Did anyone catch the final installment of Inside Auchswitz last night?

[CatWoman]

I was floored by the way the prisoners were treated once they were released -- specifically all of the raping the Soviet soldiers did to the women prisoners.

What the fuck was that all about? You liberate someone, only to brutalize them?

Even worse, the Soviet POWs were imprisoned as spies when they returned home.

I really learned quite a bit last night.

[DrWeird]

1. I only caught part of it.

Did they mention how the Americans forced the homosexual prisoners into new prisons?

[CatWoman]

3. I must have missed that part

I never heard that before.

[Zuni]

10. Huh?

I have never heard of this---and if it did happen it was on a very small scale.

[DrWeird]

13. It was discussed a few months ago here at DU.

I'll see if I can dig up the thread.

[Fenris]

2. The war on the Eastern Front isn't as widely known to Americans.

The Soviet Union's offensive against the Nazis was one of the most brutal wars in the history of the planet. They managed to push all the way to Berlin by having vast numbers of conscripts to throw at the Wermacht. Unlike when the Western Allies liberated the concentration camps, there was not a whole lot of rejoicing when the Soviets liberated them. After all, the Jews were not particularly liked in Russia either (and still aren't today, unfortunately).

[Zuni]

7. The Soviets literally killed and raped millions in Eastern Europe

and germany in 1945.

An estimated 2 million German women were raped by the Red Army soldiers in 1945, all of this encouraged by Soviet rabble rousers like Ilya Ehrenberg.

Stalin actually planned a major anti-Jewish pogrom in 1953, but died before it could be carried out

[lpbk2713]

4. I watched it

I think the harsh treatment the Soviet male and female prisoners received from the Soviet liberators was due to the mindset of the Soviet hierarchy. They felt that if they lived and were taken prisoner instead of fighting to the death then they deserved whatever harsh treatment that was given them by anyone.

[Zuni]

8. My grandparents were Soviet Prisoners

My grandfather was an officer in the Red Army who was captured during the 2nd Battle of Kharkov in 1942 when his army and 2 others were annhiliated by the Wehrmacht. He was wounded. Several hundred thousand Soviets surrendered there.
My grandmother was deported from Rostov on Don to work in a Berlin factory. In 1943 my grandfather was sent to be a laborer in berlin, where they met.

At the end of the war they fled to American lines because they were absolutely terrified of going back to the USSR. Before the war, my grandmother, who was a Cossack, lost many family and her husband to Soviet death squads during the 1938 purges.
Both of them knew that they would have been sent to siberia or simply shot as traitors for being Prisoners. They cooperated with the German slave drivers simply to survive and to get food. Neither wanted to be heroes, they just wanted to survive the war. Also, my grandmother had a daughter she had to feed.

[Archae]

5. What bothered me the most...

Was that former SS clerk from Auschwitz, who kept thinking he did nothing wrong.
BULLSHIT! He processed the money stolen from prisoners and stole a lot of it. :mad:

"Should I wear a hair shirt because of it?" :argh:

[CatWoman]

6. yeah, that bastard!!!!!

however, at the end he said that he has to constantly ward off naysayers and deniers of the truth.

there's a lot of people who keep saying that Auschwitz didn't happen.

[Zuni]

9. Funny, because the commandant of Auschwitz

Rudolf Hoess, testified at Nuremberg that they murdered over 1.5 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1942-1945.
He said at the peak, in 1944 when Hungary's Jews were being liquidated, they were killing and cremating 10,000 human beings each day.

[CatWoman]

11. Oskar Groning's statement

Oskar Gröning: I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that Auschwitz never happened.

And that's why I am here today.

Because I want to tell those deniers: I have seen the gas chambers, I have seen the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits - and I want you to believe me that these atrocities happened.

I was there.


http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/victims/perps.html#groning

[Archae]

12. HIs statement won't matter to deniers like Ernst Zundel.

"Cuz he wuz paid off by da Jews ta say dat stuff." :mad:

[Zuni]

14. Zundel wrote a book about Nazis creating flying saucers

and living underground at the North pole.

Hardly the most reliable source

[CatWoman]

15. Who is this "Zundel" fellow?

[Zuni]

16. An infamous Holocaust denier who was arrested in Canada

He tried to prove in Canadian court that the Holocaust did not happen.

I actually do not agree with the fact that he was arrested. He was arrested for saying that the Holocaust was a lie, a Jewish myth. Although Zundel and his inane views are revolting, I do not think people should be arrested for saying things that are revolting, unless they incite violence or other explicitly criminal activity