as truth there is no doubt in my mind it can happen again, and can happen here. People like DeSouza and others are no better than the propagandists of Nazi Germany and we saw how some ignorant folks bought into their garbage 80 years later.

Sound familiar? Not exactly consciously trying to make any invideous comparisons between the burning of the Reichstag and 9/11, but one gave rise to The Enabling Act, the other the Patriot Act.

The Reichstag burning was the "terroristic" crisis event staged to give Hitler his real entre in garnering public support. People believed Germany was under attack and that Hitler could protect them.

There wasn't any percentage in coming off as a monster early on. His mind-numbing speeches were full of faith and family. Lots of Gott und vaterland. To the Germans, he was a true loyalist to historic conservative Christian principles.

We have problems here in the U.S. with the above; from the Christians and guns thread:

... and we are fighting a war of muslim vs christian beliefs now.

I hope it's just a sick joke.

"Sound familiar? Not exactly consciously trying to make any invideous comparisons between the burning of the Reichstag and 9/11, but one gave rise to The Enabling Act, the other the Patriot Act."

This statement can be interpreted in different ways. I wonder what it says to you, Duluth.

It means nothing to me; didn't read the trial transcripts, and for that matter, I doubt you did either. Neither here nor there; very arresting quote. Your question, Duluth: "Sound familiar?" My answer is no.

If you want to dissect what that monster said and discuss his philosophies, ask someone else. I know what I need to know about the Holocaust. You want some life lessons, visit the Anne Frank Haus sometime.

Paraphrasing Hermann Goering from the Nuremburg Trials: People can be swayed to do someone's bidding by telling them they're being attacked. Pacifists can be denounced for their lack of patriotism and for allowing the country to be exposed to danger.

Sure sounds familiar.

What gets me is the fact that Hitler wasn't German.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I am in no way trying to diminish the genocide of the Jewish people but instead to show the depravity of the people who would do such a thing. We are totally capable of doing just such a thing and I believe the internment of the Japanese Americans is an indication of that-with the right incentive.....

I was just thinking that the ostensible obsession of the ultra right wing with guns and how liberals want to take them from you making you less secure while at the same time making you the citizen believe that ownership of a gun would make you secure against organized troops with an agenda might be part of some long term greater plan?

At any rate, I hadn't heard until the other night, that the Shoah Foundation has personal stories which can be viewed. If anyone is interested, here is their channel.

The older I get, the more horrified I become at how easy I realize it could happen here, with the quiet permission always required for such terribleness.
It doesn't take much, the same formula that has always been used since man picked up a club. It all starts with "us against them" and proceeds on from there. Its how brothers became willing to fight against beloved brothers during the the American Civil War.
Because my mother was a young adult during this world history, I tried several times to get her to tell me about it from an American's point of view, as the news broke. She never would though, she said that it was horrible enough to have heard the news stories for years, she didn't want to think or talk about it any longer, it was too horrible.
I really didn't understand her then, but the older I get, the more I do.

I now sadly realize the probability of most Americans closing their eyes to just such a thing, if the path was carefully constructed.
There are very few truly brave people - those humans are unique- that is why the truly brave, in long term circumstances, become legends. There are very, very few legends compared to those who chose silence/ resigned acceptance for whatever reason they do.

Shindler's List is a by product of that project and the Shoah Foundation was a recipient of the proceeds from the opening of the movie.

My aunt, a survivor and speaker for the Shoah Foundation, has said over and over again, after what she has seen and heard there is no doubt it can happen again. It already has. We have learned nothing.

The foundation has expanded their program to document survivors and witnesses of other genocides as well - Rwanda, Cambodia and Armenia.

There are very few truly brave people - those humans are unique- that is why the truly brave, in long term circumstances, become legends.

I disagee, There are many truly brave people that many have never heard of, not nearly enough, but more than have been talked about or recognized for their bravery.

You can view more stories of survival and bravery on the Shoah website - over 50,000 testimonials from the Holocaust alone and still growing.

Friends of the family, two interesting women in their own right (one a Rabbi and both openly gay and in a committed relationship for many years), wrote a book several years ago. RESCUERS: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust which recognized some heroes that most never heard of.

There is also the site Holocaustforgotten.com which showcases stories like this one:

Irene Gut Opdyke: She Hid Polish Jews Inside a German Officers' Villa

Irene was a teenager when the Nazi attack on Poland changed her life forever. She was separated from her family, escaped twice from incarceration, and captured and raped by Soviet soldiers. Her most difficult predicament was also her noblest: she saved the lives of 16 Polish Jews, hiding some of them literally beneath the noses of the German officers.

The actions of rescuers during the Holocaust not only placed them into danger but also forced them to seek help from unlikely sources. Young Irene Gut showed did not plan to become a heroine. She found herself in a situation in which she could help and utilized that situation. To say that her behavior was atypical of the Polish community is a generalization that overlooks the complex situation that existed in occupied Poland.

Irene's activities as a rescuer began ironically with her own capture by the Germans to serve as a slave laborer. She had just returned to Radom, in Nazi-occupied Poland, from Ternopol, under Soviet occupation, where her ill treatment by the Soviet military had occurred. She was arrested one day while at church in a lapanka, a roundup of Polish citizens. German soldiers actually interrupted Mass and herded the parishioners into the streets. Irene was selected for labor and loaded in a truck with other prisoners. She was sent to work in a munitions factory, where she fell ill. A German officer, Major Eduard Rugemer, felt pity for her and gave her a position in the kitchen of a hotel for Nazis.

It was at the hotel, which was located next to the Glinice ghetto in Radom, that Irene observed firsthand the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. One day, while setting tables, she heard gunfire. Looking through a window to observe what was happening, she saw soldiers shooting the unarmed ghetto inhabitants and turning attack dogs on them. Just as she was about to scream, Schulz, the German chef, held his hand over her mouth. "Don't cry--they will think you are a Jew-lover," he warned. It was after this terrible mass murder that Irene began helping Jews. She would put leftovers in box and leave them just inside the ghetto fence. She did this despite proclamations that anyone caught aiding a Jew would be put to death.

In April of 1942, Major Rugemer's unit was moved to Lwów. The month before the move the Glinice ghetto was liquidated and bulldozed under. Radom had been proclaimed "Jew-free." In Lwów, two things happened that set Irene closer to her course as a rescuer. There she befriended Helen Weinbaum; a Polish Catholic married to a Jewish man. Helen's husband, Henry, was an inmate at a nearby Arbeitslager, a work camp. After receiving word that the SS was holding all Jews from the Arbeitslagers and the neighboring ghettoes in village, Irene, Helen, and Irene's sister, Janina, went to the village to find Henry. There they discovered the SS rushing the Jews out of houses and shooting those whom did not run fast enough. Elderly Jews and women with children were their principle targets. Undoubtedly, the most gruesome act that Irene witnessed was a German officer tossing an infant into the air like a clay pigeon and shooting the child. He then shot the grieving mother. The surviving prisoners were then marched out of the village.

In another ironic twist, the major's unit was sent to Ternopol, scene of Irene's trials with Soviets. There Major Rugemer was commander of a factory, called Harres-Krafa-Park (HKP). Irene resumed her work in the dining hall and kitchen. In the course of her duties, Irene met Jewish workers in the hotel laundry room. She began helping them by giving them extra food and blankets, and recommending them for work in the kitchen. Schulz, the chef, helped her provide these items, although he did not acknowledge what he was doing. Unfortunately, some of the Jews began to disappear. Irene's friend, Fanka Silberman, heard her family being taken away as she hid. Two kitchen helpers, Roman and Sozia, were sent away after being betrayed by a local girlfriend of the SS chief, Rokita. Irene overheard rumors of another raid from Germans eating in the dining hall. It was after these occurrences that Irene became an active smuggler and rescuer.

Irene drove six of the Jews, including Henry Weinbaum, who had not been killed in the raid and now had the dubious job of valet for Rokita, in a dorozka, a wagon, to the forest of Puszcza Janowska. Once safe in the forest, her contraband passengers escaped into its dark reaches. In the nearby town, Irene met a sympathetic Polish Catholic priest, Father Joseph. Later she met a Polish forester, Zygmunt Pasiewski , a former partisan, who would help her care for two of the Jewish ladies, one of whom, Ida Haller, would have a baby at his cottage.

The most ironic twist was yet to come. As the liquidation of the ghetto drew near, Irene determined to save her remaining Jewish friends. They hid behind a false wall in the HKP laundry room on the night of the raid. The next night she led to their next hiding place -- a heating duct inside Major Rugemer's apartment.

The ironies did not end there. Major Rugemer decided that he would live in a villa in town. He requisitioned the former home of a Jewish architect and appointed Irene to oversee the work. The villa turned out to be the perfect hiding place. Servants quarters were located in the basement and a bunker was accessible beneath the yard.

What transpired afterward could have been the plot of a commedia d'el arte. A Nazi German officer -- a doddering old man--lived at ease without knowing that Jews were hidden beneath his feet. At one point, Irene had to interrupt the visiting Rokita, who was in-flagrante with a woman at the gazebo directly above the bunker.

Finally she was found out by Major Rugemer. He came home one afternoon and discovered Fanka Silberman and Ida Bauer upstairs with Irene. He was angry but he was also trapped: it would not look good for a Nazi officer to have had Jews hiding in his own house. So Major Rugemer became an unlikely rescuer. However, he did demand a price for his silence. Irene was forced to become his mistress.

When the advancing Soviet troops approached Ternopol, Irene was able to take her charges into the forest where they would be liberated. Through the efforts of one young Polish woman, who found herself in an unusual situation, Fanka Silberman, Henry Weinbaum, Moses Steiner, Marian Wilner, Joseph Weiss, Alex Rosen, David Rosen, Lazar Haller, Clara Bauer, Thomas Bauer, Abram Klinger, Miriam Morris, Hermann Morris, Herschel Morris, and Pola Morris were saved from the Nazi deathcamps.

The relationships of Poles to Jews during this awful time continue to be an area of controversy. Some Poles helped Jews; some Poles betrayed Jews; while others were mostly concerned about their own survival. Certainly there was sympathy toward Jews among the Poles and antipathy toward the Germans. Maria Brzeska, in her book, Through A Woman's Eyes, describes the attitudes of Polish villagers in this passage:

The peasants whom the Germans reduced to the role of pariah gave their protection to the most miserable of all pariahs: the Jews. And in this, as in many other cases, they had often paid for their humanity with their lives. In the little village of Sadowa in Wegrów County, a baker, his wife and son were shot for giving a loaf of bread to a Jewish woman. In many cases villages have had their inhabitants shot, their husbandries burnt down, their people deported amid sneers and humiliation, just because they have given Jews a loaf of bread, or shelter for the night, or have set plates of groats in the forest for the homeless Jewish children whom the Germans shoot like rabbits. Nonetheless, in village after village deliberate and effective aid has been given, with the strong and helpful forest always available if necessary.

Doctor Olga Lilien, a Holocaust survivor, who lived with the Polowicz family in a village near Tarnobrzeg during the war, gives an example of unity among the Polish villagers. "A German came to the village looking for a fugitive. He called the townspeople to a meeting to question them about the fugitive's whereabouts. Suddenly he looked at me and said, 'Oh, but this is a Jewess.' The head of the village said, 'Oh, no, she cooks at the school. She is a very good cook.' Nobody said, 'Oh well, she is Jewish. Take her.' He let me go.

The population of the village was about two thousand. They all knew there was something 'wrong' with me. Any one of them could have sold me to the Germans for two hundred Deutsch marks, but out of two thousand people nobody did it. Everybody in that village protected me. I had very good relations with them."

There were many reasons for Poles to deny aiding Jews. The Homars, for example, who hid Nechama Tec and her family, asked their charges to leave as Polish Christians and not reveal who had hidden them. When judging the reactions of Poles to the Holocaust, it is important to remember that the Poles themselves were under a constant barrage of terror and deprivation.

Public executions of citizens in the streets were commonplace.

In many instances Germans destroyed entire villages and murdered the inhabitants. The threat of lapanki, such as the one Irene Gut was caught in, made all Poles wary and each trip outside the home could be the last.

Over one million Poles were deported to slave labor in Germany. Polish children lost their lives to reprisal actions, transit in intolerable weather conditions on trains or marches, malnutrition, and were even used for blood transfusions for wounded German soldiers. The greatest threat to Poles who helped Jews was the death penalty, which was not applied anywhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe.

A Polish couple and their children, as well as the Jewish family they had been hiding, were brought to a gallows in the town square. The crowd was not allowed to leave the square, but instead, forced to witness the execution.

It was a warning from the Nazis: Helping a Jew would be punished by death.

Hard to believe that I have come from that same gene pool.

What struck me most about him is what strikes me about Corrie ten Boom. They came out of this with no hate. No depression. They learned to live and let live because of the commonalities with other prisoners; the exact opposite of what the nazis were trying to cause. Not everyone is like that, but that it is a recurring theme, really gives me hope for humanity. I think that is what joining them on their journey does for me.

Nazi Goebbels’ Step-Grandchildren Are Hidden Billionaires

By David de Jong - Jan 28, 2013 9:47 AM ET

In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels -- the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

The hand-written note confirmed the devastating news he had heard weeks earlier: His mother had committed suicide with her husband on May 1, after slipping their six children cyanide capsules in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin.

“My dear son! By now we’ve been in the Fuehrerbunker for six days already, Daddy, your six little siblings and I, to give our national socialistic lives the only possible, honorable ending,” she wrote. “Harald, dear son, I want to give you what I learned in life: Be loyal! Loyal to yourself, loyal to the people and loyal to your country!”

Quandt was released from captivity in 1947. Seven years later, he and his half-brother Herbert -- Harald was the only remaining child from Magda Goebbels’ first marriage -- would inherit the industrial empire built by their father, Guenther Quandt, which had produced Mauser firearms and anti-aircraft missiles for the Third Reich’s war machine. Among their most valuable assets at the time was a stake in car manufacturer Daimler AG. (DAI) They bought a part of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) a few years later.

Lower Profile
While the half-brothers passed away decades ago, their legacy has endured. Herbert’s widow, Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, have remained in the public eye as BMW’s dominant shareholders. The billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt -- Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo -- have kept a lower profile.

The four sisters inherited about 1.5 billion deutsche marks ($760 million) after the death of their mother, Inge, in 1978, according to the family’s sanctioned biography, “Die Quandts.” They manage their wealth through the Harald Quandt Holding GmbH, a Bad Homburg, Germany-based family investment company and trust named after their father. Fritz Becker, the chief executive officer of the family entities, said the siblings realized average annual returns above 7 percent from its founding in 1981 through 1996. Since then, the returns have averaged 7.6 percent.

“The family wants to stay private and that is an acceptable situation for me,” said Becker in an interview at his Bad Homburg office. “We invest our money globally and if it’s $1 billion, $500 million or $3 billion, who cares?”

Wartime Profits
Together, the four sisters -- and the two children of a deceased sibling -- share a fortune worth at least $6 billion, giving each of them a net worth of $1.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They have never appeared individually as billionaires on an international wealth ranking.

Becker declined to provide the exact figure the holding manages for the four sisters. The siblings declined to comment for this account, said Ralf-Dieter Brunowsky, a spokesman for the family investment company, in an e-mail. He said the net worth calculation was “too high,” declining to be more specific.

The rise of the Quandt family fortune shares the same trajectory as Germany’s quest for global domination in the 20th century. It began in 1883, when Emil Quandt acquired a textile company owned by his late father-in-law. At the turn of the century, Emil passed the business to his eldest son, Guenther.

The younger Quandt saw an opportunity with the onset of war in 1914. His factories, already one of the biggest clothing manufacturers for the German state, quadrupled their weekly uniform production for the army, according to “Die Quandts.”

Weapons Production
After Germany’s surrender four years later, Quandt put the company’s wartime profits to use. In 1922, he bought a majority stake in Accumulatoren-Fabrik AG (AFA), a Hagen-based battery manufacturer. Six years later, he took over Berlin-Karlsruher Industriewerken AG (BKIW), a Berlin-based manufacturer that made sewing machines and silverware. The factory, once one of Germany’s largest weapon producers, had been forced to retool as part of the country’s disarmament agreement.

“The Quandts' business grew in the Kaiserreich, it grew during the Weimar Republic, it grew during the Second World War and it grew strongly after the war,” Rudiger Jungbluth, author of “Die Quandts,” said in an interview at a Bavarian restaurant in Hamburg last November.

Nazi Connections
In 1918, Guenther Quandt’s first wife died of the Spanish flu, leaving him a widower with two young sons, Hellmut and Herbert. He married Magda Ritschel in 1921, and the couple’s only son, Harald, was born later that year. Hellmut died in 1927, from complications related to appendicitis.

Quandt and Magda divorced in 1929. Two years later, she married Joseph Goebbels, a member of the German parliament who also held a doctorate degree in drama and served as head of propaganda for Germany’s growing Nazi party. After the Nazis took power in 1933, their leader, Adolf Hitler, appointed Goebbels as the Third Reich’s propaganda minister. Hitler was the best man at the couple’s wedding.

Guenther Quandt joined the party that same year. His factories became key suppliers to the German war effort, even though his relationship with Goebbels had become increasingly strained.

“There was constant rivalry,” said Bonn-based history professor Joachim Scholtyseck, author of a family-commissioned study about their involvement with the Third Reich, in a telephone interview. “It didn’t matter that Goebbels didn’t like him. It didn’t have any influence on Quandt’s ability to make money.”

Forced Labor
In 1937, he earned the title of Wehrwirtschaftsfuehrer, the name given to members of an elite group of businessmen who were deemed beneficial to the production of war materials for the Third Reich. During the war, Quandt’s AFA manufactured batteries for U-Boat submarines and V-2 rocket launchers. His BKIW --which had been renamed Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken AG in 1936 -- produced Mauser firearms, ammunition and anti-aircraft missiles.

“He was one of the leading industrialists in the Third Reich and the Second World War,” Scholtyseck said. “He always kept a very low profile.”

From 1940 to 1945, the Quandt family factories were staffed with more than 50,000 forced civilian laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp workers, according to Scholtyseck’s 1,183-page study. The report was commissioned by the family in 2007 after German television aired the documentary “The Silence of the Quandts,” a critical look at their wartime activities.

Released in September 2011, the study also found that Quandt appropriated assets from Jewish company owners and that his son Herbert had planned building an AFA factory in which slave laborers would be deployed.

....

Family Meetings
The estate’s trustees had started overseeing the daughters’ money in 1974. An active investment approach commenced with the founding of the family investment company in 1981.

“It’s different if you work for a family than a corporation,” said Becker. “You can really invest instead of fulfilling regulation requirements.”

According to “Die Quandts,” the siblings try to get together a few times a year to discuss their investments. Gabriele Quandt lives in Munich. After earning a master’s degree in business administration at Insead in Fontainebleau, France, she married German publishing heir Florian Langenscheidt, with whom she had two sons. The couple divorced in 2008.

Katarina Geller-Herr owns Gestuet Waeldershausen, an equestrian center in Homberg (Ohm), Germany. She sponsored Lars Nieberg, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in show jumping.

Jewish Conversion
Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo is a jewelry designer who runs a studio and showroom in Hamburg. She converted to Judaism in New York at age 24. Her first marriage was to Michael Rosenblat, a German-Jewish businessman, whose father survived a concentration camp. The couple divorced in 1997. She remarried Frode Mo, a Norwegian journalist.

“We live with both religions and also celebrate Christmas,” Rosenblat-Mo said in “Die Quandts.”

Anette-Angelika May-Thies lives in Hamburg, according to the Harald Quandt Holding shareholders list filed with the German federal trade registry. Her first marriage was to Axel May, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) international adviser for private banking, who managed the family’s investments for about 25 years.

The siblings are also majority owners and investors in five financial services companies, all of which pay dividends, according to Becker. The firms were founded to manage the sisters’ wealth and subsequently opened up to third parties.

Private Equity
The six companies combined manage $18 billion in assets, according to the family investment company’s website. Becker said the majority of the money controlled by these firms is invested for third parties. One-fifth of the family fortune is managed by trustees for the two children of the youngest Quandt sibling, Patricia Halterman, who died in July 2005, four days before turning 38. Her townhouse on the Upper East Side of New York City sold for $37.5 million in 2008.

Auda International LP serves as the sisters’ New York-based private-equity unit. It manages almost $5 billion and was founded as their U.S. office in 1989, said Becker. Real Estate Capital Partners LP started the same year and has invested about $9 billion in real estate, according to its website. Both companies are owned through HQFS LP, an offshore entity based in the Cayman Islands.

Family Fortunes
In Bad Homburg, HQ Trust GmbH serves as a investment management company for about 30 families with fortunes ranging from 50 million euros to 500 million euros. Equita Management GmbH invests in small and mid-cap companies in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. HQ Advisor GmbH provides accounting and controlling services.

Only one sister, Gabriele, carries the family name, and none are active in the day-to-day business of the family office, said Becker.

Their uncle, Herbert Quandt, died in 1982. His fortune was divided between six children from three different marriages. BMW, his most valuable asset, was inherited by his third wife Johanna Quandt and their children, Stefan Quandt, 46, and Susanne Klatten, 50. The three billionaires hold 46.7 percent of the Munich-based car producer, according to the company’s 2011 annual report.

After Scholtyseck’s study was published in 2011, cousins Gabriele and Stefan Quandt acknowledged their family’s ties and involvement with the Third Reich in an interview with Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper.

‘Sad Truth’
“Magda killed her six children in the Fuehrerbunker. Our father loved his half-siblings very much. And when, like me, you have something like this in your family history, you think: It can’t be any worse,” Gabriele Quandt said in the interview. “It’s a sad truth that forced laborers died in Quandt companies,” said Stefan.

The acknowledgment didn’t prompt a public distancing from the men that made their family Germany’s richest. The families’ offices in Bad Homburg are named after Guenther and Harald Quandt, and the Herbert Quandt media prize of 50,000 euros is awarded annually to German journalists.

“They have to live with the name. It’s part of the history,” said Scholtyseck. “It will be a constant reminder of dictatorship and the challenges that families have to face.”

Entire story at the link

I'm just glad that is possible, even in a world of such hatred, the nazis couldn't extinguish the love these survivors have for their fellow man. They are able to compartmentalize their treatment and get on with life still loving and even learned not to judge others.

So incredibly detailed was the German attention to record keeping, filming, documenting. Had they been less so, so much of what we know now would have been lost forever.

Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay - the end up spots for many Nazi war criminals. He was one - had he been discovered in his lifetime - should have been given no quarter.

I really doubt survivors can totally dissimulate this particular horror, but recording their stories for history is a powerful thing.

BBoy your point was clear in your first post.

IMO Mengele would be one who few, if any, could find forgiveness for. He escaped the punishment he well deserved.

epiphy,"not to rain on your parade" is usually a prefeace for BUT... and then something contrary. However, I did apologize. Immediately. Obviously, I misunderstood. I aint perfect.

Guess I feel so stongly about the survivors, I don't want to hear anything contrary. They deserve so much good. And it still won't be enough. My heart has broken so many times for every last one of them. Not just for the concentration camps. The jeers they suffered and still suffer. Not by bboy, but the others. My heart just breaks they feel that way. How can they? Now, I'm crying again.

Really, its too terrible to comprehend.
And even now some haters and criminally ignorant state that they refuse to believe it all ever took place.

It gives a lot of them a way to respect and revere Hitler and Hitler's own hate and some of Hitler's bigoted ideas, after all.
If Hitler didn't really do any of that to millions of people, then what's yer problem?

Why? Why do humans allow this sort of hate to grow within them, and allow it to spread so far? I often can't grasp how it grew so large without the world stepping in much sooner to belay such insanity.

It's an insanity of epic proportions that I would hope will never be repeated. To call it a "mistake to learn from" just doesn't seem harsh enough...

For 6 months, you couldn't give away a fish that came from Lake Victoria, which led to the near collapse of the major industry for that whole region bordering the lake - Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, etc. So we did a big campaign to inform the folks that fish were safe to eat - but constantly fighting the rumor mill.

The shockwaves from that are still reverberating around the that part of Africa, eg the ongoing mess in eastern Congo.

Edited to add that there's a fascinating book about that called "Strength in What Remains" by Tracy Kidder, which I likely mentioned somewhere before. It brings up the concept of "gusimbura" which is a way of intentionally forgetting things because they're just too painful and horrible.

Well worth a read. Its a book about a refugee that made it to the US, lived on the streets, managed to graduate from Med School and started a clinic in Rwanda. Flash backs to the horrors he saw.

Rob, hiding one’s head in the sand or shutting down conversations about something unpleasant like the Holocaust is not productive.

There is a reason that many survivors have spent a good part of their lives purposely speaking up when it would have been easier for them not to do so. Some have found forgiveness and others haven’t but have moved on anyway but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed simply because it makes others like yourself uncomfortable.

Survivors have different reasons for wanting and choosing to talk about their experience.. For some it is cathartic while others find it is their way to honor those who were lost and others hope that it will help to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.

Silence doesn't protect survivors, on the contrary. One can forgive and still talk about it but it should not be ignored as if it never transpired. That is a form of disrespect in itself.

Unfortunately those who choose to speak up will continue to encounter unpleasantness and push back from those who don’t believe or hate, which is exactly why they feel the need to continue to address this instead of remaining silent. So no, ignoring the past is not an option just to make people like yourself feel good and again, forgiveness does not mean one should remain silent and not being silent doesn’t mean they haven’t forgiven.

We saw what ignorance of the past draws when Sarah Palin misused the term “blood libel”. We saw people on this very board continue to defend it, justify it, and excuse it even after they were told what the term meant and the history,

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
....

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.
.....

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

- Elie Wiesel

What a FREAKISHLY hysterical defense in that thread on behalf of that idiot Palin. The angry defense of her was just plain freakish.
I swear, after reading it I felt like I needed to wash my eyes out with soap, they felt filthy.
It was an embarrassment of an American discussion on a public forum.
Not a lot has changed.
What a pity.

Former Congresswoman Gifford still to this day struggles greatly with the results of being shot in her head, but I guess that has to be expected.

However......Mrs.'Blood Libel' Palin finally did burn right through that silly fan club of hers and thus , faded back into the shadows of obscurity, which is exactly where she always belonged, so there IS that for cold comfort.

Despite the curious 'Palin defense' in that thread, the thread did refresh my memory about the history of the term, " blood libel" , so re-reading that curiously awful thread served me a good purpose.

Mylab, yes, some of the comments on that thread were eye opening to say the least and is a prime example why this and other atrocities need to be discussed over and over again no matter how unpleasant the topic is and even though some will ignore the truth and reality. As we saw on that thread, some people, even after they are given the facts, will still defend the indefensible no matter what.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel. "

Only yesterday I read a small headline that said, "Baby found alive in plastic bag." I didn't read the attached short article, but I did shake my head and wonder yet again at what drives various members of our species.

The fact that so many can be coerced into performing genocide to such an extent is... I don't know.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

Jodik, we see how some spin here on HT to fit their agenda and how easily they are led by their nose without any thought. Just look at the Woodward thread to see an example, not to mention the link I posted. It is no different than back in the 30's and it will continue in the foreseeable future until some take an honest look at their beliefs and what they are based on and stop hating anyone who isn't a cookie cutter version of themselves.

The same people who like to claim they are the salt of the earth, smart, and would never disparage anyone because of race or religion are the very same we have seen show otherwise. Their hate is palatable and like during WWII based on unfounded fears, lies and paranoia. We have seen a poster on here literally taunt others when they stated they were not interested in viewing a piece that was clearly propaganda, no different than what transpired and how many behaved with the Nazi's. So no, sadly not much has changed and there are still people out there who will believe lies and condone and justify incitement and even violence if it fits their agenda.

There is a new film coming out in April.

NO PLACE ON EARTH brings to light the untold story of thirty-eight Ukrainian Jews who survived World War II by living in caves for eighteen months, the longest-recorded sustained underground survival. Built upon interviews with former cave inhabitants, as well as Chris Nicola, the caving enthusiast who unearthed the story, NO PLACE ON EARTH is an extraordinary testament to ingenuity, willpower and endurance against all odds.