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A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

theatlantic.com

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Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#71

Post by _m4r »

_m4r wrote: post #57
olavk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soviets really brought us more harm than nazis durning WW2 I presume you are not counting the three million Polish Jews who were murdered by the nazis?

This is very wide topic and I would like to not discuss it over Internet because I've had plenty of similar discussions with people I've met, and it would really require us to write essays :| Soviets killed about six million of polish people (until 1956). Not to mention harm that was done to the polish culture, dignity, economy, science for the 45 years.

> So you would like to make your statements, but not to have them challenged?

Oh dear, I didn't even point single statement yet.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#72

Post by code_duck »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59
code_duck wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to assume that a certain percentage of the soldiers would be or already have been rapists in civilian life, and now they perceive great opportunity in that regard. Edit - is this controversial? It’s simply a fact that some men do that, throughout history, in almost all cultures, hence the entire topic... Sometimes units of soldiers are even formed from criminals.

The assumption seems correct, but hardly significant in explaining the scale of the phenomenon.

And by scale, do you mean the amount of victims or the number of perpetrators?

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#73

Post by ziotom78 »

spunker540 wrote: post #6

It’s amazing how quickly our Russian allies turned into our Cold War enemies at the end of WWII. I’ve heard a lot of blame on both sides, the US stockpiling arms, McCarthyism fanning the flames. But the end of this story drives home just how brutal Russia was. A wwii hero who not only deliberately went to Auschwitz for three years, organized prisoners, compiled intelligence reports, then escaped and fought bravely fo…

I read Pilecki's book (aThe Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery) and found it incredible. And I too was amazed to read in the introduction that during Pileki's detainment by the communist regime, he told one of his friends that, compared to what he was ensuring in that prison, Auschwitz was "like a kindergarden".

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#74

Post by b0rsuk »

olavk wrote: post #20
badpun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Red Army was indeed a savior. It is thanks to those masses of poor soldiers, of which eight millions died, that the horror of WWII last only five years or so. All Europe and all world indeed should be grateful to them. That is under a big assumption that Stalin's USSR was actually better than Hitler's Germany. Since there were lots of people who fled Soviet-occupied parts of Poland into German-occupied ones (ho…

It would very much depends on who you were. If you had German ancestry you would be better off under the Germans, if you were Jewish you were far worse off. A lot of people in the former USSR occupied areas like the Baltics or Ukraine actually greeted the Germans as liberators, but they quickly changed their mind when they realized the Germans considered Slavs subhumans.

Hitler had this list of peoples to exterminate:

  * Jews
  * Romanies ("gypsies")
  * Slavs (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, modern Macedonians, Serbs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Slovenians...)
Jews took the biggest blow, but Hitler didn't plan to stop there. And not all of it was even ethnic. For example, he hated homosexuals and disabled people. He was going to clean the race. Communists were a target, too.

The reason he didn't exterminate everyone at the same time is that he needed slaves and collaborators in the transitional period. People down the list could be used to exterminate those higher up (indirectly, but sometimes directly).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#76

Post by dandare »

In my book, Witold Pilecki is in the same folder as Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish nurse who smuggled hundreds of Jewish kids from the ghetto, who was tortured so severely that the Nazis bastinado-fractured her feet - to no avail. Un-fucking-believable bravery that inspires me every day to resist the silly trumps and putins of our time.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#77

Post by b0rsuk »

lucozade wrote: post #66
bobthechef wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your insinuation is kind of grotesque.

What insinuation are you referring to? To my knowledge there's no evidence that Germany and Poland colluded in the annexation of Czechoslovakia but Poland definitely did take the opportunity to annex part of it. And the Germans weren't particularly unhappy about that as it played very well for them internationally.

The Nazis were delighted to ally with Poland for that. They had more foresight and understood this opportunistic move would greatly damage Poland's diplomatic relations with its allies. And it did. I was one of main reasons why Allies dragged their feet to help Poland.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#79

Post by qbaqbaqba »

zipwitch wrote: post #38
ransom1538 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Americans arrived in Berlin they were quite horrified. Over 100,000 women in Berlin were systemically raped by Russian soliders [i]. As an American/Englishmen witnessing this and ordered not to intervene created hate and disdain for the Russian forces. The American forces had no concept of what the Russian forces endured -- still not an excuse for rape. Eventually generals on the western side began forming plans…

Pure anecdote and likely shaded by the Cold War, but I remember my WWII veteran grandfather (European theater) telling me how after the war he had talked to fellow US and British officers responsible for turning POWs over to the Soviets. (I don't recall if he said whether they were the soliders of Axis powers being turned over to the Russians under some agreement, or soldiers from Russia or from Soviet occupied count…

It's true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Keelhaul

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#80

Post by danjc »

yeukhon wrote: post #27
ransom1538 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Americans arrived in Berlin they were quite horrified. Over 100,000 women in Berlin were systemically raped by Russian soliders [i]. As an American/Englishmen witnessing this and ordered not to intervene created hate and disdain for the Russian forces. The American forces had no concept of what the Russian forces endured -- still not an excuse for rape. Eventually generals on the western side began forming plans…

It is so sad that rape is a common war crime in every war since very ancient time. Rape during WW2 was probably one of the biggest crimes after mass genocide. I am familiar with the Japanese’s rape crime but this is the first time I am hearing about this. Allies are no exception. The psychology behind committing such crime is beyond the “sexual urge” excuse.

I think rape (at least in those contexts) is mostly about power
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