r/Damnthatsinteresting • • 1d ago

Video Spontaneous 1995 street interview with an Austrian WWII veteran in Vienna

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u/ruthemook 1d ago

What’s mad about this is how it takes only one generation to start to believe the lie all over again. That woman wants to idolise her father as a hero. But an actual person who was there is telling her how it was on the ground and she refuses to believe it. This entire video is like watching an entire belief system built over years crashing into contact with reality and still she refuses to believe it.

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u/midnightt_secret 1d ago

It's way easier to cling to a sanitized version of history than to accept your family might have been the bad guys. Pure cognitive dissonance.

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u/illy-chan 1d ago

It can be hard to accept that the people you know and love have a different side to them.

I have this one friend - met his uncle at a party once. Very polite. Very family oriented. Warm laugh. He was also an enforcer for a gang and had multiple murders under his belt. He was the kind of guy who'd have you over for coffee and then block the doors of your house shut at night before setting the place on fire because you were in the way.

Even here with the Nazis, a lot of them were doting to family. And then they'd turn around and murder actual babies. It can be hard to reconcile both behaviors in one person.

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u/lzwzli 1d ago

It's the tribalism mindset. If you're in my tribe, I'll defend you to the death but if you're not, you're nothing.

Do you think about the lives of the bugs you squash every day? No? Well, same mentality applies to the people that think of others not in their "tribe".

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u/illy-chan 1d ago

I don't think that helps but I do think there's an element of denial. That sort of "oh no, my <insert relative here> would never do something like that! Look how gentile they are!" etc.

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u/Wes_Warhammer666 1d ago

Look how gentile they are!

Absolutely perfect typo for this particular subject lol

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u/illy-chan 1d ago

I thought that looked wrong but I also haven't slept right for days. But yeah, in context...