• This topic has 35 replies, 26 voices, and was last updated 2 years ago by mrmo.
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  • Just what good does this do? Anne Frank content.
  • eddiebaby
    Free Member

    How does this help anyone alive today?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60024228

    z1ppy
    Full Member

    It gives us a more comprehensive view of history, might not be great that another jewish family was willing to sacrifice Anne to save their own family. Though having to stoop to that low does tell you, how desperate a situation the Nazi had pushed them into.

    As for who paid for the investigation.. that’s another argument (maybe..)

    Pook
    Full Member

    Yep. Societies of the future can learn from the mistakes of the past.

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    eddiebaby
    Free Member

    Though having to stoop to that low does tell you,

    How low would be the barrier level be before you sacrificed your family for another?

    nickc
    Full Member

    Because it’s better to have as complete a view on history as you can. There’s huge amounts of personal information and history that the holocausts has destroyed forever and might never be told, this at least completes some of tthat

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    Sounds like the normal mix of fact-free innuendo they pump out for the History Channel.

    Pankoke noted that the evidence collected was circumstantial

    So, not enough to clear the guy previously suspected, but enough to smear another potentially blameless family.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    I don’t think those investigators understand the words “anonymous note”. They’re just guessing and doing more harm than good. I don’t know exactly what their agenda is but it’s morally on the same level as the anonymous note. It’s not history, it’s speculation. So I agree with your sentiment, eddiebaby.

    ads678
    Full Member

    The team, made up of historians and other experts, spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the “cold case

    SIX YEARS to find a **** anonymous note and settle on that! Sounds like money well spent.

    dyna-ti
    Full Member

    Yep. Societies of the future can learn from the mistakes of the past.

    Oh look, you made a funny.

    How low would be the barrier level be before you sacrificed your family for another?

    Cards on the table, anyone and everyone here would likely be on the blower to the nearest gestapo hotline before you can say Jack Robinson if the lives of their own family was at stake.

    oddnumber
    Free Member

    What an horrific situation to be put in. It’s incomprehensible.

    timbog160
    Full Member

    It does feel like it is still speculation, but even if true it is a reminder of just how utterly awful were the choices that people were faced with. As Eddie says what would you do to save your family? The only blame really belongs to the fruit loop that was Hitler and his acolytes..

    ernielynch
    Full Member

    The only blame really belongs to the fruit loop that was Hitler and his acolytes..

    Nah, it involved far far more people than that. 6 million Jews were murdered, it involved a hell of a lot more than a handful of people.

    A great deal of very normal and average people were involved in the mass murder of Jews, a point which is extraordinarily important to recognise and remember imo.

    pondo
    Full Member

    They interviewed the lady who wrote the book on 5 Live this afternoon – it was interesting, she clearly had sympathy for the chap. Very hard sitting here in the the UK in the 21st century to have much in the way of insight as to what life as a Jew in occupied Holland must have been like.

    mattyfez
    Full Member

    It does feel like it is still speculation, but even if true it is a reminder of just how utterly awful were the choices that people were faced with. As Eddie says what would you do to save your family? The only blame really belongs to the fruit loop that was Hitler and his acolytes..

    ^this sums up my thoughts, Do we learn from history or ignore it?

    If the latter, then why do we preserve museums packed full of artifacts and thousands of books written about almost anything you can possibly think of?

    argee
    Full Member

    As Pondo says, realistically this is just a statement without context, same with a lot of things that happened in that era, questions that i don’t think we will ever know the answer too without understanding all the moving parts, there’s so many things about WW2 that just doesn’t make sense to me, i’ve read the material available, but it just doesn’t work as stated, without me being able to actually understand how all the influences worked to end up with the outcomes.

    timbog160
    Full Member

    Argee – I have been reading masses of stuff over the last 3 years about the Holocaust in particular and the SWW. My conclusion is I don’t think it does make any sense. It’s just completely bonkers really. Ernie is right in that respect actually – it was a sort of collective madness where people seemed to forget all sense of humanity and common decency, although Hitlers mad ideas were definitely the focus and lightning rod for it.

    It is worth remembering though that a fair number of people also showed the strength of the human spirit ie look up Anton Schmid, who was an actual German soldier in the occupied East who saved hundreds of Jewish people before he was caught and executed as a traitor. Amazing strength of character.

    ernielynch
    Full Member

    was a sort of collective madness where people seemed to forget all sense of humanity and common decency

    What I find deeply shocking was the callous indifference and acceptance from ordinary people not directly connected to the holocaust.

    We can all understand that the SS guards might have been seriously damaged human beings, but, for example, what about all the ordinary people who thought it was acceptable to use the hair shaved off the heads of Jews just before they were gassed to make army blankets?

    How did the U-boat crews cope with wearing socks made from human hair? How did those who worked in industries who used the hair shaved from murdered old women and children manage to go to work everyday and afterwards home to their families?

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-car-firm-used-hair-from-auschwitz-1635909.html

    The collective inhumanity which the holocaust exposed as possible within our species raises a lot of worrying questions imo. Dismissing it as history might be convenient but it provides no guarantees.

    tpbiker
    Free Member

    Not sure why it was necessary to put a name to the betrayer tbh. If that was a past relative of mine I’d be none too pleased with such an accusation

    gives us a more comprehensive view of history, might not be great that another jewish family was willing to sacrifice Anne to save their own family

    We could have learned just as much by keeping the accuser anonymous imo

    mattyfez
    Full Member

    We could have learned just as much by keeping the accuser anonymous imo

    It matters not, it’s just for the record, and the record should be as accurate as can be.

    If you’ll allow me to draw a comparison, the staue of that slave trader (who, let’s be honest, no one knew who he was until everyone lost thier shit over it) got pulled down, and the law got changed, you can you now get ten years in jail for that.

    Conversely, you’ll only get 5 years maximum for beating the living dayights out of another human, as long as they don’t die as a result of said beating.

    So what do we take home from this? defacing a statue is a more grave crime than commiting serious violence against another human?

    batfink
    Free Member

    was really disappointed by the article

    The team, made up of historians and other experts, spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the “cold case”. That included using computer algorithms to search for connections between many different people, something that would have taken humans thousands of hours.

    Promised much….. but then:

    In the files of a previous investigator, they found a copy of an anonymous note sent to Otto Frank identifying Arnold van den Bergh as his betrayer.

    The headline should have been: “new book adds to speculation of identity of person that betrayed Anne Frank”

    However, I think it’s more important than ever to keep talking about the Holocaust – people need to be reminded about the dangers of Demagoguery. Particularly (as stated above) how a population can be move to act (collectively) so horrendously. Anyone with an iota of imagination can see it very easily happening in our own post-truth reality.

    PJay
    Free Member

    The headline should have been: “new book adds to speculation of identity of person that betrayed Anne Frank”

    Very much this. I was interested in the wording of the article – “using modern investigative techniques to crack the “cold case”. They’ve not cracked it, just added some more speculation and possibilities.

    Some years back there was another report (Anne Frank May Not Have Been Betrayed | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine) that suggested that the Franks weren’t betrayed at all, but that it was irregularities in ration books that drew the Nazis’ attention to their house.

    chevychase
    Full Member

    The “good it does” is this:

    IT. SELLS. BOOKS.

    They’ve written a book, they need to sell it. It’s potentially got historical import – and the more of that the better – but the primary function of this story (and all stories of this type, because they pop up all the time) is to sell books.

    IF you’re interested in history, then this may well be of interest to you. But I’m not sure what “good” the OP is looking for beyond this. It’s certainly not doing any tangible harm.

    pondo
    Full Member

    If you’ve a genuine interest in the story, the Five Live interview’s worth a listen – yesterday’s 16:00 Drive show, 1:25:10 in, lasts about 6 or 8 minutes. It’s by no means a hatchet job – as the author says, who, knowing their children would otherwise be sent to the gas chambers, would not do the same?

    nickc
    Full Member

    My understanding is that the re-discovered note comes from an earlier request for information from one of the investigations into the Frank’s betrayal in either 1950’s or 1960’s. an anonymous source suggested that the lawyer in question wrote down 6 addresses that the Gestapo might want to go and search – rather than say directly “The Franks are hiding in the attic of this house”

     it was a sort of collective madness

    It’s more perverse than just calling it madness, because in a way, that let’s them off the hook. It’s a very logical conclusion to a question of ideology. I understand what you mean about a loss of humanity, but Goebbels was convinced (and said so in a public broadcast) that they were doing “Essential work that future generations would thank them for” It’s horrific, but once you’ve convinced yourself (and then the German people) that the world is better off without Jews, then gassing them en-masse becomes logically; the humane thing to do.

    desperatebicycle
    Free Member

    My son used to be in a football team with young lad who looked the spit of Anne Frank

    MoreCashThanDash
    Full Member

    However, I think it’s more important than ever to keep talking about the Holocaust – people need to be reminded about the dangers of Demagoguery. Particularly (as stated above) how a population can be move to act (collectively) so horrendously. Anyone with an iota of imagination can see it very easily happening in our own post-truth reality.

    That’s the key point.

    Ordinary people on all sides committed terrible acts in the war, in any war. The Holocaust was the biggest and most shocking, but I suspect a lot of us wouldn’t want to have a genuine conversation with ancestors who fought in either war.

    And huge amounts of people did great things to prevent horrors as well, of course.

    timbog160
    Full Member

    Some very good points being made here. I think it’s also important to reflect on the fact that if you’re faced with a choice between saving your family or not, then frankly it’s already too late. That is why we have to be on our guard to identify the precursors to these things.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    If you’ll allow me to draw a comparison, the staue of that slave trader (who, let’s be honest, no one knew who he was until everyone lost thier shit over it) got pulled down, and the law got changed, you can you now get ten years in jail for that.

    Maybe not in your neck of the woods, but anyone with any knowledge at all of Bristol’s history would be aware of it, along with anyone living around the city and who read news items and watched regional tv. I live roughly thirty miles from the city, and I know a fair amount about the slave trade in the city and the part the Merchant Venturers had in it. Bristol residents had been campaigning for years for the statue’s removal, and the names of businesses and institutions bearing his name to have them changed.

    Just ‘cos you’re ignorant, doesn’t mean everyone else is.

    tjagain
    Full Member

    Its not just the WW2 holocaust where you see this “madness”  Pogroms in russia,  Pol pot, the treatment of the Mau mau in kenya, the treatment of the boers, Even recent Yugoslavia, the treatment of POWs in Japan etc etc etc

    db
    Full Member

    And still it goes on today…
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037

    My conclusion is we are destined as a species to destroy ourselves. This ability we have, or “madness” to kill our fellow humans because of how they look, what they say or believe we clearly all have it, and some people find a way to nurture it and use it to their advantage.

    nickc
    Full Member

     and some people find a way to nurture it and use it to their advantage.

    I read a very interesting paper in a journal recently that argued that as a band of hunter/gatherers struggling to survive millennia ago, it would be advantageous to have a psychopath in your tribe. These are the folks who’ll decide that despite old man Ugg being too poorly to travel and it very probably will kill him, now is the time to move to winter pastures. That it would be worth sending a group of hunters onto the thinner ice to hunt seal, or that the other group are weaker, could be beaten, and their women given to Bug and Igg as wives….Essentially all of us are descended from the bastards that were strong enough, or lucky enough to survive.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    They had the guy from the FBI and the Dutch bloke on French TV last night. I was outraged, they’ve latched on to one possibility and ignored all others. Madame did a doctorate on the French Maquisards, one aspect was their role in French politics post war compared with low-key collaborators. When people have scores to settle and grudges it’s rarely as obvious as it seems – denounce x because people will think it’s y who has denounced etc.. Trying to get to the bottom of this thing now is hopeless, it was pretty much hopeless in 1945. There’s no doubt some good people were wrongly accused and others literally got away with murder.

    Richie_B
    Full Member

    Doesn’t the part of the article which talks to the experts say that there isn’t enough proof to make the claims they are making?

    It might be what happened but its more to sell the book or tv programme than exposing the truth

    pondo
    Full Member

    Doesn’t the part of the article which talks to the experts say that there isn’t enough proof to make the claims they are making?

    Yep, the article makes it pretty clear that certain points indicate towards a particular, compelling conclusion – this isn’t a conviction, it ain’t going to court.

    IIRC, the author made the point on radio that it’s known that Otto Frank sought out their betrayer on his return in 1945, but by the 60s (I think) he wasn’t talking about that any more, even though he’d had the note accusing van den Bergh by then. Did he believe it? Disbelieve it? Find out any more? The trail was certainly much warmer then – Otto spoke to the officers who arrested his family and one of them vouched for van den Bergh.

    I dunno where I’m going with this, other than I’m a bit bored of people taking offense, like the book’s libellous to a dead man. I don’t see it that way, I think it’s clearly speculative even if evidence-based, and whilst I’ve not read the book, I know the author sees van den Bergh sympathetically. Since Otto stopped pursuing it at some point after receiving the note, maybe he did too.

    IdleJon
    Full Member

    it was a sort of collective madness

    I don’t agree. If looked at in the context of history, it’s just one more example of people behaving appallingly towards other people. (Albeit, an especially awful example.)

    Most of Europe spent the preceding couple of hundred years committing genocide in various parts of the world, and treating ‘others’ as underclasses in various ways. Treating people as less than human seems extremely easy to do if you look at the last couple of hundred years of European history. And, as TJ points out above, the last few decades, when we should have learned something from the Holocaust.

    Nah, it involved far far more people than that. 6 million Jews were murdered

    It was a total of 13 million people died in the Holocaust. (Small point that I think is worth remembering.)

    mrmo
    Free Member

    It does feel like it is still speculation, but even if true it is a reminder of just how utterly awful were the choices that people were faced with. As Eddie says what would you do to save your family? The only blame really belongs to the fruit loop that was Hitler and his acolytes..

    What it tells you is far worse, all those people wishing people drowned in the Channel, exactly the same mindset. You other another group and you end up making hate acceptable, one more step and you legitimate the killing.

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