Auschwitz Remembered.

[Theland]

Will we remember?
Sufficiently?

[scorpiojo]

:-)

[Peter Pedant]

// It's just a different aspect to the Auschwitz story. I think Alf died in 2005.//
the allies made if very clear that if POWs ended up in concentration camps, they would shoot those involved

Alfs story is unclear- as an enemy combattant he would know he could not assist the German war effort without risking a court martial on liberation ....(English see)
and loss of his pension rights. ( Kings Regulations)

nonetheless in the chaotic conditions in 1945, the survivors of the Great Escape were to be found ins Saxenhausen and a few others in Mauthausen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration_camp#Liberation_and_post-war_heritage

scroll down to liberation s4
the banner in thpanith - saludan las furezas che liberan etc
was sewn by some really unlucky international brigade deportados
who had gone form Bargelona/burgos into France and were interned 1936, by Laval probably ( only prime minister to be shot for treason), further interned by the Vichy govt., 1940 and were found by the Germans after their occupation of the south in 1943 and taken off to Mauthausen to be liberated by the americans in 1945

Lest we forget - or never knew in the first place

[emmie]

We need to - to stop it from ever happening again.

[waterboatman]

I visited Belsen concentration camp when I was stationed in Germany, equally horrible.

[emmie]

i sometimes wish i could attend but realise it would be too much.

[waterboatman]

At Belsen, it is quiet, flowers don't grow, only grass and trees, birds don't fly over it, they fly round it. There are big, square mounds of grass with a small bronze plaque with 5ooo

[emmie]

same as Auschwitz, nothing grows, no birds according to the BBC report.. eerie.

[waterboatman]

When I was stationed in Germany, I visited Belsen concentration camp.
There a huge square mounds of earth covered with grass, each one has a small bronze plaque with '5000 buried here' another will have '10,000 buried here etc. Birds don't fly over it, they fly round it. flowers don't grow, only grass and trees. It is absolutely silent.

[waterboatman]

That first one disappeared!

[emmie]

truly horrific.

[waterboatman]

Indeed it is emmie. Mans inhumanity to man.

[emmie]

from a so called civilised society as well, it's mind boggling.

[waterboatman]

There was nothing civilised about the nazis

[emmie]

nor the millions who followed them.

[waterboatman]

They thought it was OK to rape girls as young as 12 in Poland.

[emmie]

that's horrendous, along with the experiments on children and adults by the German doctors like Mengele

[waterboatman]

Indeed.

[emmie]

i have watched footage from the death camps and can't get my head around the sheer scale of these places and the death and misery created.