skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Gruesome
Autumn is not my favourite season, watching the evenings draw in, noticing the drop in temperatures (never too warm up here at any rate, although I'm not complaining). I like the autumn colours, but you have to be quick to see them. One gale, and all the coloured leaves are gone.
Autumn contains a black day on the historical calendar, November 9th. On that day, now 69 years ago, Hitler's thugs went on the rampage on the streets of Germany to destroy anything Jewish they could find. I can't even remember the pretext. That night has gone down in the history books as the Kristallnacht. You don't really need to know German to be able to translate that into the Night of Crystal. I stick to the literal translation in order to maximise the impact of the euphemism. In English, it is commonly referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, after the heaps of broken glass left on the pavements the next morning.
Today, the BBC publicised photographs taken at the Auschwitz / Birkenau concentration camp in present-day Poland, showing SS guards and officers having a high old time, in the middle of their industrial-scale mass murder. On one of the days that the pictures were taken, 150 prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, of whom 117 were summarily gassed. The images are put in the public domain to show that the people doing the gassing were ordinary folk - on the surface at any rate, and serve as a stark warning. Read this preliminary first.
I should warn, if warning is needed, that following this link will bring you to a page with images that will most likely offend.
I love Autumn too!!! It & Spring are my favs! They can keep winter & summer. LOL
ReplyDeleteTY for the history lesson for today & reminder to all of what happened in the past.
I'm off to check the links you provided.
Hugs,
Sugar
The comparisons between the lives of the officers and those internees is cold blooded indifference; and a rage to live by any means by the prisoners.
ReplyDeletePerhaps these officers too were afraid for their's and their family's lives, but that still does not wipe off their faces, seen in these photographs, that they were able to push it to one side whilst they relaxed and enjoyed themselves after murdering so many people so casually.
These are scary photos as it makes you wonder how easy it could be to become one of them through fear and circumstances?
Society soon broke down in New Orleans and in Rwanda and Bosnia etc how tenuous is that fine line in us all? We must beware of looking on these images with indifference and learn from the circumstances.
We are so lucky not to be put to the test.
Definitely gruesome pictures Guido.
Jeanie
Yes,Autumn is truly beautiful,but just reminds me of the oncoming cold winter,brrrrrrrrrrr.
ReplyDeleteWell, I love autumn, my favorite season for many reasons.
ReplyDeleteBut, this is certainly grisly stuff. I get nightmares over it, the story that must continue to be told. I can't follow your links right now or those images will be all that remains in my brain for days. It IS horrifying. May the world never forget.
Guido,
ReplyDeleteAutumn is not my favorite either. I hate the thought of the snow coming as well as what you said about the gruesome Hitler era.
Thank you for the comment about brandi, I just don't know what else I can do right now for her.
Lori
A day and night of horror, and an embarassment to mankind that we ever let it happen.
ReplyDeleteIt is also my wedding anniversary... but each year I say a prayer of rememberance to those lost on that day... lives destroyed... I remember that, as I remember my married life began...
be well,
Dawn
http://journals.aol.com/princesssaurora/CarpeDiem/
I don`t need the link to remind me of that terrible night. Even though I wasn`t even born I`ve read and seen much of what happened and it`s burned into my memory. I actually like Autumn because of the colours. We do have some wonderful sunny days, or at least we have had in the past, just before winter tightens it`s grip on us....brrrr!
ReplyDeleteLove Sandra xx
As is everything in life there is will always be those ugly moments immersed within the good. Thank you for this reminder dear heart. It truly was an ugly mark left on the pages of history. I do love Autumn though. Of course I get to see the beauty of the season here within the mountains of New York. (Hugs) Indigo
ReplyDeleteThanks for providing this link. I read the account of a Jewish doctor who passed himself off as French but was still incarcerated but not treated so badly. The details of the torturing that went on in that book by just everybody who was in charge, I will never forget. What a chill I felt that ordinary people could be reduced to such cruelty in a relatively short time as guards, etc. He escaped in a carefully orchestrated plan covered with garbage. He feared sooner or later he would be found out and murdered. If led by monsters people can soon turn monsters it seems. Gerry
ReplyDeleteI learnt all about this horror in my teens from the local library Guido. The graphic photographs I looked at then were unbelievably horrifying!
ReplyDeletePerhaps those who refuse to accept the holocaust are those who only see their own religious devotees as existing on this planet by themselves...or soon will be.. The rest of us don't exist in their minds. Dangerous concepts. But then so were Hitler's.
Jeanie
Interesting & unbelievable. It is mind boggling to me the guards could carry on normal life with such horror surrounding them.
ReplyDeleteLisa