We have no money

[JensenA]

There was an interesting story recounted by Gunner Ronald Leverington, a gunner on a Lancaster bomber shot down over France. The crew were captured by the SS, brutally beaten, and then along with other captured Bomber command crews, were sent to Buchenwald in June 1944, to 'await execution'. They endured the same conditions as all other inmates in Buchenwald, but were exempted from work details, The SS and Gestapo were awaiting orders from Hitler to execute them, But in October, the Luftwaffe, who had taken on the responsibility for all RAF prisoners heard that 'fellow' airmen were imprisoned in Buchenwald, literally turned up at Buchenwald with a convoy of trucks, and Luftwaffe officers marched into the camp and demanded the release of all Allied Aircrew, and rescued all,of them.
So not all Germans were bad. Rremember in Nazi Germany, if you crossed the SS, you simply 'disappeared'.

[Pesty]

steviegunn said:

I hope this memorial also honours the memory of the 5 million non-Jews murdered by the Nazis in the death camps. There were gipsies, homosexuals, disabled, political prisoners and POWs sent to the very
same gas chambers.

Slavs other Eastern Europeans Russians and probably a lot more besides.

It does annoy when it's only the Jews that ever get mentioned.

[coetzeeh]

With the recent events in Paris in mind I do wonder if a memorial/education center of this magnitude won't create a site of interest for all the wrong reasons.

[jmorgan]

Pesty said:

steviegunn said:

I hope this memorial also honours the memory of the 5 million non-Jews murdered by the Nazis in the death camps. There were gipsies, homosexuals, disabled, political prisoners and POWs sent to the very
same gas chambers.

Slavs other Eastern Europeans Russians and probably a lot more besides.

It does annoy when it's only the Jews that ever get mentioned.

The H mans plan for Lebensraum did not cater for displacing people with good intent.

[allnighter]

Pesty said:

steviegunn said:

I hope this memorial also honours the memory of the 5 million non-Jews murdered by the Nazis in the death camps. There were gipsies, homosexuals, disabled, political prisoners and POWs sent to the very
same gas chambers.

Slavs other Eastern Europeans Russians and probably a lot more besides.

It does annoy when it's only the Jews that ever get mentioned.

Historians who have written on the subject of the Holocaust have chosen to interpret the tragedy in exclusivistic term only ie; the Holocaust was unique to the Jews ignoring more than 9 million Gentiles including Communists, Czechs, Greeks, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally and physically handicapped, Poles, resistance fighters, Russians, Serbs, Socialists, Spanish Republicans, trade unionists, Ukrainians, Yugoslavians, prisoners of war of many nations.
Those millions of non-Jews who were also killed only demonstrates the determination and magnitude of the Nazi extermination program to eliminate anyone who could even remotely be considered an enemy of the state.

[hairyben]

Rude-boy said:

fblm said:

Amazing. When I went through school in the 80's and 90's WW2 is all we ever did, every single fvcking year. I had no idea WW1 ever happened until recently

I think we must be about the same age (GCES's in '92)

We never got as far as WW2, we were 1905-1933 IIRC.

That anyone over the age of 30 can claim not to know about it in this country surprises me to the point of disbelief.

That there are people over 11 and under 30 that don't know about 3 of what are likely the top 5, and certainly top 10, events of the 20th century and how it shaped the World we live in today should be a national embarrassment.

Without wishing to appear crass but the amount of references to Holocaust I note on a weekly basis leaves me wondering HTF they have missed it, or not at least looked further at it to find out what this holocaust thing was! I find out something new about history on here and often I Google a little to find out more - perhaps I am one of the few but Jesus, whatever happened to the enquiring mind?!?!?

couple of years older than me. The history we did at school was useless as a means to understand how the modern world came about; instead they took certain periods and wittered on for months.

People bash wikipedia endlessly but as an easily accessible reference tool to look up historical events/people as and when they pique my interest in the course of daily life it's done far more than school to educate me in the basic framework of how and why we got to be where we are.

I'd say the fact we carry pocket computers able to reference the sum total of human knowledge (already credited as being one of the wonders of the modern age) and yet so many people, particularly the younger/my generation, are proudly and wilfully ignorant is one of the biggest tragedies of all, it's deeply foreboding and goes a long way to answering the conversations above concerning how "ordinary" germans squared with themselves what they were involved with in the 30's