Sky News - dumb & dumber

[michaelab]

Did anyone else spot Sky News yesterday spelling Auschwitz as Aushwitz? They had it up on a huge white on red banner announcing memorials etc.

Just sums up the whole attitude of Murdoch's evil empire IMO .

Michael.

 

[penance]

Ive read the BBC stuff about it today.
Even today they are dragging up the pointless debates, have we learnt/ should the allieds have bombed it etc..
Surely today of all days should be rememberance of those who suffered and died at the hands of Nazi's?

 

[tones]

have we learnt

No point in asking, because we haven't. Take a bad regime with an ideology that it wishes to force on others as the only way, a regime that is quite prepared to twist and invert the normal laws of decency, a regime in which bad people and total incompetents whose only qualification is loyality to the regime are encouraged and rewarded with honours and promotions, an aggressive regime that is hostile to anyone who says otherwise and is ready to wage war on the weak, a regime that is all too ready to dehumanise people and subject them to harsh treatment and even execution, and naturally you end up with Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghrahib.

 

[penance]

Tone
We will never learn, but hopefuly for the people nearer to it the memory will stay. The power that be may ignore it, but i hope the public will realise the wrongs.

 

[7_V]

Well, not for the first time, my views on this seem to be at odds with those of some on the forum. However, I don't feel that this should stop me posting (when has it ever?)

One thing that I've learned is that we should listen to what people say.

Hitler and other senior Nazis made their intentions very clear. Their intentions were spelt out in 'Mein Kamph' and then in a whole series of speeches, newspaper articles and books.

We didn't believe them. Indeed, how could sane people believe that these lunatics were serious in their ravings? However, if we'd only listened to what they said and taken them seriously perhaps the tragedy of the Holocaust could have been avoided.

Tones seems to be making an equivalence between the Nazi regime in the 30s and 40s and the USA now. The implication is that one can make a comparison between Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghrahib on the one hand, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau and the other death camps on the other.

Count the deaths in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghrahib; look for the chimneys of their crematoria. There is no comparison.

There is no comparison.

Many people, particularly in our free and liberal Europe, believe that the USA and G W Bush in particular pose the most serious threat to world peace at this time. For all the faults of the USA and there are many, I beg to disagree.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is, as you know, a major Islamic terrorist leader, Osama Bin Laden's main man in Iraq and the head of the jihadi insurgency against the Allawi Government and its American allies.

He has recently released an audio tape. The first aim of this release is to give al-Zarqawi's views about the forthcoming elections in Iraq. However, the tape also states precisely what he believes, the reasons why the Islamists fight against the West and why they wish to destroy the US and other Western countries.

"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it."
...
The speaker said democracy was based on un-Islamic beliefs and behaviors such as freedom of religion, rule of the people, freedom of expression, separation of religion and state, forming political parties and majority rule.

He said that freedom of expression is allowed "even cursing God. This means that there is nothing sacred in democracy." He said Islam requires the rule of God and not the rule of "the majority or the people."

I think we should listen to what al-Zarqwi and other militant Islamists are actually saying and we should believe what they are telling us.

For what it's worth, I believe that Bush does listen to them.

The USA is not my enemy.

 

[tones]

Tones seems to be making an equivalence between the Nazi regime in the 30s and 40s and the USA now. The implication is that one can make a comparison between Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghrahib on the one hand, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau and the other death camps on the other.

I was actually being naughty, Steve, I was just curious to see the reaction! I don't really believe that the USA is like Nazi Germany. However, I've just finished reading "Ordinary men", Christopher Browning's groundbreaking study of Reserve Police Batallion 101 in Poland during the war. 101 was made up of, as the title says, "ordinary men", middle-aged guys, largely from Hamburg, too old for army service and used behind the lines as Ordnungspolizei (police for keeping general order). Guys from a not particularly Nazi part of Germany, guys who were old enough to remember pre-Nazi Germany and the values that then ruled. Yet these men were turned into murderers of Jews. There was no harsh punishment meted out to those who refused to execute Jews, but only a minority refused.

Daniel Goldhagen dealt with the same policemen in his controversial "Hitler's willing executioners", and he came out firmly in favour of deep-rooted anti-Semitism in the German population as a sort of catch-all cause for the behaviour of 101. However, Browning's thesis is more complex, and to me more persuasive - anti-Semitism, yes, but only slightly, more peer group pressure, a wartime situation that allowed the Jews to be identified as "enemies", and of course less good than "us", not wanting to stand out from the other guys in the unit as being different, a culture with a traditional respect for authority, even though that authority was encouraging dreadful things, etc. It took a strong moral compass to refuse - in fact, many hid behind "weakness" when they couldn't shoot women and children. This didn't "show up" their comrades.

Browning is an American, and the book was written some time ago, but I couldn't help reflecting just how many of the facets fitted current US behaviour. As I said, the USA is not Nazi Germany and is never likely to be, but in my opinion, it is currently standing on top of the slippery slope that leads to it or something like it, and that is bothersome enough. The frightening thing about Browning's book is the lesson that, in the right circumstances, the capacity to be monsters is in us all. I think that's precisely what we're seeing in the US prisons - and the master torturer is about to become attorney general. The USA, a great country built on fine and noble foundations, has, as the King James Bible puts it, "fallen among thieves". I can only hope that the US population wakes up to it sooner rather than later.

 

[Will]

I find myself in agreement with Steve once again (a common occurence with politics threads actually ).

To me there is no comparison between Dachau, Auschwitz and all the others with Abu Ghraib. I've been to both Auschwitz and Dachau by the way, a rather sobering experience to say the least, but one I'm glad I've had. Walking through the rooms of shoes and glasses taken from the victims does bring home what happened in a way that reading books or watching television programs never could IMHO.

 

[My name is Ron]

I agree with Steve in that the parallels between Auschwitz and Guantanamo Bay are non-existent. Also, I agree that the Islamic extremists are deeply worrying people. But so too are the neocons and the particular brand of evangelical fire they carry in their bellies. It never ceases to amaze me how such small, but powerfully committed, groups can define and manipulate the political landscape of the day. For me, that's why it's so important to remember what happened at Auschwitz. It's history, but if we should ever forget, we also forget what it taught us, and we simply can't afford to do that at the moment. And yes, it would help if somebody at Sky News had treated it a bit more seriously than, say, last night's football result.

 

[7_V]

Your mention of Browning and Goldhagen, neither of whom I've read, brings to mind a passage by Primo Levi in his book "The Truce" where he tells of his own moment of liberation from Auschwitz by the Russians:

They did not greet us, nor did they smile; they seemed oppressed not only by compassion but by a confused restraint, which sealed their lips and bound their eyes to the funereal scene. It was that shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man's crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defence.

 

[penance]

I agree with Steve aswell.

But i really dont want to get into the politics of it, i stated my feelings above.


Ron sums it up nicely -

For me, that's why it's so important to remember what happened at Auschwitz. It's history, but if we should ever forget, we also forget what it taught us, and we simply can't afford to do that at the moment. And yes, it would help if somebody at Sky News had treated it a bit more seriously than, say, last night's football result.

 

[Uncle Ants]

I have to say I generally try and avoid these kind of discussions on this forum (there are other fora that I'm willing to artgue til I'm blue in the fingers on, but this is my HiFi home). I'll make an exception here though.

Steve is right ... but so is Tones. The point of making a comparison isn't to say that Auschwitz=Guantanamo (which clearly it doesn't) nor is it to justify Guantanamo by stating there is no comparison at all. The point is that by making the comparison we can learn about the dangers of where the kind of thinking that starts with a Guantanamo can go.

The Nazis didn't start with Auschwitz - they started with makeshift prison camps for the incarceration of political enemies on the grounds that they were a threat to national security. I haven't a clue whether the people held in Guantanamo are guilty of anything or not - I am absolutely convinced that incarcerating people without trial and justifying it on the grounds of national secirity is antithetical to democracy and can only be a bad thing. So far as I can tell the only reason this isn't causing the uproar in the States that I think it ought is because the people being held are "only foreigners" and in the current climate presumed guilty - so why bother with a trial.

 

[tones]

To me there is no comparison between Dachau, Auschwitz and all the others with Abu Ghraib.

Auschwitz, no, but Dachau, yes, Will. Auschwitz was a Vernichtungslager (extermination camp), a unique feature of Nazi Germany - all were built in Poland, well away from Germany. Dachau was a Konzentrationslager, a camp where one could "concentrate" one's enemies and keep an eye on them (concentration camps were invented by the British in the Boer War, and the deaths of many Afrikaner women and children in them long remained a festering sore between Afrikaner and South African). I've also been to Dachau, and I've seen the gas chambers and the crematoria there, but it was my impression that these were rarely, if ever used. It simply wasn't Dachau's job to be a death factory, like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and Maidanek. Its function was incarceration of perceived enemies, humiliation, dehumanisation, torment and death by hunger and ill-treatment - which, in my opinion anyway, brings us back to Abu Ghrahib...

 

[Sid and Coke]

I've been watching a series on BBC2 ( i think) for the last couple of weeks about the camps. There are clearly still to this day many people who don't actually think what they did was all that bad. One old bloke (a Ukranian or Pole i think) was actually laughing when he recalled how they would help themselves to the prisoners shoes and clothes as they where being led to the gas chambers.
I visisted Dachau last summer, one thing that seemed to be suggested througout my visit, by one of the local guides, was that these atrocities where done by Nazi's not Germans. After my visit I was walking back through the town of Dachau, looking at all of the fine houses and busineses that where evident all around and wondered just how many of the locals benefited from the evil just down the road all them years ago.

I suppose i should also add that although my stay in Munich was a short one for just 2 weeks I was struck by just how nice and friendly the people were, I was there on business but it felt more like a holiday, a very pleasant place to be.

I think that the sooner that time passes on and the sooner that more of these 'Old Laughing men' die the better. In saying that I would imagine that there are many thousands fo Palestinians, who have had their lands taken away from them and their houses bulldozed over, that view the current Isreali jews no better than Nazi's themselves.

(bugger, there goes another new years resolution)

 

[Paul Ranson]

There's a series running on BBC2 currently, "Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution" which seems to be a very competent history. I recommend keeping an eye out for it. I presume it will show on BBC World or elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/genocide/index.shtml

Paul

 

[Sid and Coke]

Posted by Tones,

I've also been to Dachau, and I've seen the gas chambers and the crematoria there, but it was my impression that these were rarely, if ever used.

Just like Hi-Fi isn't it strange how we all percieve things in different ways. I thought that the Gallows that where set up just in front of the cremotorium ovens at Dachau was quite a telling sign as to thier purpose. I also thought that the photographs showing piles ( ie hundreds ) of dead bodies outside the Gas Chamber/Crematorium building when the allies liberated the camp was a bit of a give away too.

 

[penance]

The program Paul mentioned is worth watching. Very moving in places, makes a very strong case.

 

[domfjbrown]

The Islamic fundamentalism thing is worrying - especially since they can't PROVE God exists; how do they KNOW that God wants them to do what they're doing? I don't buy it. Some of the Islamic fundamentalists live in oil-rich countries - SURELY witholding oil from the west is the BIGGEST terrorist tactic they could use? It'd certainly be effective when those clinically obese westerners have to get off their fat arses and walk because they can't drive their cars...

Back to religion briefly though - more wars have been started for religion and "god" than anything else - if these planks want to meet God so much - why don't they kill themselves and leave others out of it? (It's the same question I keep asking myself about Northern Ireland too to be honest - and that one's DOUBLY stupid since both Catholic and Protestant faiths believe in the same God - AFAIC the only difference is Protestants don't believe in "transfiguration" or the Pope (can confirm with my mum on this one at the weekend).

Anyway, back on track - Auschwitz... My mum went there in the early 90s, and it was only after hearing her talk about this and seeing Schindler's List that the whole horror really sank in - we only did 1700-1880s in GCSE history at school I still don't understand what those fascist idiots outside the cinema were on, trying to claim the Holocaust never happened. The evidence is still there for all to see...

The biggest thing about the whole "what if" scenario is of course - IF the Allies had bombed Auschwitz, would they have jeopardised the war in any other way? It's easy to look back in hindsight and say "well, THIS would have happened etc" but how do you KNOW? Personally though, I fail to see why they couldn't have at least taken out miles of railway line...

Let us never forget the biggest irony though. We (the British) INVENTED the concentration camp, so I hope everyone in this country will remember that one before getting on their high horses when discussing this nasty stain of history...

 

[tones]

Posted by Tones,


Just like Hi-Fi isn't ti strange how we all percieve things in different ways. I thought that the Gallows that where set up just in front of the cremotorium ovens at Dachau was quite a telling sign as to thier purpose. I also thought that the phoographs showing piles ( ie hundreds ) of dead bodies outside the Gas Chamber/Crematorium building when the allies liberated the camp was a bit of a give away too.

I was there in 1975, Sid and I concede that I might have misremembered, but, as I say, it was my impression that the gas chambers and the crematoria were (a) very late additions to Dachau, and (b) hardly ever used. As you've noted yourself, Dachau is a pleasant, leafy suburb of Munich, and even the Nazis wouldn't have liked to make that sort of stink in a place which, after all, was one of the shrines of Naziism (the attempted Putsch of 1923). Dead bodies there were always in plenty in Dachau, courtesy of the camp regime and the steadily decreasing food supply as the Allies closed in. You will see the same piles of dead in the film of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, which, to the best of my knowledge, never had a gas chamber, but which clearly never felt the lack.

 

[tones]

(It's the same question I keep asking myself about Northern Ireland too to be honest - and that one's DOUBLY stupid since both Catholic and Protestant faiths believe in the same God - AFAIC the only difference is Protestants don't believe in "transfiguration" or the Pope (can confirm with my mum on this one at the weekend).

Because Northern Ireland is not purely a religious war, Dom, it's much more complex than that. It has its roots in religion (but the intolerant religion of 300 years ago) and religion serves as a convenient label, but it's now really more a tribal and power thing - the "Protestants" have been top dogs for hundreds of years, want to stay that way and are unhappy when it appears that the "Catholics" appear to be about to get a bigger slice of the cake than they "deserve". The Protestants want to be part of the UK - just so long as it benefits them. They don't see themselves as "Irish" but neither do they see themselves as "English". Basically, they want England to pay them to do whatever they want to do and not interfere - which is precisely what happened between 1922 (Partition) and 1972, which is why the present mess came about.

P.S. I think you mean "transubstantiation", the doctrine that, in the Mass, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, as opposed to merely being symbols as they are in Protestant Holy Communion. This is the reason why Catholics genuflect to the altar in church, because that is where the Host (the communion bread) is kept.

The Protestants also do not accept the Pope as Supreme Pontiff. Neither do the Greek or Russian Orthodox Churches of course, and it causes no great hassle, but the Catholic Church's claim to be THE Church, and not merely a church among churches rankles with Northern Ireland's Calvinistic Protestants, some of whom (such as Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church) almost regard the Pope as the Antichrist.

 

[tones]

The biggest thing about the whole "what if" scenario is of course - IF the Allies had bombed Auschwitz, would they have jeopardised the war in any other way? It's easy to look back in hindsight and say "well, THIS would have happened etc" but how do you KNOW? Personally though, I fail to see why they couldn't have at least taken out miles of railway line...

Auschwitz was a long way to the east (the Nazis sited the extermination camps deep in Poland, so that they could try to fool people about "resettlement" of Jews in the east) and at the limit of bombing range. And what would bombing the camps have achieved, except for a quicker death for some of the inmates? In the later stages of the war, the railway lines to Poland were certainly within bombing range and by that stage the Allies knew exactly what was happening in Auschwitz. Of course, by that stage, most of the Western European Jews had gone down those lines and they were working on the Hungarian Jews (they only started there one year before the war's end - the father of a former secretary of mine survived only for that reason; he was a young, fit man, capable of work, and when he stood in that queue in Auschwitz, the guard sent him that way - the rest of his family (nine in all) went The Other Way...). I don't know whether a completely satisfactory answer has ever been given. The distinguished historian Sir Martin Gilbert wrote a book called "Auschwitz and the Allies", but I've never been able to find a copy.

P.S. B'gosh, Dom, I'm glad I talked to you. I checked and it's back in print! So I ordered.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...8318/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_10_4/202-3734425-9043051