Jerry Springer . . . Is ENGLISH by birth?! Who Do You Think You Are?

[expatinscotland]

OMG!

I had NO idea.

He was born in London, the son of two German Jewish refugees.

There was so much propaganda at a time when there was little access to world news that Hitler found it easy to make Jews, Gays, Romany and Mentally ill people as sub-human to ordinary Germans.

There was so much propaganda at a time when there was little access to world news that Hitler found it easy to make Jews, Gays, Romany and Mentally ill people as sub-human to ordinary Germans.

There was so much propaganda at a time when there was little access to world news that Hitler found it easy to make Jews, Gays, Romany and Mentally ill people as sub-human to ordinary Germans.

It's just so horrifying. For all the 'we must remember' and 'never again' it is so close to the surface.

oh sorry. laptop went a bit mad there.

Makes my post look like propaganda. weird.

I've often wondered how it must feel to visit the former ghettos and concentration camps knowing that the people who committed genocide came from the nearby town or even are still living there?

If you have a dc doing GCSEs then they are likely to have studied thisChinua Achebe poem.

i cried watching those children play on toys and equipment in those propoganda films for those ghettos.

knowing they were forced to do that.

and that only 1,600 out of 10,000 children deported to the one where his paternal grandmother died survived the Holocaust.

Can remember writing a 16 sided close lined A Level history essay on The Treatment of the Jews. Was told to do it because I was one of only 3 non-Jewish students in the class & had to present it to them, some who had lost relatives in the Holocaust. Hardest essay I ever worked on.

Wonderful poem Heated.

Thank you

The first one to make me cry. It too struck me again as it does anytime I see anything about real people at that time, how recent it was. How horrific. How can humans do that? And as he rightly pointed out just people, not Hitler or other high up people, people that whould have been normal everyday people beforehand. I must stop dwelling

OldestCat, that was why I said about programmes such as these being used to teach history - when Jerry wondered about the ordinary soldiers, the ones pictured with that line of children, very chilling. Never mind about Hitler being called evil, what about them?

Knowing that those children were to die. What kind of person could do that?

This programme made be cry too. When we were children our friends lived in Prague and we spent the summer at their house. We visited Terezin concentration camp and it has left a lasting memory with me.

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Not just soldiers - all the ordinary people who moved into the apartments 'vacated' by jews, or became the new 'owners' of their things. The Gestapo listed all Jerry's gran's possessions even down to her bloody underwear - who got it? Did they ever think about the poor woman it had been stolen from?

Even the people who weren't directly involved in the death camps can't have been completely untouched by it. What the hell was going through THEIR minds?

Yeah, like when Jerry was talking to his first cousin, Erika, about her school years. When she said people started to call her names and he said, 'The other kids?' And she said, 'Even the teachers.'

WTF.

She was 10 years old.

The thing that worries me most is perhaps it is too easy for people to dehumanise each other. Maybe that's how it happened - people no longer thought of the Jews as human. . . .

I hope I'm wrong.

I dunno, the way some people talk about gipsies, for instance. We have the seeds of it right here right now.

my dad went on a german exchange in the late 50's, the parents of the family he stayed with said they were very suspicious of what was going on but no-one dared ask questions because if they did they were pretty certain what would happen to them.

My german friends grandfather was imprisoned for the entire war and had all his property/belongings/money taken from him because at some point several years previously been a member of the communist party in Germany.

I think many of the "ordinary" germans were living in fear too by the time they worked out what a mistake it was for Hitler to be in power.

What a moving program that was and the ending I thought was most poignant with Jerry discovering a side to his family he never knew he had. On one side he lost a family and another he gained. A beautiful uplifting ending.
I have a huge interest in this and have visited Auschwitz and read loads on this. The horrors stayed with me for days after leaving Auschwitz when I got home, but I was glad I went and will take my children one day.
Interesting to hear about the ordinary Germans as well and their role in all this, so often you were the phrase 'they did not know it was going on' but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

cargirl, of course the Germans would deny knowing any thing. There is plenty of evidence that the Jews were despised in the main as a result of Goebels incredibly efficient propoganda and the willingness of the German people to believe him.

I suppose one thing you can say is that from the responses to this is the Holocaust is still very much alive in people's thoughts.

And that can only be a good thing.

I didn't say they denied it, they didn't have concrete proof - they had suspiscions they were also very frightened about what would happen to them if they tried to do anything about it. Who were they going to go to - United Nations?

What would you do if your dc life was on the line if you tried to do something about it?

I don't think it's that easy to excuse ordinary people, tbh. What about the schoolfriends and teachers around Springer's cousin who were calling her names and treating her badly? These were teachers and children who KNEW her. What about the customers of the shoe shop? They knew their local shopkeeper.

I agree Cargirl.

I have no doubt that the majority of German people feel guilt for what happened in their motherland.