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Post by novastar6 on Mar 21, 2021 4:29:19 GMT
I'm bumping this one. I learned about Jasenovac many years ago thanks to Youtube's recommendations, never heard of it before, went down to the library, checked the entire WWII section, not one damn thing. THE biggest concentration camp, think they said it was the size of 6 other camps put together, 800,000 prisoners, only 80 people survived it, and NOBODY remembers it.
Breaks my heart, damn 80....
At the time I saw this whole series on Youtube about it, I think it was a 12 part video, I jotted down a long short (about 40 pages) story that would explain a lot of it on a kids' level, older kids anyway, I've rewritten it twice, and if I could ever make up my mind which one to go with, I think it could be published, would be very educational, and controversial. Doesn't mean anybody would actually touch it, but given some of the stuff in YA fiction these days, seems like there's not much that's off limits, and we know the Holocaust is used frequently for kids' books, but still none of them ever cover what was happening in Croatia at that time.
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Post by novastar6 on Mar 21, 2021 4:33:16 GMT
I'm bumping this one. I learned about Jasenovac many years ago thanks to Youtube's recommendations, never heard of it before, went down to the library, checked the entire WWII section, not one damn thing. THE biggest concentration camp, think they said it was the size of 6 other camps put together, 800,000 prisoners, only 80 people survived it, and NOBODY remembers it.
I read a few books about the Holocaust in the past and I never heard of Jasenovac until I stumbled across it in Wikipedia. Detailed, well written book about the camps and not one mention of it. I knew about the Ustase and that the Croats mistreated the Serbs after Yugoslavia but not to that degree. And it falls through the crack of history because it's not really part of the Holocaust. Not many Jews were massacred at Jasenovac. Sad to say but a lot of atrocities from the Second World War are somewhat triviliazed, Unit 731, Jasenovac, Nanking, except when Iris Chang's book came out.
Well going by the numbers, 4 million people in the concentration camps died who weren't Jews either.
You're right though, most of the stuff going on at that time is ignored. I once talked to a man who couldn't get too worked up about what Germany did, and instead pointed out 'Stalin did worse things and people don't even remember those victims'.
I've got a book somewhere, I don't remember the name, or the author, I found it at a thrift shop, looked it up on Amazon and it was basically impossible to find on there, it was a German's account of what the Russian soldiers did when they invaded his country, detailing it from his teenage years, when he heard the women and girls being raped by the Russians, and then murdered afterwards.
It gets all the fingers pointing which side was worse? Can you even pick? And if you can't, why does Germany get sole focus?
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Mar 21, 2021 4:46:48 GMT
I read a few books about the Holocaust in the past and I never heard of Jasenovac until I stumbled across it in Wikipedia. Detailed, well written book about the camps and not one mention of it. I knew about the Ustase and that the Croats mistreated the Serbs after Yugoslavia but not to that degree. And it falls through the crack of history because it's not really part of the Holocaust. Not many Jews were massacred at Jasenovac. Sad to say but a lot of atrocities from the Second World War are somewhat triviliazed, Unit 731, Jasenovac, Nanking, except when Iris Chang's book came out.
Well going by the numbers, 4 million people in the concentration camps died who weren't Jews either.
You're right though, most of the stuff going on at that time is ignored. I once talked to a man who couldn't get too worked up about what Germany did, and instead pointed out 'Stalin did worse things and people don't even remember those victims'.
I've got a book somewhere, I don't remember the name, or the author, I found it at a thrift shop, looked it up on Amazon and it was basically impossible to find on there, it was a German's account of what the Russian soldiers did when they invaded his country, detailing it from his teenage years, when he heard the women and girls being raped by the Russians, and then murdered afterwards.
It gets all the fingers pointing which side was worse? Can you even pick? And if you can't, why does Germany get sole focus?
I've read a ton about the Holodomor, the Great Purges, the GULAG. It's out there. The Nazi camps do get more ink. A lot of that was the detailed bookkeeping the Nazi's did. All the records were found after the War and became public during the War Crimes trials. Of course, the true nature of the Soviet crimes did not come out until after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the records of the OPGU, NKVD and KGB were unsealed. And people can visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Dachau while no one can really tour the GULAG. And it depends of what narrative strikes the public fancy. Amon Goth was one of the biggest monsters to trod the Earth. But who had heard of him before Schindler's List?
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Post by novastar6 on Mar 21, 2021 5:04:54 GMT
Well going by the numbers, 4 million people in the concentration camps died who weren't Jews either.
You're right though, most of the stuff going on at that time is ignored. I once talked to a man who couldn't get too worked up about what Germany did, and instead pointed out 'Stalin did worse things and people don't even remember those victims'.
I've got a book somewhere, I don't remember the name, or the author, I found it at a thrift shop, looked it up on Amazon and it was basically impossible to find on there, it was a German's account of what the Russian soldiers did when they invaded his country, detailing it from his teenage years, when he heard the women and girls being raped by the Russians, and then murdered afterwards.
It gets all the fingers pointing which side was worse? Can you even pick? And if you can't, why does Germany get sole focus?
I've read a ton about the Holodomor, the Great Purges, the GULAG. It's out there. The Nazi camps do get more ink. A lot of that was the detailed bookkeeping the Nazi's did. All the records were found after the War and became public during the War Crimes trials. Of course, the true nature of the Soviet crimes did not come out until after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the records of the OPGU, NKVD and KGB were unsealed. And people can visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Dachau while no one can really tour the GULAG. And it depends of what narrative strikes the public fancy. Amon Goth was one of the biggest monsters to trod the Earth. But who had heard of him before Schindler's List?
It's a good point, we forget how much of what happened there was 'classified' from the global public for so long.
For that matter though, I have always wondered WHY the Nazis kept records as well as they did, even to tattoo everybody with numbers, did they actually start the first ones at 01, 02, 03, etc., and work up, and if not, what was the purpose of the numbers?
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Post by lunda2222 on Mar 21, 2021 9:31:26 GMT
Nothing that's really scary as such. It's the present and the future that is scary, not the past.
I can be troubled by history in many ways, but not scared by it.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Mar 22, 2021 13:54:36 GMT
I've read a ton about the Holodomor, the Great Purges, the GULAG. It's out there. The Nazi camps do get more ink. A lot of that was the detailed bookkeeping the Nazi's did. All the records were found after the War and became public during the War Crimes trials. Of course, the true nature of the Soviet crimes did not come out until after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the records of the OPGU, NKVD and KGB were unsealed. And people can visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Dachau while no one can really tour the GULAG. And it depends of what narrative strikes the public fancy. Amon Goth was one of the biggest monsters to trod the Earth. But who had heard of him before Schindler's List?
It's a good point, we forget how much of what happened there was 'classified' from the global public for so long.
For that matter though, I have always wondered WHY the Nazis kept records as well as they did, even to tattoo everybody with numbers, did they actually start the first ones at 01, 02, 03, etc., and work up, and if not, what was the purpose of the numbers?
The Nazis were fanatical record keepers in every thing. I’m not 100% sure on the reasons for tattooing the numbers other than a permanent Identification. No matter how much you read about the camps, you can’t imagine the utter horror. My uncle served in 4th Armored and liberated a couple camp including Buchenwald. He seen the lampshades. One thing he told me that really stuck. He said that if you run across a skunk that has sprayed recently or been hit on the road and you get a huge whiff of the odor, you know what it must taste like. At Buchenwald, he knew what rotting human flesh tasted like because the smell was so overwhelming
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Post by hi224 on Mar 23, 2021 0:49:15 GMT
It's a good point, we forget how much of what happened there was 'classified' from the global public for so long.
For that matter though, I have always wondered WHY the Nazis kept records as well as they did, even to tattoo everybody with numbers, did they actually start the first ones at 01, 02, 03, etc., and work up, and if not, what was the purpose of the numbers?
The Nazis were fanatical record keepers in every thing. I’m not 100% sure on the reasons for tattooing the numbers other than a permanent Identification. No matter how much you read about the camps, you can’t imagine the utter horror. My uncle served in 4th Armored and liberated a couple camp including Buchenwald. He seen the lampshades. One thing he told me that really stuck. He said that if you run across a skunk that has sprayed recently or been hit on the road and you get a huge whiff of the odor, you know what it must taste like. At Buchenwald, he knew what rotting human flesh tasted like because the smell was so overwhelming have you read about the Jedwabne massacre? fascinating and horrifying.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Mar 23, 2021 1:01:20 GMT
The Nazis were fanatical record keepers in every thing. I’m not 100% sure on the reasons for tattooing the numbers other than a permanent Identification. No matter how much you read about the camps, you can’t imagine the utter horror. My uncle served in 4th Armored and liberated a couple camp including Buchenwald. He seen the lampshades. One thing he told me that really stuck. He said that if you run across a skunk that has sprayed recently or been hit on the road and you get a huge whiff of the odor, you know what it must taste like. At Buchenwald, he knew what rotting human flesh tasted like because the smell was so overwhelming have you read about the Jedwabne massacre? fascinating and horrifying. There were so many _____________ Massacres in WWII. Unfortunately, they tend to blend. Some (in)famous, Baba Yar, Oradour-sur-Glane, some not so. I just read about this one yesterday
The Russian finally turned up the traitor who did this and shot him in 1987.
For anyone who wants a good documentary on the horrors of WWII
A subseries of Indy Neidell's WWII day by day. Very well done. And YouTube is having problems with it because it's horrifying. No shit, it's supposed to horrify people. Those who forget history...
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 24, 2021 6:14:39 GMT
The Black Dahlia case is spooky as well as the Cleveland Torso Murders. That's really frightening to read about although I wonder how many of these notorious cases are exaggerated. I.e. I hear Bathory was disliked for some land acquisitions so who knows. Reading about the Roman Coliseum is disturbing. Claude Bernard is another really sick person-he experimented with curare and he marveled at how he could torture animals while conscious--he seemed to be excited by the fact that he could torture a victim who could feel but not do anything. His wife left him--a doctor reported that when he visited his lab, and saw the animals inside, he felt humans dhould could extinct if that was what was needed to avoid the torture he saw. Dresden is horrible especially since the firebombing has been dismissed--they dropped the official total from hundreds of thousands to 30 000. That was undoubtedly politically motivated. This is why I keep saying this is a tribal war carried out by propaganda--it's Orwell's observation on communism "all animals are created equal but some are more equal than others." Operation Keelhaul is another disturbing situation---where the people who fought against the Soviets were sent back to be murdered by them--and the Allied powers allowed it to happen. Nigel Nicolson, a former British Army captain, was Tolstoy's chief witness in the libel action brought by Lord Aldington. In 1995, he wrote: Fifty years ago I was a captain in the British Army, and with others I supervised the Jugoslav (Yugoslav) 'repatriation', as it was euphemistically called. We were told not to use force, and forbidden to inform them of their true destination. When they asked us where they were going, we replied that we were transferring them to another British camp in Italy, and they mounted the trains without suspicion. As soon as the sliding doors of the cattle-trucks were padlocked, our soldiers withdrew and Tito's partisans emerged from the station building where they had been hiding, and took over command of the train. The prisoners and refugees could see them through cracks in the boarding, and began hammering on the insides of the wagons, shouting abuse at us for having betrayed them, lied to them, and sentenced at least the men among them to a grotesque death. There is now no doubt about their hideous fate, and to those of us on the spot there was little doubt then. Shortly after the first trainloads had been despatched, we heard the stories of the few survivors who escaped back to Austria, and thousands of manacled skeletons have since been disinterred in Slovenian pits.[10] Ghinghis Guirey, an American on one of the repatriation screening teams, reported: The most unpleasant aspect of this unpleasant business was the fear these people displayed. Involuntarily one began to look over one's shoulder. I heard so many threats to commit suicide from people who feared repatriation that it became almost commonplace. And they were not fooling.[2] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II."[11] He contributed to a legal defense fund set up to help Tolstoy, who was charged with libel in a 1989 case brought by Lord Aldington over war crimes allegations made by Tolstoy related to this operation. Tolstoy lost the case in the British courts; he avoided paying damages by declaring bankruptcy. There's also reports about Soviet experimentation done in Estonia and Latvia--they had Chekist NKVD interrogators. These places are very strongly anti-globalist now-and you wonder why--because these communist torturers were torturing people whose offenses were things like singing the Latvian national anthem. This is why the communists---Bernie Sanders was proud of the USSR--so he was supporting all these atrocities--are not well regarded in these places. They are the enemy so they deserve to be killed. Someone singing the wrong anthem. There was an Estonian girl--a teenager, who destroyed a Soviet monument in the 1940s-I guess she would be called a racist bigot now for that.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Mar 24, 2021 15:47:50 GMT
The Black Dahlia case is spooky as well as the Cleveland Torso Murders. That's really frightening to read about although I wonder how many of these notorious cases are exaggerated. I.e. I hear Bathory was disliked for some land acquisitions so who knows. Reading about the Roman Coliseum is disturbing. Claude Bernard is another really sick person-he experimented with curare and he marveled at how he could torture animals while conscious--he seemed to be excited by the fact that he could torture a victim who could feel but not do anything. His wife left him--a doctor reported that when he visited his lab, and saw the animals inside, he felt humans dhould could extinct if that was what was needed to avoid the torture he saw. Dresden is horrible especially since the firebombing has been dismissed--they dropped the official total from hundreds of thousands to 30 000. That was undoubtedly politically motivated. This is why I keep saying this is a tribal war carried out by propaganda--it's Orwell's observation on communism "all animals are created equal but some are more equal than others." Operation Keelhaul is another disturbing situation---where the people who fought against the Soviets were sent back to be murdered by them--and the Allied powers allowed it to happen. Nigel Nicolson, a former British Army captain, was Tolstoy's chief witness in the libel action brought by Lord Aldington. In 1995, he wrote: Fifty years ago I was a captain in the British Army, and with others I supervised the Jugoslav (Yugoslav) 'repatriation', as it was euphemistically called. We were told not to use force, and forbidden to inform them of their true destination. When they asked us where they were going, we replied that we were transferring them to another British camp in Italy, and they mounted the trains without suspicion. As soon as the sliding doors of the cattle-trucks were padlocked, our soldiers withdrew and Tito's partisans emerged from the station building where they had been hiding, and took over command of the train. The prisoners and refugees could see them through cracks in the boarding, and began hammering on the insides of the wagons, shouting abuse at us for having betrayed them, lied to them, and sentenced at least the men among them to a grotesque death. There is now no doubt about their hideous fate, and to those of us on the spot there was little doubt then. Shortly after the first trainloads had been despatched, we heard the stories of the few survivors who escaped back to Austria, and thousands of manacled skeletons have since been disinterred in Slovenian pits.[10] Ghinghis Guirey, an American on one of the repatriation screening teams, reported: The most unpleasant aspect of this unpleasant business was the fear these people displayed. Involuntarily one began to look over one's shoulder. I heard so many threats to commit suicide from people who feared repatriation that it became almost commonplace. And they were not fooling.[2] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called this operation "the last secret of World War II."[11] He contributed to a legal defense fund set up to help Tolstoy, who was charged with libel in a 1989 case brought by Lord Aldington over war crimes allegations made by Tolstoy related to this operation. Tolstoy lost the case in the British courts; he avoided paying damages by declaring bankruptcy. There's also reports about Soviet experimentation done in Estonia and Latvia--they had Chekist NKVD interrogators. These places are very strongly anti-globalist now-and you wonder why--because these communist torturers were torturing people whose offenses were things like singing the Latvian national anthem. This is why the communists---Bernie Sanders was proud of the USSR--so he was supporting all these atrocities--are not well regarded in these places. They are the enemy so they deserve to be killed. Someone singing the wrong anthem. There was an Estonian girl--a teenager, who destroyed a Soviet monument in the 1940s-I guess she would be called a racist bigot now for that.
Many Soviet prisoners who were returned to the USSR by Keelhaul were traitors. The ROA, XV SS Cavalry Corps, made up of Cossacks, were turncoats who fought for the Germans after being captured on the Eastern Front. Had a bunch of American POW's captured at Bataan or Kasserine taken up arms for the Japanese or Germans and surrendered to the Red Army, would the US wanted them back? And what would have happened to them when they came back to the US? General Vlasov and the rest of the ROA were no better than Quisling or Petain.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 24, 2021 16:39:44 GMT
Many Soviet prisoners who were returned to the USSR by Keelhaul were traitors. The ROA, XV SS Cavalry Corps, made up of Cossacks, were turncoats who fought for the Germans after being captured on the Eastern Front. Had a bunch of American POW's captured at Bataan or Kasserine taken up arms for the Japanese or Germans and surrendered to the Red Army, would the US wanted them back? And what would have happened to them when they came back to the US? General Vlasov and the rest of the ROA were no better than Quisling or Petain.
It was already known that millions were killed in the USSR by 1940. The Red Terror of 1917. The Ukrainian famine.
Obviously there were many people who didn't want to be enslaved by the USSR because they believed in protecting their national heritages and they would fight with anyone who opposed that murderous regime.
Then there's the case of the German National Socialist who saved all those Chinese from being killed--that seems weird doesn't it? Why did he do that? They regard him as a saint in China for that.
Meanwhile we know that the Red Army killed some and blamed it on Germany--that's how devious and dishonorable they were.
The USSR didn't change after 1945--they still put people in prison or slave camps. There was no change. The Dalai Lama opposes communism--is he a traitor?
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Mar 24, 2021 16:48:35 GMT
Many Soviet prisoners who were returned to the USSR by Keelhaul were traitors. The ROA, XV SS Cavalry Corps, made up of Cossacks, were turncoats who fought for the Germans after being captured on the Eastern Front. Had a bunch of American POW's captured at Bataan or Kasserine taken up arms for the Japanese or Germans and surrendered to the Red Army, would the US wanted them back? And what would have happened to them when they came back to the US? General Vlasov and the rest of the ROA were no better than Quisling or Petain.
It was already known that millions were killed in the USSR by 1940. The Red Terror of 1917. The Ukrainian famine.
Obviously there were many people who didn't want to be enslaved by the USSR because they believed in protecting their national heritages and they would fight with anyone who opposed that murderous regime.
Then there's the case of the German National Socialist who saved all those Chinese from being killed--that seems weird doesn't it? Why did he do that? They regard him as a saint in China for that.
Meanwhile we know that the Red Army killed some and blamed it on Germany--that's how devious and dishonorable they were.
The USSR didn't change after 1945--they still put people in prison or slave camps. There was no change. The Dalai Lama opposes communism--is he a traitor?
To my knowledge, the Dalai Lama isn't a soldier in the People's Army
Not defending Stalin in any way, but the ROA et al were traitors. They betrayed one vile government to fight for another, that's true. Still using the example of American POW's fighting for Japan or Germany. We would have expected them to be returned to the US for trial and execution.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 24, 2021 17:13:37 GMT
To my knowledge, the Dalai Lama isn't a soldier in the People's Army
Not defending Stalin in any way, but the ROA et al were traitors. They betrayed one vile government to fight for another, that's true. Still using the example of American POW's fighting for Japan or Germany. We would have expected them to be returned to the US for trial and execution.
You cant be a traitor to the USSR if you are a native of the countries under Soviet occupation. It's an alien government. They imprisoned and killed large numbers of the native population--the majority ethnic heritages. Of course those people would oppose that--obviously they aren't going to be all saints. The fact remains the USSR powers were murdering people before Hitler and Mussolini and Franco were even names. They would make enemies.
At that time-the US government was assumed by most to be controlled by European people--not by hostile aliens with communist sympathies. The war was advertised for nationalist reasons--that if they didn't fight Germany every American would be speaking German. That was the propaganda. That Germany was going to put people to work and earning a $1 a day with water and bread to eat. Basically what was happening in the USSR with food shortages. People were starving at that time. It is clear based on Patton's diaries that he felt the US needed to rebuild the Germany army to use to fight the USSR .
The media in the US called Stalin "Uncle Joe" at a time when they knew full well what was happening in the USSR. Churchill basically gave the USSR a huge chunk of Eastern Europe. That was signing a death sentence for many people just as much as when he divided up the Middle East with arbitrary borders.
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Post by JHA Durant on Apr 1, 2021 9:48:17 GMT
The Beast of Gévaudan. A massive animal of vague description which is believed to have killed over 600 people over a three year period in southern France during the 1760s. Preferring humans over livestock, it would kill lone men, women and children who were tending to their animals. When it was finally killed, its body was put on display and went on tours throughout France and Europe. It has to be said that although there's been animal attacks of note throughout history, such as the Tsavo lions, there has never been anything quite on the same level as the Beast of Gévaudan in the centuries since. No traces of the Beast remain, which is a shame considering the DNA technologies of today would've determined exactly what it was. Was it just a very large vicious dog, a lion or hyena, a bona fide Werewolf, or something truly otherworldly?
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Post by theravenking on Apr 8, 2021 9:15:42 GMT
What I find scary is how commonplace cruelty, torture and rape used to be for a large part of human history. Soldiers often behaved like wild animals by raping, pilfering and mindlessly destroying anything they came across. It used to be normal to show no compassion whatsoever towards your "enemy".
And I fear that we could fall back to those times again. Our modern sensibilities, our morality is a luxury and I sometimes wonder how long we will be able to afford it.
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Post by twothousandonemark on Apr 9, 2021 4:36:04 GMT
What I find scary is how commonplace cruelty, torture and rape used to be for a large part of human history. Soldiers often behaved like wild animals by raping, pilfering and mindlessly destroying anything they came across. It used to be normal to show no compassion whatsoever towards your "enemy". And I fear that we could fall back to those times again. Our modern sensibilities, our morality is a luxury and I sometimes wonder how long we will be able to afford it. Alas, that's still more commonplace than ppl want to believe. As is slavery.
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