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  • 70th Anniversary of Auschwitz Liberation – a real badass story!
  • medoramas
    Free Member

    I watched some BBC documentary about the People who escaped Auschwitz (I typed “people” with capital P for purpose…) and there was that story 😯

    Mr Piechowski was telling this story with a cheeky smile on his face… Surely this is one of the most badass thing in history!

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    It’s a horrible place, the numbers are just so big you can’t really comprehend it without seeing how big the place is. And even walking arround the foundations of the 2nd camp it’s hard to imagine quite how bad things must have been.

    medoramas
    Free Member

    The scary thing is that it wasn’t “long time ago”…

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    Harry_the_Spider
    Full Member

    I used to work with a survivor and his son. Alex, his wife and Ralf were sent to Auschwitz after being rounded up in Hungary. The boy, Ralf, was separated from his parents on arrival. Both parties assumed the worst.

    By some miracle they all survived but were unaware of the fate of the others and weren’t reunited until the late 1950s.

    Alex lived until he was 94, his wife passing away a few months before him. Ralf is still working (!) and must be about 80 years old. He has 4 kids, and loads of grandchildren and great grandchildren.

    How as a species we could even consider carrying act the atrocities of the holocaust is beyond me. It just does not compute.

    They are two of the best and most decent people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I think I’ll drop him an email in a week or so. Not today though, he’s probably got things on his mind.

    isto
    Free Member

    My wife’s granny was in Auschwitz. She even remembered being spoken to by Mengele. Horrifically, she also remembered her own granny being sent to death when they arrived at the camp and her mother deciding to go with her to the gas chambers as she didn’t want to leave her on her own. This left my wife’s granny to fend for herself at the age of 16, in what must have been hell on earth.

    She survived and met my wife’s grandfather when she returned to Hungary. He himself had lost his wife and child in a concentration camp but he managed to survive through years of slave labour.

    To me it is unthinkable that these acts happened but very important that they are remembered.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Very sobering place to visit, the scale of Birkenau and the ruthless design to maximise the efficiency of the killing is quite staggering…

    Dual, double sided electric fences

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    The scary thing is that it wasn’t “long time ago”..

    Yes indeed, it always hits me that I was born 18 years after the end of the war, a period which now seems very short to me particularly as my kids are in their 20’s

    Some very sobering stories above and your photos @footflaps.

    I’ve met a few survivors there are many who cannot speak of their experiences. I have also attended a UN workshop on the Holocaust and the organization focuses also on the genocide in Rwanda where a staggering 750,000 where hacked to death and the 8,000 in Screbrenica

    mt
    Free Member

    medoramas thanks for that link.

    BigButSlimmerBloke
    Free Member

    I used to be quite friendly with Zoe Polanska-Palmer. She was an amazing woman who I met a few times and really liked before being told her story which I would never have guessed, she was such a charming and positive person.
    She never really spoke of her experiences, but I read Yalta Victim and it left me lost for words. As I am now.

    jambourgie
    Free Member

    How as a species we could even consider carrying act the atrocities of the holocaust is beyond me. It just does not compute.

    I guess it’s a gradual thing, starting with the demonisation/dehumanising of a group of people. I was watching a documentary on the holocaust the other night and was struck by the similarity’s of how Jews were viewed at the beginning, and how the poor/disabled are beginning to be viewed in this country. The gradual demonising of people on benefits etc. Hardly anyone said anything when the whole Atos work-tests thing started for example…

    See also: Gypsies.

    oldboy
    Free Member

    Suffering atrocities was not exclusive to the Jews. I recently read “World War Two” by Anthony Beever and was shocked to discover that of the estimated 45 million civilian deaths, the majority were as a result of deliberate starvation by occupying forces.

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