Just back from Auschwitz.....

smiletime

Just got back from a trip to Auschwitz.

How on earth are people out there denying that the Holocaust happened?

What an emotional and sad place.

Ken.

If you dont mind me asking, was it expensive to get there. I'd love to visit it some day.

smiletime

lucyfur09 wrote: »

If you dont mind me asking, was it expensive to get there. I'd love to visit it some day.

Hi there,

It was quite cheap to go. I got an Aer Lingus flight which was 35 euro. The accomodation over there can be as cheap or expensive as you like. And the trip to Auschwitz itself was around 30 euro.

Glad I went. Have always wanted to see it.

Spore

Visited Auschwitz last year... hadn't the effect on me I thought it would. Didn't feel that real, in the sense that a lot of it has been rebuilt after initial Nazi attempts to destroy the sight, then terrible storm damage. The one thing that did freak me out was the 'cell for standing' such an unneccesarily cruel punishment. I'd actually recommend people just watch Schindler's List to get a better insight into the Holocaust. The sequence when Amon Goeth's men dig up hundreds of corpses and has them burnt in huge pyres is the best metaphor I've ever seen for the holocaust - hell on earth.

spurious

Once you're in Krakow, you can get to Auschwitz fairly cheaply if you use public transport (bus from the Central Train station). The cost to visit the museum is free, though there is a charge if you use a foreign language (English) guide.

novarock

I visited it last year.. If you are staying in a hotel over there, they can more than likely arrange a pickup/drop off tour for you very easily.

It didnt have the effect on me I thought it would, It didnt help that the weather was absolutely amazing when i was there.

I found it difficult to grasp the extent of it until we went to birkenau, now that place is a proper death camp - just the sheer scale of it alone.

Ken.

novarock wrote: »

I visited it last year.. If you are staying in a hotel over there, they can more than likely arrange a pickup/drop off tour for you very easily.

It didnt have the effect on me I thought it would, It didnt help that the weather was absolutely amazing when i was there.

I found it difficult to grasp the extent of it until we went to birkenau, now that place is a proper death camp - just the sheer scale of it alone.

Is birkenau far from auschwitz?, did you do both on one trip?

old hippy

spurious wrote: »

Once you're in Krakow, you can get to Auschwitz fairly cheaply if you use public transport (bus from the Central Train station). The cost to visit the museum is free, though there is a charge if you use a foreign language (English) guide.

On the bus to the camps, you're shown a film about the attrocities. If that doesn't have you broken up, the tour around the place will. It was the mounds of human hair that brought the tears forth.

We did it in a long weekend in Krakow - it hadn't been on our plan but glad we did it.

jonniebgood1

lucyfur09 wrote: »

Is birkenau far from auschwitz?, did you do both on one trip?

It is a short journey, You can walk but better to use the provided transport as its a couple of mile (from memory). It is the most necessary part of the Auscwitz trip to see the scale of Birkenau.

ReacherCreature

Isn't Birkenau and Auschwitz all a part of the same complex? I'd imagine a visit to Auschwitz would or should incorporate a visit to Birkenau.

smiletime

Yes Birkenau is next to Auschwitz.

There is a short bus journey to it. All incorporated into the fee you pay as part of bus trip.

Well worth visiting and so glad I went.

Fuinseog

smiletime wrote: »

Just got back from a trip to Auschwitz.

How on earth are people out there denying that the Holocaust happened?

What an emotional and sad place.

what kind of person goes on a misery holiday? I hope you got the made to measure tour.

smiletime

Fuinseog wrote: »

what kind of person goes on a misery holiday? I hope you got the made to measure tour.

A person who wants to learn and has interests in history.

You gob****e.

Fuinseog

Spore wrote: »

Visited Auschwitz last year... hadn't the effect on me I thought it would. Didn't feel that real, in the sense that a lot of it has been rebuilt after initial Nazi attempts to destroy the sight, then terrible storm damage. The one thing that did freak me out was the 'cell for standing' such an unneccesarily cruel punishment. I'd actually recommend people just watch Schindler's List to get a better insight into the Holocaust. The sequence when Amon Goeth's men dig up hundreds of corpses and has them burnt in huge pyres is the best metaphor I've ever seen for the holocaust - hell on earth.

yeah, Schindler's list is great. I just love 'ze German' accent they had in it. Schindler himself, though a kraut and nazi spoke quite normally.


I am sure Schindler's list is an accurate depiction of what happened. twas hell on earth like an Irish industrial school.

the Germans just could not have done it without the help of Jeewish kapos and Jewish police.

Fuinseog

spurious wrote: »

Once you're in Krakow, you can get to Auschwitz fairly cheaply if you use public transport (bus from the Central Train station). The cost to visit the museum is free, though there is a charge if you use a foreign language (English) guide.

free admission to the theme park? they are crazy. they could missing out on a fotune.

Fuinseog

smiletime wrote: »

A person who wants to learn and has interests in history.

You gob****e.

attack the post, not the poster. it should be possible to have a civilized debate here. this is not the gutter or schoolyard.

Fuinseog

old hippy wrote: »

On the bus to the camps, you're shown a film about the attrocities. If that doesn't have you broken up, the tour around the place will. It was the mounds of human hair that brought the tears forth.

We did it in a long weekend in Krakow - it hadn't been on our plan but glad we did it.

they have it well organised.

Bullseye1

I haven't been to Auschwitz but I was in a smaller camp in Flossenburg

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossenbürg_concentration_camp

It wasn't just Jews killed there many POW from eastern Europe were also killed there.

Do people not find it interesting that the 20 million plus deaths the soviet people suffered does not get the same coverage as the atrocity carried out to the 7-8 million Jewish people. Same for the large population of Chinese killed in WWII.

pljudge321

I was there about three years ago. The solemnity of the place was kind of ruined by how packed with tourists the place is. Birkenau is quieter than Auschitwz I and a bit more haunting. Its odd when you are walking up the path towards the crematoria how many more people walked up the path than dwn it when the camp was running.

I know the bit that got to me the most, and I'm sure anyone else who has been there can testify, is the case of women's hair that they have on display in Auschitwz I. Its hard quantifying in your mind just the scale of what went on there in your mind but that display really drives it home.

Fuinseog

Bullseye1 wrote: »

I haven't been to Auschwitz but I was in a smaller camp in Flossenburg

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossenbürg_concentration_camp

It wasn't just Jews killed there many POW from eastern Europe were also killed there.

Do people not find it interesting that the 20 million plus deaths the soviet people suffered does not get the same coverage as the atrocity carried out to the 7-8 million Jewish people. Same for the large population of Chinese killed in WWII.

no. Forget about Guantanamo Bay, Rwanda, Balkans, Irish Famine etc. The only people who ever suffered were the Jews.

the Jews control Hollywood so they control how the shoah is depicted in film. we are told what to think and if you fail to accept or question anything you are a holocaust denier.

harr

was there last year when we went on a long weekend to Krakow and we used a private driver who we had arranged to pick us up from the airport it worked out around 70 euro for airport return and return trip to Auschwitz in a Mercedes people carrier,it was 70 euro well spent.The driver had very good English and he new his history very well.the trip to Krakow itself worked out around 420 for flights and 3 nights for 2 people.we also did the communist tour of the old part of Krakow in one of them old cars not sure of make maybe a lada this was also a good tour as was a trip to the salt mines. I still have the number somewhere of the privet taxi if anyboby needs it.

theparish

I was there a couple of years ago.I was probably desensitized by all the holocaust documentaries that I saw over the years.
I really enjoyed Krakow and the seriously cheap price of food and drink.

Bullseye1

Fuinseog wrote: »

no. Forget about Guantanamo Bay, Rwanda, Balkans, Irish Famine etc. The only people who ever suffered were the Jews.

the Jews control Hollywood so they control how the shoah is depicted in film. we are told what to think and if you fail to accept or question anything you are a holocaust denier.

I have no problem with the Jewish population ensuring the rest of the world never forgets. Afterall they have suffered at the hand of others alot longer than most.

My point is alot more Soviet people died in WWII, i think I read if you subtract the Chinese deaths more Soviets died than the Jewish People, Americans, British, Germans etc put together.

Fuinseog

Bullseye1 wrote: »

I have no problem with the Jewish population ensuring the rest of the world never forgets. Afterall they have suffered at the hand of others alot longer than most.

My point is alot more Soviet people died in WWII, i think I read if you subtract the Chinese deaths more Soviets died than the Jewish People, Americans, British, Germans etc put together.

if an Irish person harped on about 800 years of oppression, they would be told to grow up and become more mature. Maybe its time for the chosen people to do the same. They can only milk the holocaust industry for a few more years anyway, before people get sick and tired of it.

The Jews make me laugh. they hate the Germans, yet were major contributors to Germanic culture.

Bullseye1

I don't think they hate the Germans at all. I cannot see how they can blame the children for the sins of their fathers. I don't think that is the case anyway.

brianthebard

Fuinseog banned for a week for trolling so no more replies to their posts please. Mod.

convert

I've not been to Auschwitz (yet), but I did visit Dachau when I was on a break in Munich.

It was a really worthwhile experience, and touring the place really brought home the experiences of those who were interred there.

I went on a guided tour from the centre of Munich and the guide was fantastic. He was a history student at university, and had a great grasp of the history of the era (impressive for me to say, as usually I always pick up on some inaccuracies by guides). There were only about 10 of us on the tour, all English speaking, so it was really intimate and felt more like a group outing rather than a guided tour/history lesson.

Wolfe Tone

I was there a few years ago when I was in TY, the lasting impression I have is me and my fellow shocked students leaving the room with the hair to be confronted by a group of Americans laughing hysterically, our guide nearly throttled them

jos28

I went to both camps while I was in Kracow in October. Definitely worth going, its a very sombre yet intriguing. I went on an organised tour and the journey home was very quiet. Both places were very surreal with a strange sense of calm. Birkenau is located at the edge of a wood and its really weird but there are no birds in the sky. Not a single one

Einhard

Bullseye1 wrote: »

Do people not find it interesting that the 20 million plus deaths the soviet people suffered does not get the same coverage as the atrocity carried out to the 7-8 million Jewish people. Same for the large population of Chinese killed in WWII.

None of those other groups were targeted for mass extermination because of their ethnicity though. That's what makes the Holocaust, and events like it, so chilling.

I have to say that my blood ran cold reading some of the comments on this thread from one individual, especially as some people thanked them. Is it any wonder that the Jews don't want the world to forget?

brianthebard

Einhard wrote: »

None of those other groups were targeted for mass extermination because of their ethnicity though.

In fairness the slavic people were earmarked for extermination/slavery but the germans didn't get around to it fully. I realise however that the figure Bullseye is referring to includes those killed in action and people tend to remember those differently than those killed in the holocaust.

Morlar

I don't agree there is any kind of hirearchy between those targetted based on race, nationality, social class or religion. These people were also targetted based on ethnicity ;


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664526/How-three-million-Germans-died-after-VE-Day.html

How three million Germans died after VE Day

12:01AM BST 18 Apr 2007

Comment

Nigel Jones reviews After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift by Giles MacDonogh

Giles MacDonogh is a bon viveur and a historian of wine and gastronomy, but in this book, pursuing his other consuming interest - German history - he serves a dish to turn the strongest of stomachs. It makes particularly uncomfortable reading for those who compare the disastrous occupation of Iraq unfavourably to the post-war settlement of Germany and Austria.

MacDonogh argues that the months that followed May 1945 brought no peace to the shattered skeleton of Hitler's Reich, but suffering even worse than the destruction wrought by the war. After the atrocities that the Nazis had visited on Europe, some degree of justified vengeance by their victims was inevitable, but the appalling bestialities that MacDonogh documents so soberly went far beyond that. The first 200 pages of his brave book are an almost unbearable chronicle of human suffering.

His best estimate is that some three million Germans died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities. A million soldiers vanished before they could creep back to the holes that had been their homes. The majority of them died in Soviet captivity (of the 90,000 who surrendered at Stalingrad, only 5,000 eventually came home) but, shamingly, many thousands perished as prisoners of the Anglo-Americans. Herded into cages along the Rhine, with no shelter and very little food, they dropped like flies. Others, more fortunate, toiled as slave labour in a score of Allied countries, often for years. Incredibly, some Germans were still being held in Russia as late as 1979.

The two million German civilians who died were largely the old, women and children: victims of disease, cold, hunger, suicide - and mass murder.

Apart from the well-known repeated rape of virtually every girl and woman unlucky enough to be in the Soviet occupation zones, perhaps the most shocking outrage recorded by MacDonogh - for the first time in English - is the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by their vengeful Czech compatriots. The survivors of this ethnic cleansing, naked and shivering, were pitched across the border, never to return to their homes. Similar scenes were seen across Poland, Silesia and East Prussia as age-old German communities were brutally expunged.

Given that what amounted to a lesser Holocaust was unfolding under their noses, it may be asked why the western Allies did not stop this venting of long-dammed-up rage on the (mainly) innocent. MacDonogh's answer is that it could all have been even worse. The US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, favoured turning Germany into a gigantic farm, and there were genocidal Nazi-like schemes afoot to starve, sterilise or deport the population of what was left of the bombed-out cities.

The discovery of the Nazi death camps stoked Allied fury, with General George Patton asking an aide amid the horrors of Buchenwald: 'Do you still find it hard to hate them?' But the surviving inmates were soon replaced by German captives - Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and even Auschwitz stayed in business after the war, only now with the Germans behind the wire.

It was Realpolitik, not humanitarian concern, that caused a swift shift in western attitudes towards their former foes. Fear of Communism spreading into the heart of Europe, and the barbarities of the Russians - who kidnapped and killed hundreds of their perceived enemies from the western zones of Berlin and Vienna - belatedly made the West realise that they had beaten one totalitarian power only to be threatened by another.

Even that hardline Kraut-hater Patton was sacked for advocating a pre-emptive strike against Russia. Building up West Germany and saving Berlin from Soviet strangulation with the 1948 airlift became the first battles of the Cold War - even if that meant overlooking Nazi crimes and enlisting Nazi criminals in the 'economic miracle' of reconstruction.

Although MacDonogh roundly condemns all the occupying powers, the British emerge with some credit. Apart from one Air Marshal who looted art treasures; and an MI5 interrogator nicknamed 'Tin Eye' Stephens who ran a private torture chamber, British hands may have been grubby, but were not deeply blood-stained. British squaddies preferred to purchase their sex privately with a packet of fags or a pair of nylons, rather than in the Soviet style.

MacDonogh has written a gruelling but important book. This unhappy story has long been cloaked in silence since telling it suited no one. Not the Allies, because it placed them near the moral nadir of the Nazis; nor the Germans, because they did not wish to be accused of whitewashing Hitler by highlighting what was, by any standard, a war crime. Giles MacDonogh has told a very inconvenient truth.

______________________


http://jta.org/news/article/2011/02/17/2743020/jewish-leaders-condemn-memorial-day-for-expelled-germans


Jewish leaders slam memorial day for expelled Germans

February 17, 2011

BERLIN (JTA) -- Jewish leaders and political groups in Germany condemned a proposed national day of remembrance for the 12 million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after World War II.

The proposal was to be heard in parliament Thursday.

Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told reporters that "One could almost call [the proposal] a kind of retaliation" against remembrance of the victims of German war crimes.

The governing political coalition parties -- the conservative Christian Democratic Union, its sister party the Christian Social Union, and the center-right Free Democratic Party -- proposed the annual memorial day for Aug. 5. On that day in 1950, the association of Germans from the annexed regions signed a Charter of German Expellees in which they "renounce revenge and retaliation."

According to news reports, the parties argued that the memorial day would not dissociate the expulsion of ethnic Germans from German responsibility for the war and for war crimes, but they said it was time that the stigmatization in Germany of expellees and their descendants come to an end.

Opposition political leaders and a group of historians have condemned the proposal as revisionist and avoiding German guilt.

Kramer said such a memorial day could have a "catastrophic effect" on Germany's image abroad.

The president of the League of German Expellees, Erika Steinbach, told Deutsche Welle that the 1950 charter was about the expellees "overcoming their own justified resentment to say that they wanted to look forward and bring about a peaceful coexistence in Europe."

She said she expected "the sympathy of the German state ... for the particular fate of a substantial part of the German people."

Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, called the proposal "a disgraceful distortion of history and
an abuse of truth and memory."

"In reality, ethnic Germans who colonized Eastern Europe during World War II were the unbridled instruments of the brutal Nazi plans for the conquest and plunder of Europe. They served as agents of an evil design," Steinberg said in a statement.

"To link their commemoration to the 1950 Charter of Expellees, which expresses no contrition for the victims of the Nazis, mocks the memory of all who were brutalized by the Hitler regime, Jew and non-Jew," he said.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

I don't agree there is any kind of hirearchy between those targetted based on race, nationality, social class or religion. These people were also targetted based on ethnicity ;

In the case of your example the Germans were targeted not because of their ethnicity, rather they were targeted because of their association with the crimes of the Nazi/ Wehrmacht. This type of vengeance was openly encouraged by all allied sides, particularly Russia as they approached central Europe. It was also fuelled by dicovery of the camps.
Their ethnic background and nationality may have held them together as a target group (i.e. made them recognisable) but was not the reason for them being targetted.

Morlar

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

...they were targeted because of their association with the crimes of the Nazi/ Wehrmacht.

12, 000,000 ethnic Germans living across eastern europe who were ethnically cleansed were not responsible for the nsdap or Wehrmacht, nor were the millions of 'missing'. They were targetted based on their ethnicity. Their memorialisation is frowned upon in some quarters to this day for that very same reason.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

12, 000,000 ethnic Germans living across eastern europe who were ethnically cleansed were not responsible for the nsdap or Wehrmacht, nor were the millions of 'missing'. They were targetted based on their ethnicity. Their memorialisation is frowned upon in some quarters to this day for that very same reason.

What happened them was terrible and they should be entitled to memorial without people casting aspersions on them for doing so. It is also true to say that not all of them would have supported or been responsible for the Nazi's or the Wehrmacht (nobody said this by the way). However to say that they were targeted solely on ethnic grounds is not true. The people who targetted them did so as revenge for the war time crimes against their own countries. Crimes that were uncovered in 1945 such as those at Auschwitz were used to fuel support for revenge attacks on the perceived perpetrators.
I think the distinction between killing as revenge as opposed to killing for ethnic reasons is important although it obviously is not a justification. For example a racist killing could be viewed differently than a revenge killing in court but both crimes would get a sentence.

Morlar

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

However to say that they were targeted solely on ethnic grounds is not true.

They were undoubtedly targeted on ethnic grounds.

Your attempts at equivocation notwithstanding there is no doubt whatsoever that they were solely targeted on the basis of their ethnicity.

As mentioned, their ethnicity is also the reason why their memorialisation is under attack.

Felim Uallachain

Shinners should have to go there and then justify why they allied themselves with the people who did that evil deed.

brianthebard

Felim Uallachain wrote: »

Shinners should have to go there and then justify why they allied themselves with the people who did that evil deed.

This is your only warning, stop stirring or you'll be banned. Mod.

dubbie82

I have visited the place about 2 years ago while I was traveling around the area.
I have heard stories about Auschwitz before and how it was pushed as a tourist attraction and you can buy souvenir mugs etc. I was glad this was not the case at all.
I was prepared, knowing the history and all that but what got to me was the thousands of baby and children shoes that were collected in the last weeks before the liberation of the camp. Also there was a mountain of womens hair. I don't think that sight leaves anyone untouched.

You can't just wander around on your own but are part of a small group with a guide and our guide was very good. She mentioned a lot of facts and stories that are not generally known.

After the visit at the camps I just wanted to go home and have a long shower, I felt like I could smell death. It's hard to describe but I heard a lot of people saying the same thing after beeing there.