The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: bijou on December 18, 2009, 08:51:43 AM
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(http://www.foxnews.com/images/592200/1_61_a320.jpg)
WARSAW, Poland — The infamous iron sign bearing the Nazis' cynical slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" that spanned the main entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp was stolen before dawn Friday, Polish police said....
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580525,00.html?test=latestnews
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Don't worry; The Øne will return it when he's done makin' copies for the FEMA camps.
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That is sick the things that people will do
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Who the hell does that?
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Who the hell does that?
Usually snot-nosed college kids, after a few too many JagerMeisters.
And if this bothers you more so than what made that sign notorious in the first place, I suggest a re-check of your priorities might be in order.
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Usually snot-nosed college kids, after a few too many JagerMeisters.
And if this bothers you more so than what made that sign notorious in the first place, I suggest a re-check of your priorities might be in order.
Alrighty then. I think you misunderstood. I just think that is a odd thing to steal in the first place. I do not condone what the sign means.
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Alright then.
Sorry. Wasn't meaning to jump on you about what you posted. Just trying to keep stuff in perspective.
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Sorry. Wasn't meaning to jump on you about what you posted. Just trying to keep stuff in perspective.
It is cool. I posted my meaning above.
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I think it is sad I have been there and saw that sign in person. Walked the grounds and just cried for those lost. The ones that stole the sign should be put into a gas chamber themselves
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I think it is sad I have been there and saw that sign in person. Walked the grounds and just cried for those lost. The ones that stole the sign should be put into a gas chamber themselves.
That's the kind of misplaced priorities I'm concerned about.
This whole incident reminds me of the words from Lincoln's Gettysberg Address:
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
Vandals can tear the whole camp down, and it still will not detract one whit from why the site is important. It will not "un-hallow" that ground, or disturb the rest of those souls who went to their deaths there. They are no less safe in the arms of their Heavenly Father now, than they were when they walked into those "showers" 65 years ago.
As far as the world forgetting the message that the camp's continued existence is supposed to send, how many other, in some casess WORSE, genocidal purges have been purpetrated upon the peoples of the Earth SINCE Auschwitz? I think that the evil in the world have done a superb job of IGNORING the message of Auschwitz, just as the good people of the Earth - such as yourself - cannot forget that message. In either case, Auschwitz itself is not needed to reinforce the messsage.
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That's the kind of misplaced priorities I'm concerned about.
This whole incident reminds me of the words from Lincoln's Gettysberg Address:
Vandals can tear the whole camp down, and it still will not detract one whit from why the site is important. It will not "un-hallow" that ground, or disturb the rest of those souls who went to their deaths there. They are no less safe in the arms of their Heavenly Father now, than they were when they walked into those "showers" 65 years ago.
As far as the world forgetting the message that the camp's continued existence is supposed to send, how many other, in some casess WORSE, genocidal purges have been purpetrated upon the peoples of the Earth SINCE Auschwitz? I think that the evil in the world have done a superb job of IGNORING the message of Auschwitz, just as the good people of the Earth - such as yourself - cannot forget that message. In either case, Auschwitz itself is not needed to reinforce the messsage.
That is true I just get mad thinking of the ugly things happening no I will never forget that place and do my best to remember it and teach my children about it's history.
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Tears fall down my face and upon my heart when I think of the torture of my people that happened in that place.That happened in Germany at the apex of her civilation. That's reason to be ever vigilent..... :heart:
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Appauling. I've been there too. The place sent shivers through me.
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In either case, Auschwitz itself is not needed to reinforce the messsage.
Theoretically, this is correct. For decent folk, the knowledge of what happened suffices; for those inclined to evil, a day-long docented personal tour would matter little. Personally, I knew quite a bit of what the Nazis did, but when I visited Dachau in 2000 it all became much more "real" to me somehow. I posted this reflection about that visit on another discussion forum:
In 2000, Mrs. SVPete and I spent a week and a half in southern Germany, Dachau being one of our day trips. Dachau was once an artist's colony. More to the point, Dachau also has a WW1-vintage factory workers' camp that Hitler took over to imprison political foes. After the war, it was cleaned up some and used to house refugees. Afterward, the barracks were demolished, but the administration buildings remained. As a museum, the administration buildings are used for displays, and two "barracks" buildings rebuilt and set up to represent four stages of how the actual barracks buildings looked at various stages in the camp's history. The rest of the grounds have markers indicating where barracks buildings had been, and at the far end of the open grounds, there is a chapel. Near the chapel is a gateway to where the crematorium is, and to an experimental building that prototyped the gas chamber-showers used in Auschwitz. In all of the buildings, I had a heavy sense of the evil that had been done there - a feeling that was/is a mix of what I knew/know and what is shown there. This clashed with two incongruities. First, the place is relatively quiet and peaceful - it isn't crowded, nor are those touring noisy. Second is the physical surroundings of the camp that are part of the museum. As a memorial to those who died there and whose ashes were scattered about the perimeter of the camp, groups (many of them Jewish) have created a semi-wild, semi-cultivated belt of trees, bushes, grasses and flowers that are absolutely gorgeous (we were there in May). Whether by intent or by coincidence, this physical beauty combined with the sense of the evil that happened there was and is very haunting. Dachau also reminded me that, however unpleasant the thought might be, Dachau and Auschwitz are examples of what humans are capable of when unleashed from internal and external moral restraints.
This is a lengthy blog post, including pix, about the writer's visit to Auschwitz: “We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.†(http://www.rachellucas.com/index.php/2009/08/24/we-have-to-go-into-the-despair-and-go-beyond-it-by-working-and-doing-for-somebody-else-by-using-it-for-something-else/).
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From the link.
In the basement, you can enter or peek into rooms labeled as “starvation roomsâ€, dark stultifying chambers where they put people to starve to death; a “suffocation roomâ€, which was sealed and into which the Nazis would sometimes put a burning candle to use up the oxygen; and worst of all, the “standing cells.†You can actually stand in one of these today. There are four of these cells, all in one tiny little cave of a dark room, and they are 3 x 3 feet. Four men would be put in each of these cells at the same time, for days and weeks on end. No ventilation, no light, no ability to sit or lie down. And they were only taken out during the day to slave-labor.
Never again.
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Visual cues are not something to dismiss so easily. Sort of like a headstone. I still won't visit the grave of a friend of mine who died as I know it will break me down. I know HE's not there...but seeing his name on a headstone will cut deep.
I feel the same for music. You know how when you hear a certain song, it triggers a memory.
The sign must trigger feelings for a lot of jews and especially those who lost family in Auschwitz.
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The Nazi death camps are viscerally disturbing; however, let us not forget that, compared to Mao and Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis were amateurs (in both primary senses of the word - not fully competent, but also lovers thereof). There's a gent on the web who's been kind enough to sort through the various data sources and at least find the medians of the numbers each reports - it's not a pretty picture of humanity: Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm), by Matthew White.
In very, very round numbers, the top three political murderers are (i.e., the numbers reflect those killed on account of political policy choices, and exclude those killed in the ordinary conduct of the various wars these leaders were involved in):
(1) Chairman Mao - approximately 40,000,000 deaths can be laid at his feet and the feet of his communist party
(2) Josef Stalin - approximately 20,000,000 deaths can be laid at his feet and the feet of his communist party
(3) Adolph Hitler - approximately 15,500,000 deaths can be laid at his feet and the feet of his fascist Nazi party
God bless progressive political ideologies of the sort that Sen. Sanders (Vt) and Barack Obama wish to emulate.
The sign? Barack'll probably have it back in the Spring, after he's finished having a copy made up for the new gazebo in his back yard.
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My Grandmother lost a couple of brothers to Stalin. She, her husband and their first-born came to the US in 1904, knowing what was coming. Her brothers were in an elite regiment in the Russian Army (they were among the Czar's bodyguards, from what I was told) and stayed in Russia. They were in contact until the late 20s, and then silence. They were the sons of a land-owning farmer, ethnic Germans and from the Ukraine. Did they die in the Solovetsky Islands? A dank, obscure basement? Working on the Belomor Canal? The Kolyma gold field camps? The Vorkuta timber cutting camps? The Ukrainian terror famine? I'll almost certainly never know. That was some 25 years before I was born and didn't touch me personally. But I won't forget that Stalin was one of the worst monsters so far in human history, in the same league as Mao, Hitler and Lenin.
For some reason, Russia hasn't seen fit, that I've heard, to open a large-scale Gulag memorial at the Belomor Canal (Kolyma, Vorkuta and the Solovetsky Islands being rather remote, the lack of a memorial would make sense even if the will were there). Between that lack of a public revelation/reminder and Vlad the Impaler II, I would not be surprised if Russian repression reached Leninist-Stalinist scale in 10 or 20 years.
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On a more general note, the demonization of Trotsky, Hitler and Mussolini as "rightist" or "fascist" is just propaganda lines meaning little more than, "Political competitors trying to accomplish the same ends by very slightly different means." The biggest difference I've noticed between Lenin-Stalin and Hitler was that Hitler had sense enough not to to kill off productive people like farmers and industrialists. By not killing them, Hitler made them, their assets and their knowledge slaves of the government. Think Hitler's racism was a distinction? Ask the Ukrainians, Volga Germans and Chechens! Think Stalin was less nationalist? Ask Eastern Europeans subjugated to the USSR for for a generation or two!.
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My Mom's family fled Germany when Hitler came to power. They knew. They were wealthy enough to be able to book passage. And no. We're not Jews. They left because we had relatives here in the States and we wanted no part of that SOB Hitler. My Great Uncle lost a leg in Belgium fighting those monsters.
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My Mom's family fled Germany when Hitler came to power. They knew. They were wealthy enough to be able to book passage. And no. We're not Jews. They left because we had relatives here in the States and we wanted no part of that SOB Hitler. My Great Uncle lost a leg in Belgium fighting those monsters.
It would make no difference whether your family were Jews or full-blood Aryans, thank God they had sense enough, and luck enough, to escape the carnage; they were smart people, your folks, and it's good to see that their wisdom appears to have come down through the generations.
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No updates on this story?
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I found this through Bing: Reward Offered for Stolen Auschwitz Death Camp Sign (http://artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=35108&int_modo=1). According to the results list, the story had been e-published ~3 hours ago.
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A lot of work to free that sign. :-)
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That's what I've been thinking! That thing has to weigh hundreds of pounds, and be several yards long. Removing, transporting and storing it wasn't trivial ... and not noticed?
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sign found, n 3 pieces... men detained
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2411943/posts
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It seems I over-estimated the size and weight of the sign. The apparent perps were in their 20s and 30s ... doesn't sound like the theft was a beer-fueled college prank.
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It's not only at Auschwitz and other Consentration Camps where the Nazi inhuman beasts plied their murderous trade. They turtured and killed Jews in their homes, in their synagagues, in the streets, in their hiding places, just for the fun of it. Whatever one has read, seen in movies, talked about with survivors, there's always more evil that occured in that hideous country then to learn about. NEVER AGAIN!!
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STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Swedish authorities say a man wanted in Poland in connection with the theft of a famous sign at Auschwitz has been arrested in Stockholm.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/02/11/12836931.html
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NEVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!
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Pete I just don't understand any of this. The books I have read, the movies I have seen, the parents of some of my class mates with the tattoos above their wrists, story's from family that were fresh on the scene when the camps were liberated, it just never could be real, that is until I foolishly visited the museum in DC. I made it 3/4 of the way when I collapsed and had a panic attack. I was fine until I got to the exhibit, the 3 tear bunk beds the prisoners slept on. I reached out to touch the wood and almost instant nausea, so intense I had to sit down on the floor.
Hubby had problems with the walk through rail car, he in fact almost ran through it, later when I asked him why he acted this way all he could tell me was that small little box that had held over 100 lives gave him a feeling of familiarity. Like he had been there before.
There was a woman a friend of my Moms that lived in town, she would come to the house and tell Mom what it was like for the Christian Germans as a child. The suffering imposed on the civilians by the war machine was truly horrid. Little food, spending nights in cold cellars as we bombed the heck out of them. They had to direct their anger at someone and the government gave them scape goats. Now to make life even more interesting the German people were more afraid of the government then they were of being bombed by us or England.
This woman had lived outside a camp in Germany and would watch as humans were marched through town to the camps. These heavily guarded people Jew, Gypsy, Gay, Jehovah's Witnesses and Communists were starving. Some of the town folk with little food themselves would pity the prisoners and throw them a crust of bread then run like heck as the guards would shoot them for that act.
Most of the towns folk threw rocks at these half dead people as they believed they were the reason for their suffering. The people like any other kind of folk lived in fear of that knock on the door and have their 15 year old male children taken away to fight on the Russian front.
Yes the people could in fact smell the scent of the crematoriums at times. They knew, could tell days ahead of time when a new lot of prisoners would be brought in because the smell went on day and night-----to make room for more prisoners a certain number of prisoners would have to be killed.
Most wanted revenge on the prisoners that they believed had caused the loss of life of most of their family members, those left were themselves starving, cold and terrified.
In a way it confuses me more to know both sides of the story. The German people were as much a victim of the government as those who died in the camps were. At least the people in the camps knew why the government was going to kill them, the civilians had no idea why their government also treated them so brutally.
So contradictory we are. We cheer for the people who escaped Europe before things got really nasty. We cry for those Good Germans that were 10 generation and loved their country and died for their patriotism.
To ask a German family why their relatives stayed behind is asking for trouble.
Would you leave America because you felt the government was doing wrong.?
Their government was voted in like ours, they believed they could be voted out. No sane person would believe what their government planned to do and in fact did.
Back then had there been bumper stickers they would have read, " Germany, love it or die." or, " Kids need fresh air, send them to camp."
We think this is old news, can't happen here, how blind we are. We ourselves had the west coast camps for Japanese citizens, took their homes, businesses and lives at the same time Germany was doing the same thing. Only difference was the treatment our prisoners got. But it came close, there was talk of castrating the male baby's born in the camps. Very, very close.
Today I believe the only way we can win this new war is to hark back to the old time warfare. We freaking know where this Atomic research is going on, we know every day we ignore it the better developed it gets.
Why in the name of humanity don't we use conventional bunker busters to take the whole thing out NOW. Do we have to go for a few years grumbling and worrying about how the middle east is developing something that can kill millions.? Do we wait until this monster is up and running then crap our pants because we have done nothing to stop it,
We don't even need ground troops for this, just blow a hole in the earth 10 miles square, 6 miles down. Give them their own Grand Canyon.
We can do it at the drop of a dime with out a nuclear bomb. So all the Nuclear country's go ape $h1t, old time non nuclear warfare.
This fighting on the ground is nuts, leave that for the clean up crew after we raid our arsenals and drop from the Sky's all the old and new stuff we have.
THEY started this war from the Sky's, just drop enough bombs to put them out of business and wait for the back lash. Won't hurt to just stand tall and announce after the fact, " what is the difference in one suicide bomber of yours and a really big bomber of ours.?"
Rant ended----for now, sorry Thor, we woman don't stand for foolish men or woman that don't believe in my Grandmas saying " A stitch in time saves 9"
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That post makes me dizzy........... I suppose that it's impossible for you to compound a coherent statement??
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WTF?!
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"The German people were (sic) equally victims". ?...Then who were the tens of thousands of people wildly cheering Hitler whenever he spoke to them??!!!
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vesta has been as the crack again...
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WTF?!
I warned you......
doc
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Tears fall down my face and upon my heart when I think of the torture of my people that happened in that place.That happened in Germany at the apex of her civilation. That's reason to be ever vigilent..... :heart:
Not to shit on anyone's parade but what the hey:
Since the passing of Roe Vs. Wade the "Righteous Woman's Rights" Nazis have already SURPASSED the murder-by-the-numbers of Hitler's reign.
Where is the sign for those dead humans?
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"The German people were (sic) equally victims". ?...Then who were the tens of thousands of people wildly cheering Hitler whenever he spoke to them??!!!
There were indeed many decent Germans who hid and protected Jews, at the risk of their own lives.