Lost River Camps

What are your reactions about the dehumanization in concentration camps?

What are your reactions about the dehumanization in concentration camps? Why do you think the holocaust happened? I need your personal responses or thoughts about the treatments in concentration camps during the holocaust.

Public Comments

1. I visited Dachau back in the 1960s -- fresh out of the Marine Corps and a year in Vietnam. The pictures made me ill. The camp itself looked no different from a Boy Scout camp -- except for a crematorium and a gas chamber. I was struck by how commonplace evil can be. It does not leave it's mark on a place very long, except in ghost stories. The grass continues to grow and the sun shines again. On the train back I looked at every German over 50 -- where were you. Don't ask dumb axx questions about it happening -- you give the scumbags of the earth legitimacy. Maybe you don't believe WW2 happened. The answer to holocaust deniers is a punch in the mouth.
2. The holocaust happened because many people felt that Jews (along with homosexuals, gypsies, the deformed and mentally retarded) were less than human and the masses were brainwashed into thinking that they caused the fall of germany in WWI and were a drag on the economy. Since they were less than human, anything done to them was OK, even though it wasn't
3. There are different reasons: 0) The main reason of the unjustice against the prisoners was the unjustified entry of the USA in the war. So some poeple took revenche on the prisoners. 1) Protestantic antisemitism 2) Revenge (Allies didn't respect the human rights of war, Allies bombes against civils [Dresden ...] 3) Leader in camps were criminals 4) Camps were outside the Reich (no control by Hitler) 5) To much prisoners, not enough to eat, medicaments 6) Also the normal population had hunger 7) Used to cruelty of war 8) Sicknesses (Typhus) I visited Dachau during the 2 world war. There was NO GAS CHAMBER. Only in the 60's the ghoststory of gaz chambers was invented by americans that visited without ever having seen any german during the second world war. The crualty of the injustice of the leaders of the camps is big but understandable. The allied killed BILLIONS of poeple (communisme) Most of the jews where NOT killed by the germans but by the ALLIES (STALIN). 500 000 german women were violated by the russians. And some poeple don't understand why criminals killed prisoners. They were some criminals. But the allied were ALL CRIMINALS. They knew what they did. And they aggreed all. NAGASAKI and HIROSHIMA included. They were on the side of STALIN. And his crimes are hided from the ALLIES until today. Everyone who hides those Billions of deaths is criminal himself. The german were not free. They had a tryann issued from a republic imposed by the allies (Weimarer Republik). The crimes of the allies were free. They won't never be forgotten. The gaz chambers are an invention of the allies to hide where the jews really have died. (Russia, protected, from US)
4. Well, the dehumanization affects the victims as well as the guards, I think. These were young men and women, originally brought up to respect their parents, teachers and pastors. As they grew older, they began to be influenced by others, some of them those same parents, teachers and pastors, but the real indoctrination starts with a "big lie". Hitler's theory was that if you start out with a big lie, and repeat it often enough and loudly enough, people will begin to believe it, and then the smaller lies will be easier for them to believe. Hitler was playing on an age old prejudice, the one against Jews, that had led to pogroms throughout Europe since the Middle Ages, and a basic tendency in human nature, a mistrust of strangers. If you start with this fertile ground, and sow the seeds of suspicion against the Jews, liberals and "degenerates", then fertilize the ground with suspicions about the loss of the war, the devaluation of the currency, and the frequent strikes, then offer a solution that people can believe, you have a good chance of gaining power. In 1933, with a majority in the Reichstag, the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party, got the power. The treatment of the people in the camps came about partly because of the plans of Reinhard Heidrich, and then the tendency of some guards to become more and more sadistic towards the prisoners as time goes by, then a growing cynicism on the part of other guards as sadism is not punished, but rewarded, then it's a very close step to these nice normal boys and girls becoming criminally brutal. You might google the Stanford Experiment to see how quickly normal people can be turned into sadists by the right circumstances.