Memory of the camps

Hello folks, I wanted to remind you all about the dark sides of WWII and human history. "Memory of tha camps" was a film shooted by the allied forces when they entered Germany the first time and found out about the concentration camps. The US and British forces decided to shoot to the film everything they saw 'cos that was just so unbelievable and horrific. These films were found from the Imperial war museum archives after the war and they were put together and the film was named as "memory of the camps"

You can watch the whole film from the following website. Please, take a look at the film from the link "watch the full program online" and choose the chapter.

Those of you who have never seen this footage, what are your thoughts about it and how did you feel about it?

frontline: memory of the camps | PBS

 

Ed,

Bare with my response here... but wasn't all of WWII dark? I just finished watching the attached link to "Memory of the Camps".... I had never seen this production put on by Frontline. You were seeking a response, as well as thoughts of the films....

First thought that comes to mind is tragedy. An absolute tragedy for mankind... watching the facial expressions of these prisoners encamped said it all. Pure discomfort and marveled feelings were depicted on film. I became angry.... uneasy... shocked... and debilitated. I understand your intention with this thread, but I'm sure the general consensus will ring true for thoughts and feelings...

all the best,

Jem

 

Yes, I agree with you. This film made me sick and this is something I wouldn't care to watch again. This is however very important part of history of wwII and shouldn't be forgot by any man. I didn't expect someone to say that he/she liked it and I really don't even want to hear someone saying that.

Some of the modern youngsters don't even know that something like this could happen. But nevertheless, maybe this subject don't need any discussion, film speaks for this subject enough. Jem, your response made me understand that I don't need to ask about anyones opinions and thoughts about it. I think we all share similar thoughts and feelings about this.

My only intention with this thread and link to this film is only and purely to make known this for those who haven't seen this. Everyone makes his/her own opinions about it.

 

If we are to use this as a tool not to repeat history, then the focus should not be only on the camps operated by the Germans. Lets include those operated by the Japanese as well the more modern times in Bosina/Sarajevo etc.

It seems that today's Germans are tired of having to face the sins of their fathers and I don't blame them. We should also look at every level such as those concentration camps in the US holding Japanese/Americans as well as those used by the British in South Africa. Those are my thoughts

 

True. I have also wondered that haven't western civilizations learned anything from the past? Think about the genocides that happened and are happening even today in Africa. No one really seem to care. Obviously the UN are judging, but doesn't act. The list goes on and on, but what makes Nazi crimes worse is that they did industrial genocide in killing factories like Auswitch-Birkenau and others.

 

I would not say that what the Germans did is what makes it worse because the Japanese did just as much. What makes it worse and more memorable is the level and numbers of people that they killed.

 

Yes, I didn't mean that German murders was somehow worse than Japanese or Soviet. Every murder is as bad as it could, but maybe in case of Germans it is the way they did it. Maybe that is why people remember always first the Nazi crimes, at least here in Europe.

 

Let's see: there's the Armenian genocide, the Japanese camps, the American camps, the Canadian camps, the Soviet camps, the ethnic cleansing in Darfur......

....and then there's the holocaust....

Why are all the others relegated to the mists of time while that one event remains forever in our minds?

I don't think it can be explained with something as simplistic as "method".

In Darfur, for instance, victims were hacked to pieces with machetes. This (I found out from a Canadian army vet who was there) was to not only kill them but to ensure that they would be refused admittance to Paradise since their religion stated that anyone who was not whole would not be allowed to enter Heaven.

I have no words to describe my feelings about this.....

Can this not be considered at least as bad as the holocaust? Leave aside the number of victims since we can all agree that one death is too many.

Honestly....

 

Makes life seem so insignificant.

 

To some people it's completely meaningless, yes.

Ignorance, poverty, and religious prejudice are a lethal combination when manipulated by evil men.

This is true all over the world.

 

So true and so sad. Seeing those images from the film memory of the camps and reflecting them to the images from the Darfur area we can honestly say that man has learned nothing.

 

I've never seen any films depicting the Darfur ethnic cleansing. There have been some, I'm sure, but they've never made their way around the web the way these holocaust films seem to have done.

I'd venture a guess that - while comparisons of this nature are difficult - viewing the Darfur killings would disturb you more than anything that came out of Auschwitz.

 

Are you serious?

Comparing the American and Canadian internment camps to the Holocaust, Soviet Gulag, and the Japanese atrocities in Asia as though they were somehow equal?

Just one question, what was the mortality rate in the American internment camps? Was it significantly higher than the general civilian mortality rate at the time?

 

I don't think he has making a comparison.
Your quote misleads as the original statement lists off of them then the .....there's the holocaust.
There was no good to come out of racial segregation in WWII no matter what the casualty percentage was. Japanese Americans put into camps yet the Japanese American troops sent to Europe to fight become highly decorated. While their parents are treated as criminals. None of it makes sense. It doesn't really matter the mortality rate...put yourself in the shoes.

 

No, no matter how you list them, to include the American and Canadian internment camps in the same paragraph with the German Concentration camps and the Japanese treatment of civilians implies some sort of moral equivalency, and there clearly is none.

Comparing the mortality rates of the various camps would demonstrate that fact quite clearly.

The American camps had a rationale that is defensible, even if some people would argue that they were unjust. The American government had incontrovertible proof through it's intelligence gathering that the Japanese government was actively recruiting both Japanese residents and Japanese-American citizens to perform espionage in the United States. While the mass dragnet approach may have been heavy-handed and unjust, it was no more of an inconvenience to Japanese-American citizens, than the draft was to millions of young American men who had done nothing to deserve being forced into risking their lives in combat. At least the Japanese-American citizens were not intentionally put in danger of death and dismemberment.

Injustice was rampant in WW II. It was just as unjust to select a person based on their gender and age and demand that that person risk his life in highly hazardous situations, often time and time again. The Japanese internment camps may have resulted in unfair treatment, but so did the draft and many other government programs; that is the nature of war. The German Concentration camps were of a wholly different nature; they were intended to kill large numbers of people, as were the Japanese policies in Asia.

I repeat; there was no moral equivalency between the German concentration camps and the American internment camps.

 

Disagree. Comparing the mortality rates would first and foremost demonstrate the difference between setting up a camp in the middle of an active war zone or setting up a camp in the California desert.

The American camps had no trouble receiving deliveries of food and hygiene supplies. Not so for the Nazi camps.

And who did the Nazi's round up and under what rationale? Do you even know? Do you know the difference between living in WW2 Germany and WW2 America?

The first thing the Nazi's wanted from their captives was work - slave labor to support the war effort. There was a massive I.G. Farben factory situated right next to Auschwitz. They used the camp inmates for slave labor and were found guilty of this at Nuremberg. Was this forced labor justified? Not to our eyes, no. But to think of the Nazi camps simply as enormous "killing factories" is to overlook a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

So why not round up the Communists while they were at it? I'm sure they could have found some damning evidence of espionage carried out by that group as well.

None at all? Basic facts: Both the U.S. and Nazi Germany singled out groups they felt constituted a threat to their national security. They subsequently gathered these groups together into large detention facilities (as did Canada, most likely kowtowing to the US, as usual).

You know, it's not only Jews that were sent to concentration camps. Most notably, Jehovah's Witnesses were specifically targeted, rounded up, and sent away. As well as a great number of priests, communists, labor activists, and political dissidents.

If you were more loyal to your ideology or your religious belief than you were to the Fatherland, you were a candidate for deportation. They wanted you out of the Reich at all costs.

You will now most likely (and in a rather predictable manner) accuse me of being some kind of apologist (or worse) for Nazi Germany. I assure you I am not.

What I am is an advocate for accurate history. Nothing more, nothing less. All of my inquiries start from the position of: "I wasn't there. I don't know what happened."

 

That's just plain ignorant.

The reason the German Concentration camps didn't receive basic human essentials like food and medicine was because the Nazis never shipped any. The German camps weren't in "active war zones" until quite late late in the war, long after millions of inmates had been deliberately murdered or worked to death.

There was a fundamental difference in the rationale for German camps as opposed to American camps. German camps were established for the purpose of containing the inmates until they could be killed. The American camps were established for the purpose of interning the inmates until they could be screened to make sure they weren't likely to engage in espionage activities.

The Germans rounded up Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Homosexuals, dissident political opponents, and others they considered useless or harmful to German culture. The intention was to eliminate these people from the German population by killing them.

And yes, I know the difference between living in WW II America and WW II Germany, at least to a greater extent than you seem to.

Well, you've got part of correct, but no, slave labor was an afterthought, the German camps were established above all as extermination camps.

"But the main means of killing the bulk of the Jewish population of Poland were three dedicated killing centers, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Chelmno, as well as the gas chamber complex at the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Whilst the first three were shut down in 1943, Auschwitz continued to become the final destination for hundreds of thousands of Jews from across Western Europe in 1942 and 1943 and Hungary in 1944.

Even assuming that the Jews were to be used only for the most menial forms of work the Holocaust involved a catastrophic destruction of labor power. Applying the Germans own conservative standards, the Holocaust must have claimed the lives of at least 2.4 million potential workers. Adding this to Nazism's other acts of mass murder after January 1942, we arrive at an astonishing total. Of the 1.65 million inmates of concentration camps employed at one time or another in the German economy -- referring here to camps not involved in the extermination phase of the Final Solution -- no more than 475,000 survived the war"

Source: Adam Tooze, "The Wages of Destruction", Pages 522-23

Note the author of the above passage distinguishes between camps established as "killing centers" and those meant to house slave labor. But even that distinction loses it's meaning when one realizes that the Germans intended to and deliberately worked their slaves to death, often hastening the process by with holding adequate food.

In another passage, Tooze describes the process of "selection" whereby a trainload of Jews for example, arriving at a Concentration camp, were briefly examined by German medical personnel. Essentially a triage was performed to divide the arrivals into two groups; those to be murdered immediately and those fit enough to provide labor before being eliminated. The former group was usually composed of the old, children, the sick and generally weak, while the latter group were mostly young men and women.

If you are trying to excuse or explain the German concentration camps as something other than establishments for causing mass deaths, forget it. Whether an inmate was first put to work and slowly killed through overwork, and inadequate food, or gassed or shot immediately makes little difference in the end.

Oh, there were communists in the concentration camps, as well. However, my understanding was that communists were the object of special hatreds with the result that few ever lived long enough to grace a concentration camp.

Absolutely none. All countries during WW II singled out individuals and groups they felt constituted a threat to national security and interned those individuals and groups, no doubt of that, it's just basic common sense. And here's a news flash for you; it's still happening today and rightfully so. Governments are duty bound to protect their citizens or they have no legitimacy.

Of course, you conveniently ignore what happened after those groups were interned. In the US the Japanese were screened for loyalty traits and if determined to be likely to support the US war effort they were released.
In Germany, there was no effort to determine anything except whether the individuals cold be exploited for slave labor before being murdered; THAT is the essential difference.

I'm well aware that was the case in German concentration camps, but nothing like that took place in US camps.

So what's your point? That that made it OK?

I don't know what you are, but you sound like someone who is totally ignorant of the history of WW II, or a troll attempting to lay a foundation for excusing the Holocaust.

An advocate for accurate history? Don't flatter yourself because you have to study history before you can lay claim to an accurate version of it, and you obviously haven't.

 

A photo from the NARA.

Caption reads:

"Dachau atrocity camp: tattered clothes from
prisoners who were force to strip before they
were killed, lay in huge piles in the infamous
Dachau Concentration Camp which was liberated
by Seventh Army troops. Clothing was re-used because
of material shortages.

"7A, XV Corps, Dachau, Germany."

Date: 30 April 1945.

Photographer: T/4 Sidney Blau, 163rd Signal Photo Company.

III-SC 206193, Credit NARA.


Dave

 

Ad hominems so early in the game? Come on now. You can do better than that.

Can I safely assume you have some proof of these "shipments that were never sent"? But that would proving a negative, wouldn't it? Something that cannot be done. Therefore the accusation must stand unanswered. Is this about right?

So, you were there?

Then why the giant I.G. Farben factory next to Auschwitz? What would be the reason for such an arrangement of facilities?

My goodness you seem to know an awful lot about the intentions of people from another country that lived 70 years ago.

I was referring the U.S. camps with that question.

Right, so there are parallels: in making the moral decision that certain groups constitute a threat to national security. As I said: basic facts. Basic. Get it?

I'm ignoring nothing. You, however, appear to be ignoring even the remote possibility (as well as the evidence) that perhaps the Nazi's wanted something other than a swift and painful death for their "undesirables".

You're entitled to your opinion (even if it does happen to be wrong). Excusing the holocaust or any crimes committed during the course of the war is the farthest thing from my mind.

To advocate something does not equate to possession of that thing. I'm not flattering myself, and you are misrepresenting my words. I lay claim to nothing other than the fact that "I wasn't there. I don't know what happened." From this starting point my only aim is to impartially consider the historical evidence in hopes of arriving at some semblance of the truth.

You, on the other hand, appear to be comfortably ensconced in your rigid worldview, seeming, by your words, to imply the inherent evil of Germany, thereby justifying any measures, regardless of their extremity, taken against that country.

Those black and white opinions are so very tempting, aren't they? The only problem is that they are never correct. The truth invariably lies somewhere in the middle.

 

No, it is not a personal attack on you, it is a statement of hard FACT. Anyone who thinks the German concentration camps had very high rates of mortality because it was impossible for them to supply adequate food and medical supplies is simply ignorant; there is no other word for it.

Yes, I do have proof that adequate supplies of food, medicine and other essentials were deliberately never made available to the inmates of the German concentration camps. The fact was established at the Nuremberg Trials.

No, of course not, but my parents were, and I have discussed the matter with people who did live in WW II Germany, France, and Poland.

The IG Farben plant at Auschwitz was built in 1941; the extermination camp had already been established by the SS in May, 1940 and was in operation before IG Farben decided to build a chemicals plant nearby. According to Adam Tooze, in “The Wages Of Destruction”, page 443;

“It was at the very end of 1940 that Carl Krauch and IG Farben began to concentrate their attention on the small, Upper Silesian town of Auschwitz. Situated on level ground, close to the coalfields of Cracow and central Upper Silesia, boasting both an ample supply of water, and excellent railway connections, Auschwitz was the ideal site for a large chemicals complex.”

Tooze goes on to say that; “The construction of the IG Farben plant at Monowitz [near Auschwitz] claimed the lives of 30,000 inmates.”

So obviously, Auschwitz was meant as an extermination camp and only coincidentally supplied laborers to IG Farben. It should be noted that once IG Farben no longer wanted to employ individual inmates, they were murdered by the Germans.

Well, one would have to be brain dead to ignore the overwhelming abundance of ghastly evidence discovered in Germany at the end of WW II. And of course, there is the mountain of documentation bearing on the intentions of the Germans, which was presented at the Nuremberg Trials. Evidence and documentation, I might add which is accessible to anyone with a modicum of desire to learn what had happened in Nazi Germany.

Well, you are mistaken in that regard. Domestic Communists were not rounded up by the American authorities because there was no evidence at the time that there was any danger of them engaging in espionage against the US. The Soviets were, after all, allies at that point in time.

No, and neither do you. The facts relative to the German and American camps diverge rather rapidly and drastically after you get past the obvious and inconsequential, “people were rounded up”, and that is what is important to remember.

[FONT=&quot]I gather you think that the German's exploitation of their victims for slave labor before murdering them somehow ennobles their efforts. What difference does it make that, in some cases, the Germans exacted involuntary labor before dispatching them when they could no longer be of use?
[/FONT]

Why, thank you. But why then, are you trying to legitimize the German concentration camps by equating them morally with the American internment camps? To me, that belies a total lack of understanding of what actually happened.

I’m not presenting just my opinions. I guess you haven’t noticed that I’ve presented statements by authoritative sources attesting to the facts of the matter. My position may appear black and white to you, but as you so correctly admit, you just don’t know what happened, therefore judgments as to the correctness of my position are premature on your part.

I most sincerely suggest that you invest some serious study as the differences between American internment camps and German concentration camps before attempting to lecture someone who has studied the matter. Your condescending attitude is most unbecoming in one who is apparently ignorant of basic facts.