Holocaust: Night Will Fall: Ch4 9pm.

[eybic]

I consider myself quite strong in that normally blood & guts etc. don't bother me, however I was shocked at the content of this programme within about 10 minutes.

I think what got to me the most was two fold, the sheer amount of bodies and their condition, truly awful

[selym]

The look of horror on their faces too. The most shocking thing for me was the bodies being manhandled by the arms over the shoulder (like a rucksack) to throw them into a pit; it looked as though the arms were going to detach from the bodies.
Just horrible.

[Rostfritt]

Meteor Madness said:

The first half of the film "Shoah" is on BBC4 right now. Very insightful interviews with survivors, perpetrators and bystanders.

Just watched a bit of that, very moving interview with a man who helped to build the ovens. He was told they were to make charcoal, but before long he saw the real use. He was only 13 at the time and it didn't really occur to him that it was the wrong thing to do.

The dialogue at the end was pretty eerie, detailed observations about the operation of the gas vans, coupled with footage of a newer model from the same manufacturer.

[Mercury00]

selym said:

The look of horror on their faces too. The most shocking thing for me was the bodies being manhandled by the arms over the shoulder (like a rucksack) to throw them into a pit; it looked as though the arms were going to detach from the bodies.
Just horrible.

Yeah, this was it for me. I suppose I just tend think of dead bodies as having a blank face and closed eyes, but these were just horrible, the look of terror still etched on their faces and eyes wide open. Same with the pit - I've never imagined a person having no muscle reflexes or such like, but when they threw them into the pit they were like ragdolls, moving in ways bodies shouldn't move.

[DrTre]

Mercury00 said:

selym said:

The look of horror on their faces too. The most shocking thing for me was the bodies being manhandled by the arms over the shoulder (like a rucksack) to throw them into a pit; it looked as though the arms were going to detach from the bodies.
Just horrible.

Yeah, this was it for me. I suppose I just tend think of dead bodies as having a blank face and closed eyes, but these were just horrible, the look of terror still etched on their faces and eyes wide open. Same with the pit - I've never imagined a person having no muscle reflexes or such like, but when they threw them into the pit they were like ragdolls, moving in ways bodies shouldn't move.

That. That right there was just horrific.

It's one thing to be told and to read and to have seen other footage/photos, but I've never seen anything like those bits; along with the shots of the sheer number of bodies lying on the ground just after liberation. In those shots, more than anything else I've seen, there is no hiding from the scale of the murder.

Mind blowing that people can carry that out, they can participate, that they can ignore it as though it's normal.

Here's a book about this and other film archive work on the Holocaust written by one of the main men behind the IWM work, Toby Haggith:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hetrpvcBuuEC&a...


(how does that work, it looks free?!?)

(answered my own question, it's only sections of the book).

Edited by DrTre on Monday 26th January 20:56

[anonymous-user]

Wills2 said:

Max_Torque said:

Wills2 said:

and once again I'm left asking myself how the Germans humans were capable of such acts on such a scale.

I think enough time has passed to stop the "US and THEM" kinda thing eh. The fact they were German is irrelevant (today). If we want to prevent this sort of thing happening again, we need to understand that we are ALL capable of such acts if we let our morals take second place to our political allegiances!

The programme was about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans, so it's very relevant. The Germans don't hide from their responsibility for it so I'm not sure why you should attempt to remove them from the story.

Under no circumstances would i wish to suggest that Germans, during WW2 were anything but fully responsible for those atrocities or to in any way remove them from the historical story.

However, sitting here with 70 years of hindsight, i think it's no longer valuable to "blame it on the Nazis" as that is too simple, too easy a statement, and can cause people to be blinkered as to their own actions. After all, i'm not a Nazi, so by default i could never commit such an atrocity. And yet, as a Human being, i am clearly quite capable of doing so under extreme circumstances (which is what the average "German" was under during the run up and course of WW2).
We need to recognise that we are ALL capable of such acts in order to ensure they NEVER happen again, independent of Race, Creed, Religion or Political stand point...

[drivin_me_nuts]

Max_Torque said:

Wills2 said:

Max_Torque said:

Wills2 said:

and once again I'm left asking myself how the Germans humans were capable of such acts on such a scale.

I think enough time has passed to stop the "US and THEM" kinda thing eh. The fact they were German is irrelevant (today). If we want to prevent this sort of thing happening again, we need to understand that we are ALL capable of such acts if we let our morals take second place to our political allegiances!

The programme was about the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans, so it's very relevant. The Germans don't hide from their responsibility for it so I'm not sure why you should attempt to remove them from the story.

Under no circumstances would i wish to suggest that Germans, during WW2 were anything but fully responsible for those atrocities or to in any way remove them from the historical story.

However, sitting here with 70 years of hindsight, i think it's no longer valuable to "blame it on the Nazis" as that is too simple, too easy a statement, and can cause people to be blinkered as to their own actions. After all, i'm not a Nazi, so by default i could never commit such an atrocity. And yet, as a Human being, i am clearly quite capable of doing so under extreme circumstances (which is what the average "German" was under during the run up and course of WW2).
We need to recognise that we are ALL capable of such acts in order to ensure they NEVER happen again, independent of Race, Creed, Religion or Political stand point...

Yes we are. And without diverting this thread, there are still many who would at a moments consideration consign millions more to a similar type of fate. IS.

[NDA]

Rostfritt said:

Just watched a bit of that, very moving interview with a man who helped to build the ovens. He was told they were to make charcoal, but before long he saw the real use. He was only 13 at the time and it didn't really occur to him that it was the wrong thing to do.

The dialogue at the end was pretty eerie, detailed observations about the operation of the gas vans, coupled with footage of a newer model from the same manufacturer.

It was a strange, unsettling film. Particularly as many of the Poles interviewed were essentially saying 'the jews had it coming, they had too much money'. This was film was made in 1985 - although to my untrained eye it looked earlier.

[Rostfritt]

Siko said:

Watched it myself last night, very disturbing and utterly mindless cruelty. I see the same cruelty and inhumanity in Isis, it's happening today and yet we do almost nothing.

It shocks me it keeps happening, for example:

Bangladesh - 1971 - 300k-3 million
Cambodia - 1975-1979 - 1-3 million
Rwanda - 1994 - 0.5-1 million
Srebrenica - 1995 - 8500

So much for 'never again'. For as long as we keep seeing other people as different to ourselves we will find excuses to kill each other.

[Siko]

One that's often forgotten is the 'first' Holocaust: Turkish Muslims ethnically cleansing Armenian Christians in 1915 - 1.5 million dead and still not acknowledged by Turkey.

[Mark A S]

don'tbesilly said:

After watching the programmes about the dwarfs of Auschwitz and the Freddie Knoller (extraordinary Guy) documentary 'Night will Fall' should make for an interesting and rather harrowing watch .

If the holocaust is an interesting subject for posters, this is on tomorrow:


Shoah: First Era is on TV this week ...
BBC4 7:00pm Sun 25 Jan
Season 1 Episode 1 of 2
Part one of two. Claude Lanzmann's documentary recording personal accounts of the Holocaust. Lanzmann went in search of concentration camp survivors, witnesses and former members of the Nazi party, and conducted in-depth interviews to produce a detailed, first-hand account of the atrocities committed, and examines how the bigotry that led to the genocide still exists decades on. In German, Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish, French and English
See full details

Thanks for posting this; I had never heard about this program.
Whilst the footage from Belson and other ghastly places is VERY grim, to me it still looks almost unreal, we all know it was, but still I find B/W footage of this type almost alien.

Shoah on the other hand I found Extremely real, it looked as if it had only happened a few years before as the surroundings and people had not really changed. The locals dressed in the same clothes, horse drawn carts, dirt roads etc, all made it feel eerily realistic.
The interviews nearly all described the shear helplessness of the terrible situation, like, “this is terrible, but what can we do” !
I also got the impression that there was a significant envy from the locals against the Jewish people, many were kind of glad they were no longer there but did not agree with there fate!

I look forward to part 2, if looking forward is the right way to say it!

[anonymous-user]

drivin_me_nuts said:

What I find I comprehensible is the planning behind the camps. How many 'management meetings'.would it have taken. I'm sure a few years ago I watched a documentary where they talked about the crematorium design and the engineering drawings and specifications.

I recall seeing the same thing. I think it was one of those dramatised documentaries recounting a planning meeting amongst top Nazis, from the political side to the plain simple engineering involved in what they were trying to achieve, with technical staff highlighting the various "benefits" of one system of extermination over another to the political figures.
Wish I could remember what it was called as that too is well worth a watch. Nothing on the scale of Night Will Fall though.
I noticed at one point in the footage the German POWs literally walking over a pile of bodies to add more to the top, treading on limbs, heads, faces.....
For both sides, clearing it all up can't have not affected them very, very deeply. I can only imagine those actually handling the bodies would've been mentally scarred beyond help.

[Rachel 111s]

Crossflow Kid said:

I recall seeing the same thing. I think it was one of those dramatised documentaries recounting a planning meeting amongst top Nazis, from the political side to the plain simple engineering involved in what they were trying to achieve, with technical staff highlighting the various "benefits" of one system of extermination over another to the political figures.
Wish I could remember what it was called as that too is well worth a watch. Nothing on the scale of Night Will Fall though.

Could you be thinking of Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh?:

"The historical recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi and SS leaders gathered in a Berlin suburb to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Lead by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, this group of high ranking German officials came to the historic and far reaching decision that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated in what would come to be known as the Holocaust."

[dudleybloke]

Crossflow Kid said:

drivin_me_nuts said:

What I find I comprehensible is the planning behind the camps. How many 'management meetings'.would it have taken. I'm sure a few years ago I watched a documentary where they talked about the crematorium design and the engineering drawings and specifications.

I recall seeing the same thing. I think it was one of those dramatised documentaries recounting a planning meeting amongst top Nazis, from the political side to the plain simple engineering involved in what they were trying to achieve, with technical staff highlighting the various "benefits" of one system of extermination over another to the political figures.
Wish I could remember what it was called as that too is well worth a watch. Nothing on the scale of Night Will Fall though.
I noticed at one point in the footage the German POWs literally walking over a pile of bodies to add more to the top, treading on limbs, heads, faces.....
For both sides, clearing it all up can't have not affected them very, very deeply. I can only imagine those actually handling the bodies would've been mentally scarred beyond help.

Was it this

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(2001_fi...

[Dog Star]

I watched this on 4OD last night. Quite incredible, really.

[anonymous-user]

Rachel 111s said:

Crossflow Kid said:

I recall seeing the same thing. I think it was one of those dramatised documentaries recounting a planning meeting amongst top Nazis, from the political side to the plain simple engineering involved in what they were trying to achieve, with technical staff highlighting the various "benefits" of one system of extermination over another to the political figures.
Wish I could remember what it was called as that too is well worth a watch. Nothing on the scale of Night Will Fall though.

Could you be thinking of Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh?:

"The historical recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi and SS leaders gathered in a Berlin suburb to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Lead by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, this group of high ranking German officials came to the historic and far reaching decision that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated in what would come to be known as the Holocaust."

That's the one. For some reason I had Colin Firth in my head as the lead.

[Elderly]

Max_Torque said:

Wills2 said:

and once again I'm left asking myself how the Germans humans were capable of such acts on such a scale.

I think enough time has passed to stop the "US and THEM" kinda thing eh. The fact they were German is irrelevant (today). If we want to prevent this sort of thing happening again, we need to understand that we are ALL capable of such acts if we let our morals take second place to our political allegiances!

What amazes me is that the Germans were such a very 'cultured' nation;
a nation that produced Beethoven, Goetha, Einstein, Spengler, etc.
yet were still capable of this disregard for humanity and civilized behaviour.

My daughter plays the 'cello and had lessons from a musician who survived the camps only because she played (with others) to quench the cultural needs of one of the camp commanders.

[Dog Star]

Elderly said:

What amazes me is that the Germans were such a very 'cultured' nation;
a nation that produced Beethoven, Goetha, Einstein, Spengler, etc.
yet were still capable of this disregard for humanity and civilized behaviour.

My daughter plays the 'cello and had lessons from a musician who survived the camps only because she played (with others) to quench the cultural needs of one of the camp commanders.

That was the other thing that I was going to say - Germans are a race of people I admire above all others, I find them open, friendly, hard working and honest. Great people. How did this happen? It's only my own grandparents generation, after all.

[johnxjsc1985]

I still think its hard for people like me to really understand the full horror of this .
I have seen so much on TV and read about it and it chills me to the bone but imagine having lived through it how did they find the strength.
Its a hell of a reminder of just how awful the human race can be.

[theotherJamie]

Crossflow Kid said:

I recall seeing the same thing. I think it was one of those dramatised documentaries recounting a planning meeting amongst top Nazis, .............

I'm sure you're thinking of a 6 part BBC documentary (currently on Netflix and well worth watching)