Rick from NY Loc: Sarasota FL

The ONE WAY road in……..

Rick from NY Loc: Sarasota FL

Uh - there were no gas chambers nor ovens at Dachau.

randave2001 Loc: Richmond

Maybe you should read this to educate yourself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp

BurghByrd Loc: Pittsburgh

Good point, wish I had tought of that title.

anotherview Loc: California

The German Nazi genocide of the Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and others continues to shock the intellect of the living. It counts among the other deadly pogroms and massacres in human history.

anotherview Loc: California

Whoops.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

— Martin Niemöller

davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel

The next time one uses the excuse "My job required me to do it" keep these photographs in mind. No one should be allowed to do this kind of thing and get away with it.

Zooman 1

Thanks for the reminder! Photos do a good job of showing this facility.

TreborLow

Yes! Read it and pay attention to the bland numbers and realize how much we take for granted and ignore the dark side of "civilization". How easy it was even for Martin Neimoeller to get sucked into being a Nazi as a youth. His famous "First they came for the Socialists...." warning came awfully (and very awfully late). WE ALL have to be alert to the creeping dangers of too much nationalism; too much power in one person; too little attention paid by the rest of us.
Yes, check the link and the link to Neimoeller. Then think hard about today.

MosheR Loc: New York City

It’s my understanding that, for the most part, Orthodox Jews are not supposed to be cremated. And among the less religiously intense, while it’s not exactly verboten, it is also pretty much frowned upon. With this in mind, what the Nazis did in Auschwitz by burning the bodies of their victims certainly added insult to injury.

We have a very dear friend whose parents both survived Auschwitz. Then, in 1947, a couple of years after the war in Europe ended, our friend was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, as the first of a total of four children.

One day I was chatting with her father and brought up the fact of how relatively lucky his family had been that both he and his wife survived that horror-show intact. He then corrected me. Before the war he and his wife had each been married to other people and each already had several children. All of them were gone, as were the rest of their families. Up in smoke. They were the only ones left, had each lost everyone they loved, but were fortunate enough to meet one another after the war, fall in love, marry, and have their four kids, one of whom was our friend.

He then surprised me by saying that both he and his wife had plans to be cremated after they were gone. This way they could still “be” with each other, and also rejoin the rest of their families who had already gone up in smoke so many years before. In this case the choice would be theirs, not the Nazis’.

And that’s what was done.

A few years after their deaths my wife and I visited Poland and the now renamed Czech Republic. While in Poland we Went to Auschwitz and, like every visiter who comes here, were completely overcome to be standing in the middle of the place in which so much horror and complete desecration of humanity once took took place. This was all the more meaningful to us as, having both been born in the early 1940’s, all this occurred during our own time on earth, not in some vague long ago, Daguerreotype period.

So we walked around the camp and eventually found ourselves in what I believe was the camp’s last still standing crematorium. The oven doors were open so we could see inside … an inside that was now sparkling clean … with no remaining ashes from its former “customers.” There was one of those velvet ropes in front of the ovens, as there are at so many museums and galleries, so the visitors could not approach too closely. In the Jewish religion, when you visit a grave, you’re supposed to place a stone on top of the marker to show that you were there. So I went outside, found a stone for each of us, walked back in, ducked under the velvet rope, and place the two stones inside one of the crematory’s ovens.

When we returned home and we told our friend what I did, for which we each received a big, tight hug. Although she and her husband certainly understood why, they had both been very upset when they carried out her parents’ post-death plan. Now, knowing that there was at least a temporary memorial to them … I’m sure those rocks were removed just after we left … in such an appropriate place, they both felt a lot better.

I realized many years later that, if it weren’t for Hitler, our friend would never have existed. Her parents would each have had other families and would not have joined together. The universe twists and turns in ways we cannot know or understand.

W9OD Loc: Wisconsin

Very good reminder of what travesty was done to human lives. Thank you for sharing.

Merlin1300 Loc: New England, But Now & Forever SoTX

We will see hitler in the lake of fire. Totally inexcusable.
IMHO - stalin was worse.

Horseart Loc: Alabama

It makes my heart hurt to see these, but thank you for this reminder.

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

Very dark time, but it is good to remember.