Snarkpit Forum Index » General Banter » When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
1
Post Reply
Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by satchmo on Fri Nov 4th at 3:58pm 2005

After a run of frivolity in the forum, it's time for something more serious. . .

This is an excerpt from an article in the Los Angeles Times. It's a reminder to all of us what we are capable of as humans.

-----

In March 1943 he left for a year of training in Georgia, then boarded a British ship for Europe. He saw comrades fall to German attacks as they pushed through France and Germany. But nothing had prepared him for Ebensee, the brutal sub-camp of Mauthausen.

"We had never even heard about the concentration camps until a few weeks before the war ended, when I read in the Stars and Stripes [the U.S. military newspaper] about one of the camps, maybe Bergen-Belsen, and how the American [soldiers] were running into this."

His reconnaissance unit was patrolling "a beautiful little town" in the Austrian Alps, with roads flanked by forests and lakes. Another unit had spotted the camp, two miles from town up a mountain road. Persinger was dispatched to check it out and report back.

He rolled his tank up to the compound's barbed-wire gates. Inside, thousands of people ? dressed in rags, looking more dead than alive ? were "milling around like bees," he said.

"We stopped and peered down in amazement. We couldn't believe what we were seeing." There were "dead bodies scattered here and there, all over the ground." Thousands of inmates surged forward, as thin as skeletons, shivering in filthy, striped pajamas. "Some just wore the tops, some the pants, some had no clothes at all, standing ankle-deep in mud," he recalled.

The German camp commanders had deserted and left elderly Austrian civilians in charge. Persinger emerged from his tank, snatched a rifle from one of the guards, broke it over the turret of his tank and hung it over a lamppost beside the gate.

"It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing," he said. "It brought on such a roar; it was pandemonium?. The prisoners surrounded us, dirty, open sores all over them, loaded with lice.

"I'd seen death before, but nothing like that. I remember thinking: If everybody could see this, there wouldn't be nothing like wars anymore. To treat human beings like that ? I couldn't have imagined."

In the crematorium ? which had operated around the clock, turning hundreds of corpses each day to ash ? they found bodies stacked along a wall, 400 or more, waiting to be burned.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by pepper on Fri Nov 4th at 4:13pm 2005

Reminds me of the Band of Brothers episode - Why we fight

Shocking, but there is even worse, Stalin already managed to kill more in the goelags, but Mao even went above that.




RUST Gamedesign
pepper design

The strength of the turbulence is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by Underdog on Fri Nov 4th at 4:25pm 2005

STOP POSTING THIS s**t.

(whispers) Someone has way to much time on their hands. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_lol.gif">

Dammit, can't you post some good rice recipes or something equally important for a change. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">

I am about to go get some new tires so I'll have to wait to read this fully.




There is no history until something happens, then there is.



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by Andrei on Fri Nov 4th at 4:37pm 2005

I can't see why you found this particular story so impressive when there are countless others more horrible than any sane person could imagine. I could start with Mengele's children and Dachau...




Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Fri Nov 4th at 5:06pm 2005

Pepper, I'm not aware of the number of people Stalin and Mao killed... what are the numbers on that?

And I agree, there are some really shocking and terrible stories involving the holocaust. I went to DC to visit the Holocaust Museum and I suggest you visit it if you're ever in the DC area. It's not an easily forgettable experience.




Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by Nickelplate on Fri Nov 4th at 5:21pm 2005

the holocaust is made up by Jews because they are trying to take over the world.

HAHAHA that's the most retarded thing i've ever heard, but i know some ppl who think that.

It was a very horrible time for everyone. I don't know how I'm really supposed to respond to your post... over half of me is sorry we killed the Jews, and about 16th of me is angry that we were persecuted...




I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by satchmo on Fri Nov 4th at 5:25pm 2005

I was at Terenzin, the concentration camp North of Prague, a few years ago. I have witnessed evidence of atrocity first-hand.

image

But this story still impressed me, even on an ordinary morning like this.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by KoRnFlakes on Fri Nov 4th at 5:45pm 2005

Most of those sorts of things went on in austria, they would go through as many jews as they could until they achieved things such as counterfeit british notes to break our economy (which they later became so greedy about - they kept themselves)

Afaik lots of the hitler youth places were in austrian alps etc also, and they were encouraged to go to the jewish concentration camps to belittle them & order them for the experience (these are kids remember, some of them have never lost memories of jews being killed in front of them)

The sad truth is, most of these kids were so indoctrinated with hitlers views they took them seriously enough to not give in where adults did, as germany fell, many of the elder germans gave themselves up. But due to the false beliefs of these little children they actually hated the adults for giving in, it was told you were not allowed to do such things.

The russians of course had to kill children as young as like 8 because of it. The moral of the story being, our education system isn't -that- bad



My Pit



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by pepper on Fri Nov 4th at 8:04pm 2005

I do not have excat figures but i know in the time that stalin industrialized Russia 20 million russians found the death, not to little i'd say. Mao(Chinese revolution) even went higher, dozen million above it. Again, i have no excate figures yet.


RUST Gamedesign
pepper design

The strength of the turbulence is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.



Quote
 Re: When Ignorance and Hatred Run Amok
Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sat Nov 5th at 1:05am 2005

Yeah, I think what makes the Holocaust so terrible was the fact that it was a systematic, organized, mass-genocide.





1
Post Reply