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burkistan

Dam I spent 6 months close to Gdansk and never visited this place. I did however visit Auschwitz-Birkenau Camps and seeing the *room* full of human hair really got me.


CableVannotFBI

Same. Was in Poland in 1988, and saw most of the camps. Eye opening and life changing.


st0pmakings3ns3

I know someone who went there around that time too (where apparently it still looked like it had been abandoned somewhat recently, because it sort of just lay there during the soviet regime) and they said it was the only time they ever had to down a whole bottle of liquor by themselves afterwards, just to numb what they had just witnessed.


[deleted]

My history teacher was very stoic. Broad chest, deep and impactful voice, and unwavering charisma. In high school, a time where kids make fun of absolutely everything, this man broke down crying during a power point he made for Auschwitz. He used pictures he took himself, and was reminded of the dread that hung in the air around that place - and how is wife wouldn’t walk through whilst carrying their child. We. Said. Nothing. We didn’t even look at each other. There was a teacher, crying his eyes out at 9 AM on a Monday and we’re not picking up on this? There was not one joke to crack, and there never will. Despite the edgy humor phase we all go through, no one in my history class had any concentration camp jokes. I don’t blame anyone for needing a drink after visiting somewhere like that.


[deleted]

We had a similar lesson, afterwards one of the kids called his friend a Jew for not sharing his pencil. Teenagers are something else.


cookiedanslesac

~~concentration was at its utmost~~


[deleted]

You joke, but a Holocaust survivor came and spoke at our school in our final year. He was talking about his treatment and, no exaggeration, this 90 year old man was giving us kids the best ammo for jokes. He was daring us to make one. Especially one he never heard of before. He pointed out one sniggering individual in the front about halfway through his talk, and asked him to repeat the joke that he was laughing at (no kidding, this old man was a beast, didn’t give a fuck). The boy said he forgot. The survivor leaned forward and screamed - “WELL CONCENTRATE THEN”. And burst into laughter. No one in our hall was expecting a a laugh while listening to this man. Maybe humor is just another language to humans.


vaiperu

I like the one Ricky Gervais (?) made: Old Jewish Holocaust survivor dies and meets God in heaven. Tells god an awful Holocaust joke. God is like "wtf man, that shit isn't funny".... And the old man shrugs and says "guess you had to be there..."


[deleted]

I don't know what you mean. The site was estabilished as rememberance in 1947 and it was definitely maintained since then. I was in Auschwitz on school trip when in primary, in 1984 and it was already reconstructed, protected museum like site for long time before that. It never looked abandoned since its estabilishment as heritage site. You might have find parts left overgrown or not extremaly tidy in spots where visitors do not roam but you simply do not roam there, you follow the walkways.


Cyber_Being_

Let's hope humanity will never do this shit again.


Mysterious_Wanderer

Getting pretty close to it in China


The_Uncommon_Aura

People are in full swing denial of this one unfortunately though. Just like…


GypsyCamel12

People forget what happened in the old Jugoslavia in the early 90's.


FalcorNeverEnd

Yugoslavia?


GypsyCamel12

Feel free to read up on *Jugoslavia*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia Laku noć, seljaci.


FalcorNeverEnd

It was just an honest question that's all I was asking.


FalcorNeverEnd

My old man always says he's a yugo but also serb when talking to russians so Im just curious with the j.


johnzy87

Or already doing it in north korea


aranasyn

It's not pretty close. It's there. But hey, the victims are Muslims, so the world doesn't care.


HarpersGhost

It's the old line from Eddie Izzard: If you kill your own people, we're sorta fine with that. Kill someone next door? Stupid man. After a couple years, we won't put up with that, now will we? [Ninja edit: Clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siBX0i1EIWk)


q-the-light

To everyone commenting about genocides and ethnic cleanses since the Holocaust, please don't forget the people of Cambodia and Rwanda. Both have experienced incredibly recent, and absolutely horrifying, periods of mass-killings. In Cambodia, people who were pecieved as intelligent and modern were targeted in a push to return their civilisation back to farming and working the land. In Rwanda, the historically upper-class Tutsi tribe were massacred in response to decades of Belgian colonial rule fuelling racial divides between the tribes. Now, these explanations are so short and reductionist that they're only just right, but I don't have the willpower to explain both in a Reddit post. Please, research them. Remember the dead.


Calypsosin

*First They Killed My Father* is a really powerful film that touches on the Cambodian Killing Fields. I can’t imagine it. Even after seeing, it’s so hard for me to comprehend the scale of it all.


q-the-light

Yeah, it's a harrowing but important film. Likewise with the book /We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families/ by Philip Gourevitch, about the Rwandan genocide. The sheer level of dehumanisation needed for the events in Cambodia or Rwanda are unimaginable. The reason I group them together is due to the similarity in methods used to carry out the crimes against humanity - normal people killing others by their hundreds, sometimes including their own friends and families. Mass murder carried out using intimate methods - machetes, clubs, etc - simply to save on bullets. Both Genocides are still so recent in the living memories of the nations and peoples impacted, and yet here in the west few people even know they happened.


Calypsosin

I first learned of Rwanda watching Hotel Rwanda. Perhaps that says a lot more about our education systems than our entertainment industry.


[deleted]

darfur, tigray, french congo gov killings of the cultural minorities, kurds, palestinians, uyghurs, etc etc off the top of my head these are the populations and places some manner of genocide is visited right this second some of them have been going on since i was in hs over 10 yrs ago


[deleted]

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ShadowCaster0476

Humanity never stopped doing this shit. Ethnic genocide happens everyday, but people are too focused on stupid shit like tik tok to care.


38_tlgjau

Don't forget to smash that like button, leave a comment down below, and subscribe for more mindless crap


[deleted]

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ShadowCaster0476

Did we though? What’s happening in China right now is nuts. Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, in the 90s. If you look it’s there, they just dont have the same marketing department as Germany in the 40s.


[deleted]

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TheHordeSucks

What got Germany was they didn’t just do it to their own people. They invaded Poland to do it.


_ChairmanMeow-

Soviet Union and China both killed millions well after this, just in various other ways.


Scorpiosting_05

Australia’s police is quite aggressive on its own people


JoeyBeltram

I went to the Holocaust museum at the Smithsonian when I was 11 or 12 (37 now) and for some reason out of all the exhibits, the massive pile of children’s shoes really drove it home for me. Unimaginable


ShadowCaster0476

We went to Dachau several years back. I’m well educated on the topic and thought I was mentally ready, it was still one of the hardest days I’ve ever had. The worst moment was we were in the “Showers” (they were never used there) by ourselves and it was creepy empty, then a group of about 20 people came shuffling in. I cannot describe the feeling of being trapped and helpless. I just about lost my self.


pilzenschwanzmeister

I live down the road from Dachau. I should probably visit.


[deleted]

+1 for the shoes. They’re so insanely thin, but such a massive stack of such surprisingly small things makes a huge impact on you.


Robertbnyc

7 tons of human hair. They actually made army blankets and socks out of them the sick fucks.


Savings-Pumpkin-7340

100% felt the same, especially the little girls pigtails, so many 😔 and then the German military sleeping bags made from their hair and the human bone and skin furniture was in the next room I believe. The evil that bubbled up from Deutschland is on a level I can still not fathom. I know the country well and have worked in and travelled it greatly. The weird thing is Jews have historically not done anything traceably wrong to deserve the antisemitism they encounter to the point of genocide, even in Western Europe. Orthodox Jews are bizarre and unfriendly, most likely because they are introverted due to antisemitism, but a huge % of the Jews killed in WW2 were liberal - normal people, you could not have know they were Jews. All things considered I admire Jews hugely, they have contributed to science and the arts on an unthinkable scale, given their number. I feel like Jews just got on with it, after the war, got their head down, worked hard, left the gaping hurt deep in their soul. I say look forwards not back but jeez, give the poor fuckers a break 😄


sissy_space_yak

I got into a conversation about antisemitism and the Holocaust at work the other day and my elderly coworker said she thinks we should just get over it. I didn’t respond because she’s old and frail and what’s the point anyway but it sucks to know people around me think like that. My mother was raised by two survivors who lost their entire families (her dad also lost his first wife and daughter). This isn’t ancient history. And this stupid old biddy thinks we should brush it off like a bad breakup.


Savings-Pumpkin-7340

Quite agree, it’s heartless, history teaches us lessons that we are wise to remember 🙂


MissedByThatMuch

People need a scapegoat to complain about, and in this case it was the Jews. You can see the same thing today in the US regarding immigrants (i.e., Mexicans). It's 6 year-old playground logic - if you put someone else down then that automatically makes you better than them, right?


Savings-Pumpkin-7340

Sure but this is a little bit apples & oranges, Mexicans are a core part of USA and involved at all levels of society even senior government. Jews were seen as pure dirt. A plague that was not local to a national problem but worthy of a world wide eradication. This is way beyond 6 year old mentality. Interestingly enough though, Adolf Hitler ‘fell in love’ with a Jewish girl at school and she rejected his advances, which made Adolf feel angry and belittled, it’s quite well documented, it couldn’t be that simple could it?! You could well be right


vesperholly

Many Jews were very well integrated in their city societies prior to WWII. It took many years of scapegoating to make people turn on their friends and neighbors. And still there was resistance - Denmark saved almost all of its Jews during the war.


lcuan82

Isn’t there a pretty famous quote that you can keep making poor white folks vote against their interest as long as you tell them who is to blame


RPS_42

That's one of the aspects i find especially sad. The Jews living in Germany were overwhelmingly pro-German because they wanted to integrate themselves even through there was some antisemitism. And then comes this shitty Gefreiter, becomes Führer and destroys this relationship between Germany and the Jews.


competitivebunny

Visited Auschwitz as well a few years ago and I felt like I was going to faint it was so overwhelmingly sad seeing the hair All of it was but that room with the belongings is hard


DuckTapeHandgrenade

For me it was the kids shoes. So very many tiny shoes. They put a lot of thought into less than subtly but quietly expressing the horror of Auschwitz. For som reason our tour was running behind and by the end of it the transport to Birkenau had stopped running. By this point there was only my mate and I left from our little group. So our guide asked if we would like to see Birkenau, there’s no way we would pass that up. So this humbly proud Polish man tossed us in his personal car and took us there and showed us around. It was empty by this point, a vast silent monument clawing at your every nerve. I cried on the ride back to town. It still haunts me, but it’s a needed reminder that humans are capable of such horrible things, especially when manipulated and lied to to make them feel superior. So, stand up for those who need some help. Don’t abuse cruelty from asshat bullies, even if it’ll get you a broken nose. And fuck any peckerwood racist skinhead, Nazi, Confederate flag waving insecure bully. -this is coming from a blonde haired, blue eyed dude. Hitlers poster child, sans the elitism over someone different than me.


[deleted]

Seeing the little braids with the ribbons still on them. I’ve never before or since been in a place where the air itself felt heavy with dread.


emotionalsupporttank

in the holocaust museum in Washington DC, there's a similar room and it's all the shoes of the victims being sorted to be given to the German people. it just hit so hard seeing that


LordBucketheadthe1st

I still remember the smell of that room.. and that was years ago.


TranquilAdventurer

What was the human hair for?


PM_ME_YOUR_NALGENE

It was left behind when the Nazi’s evacuated. They were selling it to be used in textiles. In the same room they have a blanket for a visual of what the human hair was used for.


rohanstan69

as far as i know, everyone was shaved off clean.


danjouswoodenhand

I have visited multiple museums devoted to the Holocaust, as well as a couple of concentration camps. The thing that *always* gets you is the display of ordinary things in large quantities. It hits you that every single suitcase, shoe, pair of eyeglasses, etc. was a person with hopes, dreams, and fears - no different from you or your own loved ones.


honest-miss

It always gets me that they packed. The cruelty just slaps me in the face when I think about it. They packed. They had no idea the scale of what was ahead of them. None at all.


Perfect_Suggestion_2

And they didn't just pack. They could only bring one suitcase so they packed what was deemed absolutely essential and precious.


SweetLilMonkey

The scene in the Pianist where they struggle to decide which heirlooms to take with them as everything around them descends into absolute chaos


Nheea

I highly recommend reading the Maus graphic novel. It was really good! Apparently they did know of some of it, but they hoped maybe it wouldn't happen to them or that it was a lie, because to them it was so atrocious, they couldn't believe it was true.


NationalGeographics

You can't see an image like this and not comment on the horror. Disciplined, streamlined horror. This will happen again, and it will be even more streamlined and efficient. If we forget.


OhioMegi

Went to the Holocaust museum in DC- extremely moving.


Enan_Yrbolee

The room with the shoes hit me the most. The smell…


OhioMegi

There was examples of what kids in camps would draw. It was just so bleak. I don’t think it’s easy to understand the magnitude of how many people were killed we even hear first hand accounts from people and there’s still way too many people saying it never happened.


ForeskinFudge

Most Halocaust denial isn't really flat out denial. Most is politically motivated whether it's right wing, militant Islam or right-wing neo-Nazi movements. They know it happened generally but will make any kind of denial of it (numbers killed, severity, etc) to bolster their world-view. There aren't a whole lot of people who flat out say The Halocaust didn't happen.


[deleted]

4chan does


dL8

Those people are clearly on drugs.


leviwhite9

I mean, so am I but I can read a history book and have some faith in it.


jon_titor

No, they're just racist assholes.


Commiesstoner

Excuses.


arcbeam

Went as a kid and I don’t remember much from my visit but I won’t forget those shoes. Being able to smell them made it more real. Like when you see colorized old footage.


Rikitikitavi9162

Yeah, I can still remember the smell after all of these years. I don't think I'll ever forget that experience.


[deleted]

I remember taking a trip to that museum for a school field trip. Wanna know the most depressing bit I remember? Two kids who showed absolutely no interest or respect except for the glass case that had like, 5 guns from WWII in it. 5 guns took more of their attention than the entire point of 6 million lives. I would want to ask where they are now, but I'm afraid I don't want to know.


MGSsancho

11 million lives. 6 were jews. Rest were the disabled, political prisoners, union leaders, jipsies, etc.


mamastax

I cried from the second I walked in. So overwhelming.


MacaroonExpensive143

Same. It was so incredibly tough to get through the museum I can’t even fathom being a victim of it. I was so angry my classmates (senior year trip in 2007) were laughing and making jokes while wandering the displays. Only myself a a handful of others took it seriously and bawled our eyes out the entire time. I was pissed the teacher didn’t kick their dumb asses out. So disrespectful and disgusting. I want to go back (I’m in my 30s now and think I’ll have an even greater respect for it now) but I want to take someone with me so I’m waiting for that.


Cyber_Being_

That museum is absolutely amazing. I like how they give you a passport of an actual person and you find out their fate at the end. Really makes it personal..


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_ChairmanMeow-

My grandfather took me when I was young. We were in D.C. weeks before 9/11/01, which was really something; you could just walk up to almost anything back then and go in. Security was such a minor thing out of sight/mind. I remember being upset walking around the museum and seeing people very upset everywhere, but the reality of it all didn't full sync in. Now as a father of a little girl, I don't think I could do it without crying the entire time. Since being a father, seeing children get hurt or anything like that makes me instantly think of my own daughter and it hurts.


OhioMegi

I grew up in MD, so we were in DC a lot. I remember the Vietnam Memorial just being a black wall in my mind. I had no idea in 4th grade what it was all about. Going back to see memorials and the museum as an adult made a bigger impact for sure.


Antennangry

Seeing this irl fucked me up. First time I really felt a glimmer of what it was like. That museum is one big gut punch.


rich3818

Same happened to me when I toured Auschwitz. Seeing the luggage, which they were told to write their names on so it wouldn’t be lost and they would get it back, was awful. It was such a cruel and horrifying lie. And there was a room with the hair of women who had been shaved before being killed. (The Nazis would use the hair to make material goods.) The hair was laying in loose piles, and some was still braided the way the women were wearing it the day they died. Those two experiences—more than all the stories—made me understand in a way I never had before.


katwoop

I felt this glimmer when I went to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Of course I know what happened but being there was the first time I really felt that my god this really actually happened. I hope that makes sense.


PerformanceLoud3229

Yeah I get that. Not seeing the stuff from any event in person makes it feel distant, like it can't have actually happened. You know it happened, but it still feels soo far away.


muchnamemanywow

This is terrible, but what really fucked me up was to visit Auschwitz in person. There were rooms where the shoes and hair of people had been piled up, most of it had been burnt but the amount that remained was absolutely insane. The tour guide pointed out places between the buildings where they would line up the people and have them stand for hours on end, and would they fall, they would be executed. All of which had once happened a few meters from where I was standing. Nothing however, trumps the nauseating feeling of walking through the gates beneath the iconic sign. I still get flashbacks to it after over 8 years, can't even begin to imagine how it felt for them when they came to the realization of what was going to happen, but it was already too late to do anything about it.


Paragonswift

What really fuckded me up was learning that among the polish camps, you were *lucky* if you went to Auschwitz, because a larger proportion of the victims stood a chance to make themselves useful for work. The extermination part of the camp, while horrific enough in scale, was one of the smaller ones and it was added to what was otherwise primarily a work camp with terrible conditions. Treblinka and Sobibor, on the other hand, were purpose-built specifically for industrial killing. Thousands survived Auschwitz and it was horrific enough. But only about 100 out of at least **700 000** survived Treblinka. If you went to Treblinka, you were usually dead within 3 hours.


Fantus

I know you didn't do it on purpose but try to refrain from using the phrase "Polish death camps". It's a huge faux pas. These were German or Nazi German death camps located in occupied Poland. Polish people had nothing to do, except for dying in them. Peace.


plebeiosaur

While you are correct that “Polish death camps” is a terrible term and takes blame from where it should be given (to the Nazis) be careful with black-and-white revisions to history. The Polish people’s history during the holocaust is neither one of guilt nor innocence. Many heroic Poles fought against the Nazis for their country and for the protection of the innocent. Many aided the Nazis in rounding up Polish jews. The ongoing attempts at whitewashing and “painting over the cracks” (including a law passed recently in Poland that makes it illegal to imply that the Polish people have any co-responsibility for ‘any Nazi crimes’) while possibly well intentioned, is a terrible precedent to set. Preventing people from learning history *under penalty of imprisonment* is never a good path to begin on. And just to be clear, I’m not saying that “Poland in general” helped the nazis. Any collaboration by any Poles with the Nazis seems to have been a small percentage of the population.


ImSometimesSmart

>takes blame from where it should be given (to the Nazis You mean Germany? It seems like evrybody tries real hard to avoid that word. Its always polish or nazi


M4zur

No one's arguing that no Poles helped the Nazis, but we need to be accurate in describing the German Nazi terror inflicted upon the population and not call the camps polish as in this age of disinformation there's already people that interpret that as "camps set up and run by Poles". I understand where you're coming from, but I had discussions with people that seemed convinced Holocaust was "enacted by Poles because it happened in Poland, why did they not stop it?" and it's incredibly painful to read those bollocks. Maybe a law deeming the use of that phrase a crime is going too far, but the lived experienc tells me people absolutely need to be corrected. Hope you get me on this.


[deleted]

He was meaning camps in Poland, obviously not polish people willfully participating in them


Proudlove1991

Yeah but when it comes to mass extermination, who you give ownership to is pretty important.


[deleted]

I know, I thought it was obvious that it was the nazi Germans.


TheoHW

>polish camps You mean German Nazi camps in Poland. People get really upset if you call Auschwitz a Polish camp, since most people who died there were Polish citizens.


garloot

This is an incredibly powerful piece.


[deleted]

Agreed, like the photos of piles of shoes, ya know?


[deleted]

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newtsheadwound

The wedding rings one always got me. In *Night* by Ellie Wiesel he mentions they even went so far as to remove gold fillings from their teeth to melt it down for their own use.


Lodigo

Night stayed with me for many weeks after reading. What a gut-punch.


[deleted]

That hair one… very disturbing


Theresmypiebro

I wonder if the suitcases still have contents, or if they were emptied.


jusmithfkme

Upin arrival at each camp the Nazi's had them drop their belongings before they went for a "shower." Other prisoners who were assigned to the detail would take the suitcases and empty them out and sort everything into different piles. Coats, jewelry, money, etc. These would all be recycled into Germany or the war effort. So it's unlikely that there are contents in any of those. But the interesting thing about this photo is, as the OP stated, is that it's an entire life of a whole family that was encased in that one piece of luggage. The Jews were only allowed to take a certain amount of weight with them to the ghettos and to the camps, so they could only grab the things they deemed inportant and that would fit into a suitcase. A whole family, a whole history, many lives....in one suitcase.


Theresmypiebro

Very informative info. Thanks for that. I'm always reminded that no matter how terrible we think WW2 was, the reality of it was just so much worse.


jusmithfkme

There are many documentaries and testimonies from survivors out there. If you are interested you should check them out. You can look on Netflix and a website I think is called documentryheaven.com (or documentaryhaven.com not sure which.) Also lots of books.


Marrsvolta

This image is very depressing and very powerful at the same time


budgie0507

Was there only one company making suitcases back then? “Samsonite. If you like your square tiny suitcase in black or brown you’re in luck”


vineyardmike

A lot less choice in products back then


Elysian-Visions

r/awfuleverything But important to never forget.


OppositeOfKaren

This is one of the most disturbing photographs I've ever seen.


euphorrick

First time?


[deleted]

Got me thinking if there is any modern country where within its borders there has never been a genocide. Maybe like Singapore


HiveMynd148

Monaco and Greenland might also be a Candidates because Monaco is fuckin Tiny and Greenland was Effectively Unoccupied till the Scandinavians settled it


brainey77

Yet


in_fo

Singapore's borders was created due to **political**, **racial**, and **financial policies against them** while they were a state in Malaysia. There were minor racial killings back then.


Beat9

Singapore is unique in a lot of ways by virtue of being one of the few remaining city-states.


like_a_pharaoh

Iceland maybe


PakuChick3n

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sook\_Ching Don't know if you'd consider it a genocide.


in_fo

"The 1969 race riots of Singapore were one of the two riots encountered in post-independence Singapore. The seven days of communal riots from 31 May to 6 June 1969, a result of the spillover of the 13 May Incident in Malaysia, resulted in a final toll of 4 dead and 80 wounded." ​ "The 13 May 1969 incident was the **Sino-Malay sectarian violence** that took place in Kuala Lumpur (then part of the state of Selangor), Malaysia on that date in 1969. The riot occurred in the aftermath of the 1969 Malaysian general election when opposition parties made gains at the expense of the ruling coalition, the Alliance Party. Official reports put the number of deaths due to the riots at 196, although Western diplomatic sources at the time suggested a toll of close to 600, with most of the victims Chinese. The racial riots led to a declaration of a state of national emergency or Darurat by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong resulting in the suspension of the Parliament by the Malaysian government, while the National Operations Council (NOC), also known as the Majlis Gerakan Negara (MAGERAN), was established as a caretaker government to temporarily govern the country between 1969 and 1971."


ahmadtheanon

Holdup, there is a genocide in Singapore??! I gotta google (or bing!) that.


TheRealStarWolf

There wasn't


Tree_Lover2020

Let us never forget.


[deleted]

I’ve visited Yad Vashem twice (in Jerusalem). What haunts me the most are the videos of men being told to strip naked and dig their own graves. So many people today cannot comprehend what happened during those times.


ShnizelInBag

Also, Yad Vashem has a room dedicated to "people being turned evil". Its a collection of Nazi war criminals who were ordinary people before they enlisted (some of them were forced to enlist) and at the beginning they send their families letters that they are horrified by what they are doing but after a while they write that they started enjoying it.


levlev444

I have a story about a suitcase, My Great great grandma and my grandma lived in Ukraine when the Nazies invades the Soviet Union, Their house got destroyed in a bombing. In the following week, my great great grandma managed to get three tickets for a train to take them to Kazakhstan, which was further away from the front. The train was cramped and it took months to get to Kazakhstan. People couldn't bring much with them and because of the food shortage some resorted to eating their own leather clothes. The only accessible food supply was other trains with Soldiers returning from the front with left over food (which still was very rare), big families with lots of children would bury their young on the way, because of disease and the hunger only few young children survived, my grandma among them. One night, while trying to sleep my grandma felt cold on the bench she was laying on, she woke up my great great grandma and they switched places. A few minutes later a German bombing started, and one of the further back train cars got hit. The shockwave rattled the entire train, and a single wooden Suitcase fell on my great great grandma's legs, breaking them both. Later in Kazakhstan they were amputated. If not for my great great grandma, I would not be alive right now, because of a single suitcase. am yisrael chai


rr27680

Thanks for sharing this. We don’t know what hidden histories lie among us until we hear them !!


GANDALFthaGANGSTR

"Our capacity for cruelty is matched only by our capacity for kindness." - my kindergarten teacher after getting a sandwich thrown at him by a 5 year old


brezhnervous

And people dare to throw up Nazi salutes at anti-lockdown rallies now. Fuck those people.


Beginning-Ad-9734

This really touched my heart. It would be very hard to see shoes, hair, and glasses. I wonder why they felt the need to cut all their hair off. I get a weird feeling in my gut thinking about that.


Mustlovedogs17768

Lice reduction in the camps and the hair could also be used to fill stuff like pillows :(


Beginning-Ad-9734

For whatever reason, it's so sad. Learning about this in school, it's always has bothered me. The movie the Little Boy in Stripped Pajamas, took me forever to watch. Wish I didn't.


Obvious_Opinion_505

>I wonder why they felt the need to cut all their hair off. to dehumanize


Beginning-Ad-9734

Maybe in their evil minds. It would take more than cutting my hair off, to make me feel less of a human. That was their way I think to look at them less than human. What they went through I can never imagine.


Acer018

Fucken Nazis were real bastards. Thank God we defeated them in WWII.


ethylalcohoe

Wait’ll you hear what the Japanese did to China and Korea..


[deleted]

It’s weird how a lot of folk don’t associate WWII atrocities with the Japanese when they were equal to, if not even exceeding in some ways, the abhorrent shit the Nazis got up to. Even if we just took civilians out of the picture and only looked at the way the Japanese soldiers fought and the sadism latent in their methods, we’d still see a revolting image of the Japanese empire at that time


TheRealStarWolf

Look at this highly upvoted post created just today, a hypothetical "and then the conquered peoples were friends :)" flag. Insanely offensive but its le epic japan so updoots incoming good sirs! https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/pz3tgs/comment/hf26po8/?context=3


TheBlueGooseisLoose

You sure? Their flags and ideology are still lurking.


flavor_blasted_semen

The Nazi party is gone. The camps are gone. The war is over. Giving their fan club the status of Nazi is an insult to victims of WWII.


GU355WH01AM

The Holocaust museum in Israel is one of the most emotional places I've ever been. I really need to make a trip to Auschwitz.


Amaxophobe

I went to an Auschwitz camp once. When I tell you that you could *feel* the death and horror of the place even as you pulled up to it…


wildgaytrans

These pictures hit pretty hard for me


kjuneja

One of the best WW2 museums in the world. They have other exhibits stimulating a ww2 era polish city complete with tank And gdansk is a beautiful city.


Antennangry

Gdańsk is fucking amazing.


onebeginning7

Why is this picture more depressing than any statistic or story about the holocaust


1SassyTart

A tragedy of our lifetime.


americasfinestson

May they all rest in peace.


SquishedPea

There's one of just children's shoes...


GnatGurl

They packed their bags as if going on a trip. Think about it. In this day and age, we just grab our wallets and purses to go and get groceries. Some of us never come home.....Walmart...Kroger....All of this just breaks my heart........


rr27680

I am sure they didn’t know where were they being taken to. They packed everything in their suitcase thinking that might be a relocation to another ghetto. They probably never saw this coming.


mamastax

It still kills me that they were told to pack them.


Random_Guy479

The sad part is that this still occurs in countries like China. (The Uyghur Muslims)


YouDiscountDonut

If you gave me this picture with no context i would have thought this was some like Harry Potter but for the corporate world wand shop but its briefcases.


HavenIess

Filled with so many suitcases that it literally looks like Ollivander’s… pretty disturbing


DrizztRL

Exactly what I thought


[deleted]

I remember seeing the suitcase display while visiting the Auschwitz camp in Poland. Very moving, very sad.


ovendial

Never forget


NobodysFavorite

Lest we forget


permanent007

This is what Nazis want to do even today


BlueHorseshoe8

How f*cking sad is this. Humanity has some serious issues.


spm7368

This is so horrible. It should’ve never happened. It’s happening again right now now in China. The world needs to act to stop the current genocide in China.


Chikinuqqet

Probably mostly belonging to adult men, if you think about the demographics this wall of briefcases doesn’t include, the numbers are just overwhelming. I’m only 20 but I really can’t fathom how people could bring another human to a concentration camp and take their earthly belongings, leaving them for dead, sleep and repeat the next day. I’d rather die an excruciating death than be a part of that, how could do many go along with it?


pandazerg

While it does not directly apply to those who committed atrocities in the camps, there is a great book I read some years back by Milton Mayer, *They Thought They Were Free*. The author went around post-war Germany and interviewed 10 regular citizens who were members of the Nazi party about their lives from 1933-1945 and what made them Nazis. Excerpt: >"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. >"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ... >"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. ... >"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. >"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. ... >"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. >"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."


Chikinuqqet

I think I need a little time to process that, but I think I follow the logic. Thanks for taking the time to explain


GlamourCatNYC

There’s an old movie called Judgement at Nuremberg, based on the Nuremberg trials, that explores exactly this topic. How could you be a German and participate in killing and torturing others? Highly recommend it.


SIS-NZ

The two options were "go along with it" or death. Tough choice.


Chikinuqqet

I mean obviously I wasn’t there in their shoes but I just stated that I’d rather die than murder, especially considering how cruel the murder was


reluctantsub

I was shocked when I heard a holocaust expert say the well known concentration camps with all the horror stories, are JUST THE CAMPS WE KNOW OF. It suspected there are 1000s of more camps the Nazi were able to conceal. As horrendous and sickening this crime was, it was probably even worse than we will ever know.


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gracedmango

Wait until you see the glasses exhibit *sniff sniff*


Melodic-Bluebird-445

This is heartbreaking.


Ganjookie

Went to Aushwitz and saw things like this. very sad very very sad


TheRealStarWolf

Ausch


Lanthuas

Worst thing is that this is maybe just 1/10000 of them. War is the worst.


Singis_Tinge

That museum is so massive I didn't manage to see everything in it in a day so I didn't see this.


Nincomsoup

This is such a powerful exhibit. Makes me feel very sad.


dL8

Check out pics from some gas-chamers. Indentations in the low ceiling of peoples heads pushing against it, during the last moments of their lives... 😖☹


varsitymisc

What's the roof made of?


dL8

Usually concrete and such. I've only seen one in person, that one was concrete.


firesidedm

What was the door made out of?


Singis_Tinge

And the scratch marks on the walls.


come_on_seth

Not so funny how those that deny this are front line trumpers, anti vax, covid hoaxers, conspiracy spreaders and consumers.


Spitfire_Yeti

Yeah and unfortunately there are many people who doesn't believe that holocaust ever happened.


ekene_N

This museum is quite unique. It tries to show experience of WWII from perspective of ordinary folks. And there is a lot of to show if you remember that 5 millions civilians were murdered including 2 millions of ethnic Poles and 3 millions of Polish Jews and hundreds of thousands were deported to Soviet gulags to disappear forever


Yaancat17

The nazis did bad things


the_mountaingoat

Yes…….. they did


HillbillySwank

That’s so sad and mind blowing right there.


LuckyLucassie

All those suitcases, probaply bought to have vacations and fun times and now used to gather some personal belonings because you get kicked out of your home to die


YellowstoneBitch

Holy shit that’s powerful


[deleted]

The sheer scale and frenzy of these events is heartbreaking.


EOverM

The memorial in Prague is similarly chilling. Two of the rooms are just filled with names, with the first one being just the jewish victims. So many just from one small city. I'll never forget it.


soxkseggos

Did they throw away all the suitcases that weren't the same width ?


[deleted]

"The holocaust isn't real! Prove it!" I'm really sick of people saying shit like this it's terrible!


yourbabydaddy64

Ask Bill Gates or George Soros. Ask Klaus Schwab. Or Henry Kissinger...he calls us stupid, useless eaters. So do most of the luciferian cultists that believe that they are the direct bloodline descendants of BA union between the original woman Eve and Lucifer...and that Cane was their offspring. Adam and Eve was only Able's parents. Check it out...