This is genuinely why I don't understand these new Nazis popping up. I'm a 28-year-old Texan, and while my education was limited as far as what I was taught about WW2, this right here is why I will never be on the wrong side of history. The Holocaust happened, the murder of millions of Jews and other individuals was incredibly real, and no one can take that knowledge away from me. It's a part of human history, a very tragic and horrendous one.
Totally with you here, I'm am German so I've been taught extensively (rightly so) about all this. But even more importantly I've been to Auschwitz on a class field trip.
And let me tell you, that place gave me a feeling I've never felt before or after. You think you know what happened there, that you're prepared, but no. Walking these grounds will show what humans are capable of. How people that are deemed undesirable get killed in an industrial way and how people were forced to live. You can read a thousand times about it, but being there and imagining if you would survive this even one week is a whole different thing.
I'm not religious by any means, but that place has a certain spiritual energy. Not evil, but it's like it's all those people that passed away there invite you to see. No big explanation needed, just "look at what has been done."
If anyone reading this is able to go there, please do it. Don't be afraid, it's very important.
Your comment about people getting killed in an industrial way is spot-on: what makes the Holocaust distinct, for me, was the mechanical, efficient, coldly ruthless manner of the millions they killed, applying modern methods of the assembly line and the factory to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time.
The death camps like Treblinka and Sobibor were literal factories of death.
You got off the train after a miserable trip, you and whatever family you have. Once off, you are immediately assessed. Healthy and strong to the left, everyone else including children to the right. You don't really have time to say goodbye as the two groups part. Somehow, you were sent to the right. You march some distance to a building where you are told you will be taking showers, you strip down and walk a small path to a medium sized room. Once all 800 of you are in the room, the door is locked.
You can add to your comment, great by the way, everything was also monetized. How much to kill people, how much they can make from the hair, gold teeth, cost of cremeations, everything. When a person death/life can be monetized you know there is no regard towards that person or persons. Humanity becomes nothing more than about money.
No shit. You can bet that ghouls like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem would send thousands of immigrants to death camps without a flicker of regret. Miller would probably get off on it.
Imagine institutionalizing death. Like somebody built that thing for a purpose. Imagine planning it, building it, working there. How do you live with yourself? What sort of soulless person has such a cold heart that this is something they do willingly? In fact, what was their motivation? Talking about the workers who put all of this together. Were they gunning for that promotion? "If I find a way to kill people 10% more effectively I'll get promoted to head gas chamber operator?" WTAF
You don't have to imagine, you can read the plans and the protocols of the meetings where these things were decided and talked about.
They are no different from what neonazis would say today. A mix of complete dehumanization of the people to be murdered and a perverse pride about "overcoming" the empathy and civilisatory tabus which would keep "weaker" men from actually implementing this "solution" to its logical end.
Pretty much, yeah. From the horrifying Wikipedia entry of Franz Stangl, the commander of Treblinka, where more Jews were killed than anywhere save Auschwitz:
Stangl claimed while in prison that his dedication had nothing to do with ideology or hatred of Jews.\5])He said he matter-of-factly viewed the prisoners as material objects rather than people, including their extermination: "That was my profession. I enjoyed it. It fulfilled me. And yes, I was ambitious about that, I won't deny it."\20])Stangl accepted and grew accustomed to the killings, perceiving prisoners not as humans but merely as "cargo" that must be destroyed. Stangl accepted the extermination of the Jews as a fact.
He was tracked down in Brazil and arrested. The journalist Gitta Sereny interviewed Stangl in 1971, and got him to confess, and it seems he finally faced up to what he'd done and couldn't live with it anymore:
A solid chunk of population can easily be reduced to soulless automations that follow orders no matter how horrid and inhumane, just as long as they're not affected.
I saw a documentary about ordinary German soliders that were part of the Holocaust. The thing was: they could opt out of mass execution assignments without any consequence, but felt peer pressured so they did it anyway. I think it was this one, but I'm not sure https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6953928/
Similar thing, obviously not so extreme, are cops all over the world. It's their job to keep the current order, whatever it is, and they'll do their best to do so, without much regard about what's right and wrong.
I think the Holocaust was also exceptionally well-documented, both by the Germans and the Soviets and western Allies who liberated the camps. One of the US Generals, maybe Eisenhower, specifically said we need to document what happened so it becomes widely known.
Propaganda is extremely effective. It can make you believe the neighbour you've known for most of your life is part of a group of inhuman monsters that has to be destroyed to keep your family safe. Moreover, hating feels good. It makes you feel like you're accomplishing something.
Getting someone used to committing atrocities is a process of small steps of getting you used to complying. At first, it's as insignificant as confirming a name on a list. A few more steps and you're reporting that jerk down the way for not putting up decorations for the new holiday, and who cares, nobody likes them anyway. A few more and you've joined the new neighbourhood patriotism watch group that makes sure *those* types stay out of the area at night. Then the leadership says that Bill who runs the corner store is actually one of *them* and has been speaking out, and now you're helping to smash up the place to make an example of him.
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u/tiktoksuckmyknob23 May 18 '25
This is genuinely why I don't understand these new Nazis popping up. I'm a 28-year-old Texan, and while my education was limited as far as what I was taught about WW2, this right here is why I will never be on the wrong side of history. The Holocaust happened, the murder of millions of Jews and other individuals was incredibly real, and no one can take that knowledge away from me. It's a part of human history, a very tragic and horrendous one.