Auschwitz

Chilling footage from a drone flight over the camp.

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Very chilling indeed. I remember visiting Belsen whilst I was doing my National Service in Germany in the early `60s; we were told that birds never ever sang or flew over the site of the concentration camp there....and it was true.

I have recently read Viktor Frankl's wonderful book "Man's Search For Meaning". He was an Austrian psychiatrist. The first half of the book is about his personal experiences as an inmate in Auschwitz. The second half gives an outline of his psychological method, called logotherapy. The heart of his theory is that the prime drive for human beings is not pleasure, or happiness, but a search for meaning. It's a compelling read.

I have recently read Viktor Frankl's wonderful book "Man's Search For Meaning". He was an Austrian psychiatrist. The first half of the book is about his personal experiences as an inmate in Auschwitz. The second half gives an outline of his psychological method, called logotherapy. The heart of his theory is that the prime drive for human beings is not pleasure, or happiness, but a search for meaning. It's a compelling read.

Didn't he top himself?

Didn't he top himself?

No, he died of heart failure in 1997.

When we lose a couple of football matches on the bounce it is worth remembering that things could be worse.

When we lose a couple of football matches on the bounce it is worth remembering that things could be worse.

A little trite. Perspective is always needed but man doesn't go round smiling and shrugging at any adversity thanking himself he isn't in a death camp.

Like the ineffectiveness of me telling the kids to eat their greens as many starving kids in Africa.

I have just watched a few more of the YouTube films. A lot of the comments that are written below are unbelievable. I find it hard to understand that there are still people who deny or try to minimalize what happened.

I have just watched a few more of the YouTube films. A lot of the comments that are written below are unbelievable. I find it hard to understand that there are still people who deny or try to minimalize what happened.

Its mostly just the same kind of characters you find on any internet comments section - including a few here. People who get their jollys saying whatever will get a reaction. Sad ****ers.

A little trite. Perspective is always needed but man doesn't go round smiling and shrugging at any adversity thanking himself he isn't in a death camp.

Like the ineffectiveness of me telling the kids to eat their greens as many starving kids in Africa.

It maybe trite Whelk, but it is all about perspective. There are a lot of things in life that are worse than losing a football match.

It maybe trite Whelk, but it is all about perspective. There are a lot of things in life that are worse than losing a football match.

And why would anyone pretend that there isn't?

And why would anyone pretend that there isn't?

I don't know. Why would they? By the way, nice to see you back on Sotonians again. Or is it your ex girlfriend?

Its mostly just the same kind of characters you find on any internet comments section - including a few here. People who get their jollys saying whatever will get a reaction. Sad ****ers.

Adam Buxton's BUG is amusing

It maybe trite Whelk, but it is all about perspective. There are a lot of things in life that are worse than losing a football match.

Yes but emotions aren't regulated that easily. We are complex beings

Yes but emotions aren't regulated that easily. We are complex beings

We are indeed. It is good to see that education about the Holocaust has improved since I was at school. We touched on it when I did Modern History for A level but other than that not much. I remember our maths teacher being off sick and the history teacher stood in. He spent the whole lesson reading us accounts of what happened in Belsen and you could have heard a pin drop. It is amazing how chilling it is just watching those clips of the ruins of the death camp.

The Viktor Frankl book I mentioned is a psychological analysis. Elie Wiesel's concise memoir "Night" is a literary approach to the same dark topic.

We are indeed. It is good to see that education about the Holocaust has improved since I was at school. We touched on it when I did Modern History for A level but other than that not much. I remember our maths teacher being off sick and the history teacher stood in. He spent the whole lesson reading us accounts of what happened in Belsen and you could have heard a pin drop. It is amazing how chilling it is just watching those clips of the ruins of the death camp.

My uncle was in the RAF Regiment and visited Belsen at the end of the war. It put him off ever having any children, he didn't want to bring them into this world.

The films look bad enough. I cant imagine what it must have been like to be there are see it first hand. I will never understand how people can do that to other human beings. Only obeying orders? You would think that there are some orders that you just cant obey.

And to think some utter sh it heads try to claim it's a myth...disgusting people

And to think some utter sh it heads try to claim it's a myth...disgusting people

I totally agree, but it must not be forgotten that this was not the only despicable episode in this whole sorry affair.

I totally agree, but it must not be forgotten that this was not the only despicable episode in this whole sorry affair.

What do you mean?

I totally agree, but it must not be forgotten that this was not the only despicable episode in this whole sorry affair.

You're going to have to elaborate. Surely when talking about the holocaust there's no need for a "but..."

I visited both camps when I was in Poland about 10 years ago. Walking into the Gas chamber at Auschwitz was one of the most errie feelings I have ever had. The camp most people see with the gates was for the political prisoners. It was not until you went to Birkeneau where you could see the industrial scale of the killing that took place row after row of huts and extermination chambers at the other end of the camp. When you see the squalid conditions that the prisoners had to live in and how bad it must have been starving and freezing in winter knowing if they did not show they were fit they would be killed you could not be seriously moved. If you have the stomach for a visit it is a really humbling experience and it does give perspective in life to you.

What do you mean?

Only that sometimes the holocaust is portrayed as the most despicable aspect of the war. There were other extensive massacres of civilians in other spheres of operation such as Russia and China. What makes the Jewish extermination programme so chilling is the cold-blooded nature of it.

I havn't been but it's something I definitely want to do.

I recently went to the Imperial war museum's holocaust exhibit and it's well worth a visit. What is really shocking is the massive number of Germans that were involved. It wasn't just a few SS psychos but thousands and thousands of people - army, civilians, private companies all complicit in industrialised mass murder. We should never forget what the Germans did.

Only that sometimes the holocaust is portrayed as the most despicable aspect of the war. There were other extensive massacres of civilians in other spheres of operation such as Russia and China. What makes the Jewish extermination programme so chilling is the cold-blooded nature of it.

I have no idea what the point of your post is. It's a really odd thing to start bringing up on a thread about Auschwitz.

Of course there were other atrocities, everyone knows that.

"sometimes the holocaust is portrayed as the most despicable aspect of the war".

Well, is that surprising? It was the most despicable aspect just for the sheer scale of the extermination.

I have no idea what you're trying to achieve or why you think a thread about Auschwitz is the place to do it.

Only that sometimes the holocaust is portrayed as the most despicable aspect of the war. There were other extensive massacres of civilians in other spheres of operation such as Russia and China. What makes the Jewish extermination programme so chilling is the cold-blooded nature of it.

Give me strength. Sort of thing SOG would say. It doesn't need comparisons.

Give me strength. Sort of thing SOG would say. It doesn't need comparisons.

He is right though. There were other extensive massacres.

He is right though. There were other extensive massacres.

But none characterized by the same sort of cold-blooded, inhuman depravity. And none at the same level of extremity, magnitude, and significance.

But none characterized by the same sort of cold-blooded, inhuman depravity. And none at the same level of extremity, magnitude, and significance.

Exactly. There has been all sorts of awful things done throughout history - and still are today, but the level of 'civilisation' Germany was at when it carried out this genocide and the shear scale and organisation involved make it mankind's lowest point.

Exactly. There has been all sorts of awful things done throughout history - and still are today, but the level of 'civilisation' Germany was at when it carried out this genocide and the shear scale and organisation involved make it mankind's lowest point.

I'd say some of the stuff the Japanese did in China is probably up there. For another supposedly well developed nation to commit similar atrocities has got to be right up there with the holocaust. Some of the insane medical experiments they tried on Chinese civilians were just horrific.

The Soviets were equally unpleasant against many of their own civilians. They may not have perfected the same industrial infrastructure of murder that the Nazis did but they wiped out a few million innocent people.

I do not believe 'man' is as civilised as we like to think.

The fact people kill each other all over the world because their make believe man in the sky is different to another mans make believe man in the sky...just plain odd

I do not believe 'man' is as civilised as we like to think.

The fact people kill each other all over the world because their make believe man in the sky is different to another mans make believe man in the sky...just plain odd

That good old Christian Hitler with his religious fundamentalism eh.

On the scale of atrocity how highly do we place what occurred at Auschwitz compared to (for example) the ''Rape of Nanking'' - where the Japanese Army used innocent children for bayonet practice - or any number of other examples of humanity's manifest capacity for inhumanity? Is there a league table for this type of thing somewhere...

I suppose what makes the horrors of the ''Final Solution'' stand head and shoulders above the run of everyday murder for me is not only the sheer scale of this unspeakable crime, but the cold industrialised nature of the slaughter. Thousands of years of civilisation and we had finally reached the stage in our evolution where for the first time we could conceive of something akin to a murder factory in which our fellow human beings could be reduced to fat useful in soap manufacturer, or piles of valuable gold teeth apt for recycling ... and all achieved with a unprecedented degree of efficiency. What a ''piece of work'' is man eh?

As for what remains of the Auschwitz site, I find myself torn between two competing reactions. Part of me would dearly love to see the whole hellish place raised to the ground and that cursed earth itself seeded with salt. On the other hand, I well known that we as a race need to remember what happened there because the day will come when our children start to doubt that something like that could ever possibly have happened.

And the final lesson I personally take from the final solution? I saw a Jewish survivor of the holocaust interviewed once - a young man who had survived by working for the Nazis helping to process of all those corpses - and they asked him how he had possibly done such a terrible thing? He answered that only when you find yourself in such a situation will you come to understand that your average Human Being will do absolutely anything to live another five minutes.

In there somewhere lays our damnation ... and our only hope too.

I do not believe 'man' is as civilised as we like to think.

The fact people kill each other all over the world because their make believe man in the sky is different to another mans make believe man in the sky...just plain odd

Regardless of your beliefs, the facts say otherwise. Despite all that's happening around us, we've never been more 'civilised'. Here's some weekend reading for you:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0141034645

I do not believe 'man' is as civilised as we like to think.

The fact people kill each other all over the world because their make believe man in the sky is different to another mans make believe man in the sky...just plain odd

Sadly Man doesn't just need a man in the sky as an excuse to kill one another. We find plenty of other reasons too but I agree that religious and ethnic reasons are right up there. After what happened under the Nazis you would have hoped that the phrase "ethnic cleansing" would never be used again, yet it wasn't that long ago that it was happening in eastern Europe.

I found the most poignant part around 1.30. The agony that must have played out in that courtyard against the mundanity of lorries just rolling by

Regardless of your beliefs, the facts say otherwise. Despite all that's happening around us, we've never been more 'civilised'. Here's some weekend reading for you:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0141034645

BIll Gate's desert island book

Always wanted to go, will do one day.

As a History graduate that extensively studied Nazism and Nazi Germany it is something I simply must do one day.