Saw a wonderful play this weekend! It was an adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank... thought i would start a thread to see if any of you are descended from holocaust survivors... or if anyone has anything to illuminate the rest of us!
Saw a wonderful play this weekend! It was an adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank... thought i would start a thread to see if any of you are descended from holocaust survivors... or if anyone has anything to illuminate the rest of us!
the best book i ever read was in high school about a survivor of the holocaust. my grandfather was in germany in wwII and was part of a regime that helped clean up the concentration camps, he had pictures and awful stories about what he saw.
my dad was anti aircraft artillery, which just means he shot planes down from the ground... ask your gramps sometime and let me know!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
me thinks it was this one, my grandfather died in 2002.
ah, then i think they weren't in the same division... i don't remember which concentration camp my dad was at, but the Russians liberated it!
so sorry about your grandpa...not a lot of WWII vets left!!!
my uncle was a clerk and jeep driver for General Patton... my uncle is still kickin!!
My granddad was also in Germany during WWII and was on one of the first tanks to burst thru the gates of one of the camps to save the victims. He saw things he won't talk about to this day (he's 85 now), and my Mom told me things that him and his fellow soldiers did to some of the German soldiers - and I can't say that I blame him.
He's never left England since the war, and hates Germans to this day.
I was glad that I got to see him when I went to England this year, and got to see his war scrapbook with some clippings about what he saw - and he was supposed to be called in to court to testify, but they never called him.
We have a friend who owns the gym we go to in Yukon Ok.We were over at her house one night for drinks and giggles. Being the nosy shit I am I started looking at her rather sparse family photo albumn. Both her parents are holocaust survivors. the photos were of her parents,her sister and her own child.Thats it. No Grandparents,no Aunts,no Uncles,no Cousins.Her extended family no longer exist.That made the holocaust so real to me.
Stay in Drugs. Eat your School. Don't do Vegetables.
I remember reading We Are Witness in the 5th grade and If I Should Die Before I Wake in the 6th. I went to a middle school and high school that was predominantly Jewish (I was a minority being Methodist, like one of 10 people in the school that didn't go to Temple) and most of their parents or grandparents had stories of their family. It was a major part of our history classes too.
And to think that are morons out there that actually think the holocast never happened - when I have my own personal witness!
My great uncle was in Germany and Holland during the war. I was too young when he died to have even known to ask him about it.
My mother lost family in the camps, and refuses to watch or read anything about the Holocaust. I feel that, by pretending it never happened, she is allowing the lives of her family to have been in vain.
If anyone here has seen 'Who Do You Think You Are?', the episode with Stephen Fry is sobering, as is Natasha Kaplinski's. The Stephen Fry episode is available on YouTube, if anyone is interested.
Yeah no shit! And it's so insulting to the families and the people that it happened to. Same thing with 9/11 conspiracy theories imo.
Anyways, my uncle's mother is a Holocaust survivor and both my grandads were doctors during the war. One of my grandpas delivered something like 400 babies during World War II.
What a horrible time in history that people want to say did not happen.
I'm not Jewish, but I worked in a Jewish restaurant for years. I used to wait on a couple of people who had numbers tattooed on their wrists. That brought it home for me.
is he still kickin??? it would be something if your uncle and my uncle knew each other!
i also can't believe those assholes that say the holocaust never happened... talk about deluded people...
i'd love to tour the attic where they hid... i need to go to the netherlands anyway, cuz we had an Up with People student from there stay with us a few years ago, and she is always asking her to visit her.
beecee, thanks for the cool link to the website... i am gonna read up on her more!
Sus
I visited Dachau and it was a terrible sight. One barracks has been restrored and there is about a two feets space between bunks. A museum is set up that shows pictures of dead and alive prisoners, in different stages of the experiments. Worst thing that happened was we walked on the rocky parade grounds where the prisoners fell out each day for roll call. We had to get quickly off the rocks. The evil,pain, ect is still there and we could feel it thru our shoe soles. The ovens were off limits, but still big and ugly and visable. I will never forget that visit to Germany.
of the few stories my grandpa did tell about it, this one is the one i remember most. order of his regime were to tie nazi soldiers up and make them watch footage of what they'd done. on a huge screen in a warehouse i believe, they made them watch still photos of the destruction they caused. my grandfather said that the regime was VERY ADAMANT about making them watch the footage, they held guns to their heads anyone who turned away or closed their eyes was shot.
now my grandfather was also a bi-polar schizophrenic, often was on and off meds sometimes he was delusional, so i'm not 100% sure this story is true. i do know for sure he was in the war and in germany as he had artifacts and pictures.
the whole thing was such a tragedy. it sickens me to think that that happened. what a waste of life Hilter and his crew were. on a side note....that person with Sid and Nancy as their avatar should know that Sid wrote a song when he was with the Pistols called Belsen Was A Gas...not very nice or funny.
My dad was a young reporter that went to the Nuremburg (?) trials. He said that after the war criminals were convicted, they were taken out one by one and hanged.
xoxojessica - I can attest to one thing. When America and our allies liberated these concentration camps, a cameraman was always along recording the events. The German people always claimed innocent, I didn't know what was happening. BULLSHIT How could they not smell the flesh burning in the crematoriums!!!! As we and allies took over the camps, there were still many dead prisoners needed to be buried. The camp commanders forced the townspeople to bury the dead. And, all of this is also captured on film. I was always so happy that the "innocent" folk were made to do this nasty job.
My grandparents were in Dachau. They escaped, but would never talk about anything of their lives during the war.
Heard on the news today that the tree that stands outside the attic is going to be cut down on 11/21 because it is diseased and dying. She mentions it several times in her diary. Grafts have been taken and a sapling of the tree will replace it. Still to think it was the same tree she saw. How sad! I too can not imagine people not believing the holocaust happened. Back in the late 50's when I was little, I remember going into a shoe store with my Mom and asking her out loud why the cashier had numbers tatooed on her arm. My mom told me to shut up and she would tell me when we left the store, which she did. I did not understand at all how someone could do this to another person.
I believe that was announced last year. There is a live webcam that shows the building, with the tree visible. I like the cam best after dark, when the lights are on inside and you can see people walking past the windows.
Holocaust deniers were mentioned, and someone said they couldn't understand how anyone could believe the Holocaust never happened. I feel that they don't believe it because they don't want to believe it. They want to believe that the Third Reich was glorious, and that evil allies brought it down because they couldn't bear to see Germany strong and powerful. We all like to root for the underdog, but they take it to extremes.
my dad has pictures that he himself took of the bodies in the concentration camps... incredibly he used to carpool to work with an asshole that denied the holocaust... he couldn't get the guy to even listen to him! this guy's last name was Kaiser.... coincidence? i think not!
thank god for our dads and grandpas... and for the women that supported WWII... the world would be a very different place if germany had won the war...
seems like i heard there is a movie or book where that is the scenario... germany won, and what the states were like after that... has anyone read or seen it???
[SIZE=3]Ever wonder if the reason that Schultz of Hogan's Hero fame constantly claimed he knew NOTHing wasn't a kind of semi-dark joke aimed at that very thing? It could have been a more general reference but, it seems to fit quite well with the whole idea. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]I also think it was ironic that a lot of the really damning evidence of what went on in the Holocaust was provided by the whack jobs themselves as they meticulously filmed and documented their various atrocities. Ego-maniacal assholes.[/SIZE]
Last edited by BeeCee; 11-15-2007 at 09:12 AM.
My parents went to her home and the camps before I was born and took pictures. My husband and I went to the Holocaust museum on our honeymoon in D.C. They had oodles and oodles of shoes there, tons of photos, videos, etc. It was stomach churning.
I know someone that is American,her parents American and never went to Germany. Yet she let something in her family tree slip in high school once and was persecuted for it.
She was related distantly to Rudolph Hess.
Her Grandfather was a Hess and during the war, he and his wife got many death threats. They ran a toy store and never had been in Germany and were not against
any religion,race or gender. They did know who 'Uncle Rudy' was though.
Back in the early 70's my ex was backpacking through Europe with a friend. In Austria they stopped at a relative's house of his uncle by marriage who is Austrian born. After giving them a tour of the house, the couple took them to a back room where there was a shrine to Hitler! My ex and his friend were so shocked and disgusted they got the hell out of there as fast as they could.
i did an army scrapbook for my dad a couple of years ago... it was one of the best things i ever did... i had to sit and ask him questions to write the narrative to go with the pictures... i know way more now than i ever knew before... he was never hesitant to talk about it... i just never took the time to get all the details and specifics about what he did. he didn't talk about the emotional part though. i tried to get him to talk about seeing all the bodies at the concentration camp, and he couldn't... that stiff upper lip thing... and best of all the grandkids and great grandkids will always know what their grandpa did in WWII...
i am a major scrapbooker.... i also did one of each of my parents before they were married, and one of their married life. LOVE it!
I have a ton of books with pictures of the holocaust and it just so depressing, I don't know how anyone could do that to anyone. Let alone so many people.
Miep Gies is still alive today at 98 years old. I bet she never had any idea the impact it would have in the world by hiding the Frank family and keeping that diary. You can leave a leaf on the online tree at http://www.annefranktree.com/
Of course it happened, like the 2nd World War happened!
The Germans are struggling to come to terms with it as are many european countries even today! Many countries and people suffered, the gypsy's were almost wiped out but there was not accounting for their numbers because they were gypsies! Apparently there were just as many if not more gypsies gassed but they are not on record of course.
The gays, artists,bohemians,gypsies as well as the jews. To recognise the true atrocieties we must suspend all hatred and get down to proper research of individuals and circumstance. That is why Anne Frank is a great example she was one individual amongst millions!
No one calls their son Adolf anymore!
I am a sick puppy....woof woof!!!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Carping the living shit out of the Diem. - Me!!
http://www.pinterest.com/neilmpenny
Anyone see the new footage? Some dutch couple who married in Amsterdam went through their 8mm wedding day footage, and guess who was watching their wedding through the attic window? It made the news a few years back.
I have not heard about that. Is it on the internet?
It wasn't from the attic, it was from her home before they went into hiding.
Here it is.
They republished her diary a few years ago. It included entries that were formerly
censored.