MK5 Golf GTI
General => Random Chat => Topic started by: patrickcullen87 on July 05, 2011, 05:27:51 pm
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Just wondering if anyone has been to the Auschwitz concentration camps/museums and what did yous think of it? thinking of going near the end of the year and just wanted to see peoples thoughts on it :smiley:
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It's a worthwhile experience, in fact I think everyone should visit a concentration camp. The thing that got me was how efficient everything was designed to be and how recently it happened. And of course how it's still happening in some parts of the world :sick:
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I went, probably close to a decade ago now. The experience has never left me. Auschwitz I is the museum, and was the former camp for political prisoners. Auschwitz II - Birkenau is the main camp, and it's a desolate place. One is kind of awed at the magnitude or enormity of what occured there, whilst being simultaneously repulsed. As Weston says, one of the shocking things is how well designed it is for its purpose. People thought, and thought hard, about the most efficient way to mass-murder and dispose of the remains.
The cremetoria were demolished by the Nazis on their way out, but still remain partially (preserved by the Soviets, no less); it's hard to imagine one million people died in them.
As I recall, it was a deathly quiet place. We went in spring - March, I think. There was no birdsong, to my memory.
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If you want to feel depressed, go to Auschwitz.
I don't buy into this idea that by preserving it etc will stop such horrors happening in the future. But I can accept it as a monument for those families who lost loved ones and relatives. I see no point in myself visiting it.
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I have been to Auschwitz and Dachau, both very moving and thought provoking places.
I have also done battlefield tours in Ypres (WW1), Oradour-Sur-Glane (WW2), The Crimea (Charge of the Light Brigade), Gallipoli (WW1), Sarajevo, and when just and I mean just after the cessation of hostilities - Iraq (visited Commonwealth War graves).
It interests me, and it is not something that I take lightly.
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I have been and can only echo what has already been said. It was a very powerful experience for me and certainly one I will never forget. I think it's somewhere people should visit and see for themselves the scale of the holocaust. As has been said the nazis were very efficient and absolutely nothing was wasted!
Now I have been it's not somewhere I would look to revisit.
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For me it has been enough to see the documentaries on TV.
What I also find shocking was what the Jews who were rescued from the camps at the end of WW2 then did in Israel to the Palestinians.
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I cant think of anywhere I would like less to go. :sick:
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My 20yo daughter went on a university trip to Krakow earlier this year and they were taken around Auschwitz. She was quite annoyed that she was obliged to attend the visit - It wasn't voluntary. No-one should be made to visit such places.
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I've not been to Auschwitz but I have been to Dachau.
Cracking Beer Festival even if I did nearly get tazered whilst taking a leak through the fence into the river. :ashamed:
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No-one should be made to visit such places.
I respectfully disagree. I think everyone should be made to visit such a place (whether it's a WW2 camp, or a disused Gulag, or a battlefield of red poppies, or a football stadium used by refugees...) at least once in their life.
The world is not a nice place. People do not do nice things to each other. Maybe if we are all more aware of what we have done in the past, maybe if we are aware of what horrors men (and some women) have wrought upon other men (and more women), then maybe we will all be less likely to commit such horrors in the future.
It's far too easy to get entrapped in the cotton-wool of your own blinkers, and lose awareness of the world. Most Germans, even those living in towns right next to extermination and concentration camps, either accepted or ignored or turned a blind eye to horror a short distance away.The most common cry of the Nazi camp guards was, "We were following orders!". To some, they did nothing wrong. They looked away. They "followed orders". Nuremburg set the precedent that this was not a valid defence.
I really do fear, that were something to happen again (and it just as easily might - it is happening, or has happened, to various degrees, in Rwanda, in the Congo, in Palestine, in Kashmir, in Tibet, in the Balkans - right in Europe, people! - in Central and South America...) people could happily put their blinkers on and ignore everything because it was upsetting, or distressing, or depressing, or whatever.
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It's for the same reason I think all politicians (well, all people; but politicians and generals especially) should take a trip into space. Because from up there, there are no borders or state-lines. And this is coming from me, hardly a hippy. Hell, go far enough away and the entire Earth, with all its peoples and its civilisations and achievements can be hidden behind a thumb.
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I've not been to Auschwitz but I have been to Dachau.
Cracking Beer Festival even if I did nearly get tazered whilst taking a leak through the fence into the river. :ashamed:
:popcornsoda: We need to hear the full story :happy2:
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Another time Hugh. :smiley:
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No-one should be made to visit such places.
I respectfully disagree. I think everyone should be made to visit such a place (whether it's a WW2 camp, or a disused Gulag, or a battlefield of red poppies, or a football stadium used by refugees...) at least once in their life.
The world is not a nice place. People do not do nice things to each other. Maybe if we are all more aware of what we have done in the past, maybe if we are aware of what horrors men (and some women) have wrought upon other men (and more women), then maybe we will all be less likely to commit such horrors in the future.
It's far too easy to get entrapped in the cotton-wool of your own blinkers, and lose awareness of the world. Most Germans, even those living in towns right next to extermination and concentration camps, either accepted or ignored or turned a blind eye to horror a short distance away.The most common cry of the Nazi camp guards was, "We were following orders!". To some, they did nothing wrong. They looked away. They "followed orders". Nuremburg set the precedent that this was not a valid defence.
I really do fear, that were something to happen again (and it just as easily might - it is happening, or has happened, to various degrees, in Rwanda, in the Congo, in Palestine, in Kashmir, in Tibet, in the Balkans - right in Europe, people! - in Central and South America...) people could happily put their blinkers on and ignore everything because it was upsetting, or distressing, or depressing, or whatever.
....I see your point but I simply don't have enough faith in mankind (or should it be manunkind?) that compulsory visiting will exterminate such behaviour forever. In fact, those who would perpetrate such heinous crimes would probably be inspired by seeing the teutonic efficiency of Auschwitz. But neither am I saying that Auschwitz should be pulled down, but rather that we all should be given the freedom of choice whether to visit or not. Whether WW2 was politically inspired or truly a war for freedom (aren't they all? he said cynically), we should all have that freedom of choice. As already said, I personally wouldn't visit.
It's all very well for a court in the aftermath to sit and declare that 'following orders' is no excuse but I wonder what each of them would have done if facing those same circumstances. Isn't it well known that even a few Jewish inmates murdered their own kind in order to survive? A very good friend of mine's father was 'asked' to be one of Mr Hitler's drivers during WW2 - Obviously he didn't refuse. It's a matter of survival.
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Forcing people to go to Auschwitz??? I think that was the problem in the first place neo. :laugh:
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Forcing people to go to Auschwitz??? I think that was the problem in the first place neo. :laugh:
:signLOL:
...I did give a variety of choices... :laugh:
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It is a sad place to visit, but I think it should be kept there. You can't live life with blinkers on, how can you move forward without knowing what happened in the past? History simply repeats itself, it's happening around the world right now.
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Another time Hugh. :smiley:
:popcornsoda: ok mate Ill wait. Back on track.......I went to Belsen over 10 years ago and it opened my eyes to the horrrors that occured.
The original station platform was still in place and could be seen a few yards before you enter the main entrance.The sight of the platform was the thing that really
stuck in my mind and has done all these years and probably will for ever.
Oh I remember the Reeperbahn as well but in a more foggy,hazy way :love:
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What I also find shocking was what the Jews who were rescued from the camps at the end of WW2 then did in Israel to the Palestinians.
Who is to say it was those Jews though Robin,
And also Auchwitz/Birkenhau and the other camps were not just filled with Jews, there were disabled people/people with learning difficulties, gypsies, homosexuals and political prisoners of any faith rounded up throughout its existence.
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What I also find shocking was what the Jews who were rescued from the camps at the end of WW2 then did in Israel to the Palestinians.
Who is to say it was those Jews though Robin,
And also Auchwitz/Birkenhau and the other camps were not just filled with Jews, there were disabled people/people with learning difficulties, gypsies, homosexuals and political prisoners of any faith rounded up throughout its existence.
....Whether in fact it was the actual same Jewish individuals or not, they should have known better having known what was done to their own kind, especially as it was immediately after WW2.
I know that others were murdered in the death camps but my point was about what was then done in Israel (and continues today) - Those other peoples weren't involved in that.
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Some very anti semetic views again. Red Robin I know for a fact
That you should walk a mile in someone's shoes before you judge
Them. Because Jewish or not. If I was in the same situation I'd wipe anybody
Out if it meant my children were safe and well. As per the situation after the war with Palestine
And isreal, it's just the same as Ireland but without the English. It's human nature unfortunately
Were all born with a seed of evil in our hearts. It's just wether you chose to water it.
If we as a people keep banging on about the Jews the nazis, Palestinians. Were all full of sh*te and
Hypocrits as the same sh*ts happening right now in Sudan between Muslims and Christians.
Only difference is the colour of their skin and the fact there poor. Oh yeah and I am from Jewish lineage.
But I bear no grudge to any religion race or creed. I believe if we live our life's with hate or prejudice, then that's a wasted :smiley:life
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Some very anti semetic views again. Red Robin I know for a fact
That you should walk a mile in someone's shoes before you judge
Them. Because Jewish or not. If I was in the same situation I'd wipe anybody
Out if it meant my children were safe and well. As per the situation after the war with Palestine
And isreal, it's just the same as Ireland but without the English. It's human nature unfortunately
Were all born with a seed of evil in our hearts. It's just wether you chose to water it.
If we as a people keep banging on about the Jews the nazis, Palestinians. Were all full of sh*te and
Hypocrits as the same sh*ts happening right now in Sudan between Muslims and Christians.
Only difference is the colour of their skin and the fact there poor. Oh yeah and I am from Jewish lineage.
But I bear no grudge to any religion race or creed. I believe if we live our life's with hate or prejudice, then that's a wasted :smiley:life
So you're willing to 'wipe' somebody away so your family can be safe? Do you not think the person you would wipe out has a family? What a dumb comment, it's ok to steal somebody's land because you want to be safe. The Jews that continue to steal and kill innocent Palestinians are just as bad as Hitler, except this time the news won't cover it. No I'm not a hypocrite because I care about all of humanity and do actively get involved with something that I feel is unfair.
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Just wondering if anyone has been to the Auschwitz concentration camps/museums and what did yous think of it? thinking of going near the end of the year and just wanted to see peoples thoughts on it :smiley:
I would go and visit and make up your own mind, i went in 2006 and found it quite moving. No one should be made to visit anywhere!! but it is important that these events should never be forgotten and these places serve a fitting tribute to that.
But make sure you enjoy the best poland has to offer aswell a visit to the saltmines in Wieliczka is a must! and polish beer and vodka is something else. Also the female polish form is rather pleasing on the eye :happy2: Just don't take your car as some of their roads are worse than ours!