Auschwitz - 80 years since it was liberated. Have any lessons been learnt?

[cakeorwine]

On Monday 27th Jan, it will be 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated by Russian soldiers.

Despite the Nazis best efforts to destroy evidence, Auschwitz is a haunting place to visit. You can see the rooms with human hair in, the suitcases, the shoes. The cells where people were forced to stand and starved. The gallows. The gas chambers and the crematoria. The railway line and the platform where people were divided into those who would enter Auschwitz and those who would walk to the gas chambers.

1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz including 1 million Jews.

Others were forced into slave labour and to live in horrendous conditions.

The commander lived very near the camp - and was hanged several years afterwards near the gas chambers.

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8x195dnlro

Have we learnt anything? There seems more division, more hate, more othering.

There are lessons from history about the rise of the Nazis and what led up to the concentration camps and the Holocaust.

@travelodge - it refers to the destruction, or "death", pf a group of people:

According to Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Yes, I know. I’ve read it. But if all it means is killing members of an ethnic or national or religious group, with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, that group, presumably it applies to the October 23 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Sadly it seems that anti-semitism only had a short reprieve and it’s alive and kicking again. Horrific.

@travelodge - possibly yes. Many people have already suggested it does.

I'm now watching the service and I've asked Wilf to watch too.
Without me saying anything he has changed his FB profile and cover photos to WHD pictures... I'm very proud of him.
It is so important that the next generation are taught...

Really? I hadn’t heard that. Certainly the UN doesn’t seem to think so.

The man speaking now Auschwitz is talking about the current gradual sweep of hatred against Jews. The Jews he said in many countries around the world currently in fear at university campuses, in places like London where they are unable to walk freely (told to stay away during marches) the rise of anti semitism online and in everyday life. It began slowly he said, it grew until the killing of millions of Jews. He was and is right. Its uncomfortable but he is right.

There was no systematic destruction with Hamas, it was a terrorist attack. What Israel is doing in return is genocide.

No OP the world hasn't learnt a fucking thing.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

@travelodge - a complaint has been lodged with the ICC. This is just Wiki but gives an overview of some of the discourse. Allegations of genocide in the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel - Wikipedia

He is now talking about the chants of 'globalise the intifada'. We see those chants on our streets here. Are we silent to them? What does that chant mean, death to Jews.

It doesn't mean Israel can do as they like. It means we are listening and watching similar creeping hatred against Jews. No hatred to any people should be tolerated.

Not really. I suspect we are in technological state where we could actually manage to eliminate a racial or religious group effectively. The Nazis had to hide it; I suppose that requirement would still exist in a nominal democracy.

But when you are killing your own people democracy doesn't really figure. You'll always need an authority to decide who is worth keeping alive. They don't like votes.

The founding charter of Hamas, which they have never repudiated, called for the death of all Jews.

The Geneva Convention isn't some kind of immutable eternal truth - it's changed a fair bit over the years. Even at the time the genocide clause was drafted there was acknowledgement that while people feel they know genocide when they see it, as it were, it's something very difficult to define. This difficulty was compounded by the increased global incidence of civil war in the post-colonial aftermath of WWII.

I don't know that any agreement can cover the many grotesque permutations of civilian destruction that are part and parcel of industrial warfare. Almost certainly the firebombing of Germany and Japan and the atomic bombing of Japan would be war crimes under the 1948 version, for example.

Ultimately the real question for politicians of other countries evaluating any kind of state mediated violence aka war is : should we - under all the circumstances including our own nation's interests - move to action? The Convention is better than having no guidance at all but it's far from the whole story.

You won't ever eliminate hatred. You can only make it difficult to grow. Happy societies have less of it

The old lady crying... 😢 😢 😢 😢 😢 😢 😢 😢
Lovely to see and hear the applause for Zlensky. ♥️ ♥️ ♥️

Zelensky eh. Leader of the only country in the world to have actual self-declared Nazi battalions on its army payroll.

Yes. I hope you are getting big roubles

US Democrats say Azov is a foreign terrorist organisation. Are they Russian propagandists too? These guys have swastikas on their helmets and recruit international mercenaries across far right neo nazi networks.

Big roubles for the new posters

Interesting to hear that Charles is the first British Monarch to visit Auschwitz.

I wonder how many political leaders have visited there. Properly visiting. Walking round, listening to what happened and not rushing.

I feel that anti-semitism is on the rise. As a person who's mother is half jewish but not religious, I am the one who looks "most jewish" in terms of my appearance & I get asked my race/ethnicity on a regular basis.

Whilst I don't agree with what is happening in Palestine at all, I don't disclose my heritage, only to friends as I am afraid that the current levels of anti-semitism are very concerning & could lead to a repeat of the holocaust in some form.

The only thing that will work IMHO is a 2 state solution, otherwise the same conflict will keep on going round in circles.

@cakeorwine I was surprised to hear that no other British monarch has visited there.

this x a million