Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The latter, as estimated from the former.
A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
81–90 of 153 posts
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#82In 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.
Agree to a lot of it.
But it would probably have more weight if you didn't compare Trump and Putin with the systems that systematically tortured and killed millions of people.
And for the record: I'm no big Trump fan.
Edit: as usual I'm honest and I'm not trying to troll anyone. And as the downvotes pile up it would be interesting to know what I've written that was so horribly wrong or offending.
Edit2: I don't care aboit those stupid points. But I do care to get my point across efficiently and without insulting anyone unnecessarily.
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#83Earlier 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.
> Soviets killed about six million of polish people (until 1956).
[citation needed]
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#84Earlier 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…
I hope that readers of this comment understand that this narrative of the "systematic rape" (quoting parent) of Germany by the soldiers of the Red Army, while factual, is a lot more complicated than meets the eye. It is a narrative that has been deliberately narrowed, with a strong political motivation, to the scope of 1945. Modern German historians see this narrowing of the Western European memory as the effects of…
I mostly agree with your statement.
It's really easy to sit in an air conditioned office while eating $8 bagel and talk about how horrible decisions people made in the past are.
>Principles about eyes probably don't seem to carry weight when the only parts of your village left to come home to (that you passed, on your way to the front) are the parts that wouldn't burn.
I agree.
If Truman had toured the Pacific theater a little more we probably wouldn't have stopped at two
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
And before that Germany and Poland joined forces together to invade Czechoslovakia....
Your insinuation is kind of grotesque.
This kind of vague ad-hominem attack does not belong here. If you have a problem with GP's "insinuation", please explain what you think is wrong using factual, logical arguments. Claiming that it is "grotesque" tells us a lot more about you than about the argument here.
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the end of this story drives home just how brutal Russia was. > it all ends up getting tortured and killed by Russians a few years after the war. Is it that brutal? Killing foreign spies is something not unheard of in this historical period (see eg. Klaus Fuchs, who stole nuclear secrets), the only difference is in the torture.
So Polish Resistance soldiers who so bravely fought Nazis are considered "foreign spies"? That's basically what Soviets were doing in Poland: arresting all the members of Polish Home Army [1] they could find and sentencing them to death. So yes, that's brutal and it makes the Red Army just another invader, not a "savior". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Army#Postwar
Pilecki was not considered a "foreign spy" for his fighting the Nazis, but for organizing an intelligence network of his own and leaking information to the West. That counts as a foreign spy in my eyes, and I'm sure someone who did the same in eg. France would also be considered as such.
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bone of contention and a heavily discussed subject, because the world is not a black-and-white place. 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. On the other hand, there was the Stalinist regime, ruthless rule, killing one's own p…
You have to take into account Soviet intent. Stalin was not interested in liberating Poland or the other countries occupied by the Nazis per se. Stalin was interested in Soviet domination. He had already tried to conquer Poland in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 (in which Pilecki fought, as the article mentions). They lost to the Poles. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was essentially a temporary agreement (that really…
"ut rather that in Soviet, and ultimately Russian, culture, human life is much more dispensable to those in power than it is in the West."
It is easy to lay blame at the feet of a handful of leaders and forget that in centuries the Russian people put their arms, their strength, their blood behind such. It is easy to focus on a single tiny person within the scope of history and say of course this person had no power and no complicity in evil and forget that the totality of the Russian people are complicit in the actions of their leaders.
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#88In 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.
Agree to a lot of it. But it would probably have more weight if you didn't compare Trump and Putin with the systems that systematically tortured and killed millions of people. And for the record: I'm no big Trump fan. Edit: as usual I'm honest and I'm not trying to troll anyone. And as the downvotes pile up it would be interesting to know what I've written that was so horribly wrong or offending. Edit2: I don't care…
I didn't vote you one way or another, but what I gathered from the post was that he/she doesn't put Trump/Putin anywhere even close to the atrocities of the Nazi's and despite how he feels about them, times are far better than they were. Your post is essentially agreeing with him while chastising him, which is why I can imagine some have down voted you. I think looking back on history and far darker times, is an acceptable way to reduce your anxiety about the current state of affairs, while also ensuring it never gets that bad again.
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#89[deleted]
Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)
#90In 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.
Putin actually has his opponents murdered. Look up what happened to Boris Nemtsov, he was gunned down right outside the Kremlin. I would take Trump over Putin any day.