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Why didn't the Allies bomb Auschwitz

271 replies

Gwenick · 23/01/2005 12:34

Just read this link

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4175045.stm

It's all very well asking now - "should we have bombed it" - but then what would we be saying if we HAD - it would probably be something along the lines - of "OMG look how many innocent Jews we killed trying to 'save' them".

What about those Jews who survived, and have gone to on to get married and have children, or those that survived and were reunited with family members?? How would the families feel now if we'd bombed them?? I don't think it would have helped bombing them - the Nazi's would only have found somewhere/somehow else to persecute the Jews.

Opinions please (nice controversial one for a Sunday afternoon ;-)

OP posts:
Casmie · 29/01/2005 15:34

Um... yes Gwenwick - I know. I'm against ID cards.

But that is what you are accused of being if you oppose them. Just like if you oppose Margaret Hodge's database you "must" be on the side of child abusers.

Gwenick · 29/01/2005 15:35

oh I'm sorry didn't quite understand the comments I shut up now

OP posts:
Moomina · 29/01/2005 15:35

I think that comment about ID cards was meant to be ironic, Gwenick.

Moomina · 29/01/2005 15:37

Sorry, x-posted.

Gwenick · 29/01/2005 15:37

moomina - I understand that now - I hadn't read all of the comments properly..........mind you I was told the other day not to try and write 'irony' in written word as it doesn't come out well.....perhaps others should heed the warning given to me

OP posts:
twiglett · 29/01/2005 15:40

Oh F' off Gwenick

Gwenick · 29/01/2005 15:41

Isn't it sad when people have to resort to swearing and calling people names (racist, antsemite, holocause denier etc etc) to try and get their point across???

OP posts:
Casmie · 29/01/2005 15:45

Was about to respond LOL to your 'irony' comment, Gwenwick

Casmie · 29/01/2005 15:47

Sorry, twig - but I think Gwenick's misreading of my post is the sort of thing I would do too... (recovering from the 'flu at the moment and not firing on all cylinders)

Moomina · 29/01/2005 15:48

Oh, come on, Twig. Gwenick's grasp of irony might be lacking but that's totally unnecessary.

Casmie · 29/01/2005 15:50

Incidentally, although I didn't understand Gwenick's original irony, I think this thread has been fab - a good debate on a sensitive topic. I don't think anyone has said that we shouldn't honour the jewish dead, but that we should also remember the other victims (of course, there has been debate on the proportions etc - but I've found that very interesting).

What would be truly anti-semitic (sp?) would be to deny the Holocaust happened at all or to try and stop discussion of it. Surely, by having this debate then we're keeping the event firmly in the present mind and can help in preventing similar happening again? (well, one can be but optimistic)

edam · 29/01/2005 16:12

Satine, I watched Farenheit 911 the other night and although Michael Moore can be accused of over-simplifying, it is true that recruits to the US army are kids from desperately poor areas. They join because a. there are no jobs and b. the Army promises to pay for their university education. Otherwise they couldn't go to university, full stop.
So the poor are pressed into the army though lack of opportunity and then are sent to oppress other poor people...

Caligula · 29/01/2005 16:32

I thought some of them looked like they belonged in school as well, they were so young.

suedonim · 29/01/2005 21:24

I'm amazed there has been such a muted response in the media to the House Arrest proposals, which will also apparently be applicable to the detainee's family, if necessary. The govt was told that imprisoning foreigners without trial is against their human rights so their resposnse is to infringe everybody's human rights. I feel a visceral disgust at this proposal, the same as I feel about ID cards. I agree that it's a steady chip, chip, chipping away of our liberty.

Satine · 30/01/2005 17:53

Edam, I found your comment that US soldiers are sent to countries to "slaughter and torture the people who live there" very offensive and sensationalist. Of course many innocent civilians have lost their lives and I am the last one to justify Bush's decision to go to war but only a very small minority of the hundreds of thousands of coalition troops have been involved in any kind of torture. And as for dismissing US soldiers as poor, desparate people who will take any way out to get an education, you are doing a disservice to the many proud and dedicated men and women, some of whom I have worked with. It's a big generalistaion and Michael Moore specialises in the red-top version of television. You might as well quote the News of The World.

edam · 30/01/2005 17:57

Sabine, war is slaughter, by definition. And the troops didn't torture people because they felt like it, there were clearly orders from the top. But the people at the top don't carry the can.

Caligula · 30/01/2005 18:25

Also, we don't know how many people were involved in torture.

Don't suppose they've kept records.

And torture takes lots of forms - the stuff that we've seen which they were stupid and wierd enough to photograph, is at one end of the spectrum, but what about the lower end stuff like beating the crap out of someone for not moving out of your way fast enough, or not allowing a prisoner to go to the loo for hours, that doesn't get photographed and doesn't get documented? We simply don't know what's gone on - that's one of the features of war.

louise1974 · 30/01/2005 19:24

I wasn't going to comment at all on this thread but having read this whole thread I've just got to say Iam appalled at Gwenick and can totally understand twiglets frustration resulting in swearing.
It is my opinion from reading this whole thread that gwenick is an outright racist, I feel sick to my stomach about her comments on "the jew" in her family.
What an appalling self righteous woman.
Sorry if I have offended anyone else by speaking out but she has made me so angry.

piffle · 30/01/2005 20:19

red top or not satine, they are facts that Michael Moore works with!

And as for frustration and reaction on part of some mners, I think it can be presumed fairly easily that irony and humour in a thread about the holocaust really do not work...

NotQuiteCockney · 30/01/2005 20:29

I'm leftist. I agree with Michael Moore's points, generally. Really.

But I'm not sure he works with facts. He's forever stretching the truth or spinning things. I would certainly not rely on his work as fact.

I saw him live a few years back, and I remember someone in the crowd asking him, how much was he getting to do the show? (cute, using his own techniques on him) He said, his guarantee was £100 per night, or something, implying that was how much he was making, total. When, really, I'm sure that was how much he was guaranteed to make, if nobody bought any tickets. (It was at the Camden Roundhouse, and the place was full.)

NotQuiteCockney · 30/01/2005 20:30

Oh, but I do agree that most people join the US army out of lack of other opportunities.

Blu · 30/01/2005 21:20

Something which leads to the destruction of innocent humans at the hands of people with power is total horror, per se. No memorial would suffice to express our sorrow or shame of the .Jewish dead, nor the other victims of Hitler and the nazis.

I am very uncomfortable with any comparisons of 'scale'. 400 years of slavery, the holocaust, rwanda, all with their own lists of individual lives lost or llived in terror and agony. But all with their own particular circumstances and legacies and, for us lesssons into things gone wrong, things left ignored and unchallenged.

My aunt, as a young child, was put on a train out of Austria without her parents and made the loneliest journey to England which left her as one of the few members of her family to escape the gas chambers. Within a year of the end of the war her older sister was chased by youths shouting 'jew, jew' along a railway embankment in the Midlands. They raped her, and within another year she was dead, nobody knows why, but my aunt has always believed it was shock and despair.

My aunt puts some of her life into helping people who are refugees, poor, under-educated or disabled. She does not make a hierarchy of suffering, and never makes reference to her own background. Not ever.

For myself, no amount of trouble we take to look at what happened is too much, or' biased,' because the awfulness of it is total, per se. But in terms of circumstances and learning from it, we must give Hitlers genocide of the jewish people our complete scrutiny. For a start, some people who took part, (and more , I hope, who survived) are still alive.

The discussions and revelations about missed, lost or dodged opportunities to put a stop to what was happening are new to me - and miles from the version of the WW2 that was taught in my O level years. But even then, as the spirit of Vera Lynn was invoked , I could still picture those youths running along the embankment shouting' jew jew'.

tamum · 30/01/2005 21:34

That's an incredible post Blu. Utterly sobering.

lisalisa · 31/01/2005 12:18

Message withdrawn

Blu · 31/01/2005 12:40

Deep respect lisalisa.

Actually, my own breath has been taken away by friends, colleagues, and as I said below family members, who have used the atrocities of murderous discrimination agianst their families or people to ensure that they are never, in the slightest sense, guilty of the same discrimination. I have experienced warmth and generosity of older people, making a home here after the war, (even when directly affected by hate crimes) and have worked alongside colleagues who would never in a million years have acted other than 'equal opportunities' in a job recruitment situation.