Holocaust remembrance Day.

[Drabarni]

To want to draw your attention to this, if you are unaware, of course.

We know that approx 6,000,000 Jews were killed during the holocaust, just murdered for their race.
I would like to point out that other groups shouldn't be forgotten or glossed over because of the sheer numbers of murdered Jews.
The disabled, homosexual, anyone who didn't fit with Hitler's ideal.

With the rise of Neo Natziism, anti semitism and racism throughout Europe and the US, we can't afford for this to take hold again.

The atrocities weren't a result of the second world war, it was a systematic plan starting from the early 30's in Germany.

Another group affected were Roma, it's suggested that more than a quarter of European Roma were targeted, even Britain, but thankfully they were thwarted.

I'm aware of this as I am Romany/Jewish, but realise that I wouldn't, if I didn't actively seek the information.

www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/docs/paper9.shtml

You don't have to answer the questions and

@MrsBrentford that was me!

The mothers I spoke to believed it was a kind of survivors guilt but there's actually been some research into transmission of trauma which obviously affects mental health eg

www.scientificamerican.com/article/descendants-of-holocaust-survivors-have-altered-stress-hormones/

Thanks @GrimDamnFanjo

Thank you for starting this thread OP

The majority of my Grandma’s family were wiped out in WWII - they were Polish Roman Catholics, and some of them part of the resistance movement in their little town.

We should remember all of them.

One of the most telling facts about the depth of ignorance over the Holocaust’s Roma victims is that over seven decades later, scholars still can’t agree on the death toll. Yad Vashem, Israel’s premiere Holocaust museum and research center, estimates that about 200,000 Roma and Sinti were killed, while the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum puts the number at “up to 250,000.” Both museums acknowledge that their numbers are approximates at best, with other estimates closer to 500,000. What is certain is that their deaths were every bit as premeditated and every bit as horrific as that of the Jews

The infamous Nuremberg Laws, which institutionalized the persecution of Germany’s Jews based on race, were also applied to the Roma, who were determined to be “racially inferior” and “parasitic” peoples, just like Jews. In concentration camps, the Roma were subjected to slave labor, starvation and ultimately death. The Nazis also used Roma for horrendous medical experiments in the camps. And those exterminated in the camp system are only a percentage of the total victims. Close to 40 percent of Jews killed in the Holocaust were massacred in the forests and fields of Eastern Europe; untold numbers of Roma met the same fate

The above extract was from an article entitled:
Auschwitz's 75th liberation anniversary is a warning: Not all Nazi victims are remembered equally by Lev Golinkin

The freemasons were also targeted...

I don't understand why anyone has voted YABU.

Look at our current headlines on the front of the mail and express, blaming immigrants for every thing that is wrong and compare them to the demonisation of Jews and other groups before and during WW2. It's the same. It's propaganda. It's not okay.

Black and mixed race people were persecuted too. There was a BBC docu in 1997, Hitler's forgotten victims.

Thank you for the comments.
Totally agree with those adding other groups too, and thank you.
I didn't know about Freemasons.

Hefzi I can't quite remember which it was but I read that a whole tribe with their own language were just wiped off the face of the earth. I know I have it in notes somewhere.
Roma tend to keep themselves private and are suspicious of the gaugi, they don't trust authority because they have usually been unkind to them, or so they believed. It's still the case in some places, but the English/UK Romany are different to European Roma in some respects.
It's true that we never learn though, it's appalling what is happening to Roma throughout Europe atm, it's really scary.

The film, where hands touch, tells the story of a mixed race girl growing up in Germany, under Nazi rule.

Are you aware if what happened when the camps were liberated? They let the prisoners do what they wanted in the neighbouring towns and villages.

That included, murder, violence, rape, including child rapes and other crimes. We then systematically starved the German people to death. Of course the death toll was the highest for children under 7 and women. We didn't discriminate based on how a region voted. So we even punished those who had voted against the Nazi party.

You talk about the rise in Right Wing groups, but we (UK) don't care about the death toll we've caused over the last few years by our military help given to various regimes.

The Torys don't care about the death toll caused by Austerity. Nor does anyone who voted for them.

I see you mention Europe, isn't India, Africa and the Middle East under threat from Radical Muslims and ultimately all of us?

Yes, the plans were set quite early on in Germany, but no one cared when the Jews were being kicked to death in the streets. We all happily got on board with that. Even the Roma.

It would be nice to think we could identify who could do such things, but we can't, because they are our neighbours, Co workers, friends and family.

The lynching of black people in the US, into the 70's show us that.

"I read that a whole tribe with their own language were just wiped off the face of the earth."

It wasn't the first time in history that had happened. Every group of people have been responsible for ethnic cleansing.

Its beyond belief tbh that anyone has voted YABU

Hand slipped, newb who doesn't know about voting, person thinks voting on something like this is distasteful... there could be a host of reasons.

As someone with Polish ancestry, 'it must never happen again' rings very hollow when you see the propaganda in the press.

Concentration Camps were a British idea ... Kitchener put all the boer children and wives and black people opposed to the British in camps ... it was a large factor in why the war was won.

It was the first time that there were displaced people ... former inmates had nowhere to go and no home or refuge. It was an incredibly systematic way of decimating a group of people.

It didn’t stop or came to an end because of any other action than the fact that the Germans were afraid of the invading army ... they knew what they were doing was evil and still they did it.

It is happening today on a regular basis and no one actually does anything - we just reward them with contracts and turn a blind eye ..

Mrs Brentford The suicide thing is to do with “intergenerational trauma“ and “epigenetics” which are things I only heard of it recently and ended up down a Google rabbit hole about it.

@GrimDamnFanjo

Thank you for posting that link. It's a fascinating read. I'm the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor. Similarly, I've read that the slave trade has also affected further generations of afro Caribbean people in many ways too.

YANBU. It bothers me that people are so unaware that the Roma and disabled were also murdered.

I think that public perception of the Roma and the disabled today would be totally different if it was widely known that they had also been victims.

How would public perception be different do you think?

Well, for a start, people might not be so damn eager to share stuff on facebook about "gypsies" stealing children. General casual slurs about "gypsies" would be considered on par with casual anti-semitic slurs.

There is a hierarchy of prejudice, and which groups are supposedly acceptable targets. Currently, people who wouldn't dare make cracks about Jews or black people think it's open season on people from Eastern Europe and "gypsies". Many people have never got that racial prejudice is wrong; they have merely learnt that some groups are off-limits.

Similarly, if there was awareness of T4 (the phase focusing on the elimination of disabled people), people today would have a much more visceral reaction to media coverage demonising them.as spongers. The media would never have got going with painting disability benefits as easy-to-get, because it wouldn't have sold papers. They'd have picked on another group instead.

I think people forget or don't know that Romany, Gypsy and Irish travellers are considered a race.
Even though different groups they have their own identity, social norms, culture and belief.
Antigypsyism is a thing and whilst it's being tackled, which is brilliant, so many aren't aware.
Here's a link to just some of what will hopefully make a difference.
As well as people in the UK being made aware through education.

www.enar-eu.org/Antigypsyism-64

@JamieVardysHavingAParty from what I understand, the disabled were one of the first groups to be persecuted by the nazis because of the crazy doctors obsessed with eugenics and the “master race”
Started out slowly by shoving those unable to care for themselves in mental hospitals etc and carrying out sterilisation on them, and then moving on to killing them and informing the families of “death by natural causes”

Concentration camps were not just British - the American Civil War used them, (Andersonville Camp Sumpter) and after Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 over 46.000 indigenous people were forcibly removed. It's said that Hitler was inspired by the "reservations" Then there are the appalling Japanese war crimes, which are never thought of - it just goes on and on and on. Every time I see "never forget" I think - it's too late

ThePolishWombat

I am so sorry for your grandparents family . I believe from extensive study that Romany were targeted as early as 1933, they were considered as lower than Jews, if that could be possible, it beggars belief. I don't know about other groups.
I think this can be a problem with education of the Holocaust, there are so many groups who rightly need to be remembered, they tend to be reported in isolation.
There again the answer isn't to lump them all together.
On August 2nd I know that Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia and recently the UK mark this day for remembrance because of the mainly women and children murdered in 1944.

The British did not invent concentration camps. The Spanish used them in Cuba at the end of the 19th century. Violence and cruelty have been part of human history as long as records exist. We need to remember in order to remain vigilant against any who regard fellow humans as lesser.

Thanks drabarni- I'm afraid I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that. I must make the effort to read much more about it - I wonder, being itinerant and possibly more reliant on an oral tradition rather than written records too (if that was even the case - I'm just extrapolating from what I know about similar societies) has contributed to the difficulty identifying those who perished?

I agree that people from Romany/Gypsy/Traveller origins face discrimination today - in the UK and Ireland, but across Europe also - that is incredibly mainstream especially in so-called liberal circles. I've seen appalling things posted on MN that simply wouldn't be countenanced about other races. I think it's perhaps right that they aren't identified as being a separate race, and people justify it that way to the themselves.

Iirc, there was another poster who did an AMA on being Romany - it was fascinating, and I remember her being extremely patient with and gracious to some right halfwits...