# The Aushwitz Album **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 18, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160 "2011-03-18T15:24:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/21 "2011-03-19T04:31:28Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > My mom’s last memory of her mother and younger sister was of them walking, hand in hand, to the chambers at Auschwitz. Most had died in the ghetto prior to the liquidation. My mom and three of her older sisters survived the ghetto and the camps. > > ETA: Can’t look at the album. I’m terrified to see my mom, aunts or my dad (who was there also). I’m speechless. I’m so sorry this happened to your family. > [@gallows\_fodder](#): > > I hope this is okay to put this here… > > My grandfather was one of the US soldiers in Patton’s 3rd Army who liberated Buchenwald, and he snuck a camera in with him that day. We’ve digitized some of them, and you can see a few of them [here](http://imgur.com/a/GsFaC#n67kq). > > It’s a long story, but my mother was able to track down the little toddler you see in one of them (picture labeled “Concentration camp inmates”), and my grandfather was able to meet him a few years ago. [Here they are with my aunt](http://i.imgur.com/XYSRd.jpg). Wow. Now I’m crying. Bless your mother for arranging that reunion. Oh, and I’ve been corrected. My husband tells me his grandfather surrendered to the British, not the French. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/22 "2011-03-19T17:59:13Z")
Both my grandfathers were in Europe at some point during the war, but both died many years ago and I know nothing about what they saw or did. My family lived in Germany for a few years when I was a kid. When we were leaving Canada to move there, we were having ice cream at the airport, and met a concentration camp survivor. He showed us his tattooed serial number. I don’t remember what he talked about, though I’m sure my parents do. I was a little scared, because I understood only enough to know that something bad had happened to him in Germany. I remember he told me “You’ll love Germany. It’s a beautiful country, with beautiful people.” Compared to the rest of this thread, that’s a really lame story, but it meant something to me. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/23 "2011-03-19T18:54:08Z")
> [@Anticounterrevolutionary](#): > > Thanks for sharing this. Actually, [there is another photo album from Auschwitz.](http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/ssalbum/?content=1) It was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives in '07. It was the personal album of SS-Obersturmführer Karl Höcker, the adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, and has pictures of his time there from May 1944 until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945. > > The album you linked to was at one time thought to be the only one, and that is discussed in section 3, “A Tale Of Two Albums” where it is suggested that “…it is critically important to view the two albums side by side, because they allow us to witness how the SS created two alternative views of reality.” To me, another thing that makes this sort of album important is that it shows that apart from being murderous bastards on the job, many of the SS were pretty much regular folks who flirted with girls, played with their pets, and took time off to relax at the lodge. As long as we can look at them as inhuman monsters and nothing else, it’s easy to dismiss what they did as an aberration. But the savage lives in all of us (and yes, I include myself): we all have buttons that, when properly pushed, punch through the veneer of “civilization” we shroud ourselves in and nudge the beast. The genius (for want of a better word) of the Nazis was that they found just the right button for the majority of the German people, and once they pushed it, they never let up. So apart from the historical value of Höcker’s album, I regard it as something of a cautionary tale. One which we ignore at our peril. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/24 "2011-03-19T19:58:14Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > “Man-eating dog den”? What the _fuck?!!_ I don’t know anything specific about Buchenwald, but I know that in other camps, dogs were trained to attack people and were unleashed on the prisoners for punishment, intimidation, or just for the amusement of the officers. I think it became a bit of a contest among the guards to see who could come up with the most horrific forms of torture. In Auschwitz they had a ‘standing room’ which was a “room” about the size of a telephone booth with no windows or ventilation. The entrance was a small rectangular opening in the bottom. For punishment, prisoners were forced to sleep in there, standing up, with a total of 4 men crammed in there together, smashed up against each other with little air. Then in the morning they had crawl out of the opening in the bottom to resume their slave labor. It was nauseating to see this room and imagine that someone came up with and implemented this sick idea…not to mention the horror that innocent people were forced to experience it. > [@OttoDaFe](#): > > To me, another thing that makes this sort of album important is that it shows that apart from being murderous bastards on the job, many of the SS were pretty much regular folks who flirted with girls, played with their pets, and took time off to relax at the lodge. > > As long as we can look at them as inhuman monsters and nothing else, it’s easy to dismiss what they did as an aberration. But the savage lives in all of us (and yes, I include myself): we all have buttons that, when properly pushed, punch through the veneer of “civilization” we shroud ourselves in and nudge the beast. The genius (for want of a better word) of the Nazis was that they found just the right button for the majority of the German people, and once they pushed it, they never let up. > > So apart from the historical value of Höcker’s album, I regard it as something of a cautionary tale. One which we ignore at our peril. I think this is what is so disturbing about the Holocaust. With people like Jeffrey Dauhmer or other depraved killers, it’s easy to write them off as bizarre monstrous aberrations. But these camp guards were basically regular folk who committed unbelievably horrific acts. And the extermination of the Jews could not have been possible without the collaboration of the German people. I can’t remember the numbers off hand, but the ratio of SS officers was very low relative to the population. So they relied on ordinary citizens to report their fellow citizens and neighbors. And they did. Sure, there were some heros who spoke out, hid Jews, or otherwise protested. But the majority of the people were complicit and that, as you say, must be regarded as a cautionary tale. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/25 "2011-03-20T16:17:09Z")
My heart goes out to those whose families were impacted by this atrocity. I worked in a nursing home which had several Holocaust survivors. Some were quite open about it. Some were in a state of dementia and seemed to confuse the nursing staff with SS guards… heart-rending stuff. The witnesses to this great act of evil will soon be passing on… we have an obligation to preserve this history and never forget what it reveals about human nature. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/26 "2011-03-20T16:55:19Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > And the extermination of the Jews could not have been possible without the collaboration of the German people. And the Polish people, and the Hungarian people, and the Romanian people, and the Croatian/Bosnian/Albanian people, the Lithuanian people, Latvian people, etc. And the American and British people as well, who could have easily stopped the Holocaust early on, who could have bombed the railways leading to the camps, who could have allowed Jewish refugees on the U.S. St. Louis instead of turning them back to Europe to be killed… Nobody gave a damn about the Jews. Nobody lifted a finger to stop it. The ending of the Holocaust was completely incidental to the war, an added “bonus” of victory in Europe. It was never a direct goal. Nobody cared. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/27 "2011-03-21T19:54:18Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > And the Polish people, and the Hungarian people, and the Romanian people, and the Croatian/Bosnian/Albanian people, the Lithuanian people, Latvian people, etc. And the American and British people as well, who could have easily stopped the Holocaust early on, who could have bombed the railways leading to the camps, who could have allowed Jewish refugees on the U.S. St. Louis instead of turning them back to Europe to be killed… > > Nobody gave a damn about the Jews. Nobody lifted a finger to stop it. The ending of the Holocaust was completely incidental to the war, an added “bonus” of victory in Europe. It was never a direct goal. > > Nobody cared. Are you certain that the Allies knew what was going on in those places before they actually arrived there? This was before the types of intelligence gathering resources we have today. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/28 "2011-03-21T21:15:49Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > I worked in a nursing home which had several Holocaust survivors. Some were quite open about it. Some were in a state of dementia and seemed to confuse the nursing staff with SS guards… heart-rending stuff. . Aw, sh\*t. Now that made me cry. How awful to survive that horror only to have your mind bring you back, so you spend your final days feeling terrorized. ---
**Author:** ![Surok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@Surok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surok)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/29 "2011-03-21T21:32:27Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Are you certain that the Allies knew what was going on in those places before they actually arrived there? This was before the types of intelligence gathering resources we have today. Witold Pilecki, a Polish member of the Resistance, gave a detailed [report](http://www.witoldsreport.blogspot.com/) to the Allies on conditions in Auschwitz in, I believe, 1940. So yes, the Allies were aware of what was happening. [Here](http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203868.pdf) (PDF) is an interview with Yehuda Bauer, a highly regarded historian, which addresses why no action was taken. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/30 "2011-03-21T23:54:14Z")
> [@Surok](#): > > Witold Pilecki, a Polish member of the Resistance, gave a detailed [report](http://www.witoldsreport.blogspot.com/) to the Allies on conditions in Auschwitz in, I believe, 1940. > > So yes, the Allies were aware of what was happening. [Here](http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203868.pdf) (PDF) is an interview with Yehuda Bauer, a highly regarded historian, which addresses why no action was taken. Very interesting, thank you. So really it was a combination of factors, including a lack of capability earlier in the war, not just malignant indifference as **Argent Towers** seems to imply (no offense, **Argent** ). ---
**Author:** ![Laudenum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Laudenum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laudenum)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/31 "2011-03-21T23:56:43Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > My heart goes out to those whose families were impacted by this atrocity. > > I worked in a nursing home which had several Holocaust survivors. Some were quite open about it. Some were in a state of dementia and seemed to confuse the nursing staff with SS guards… heart-rending stuff. The witnesses to this great act of evil will soon be passing on… we have an obligation to preserve this history and never forget what\*\* it reveals about human nature.\*\* I’m not sure it really revealed that much. ---
**Author:** ![Iolanthe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7bcc69/32.png) [@Iolanthe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iolanthe)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/32 "2011-03-22T00:53:06Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > And the Polish people, and the Hungarian people, and the Romanian people, and the Croatian/Bosnian/Albanian people, the Lithuanian people, Latvian people, etc. And the American and British people as well, who could have easily stopped the Holocaust early on, who could have bombed the railways leading to the camps, who could have allowed Jewish refugees on the U.S. St. Louis instead of turning them back to Europe to be killed… > > Nobody gave a damn about the Jews. Nobody lifted a finger to stop it. The ending of the Holocaust was completely incidental to the war, an added “bonus” of victory in Europe. It was never a direct goal. > > Nobody cared. Denmark did. (8,000 Jews in Denmark, no more than 100 killed.) Bulgaria did (All 50,000 Jews in Bulgaria proper were saved). Finland did (2,000 Jews in Finland, 22 died and all of them were in the Finnish Army.) _Italy_ did (40,000 Jews pre-war, 8,000 killed in an _Axis Power_.) Look, you’re right about Poland, you’re right about the Baltics, you’re right about goddamn Cordell Hull. But you know what country has the highest number of righteous gentiles per Yad Vashem? Poland, with 6,195. [http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/statistics.asp#detailed](http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/statistics.asp#detailed). Irena Sendler, Witold Pilecki, and Jan Karski did exist, and they and their fellow heroes shouldn’t be forgotten, amidst all the horror. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/33 "2011-03-22T04:14:48Z")
I can’t cry – I’m just sitting here kind of in horror. Every little tidbit I’m reading here makes me sort of unable to breath in a way. Personally, I’ve always found the case of [Albert Göring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_G%C3%B6ring) fascinating. Yes, Hermann Göring’s brother. Except Albert was violently anti-Nazi and actually aided the Jews in escaping. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/34 "2011-03-22T22:31:05Z")
People suck. I wish it were enough to just promise that I, personally, would/will not facilitate this kind of thing. But enough people always will. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2011, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/35 "2011-03-22T23:34:19Z")
People always say they are so deeply affected by the Holocaust, and how horrified they are that it could happen, etc etc, but so many of these same people are either totally apathetic or actively _supportive_ about very real forces that are, right now, as we speak, trying to wipe the Jewish state (Israel) off of the map and “finish what Hitler started.” They are trying as hard as they can to perpetrate a second Holocaust. I think most people, consciously or unconsciously, _prefer_ the Jews as victims. This is their “place”, to be objects of pity and sympathy for the other peoples of the world (who are all safe and sound in their well-established territories protected by their big armies.) When the Jews get “uppity” and get it into their heads that they can control their own destiny rather than just existing as glorified servant-classes in their “host” countries, inventing technology and writing literature and cracking jokes for the amusement of their Gentile masters - this, people are unable to accept. I’m not saying all these people are actively and deliberately anti-Jewish, though some of them certainly are. It’s more that they are conditioned to a certain worldview (established over thousands of years) that the Jews have a certain “place” in the grand scheme of things, and that place is as a people without a military and without a homeland, which ultimately makes them non-assertive and impotent weaklings with no agency to control their fate. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/36 "2011-03-23T02:51:59Z")
> [@Surok](#): > > . [Here](http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203868.pdf) (PDF) is an interview with Yehuda Bauer, a highly regarded historian, which addresses why no action was taken. Interesting. This point of view is much more lenient towards the allies than what I’ve read before. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/37 "2011-03-23T10:10:27Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > I’m speechless. I’m so sorry this happened to your family. Wow. Now I’m crying. Bless your mother for arranging that reunion. > > . How did they ever find that little boy again all those years later? ---
**Author:** ![Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mona_Lisa_Simpson)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/38 "2011-03-23T10:15:31Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > My heart goes out to those whose families were impacted by this atrocity. > > I worked in a nursing home which had several Holocaust survivors. Some were quite open about it. Some were in a state of dementia and seemed to confuse the nursing staff with SS guards… heart-rending stuff. The witnesses to this great act of evil will soon be passing on… we have an obligation to preserve this history and never forget what it reveals about human nature. I had a patient (who was in mid stages of dementia) in one nursing home who had a doctors order, signed off by the local health authority that she was not to be taken into the shower room for baths or showers but given bed baths only and hair was washed at the hairdressers. You can guess why. I hated explaining this to new staff though. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2011, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160/39 "2011-03-23T11:40:12Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > People always say they are so deeply affected by the Holocaust, and how horrified they are that it could happen, etc etc, but so many of these same people are either totally apathetic or actively _supportive_ about very real forces that are, right now, as we speak, trying to wipe the Jewish state (Israel) off of the map and “finish what Hitler started.” They are trying as hard as they can to perpetrate a second Holocaust. Wow, **Argent** , really? Outside of some Middle Eastern countries and some anti-semitic types scattered throughout the world, who are these nefarious agents trying to perpetuate a second Holocaust? > [@](#): > > that place is as a people without a military and without a homeland, which ultimately makes them non-assertive and impotent weaklings with no agency to control their fate. Yeah, except for that kick ass and well-supplied military called the IDF in a little place called Israel. I’m really trying to grasp what you are implying. I just don’t see what you are seeing, at least not in a sense that what you suggest is so pervasive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aushwitz-album/575160.md?page=1)