What Did the German Public Know About the Holocaust During WWII?

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  • Опубліковано 1 січ 2023
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КОМЕНТАРІ • 12 тис.

  • @TodayIFoundOut
    @TodayIFoundOut  Рік тому +507

    If you liked this video, you might enjoy a few of our other channels such as our new one, Higher Learning in which we discuss in depth aviation related history while flying around in a little plane: youtube.com/@HigherLearningFlight
    Or how about Highlight History where we cover a lot of topics exactly like this one: youtube.com/@HighlightHistory
    And finally if you didn't enjoy the length of this one, we have another new one Fact Quickie, where we redo these topics to be about 2-5 minutes long, as well as cover some others too short for TodayIFoundOut: youtube.com/@FactQuickie

    • @OPIXdotWORLD
      @OPIXdotWORLD Рік тому

      ps...the world is run by nastis... they won ww2

    • @TheHardys01
      @TheHardys01 Рік тому

      Hello Longman...

    • @stormboy2367
      @stormboy2367 Рік тому +6

      It's interesting what Gerhard Kettal wrote. A sort of Jordan Peterson of his days.
      I have to add it was the horrors of 1920s Berlin that seeded the Nazis cruelty and most certainly the treaty of Versailles that implications all the way to China.
      Banks like JP Morgan and the like didn't really help the matter.
      There was also a food crisis in Germany at the time so in some ways I can be justified by the standard of the times (millions had died in a war not too far in the past) certainly not by modern standard (kind of what like the tories of the UK do now)
      To be fair to the Nazis (with out the english bias) they did what they thought they had to do. To be scathing well it was not well thought out with how it would play out as the mood at the time manifested into a life of its own and more well placed industrialists took the hold and gripped power from the military much like what happened in the Iraq war as profit, ideological and of course old fashioned greed and contempt moved to the forefront.

    • @stormboy2367
      @stormboy2367 Рік тому

      Lol Hitler had Udet
      Trump had Twitter
      In regards to the internet
      Was 1m Americans a statistic
      It's kind of weird that in retrospect China found a massive oil reserve in the Tarim oil fields a month before Wuhan occurred.
      Now that oil there with Belt and Road well it's very cheap to refine, transport and sell. Much cheaper than British petroleum, Chevron or Shell can compete with.
      So you can imagine after Iraq
      Well..
      Perhaps an insinuation or aporia but history has its little points that can not be missed.
      And well it fits the M.O.

    • @Sharpstoned
      @Sharpstoned Рік тому

      Considering most people today don't have any idea the atrocities the merican government is committing daily how can you justify holding the German people to a higher standard.

  • @LadyAstraan
    @LadyAstraan Рік тому +5860

    I am Polish, when I was 14 years old I visited Auschwitz during a school trip. One thing in particular stuck with me. I saw a room with a literal mountain of eye glasses. It was the math that shook me. I realized: How many % of people wear glasses? Well, not the majority, right? Well then, if this mountain was just a small percentage of those killed... then the numbers must be so large that the human mind refuses to accept them.

    • @amouramarie
      @amouramarie Рік тому +719

      For me it was the gold teeth. Barrels and barrels of gold teeth. How many people had gold fillings? How many gold fillings per person? How many dead and looted human bodies would it take to fill multiple enormous barrels to their brims with nothing but the individual teeth that happened to have gold in them? And then the likelihood that most of those teeth were pulled from living people with as much pain inflicted as possible. And that it happened so recently there are still people living who were there.

    • @AnaLucia-wy2ii
      @AnaLucia-wy2ii Рік тому +161

      I don’t know if I could have handled that at 14. I used to get very disturbed about things, but maybe it’s different from a movie or graphic images. I’m older now and still can’t bring myself to watch Schindler’s List, even though I know the whole story.
      I recently watched the Pianist. I was disturbed by a couple of images for a few days but was okay after that. I don’t know if I could handle visiting Auschwitz.
      I can handle a lot more than I could at 14, obviously. I would imagine that in Poland, almost everyone has a loose connection to someone who died there through neighbors, friends, and acquaintances.

    • @KsylaksRysuje
      @KsylaksRysuje Рік тому

      @@andrewmclaughlin2701 Soviet stage craft was present, yes. But we're Polish and our families went through this. The stories our grandmothers told about r*pes, murders and theft was immense. A lot of my family ended up in the camp. Shut your mouth if you think ALL OF THIS is soviet propaganda. Soviets are as much hated and did as much fucked up shit.

    • @abbynormal3068
      @abbynormal3068 Рік тому +31

      @@andrewmclaughlin2701 What? Please explain what you mean.

    • @andrewmclaughlin2701
      @andrewmclaughlin2701 Рік тому +76

      @@abbynormal3068 Turns out a lot of what the Soviets reported was false. Imagine being able to believe the Soviets.

  • @brera2434
    @brera2434 Рік тому +1851

    My grandfather once said, when I asked him: I was a teenager during the war, and no camp close by, and you better believe me that whoever had eyes to see and ears to hear, knew exactly that something horrible was being done to the Jewish neighbours who disappeared. Everybody kept their mouths shut because they were scared the same would happen to them. And this is how it was possible. Please, never make that mistake. Never shut up. This is how bad things happen.

    • @gbarbecue2399
      @gbarbecue2399 Рік тому +55

      I'm not sure about the actual quote, but the gist is for bad things to happen good people have to stay silent.

    • @LMorningstar-yv8ou
      @LMorningstar-yv8ou Рік тому +43

      This quote is often misattributed to Einstein, but I don't *think* it was him who said it, and that is, "The only way for evil to triumph is if good people do nothing". Hats off to that badass preacher though, his letter to the Chief Physician was like something outta freakin Pulp Fiction! :P Poor man though, but brave. He essentially gave his life for the Jews, a group he did not even belong to :(

    • @TNT-km2eg
      @TNT-km2eg Рік тому

      You only have to look at the faces of KFZ employees , it tells you all about Germans

    • @ashleemarie8779
      @ashleemarie8779 Рік тому +33

      My dad always told me it was a lie that the public didn’t know. They knew very well. To me the German citizens are to blame as well. He’d tell me how soldiers took them to show them as well & made them clean up

    • @abbynormal3068
      @abbynormal3068 Рік тому +22

      That brought tears to my eyes. Not just for what your grandfather had to go through at such a young age, but because we can’t seem to overcome our viciousness; our cruelty.

  • @hirograveyard8236
    @hirograveyard8236 8 місяців тому +235

    As a taxi driver, one of my favorite regular clients was an old German woman who was finishing HS during the holocaust. The ONE time we spoke about it she cried, and told me that she knew, and everyone knew. They were either scared or in agreement. She married an American soldier and gtfo there lol. When I started driving her, it was to see him in the nursing home.
    Her secret to healthy marriage?
    “Buy two televisions. I’m being serious.”

    • @Sam-xt5gb
      @Sam-xt5gb 4 місяці тому +22

      I think in some weird way you’ve captured the human experience in your comment. We go through our lives, most of us powerless to the events around us, experience some degree of hardship or horror, and give advice to those that come after us. Thanks for sharing your story :)

    • @montrelouisebohon-harris7023
      @montrelouisebohon-harris7023 3 місяці тому +7

      That’s funny they have two separate TVs but I’m glad that she got out of germinating and found love in the midst of war

    • @hirograveyard8236
      @hirograveyard8236 3 місяці тому +17

      @@montrelouisebohon-harris7023 my last trip with her was to go to the nursing home and collect some of his things after he died. It was years ago. I’ll never forget her.

    • @scottmcdonald4571
      @scottmcdonald4571 3 місяці тому

      ​@@hirograveyard8236make a good movie

    • @scottmcdonald4571
      @scottmcdonald4571 3 місяці тому +5

      Write a book

  • @xplosiv211
    @xplosiv211 5 місяців тому +224

    Patton was so pissed he matched his men to the nearest town, rounded up the civilians, marched their asses to the camp and made them walk the camp and help with the clean up. He told them he knew they had to have known, and wanted them to see what their complicity had done.

    • @mysteriousjungalist
      @mysteriousjungalist 3 місяці тому

      He knew by the end of the war it was fake.
      Patton famously stated ”We fought the wrong enemy. We should have fought alongside the fascists against the communists."
      Shortly after he was murdered.
      Look it up.

    • @aSSGoblin1488
      @aSSGoblin1488 3 місяці тому +7

      muslims say this was fake or exaggerated

    • @meepk633
      @meepk633 3 місяці тому

      @@aSSGoblin1488 kiss your shelf

    • @nancyvillines4552
      @nancyvillines4552 3 місяці тому

      ​​@@aSSGoblin1488 They can say what they want. There are videos and pictures. Interesting fact, it was a Muslim country that took in Jews.

    • @lindamcgough3645
      @lindamcgough3645 3 місяці тому +4

      In their fur coats no less!

  • @909sickle
    @909sickle Рік тому +3809

    People keeping saying "never again", but then turn around and support the same policies even today or quietly disagree and are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs or being publicly attacked. It doesn't start with camps. It happens one small step at a time. Any time you see a wide group of people being singled out as the enemy, you're seeing the first step.

    • @salomecomedy
      @salomecomedy Рік тому

      Your comment is spot on...
      I couldn't believe how the german society supported the seggregation of unvaccinated people (including children and pregnant women) for months during 2021/2022.
      It has been the biggest wake up call for me, as a person that is living in the country for 16 years now.

    • @squirrelhaggard3884
      @squirrelhaggard3884 Рік тому +253

      That’s what you always hear holocaust survivors saying. Is before they knew it it had gotten out of control and it all started by small moves and little things being stripes from you

    • @cody0126a
      @cody0126a Рік тому +1

      Yes anti white racism is bad these days

    • @justincraig398
      @justincraig398 Рік тому +45

      ‘People keeping’ is so wrong that it hurts my head when I read it …… ‘people keep saying’ is the way you’re supposed to say it. I hope it was just a typo and you don’t really speak like that.

    • @jameshughes525
      @jameshughes525 Рік тому +1

      these idiotic SJW's think they want socialism because it's " fair " and " inclusive " . But surely have no idea what it is they're actually asking for

  • @aslinndhan
    @aslinndhan Рік тому +1382

    My grandfather was at Birkenau and he said there was no way the villagers didn't know what was happening because you could smell the camps before you saw them. The effluvia of people living together in extreme conditions with poor sanitation and the rotting of bodies was overwhelming.

    • @karola_ro5930
      @karola_ro5930 Рік тому +51

      They know but they can be next especially in Poland

    • @michelleli2175
      @michelleli2175 Рік тому

      @@karola_ro5930 Exactly, I am sure back than there must be plenty of jews or other communities like gay people living around in Germany, and suddenly one day, they are gone. Where could they be? That's pretty obvious no?
      On top of that people living around the extermination camps, there is no way that they wouldn't know. So many people going in and no one goes out, that's pretty much - you do the maths.

    • @styleme3375
      @styleme3375 Рік тому +143

      This was my first thoughts when I visited Dachau. The towns people said they had no idea but you have old farm houses within a mile from the crematorium. They knew.

    • @Mk-vd9qs
      @Mk-vd9qs Рік тому +71

      And the smell of burning flesh from the crematorias...

    • @karola_ro5930
      @karola_ro5930 Рік тому +26

      @@styleme3375 as I know situation of "normal" citizens was different in Poland than in Germany during WWII, as well as reaction to cruelty

  • @anomalyfox5186
    @anomalyfox5186 6 місяців тому +114

    I am German and I like to watch these videos so I can educate myself on history to the fullest extent, for if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. I visited Auschwitz on a school field trip when I was 16, and it was one of the most somber places I have ever visited. I found it so hard to believe the atrocities that happened there. This video made me cry, mostly for the Captain and his message of all life being precious. He sounds like he would have been incredible to meet.

    • @dxcSOUL
      @dxcSOUL 5 місяців тому +6

      If only the people of Japan cared this much.

    • @Maven0666
      @Maven0666 4 місяці тому +4

      You don’t have to apologize for being German. 🇩🇪 I agree with you. Be willing to learn from history so you see it repeat itself.

    • @ThatJew305
      @ThatJew305 4 місяці тому

      Monster

    • @anomalyfox5186
      @anomalyfox5186 4 місяці тому +3

      @@ThatJew305 What?

    • @nono86753
      @nono86753 3 місяці тому

      @@ThatJew305 🇵🇸

  • @lillmiss22
    @lillmiss22 8 місяців тому +76

    That statement you made about some of the German citizens feeling like they were Liberated by allied forces is correct. We were stationed in Germany for 6 years. A little German couple down the street who were kids during the war were so sweet. They had great apple & fruit trees in their yard and would let my son pick some on the way to school. They confused the heck out of him one day by saying they loved the American soldiers because we saved them. The gentleman went on to tell him later it was because if they spoke out back then they would be rationed or mysteriously disappear.

    • @macarthurstudios
      @macarthurstudios 5 місяців тому +9

      100% this is my grandparents story.. the are greatful of the americans

  • @r.blakehole932
    @r.blakehole932 Рік тому +1102

    To corroborate: In college in the late 70's and early 80's, I had a German language teacher who was a child in NAZI Germany during the war. When asked in class as to what she knew of the Holocaust during the war she said, "As a child, us kids all heard rumors. But our parents and guardians said nothing except to silence any loud talking about it. And, we kids really did not believe our nation could be so evil." She further went on to say, "But as a Christian I know now ALL people harbor some evil in their hearts. And none of us should ever give evil space or time to growth within us."

    • @RobespierreThePoof
      @RobespierreThePoof Рік тому +15

      It certainly fits the history as we know it.

    • @lifemocker85
      @lifemocker85 Рік тому

      German nation was no evil. Communists just made lies to demonize nationalism

    • @Factchekka
      @Factchekka Рік тому +4

      ​@Trevor Brannon You are ridiculous Dude...

    • @jaaackaissa1633
      @jaaackaissa1633 Рік тому

      "But as a Christian I now know that all people harbor some evil in their hearts. None of us should give evil space or time to grow within us."
      What evil are you talking about? The Old Testament is the most bloody book, commanding crimes equal to, and perhaps even greater than, the crimes of Nazism.
      As for the new covenant, we cannot extract from it an objective moral framework that criminalizes the actions of the Nazis.

    • @andydudley1775
      @andydudley1775 Рік тому +1

      ty

  • @ggenie7489
    @ggenie7489 Рік тому +826

    I knew someone when I was a kid who survived a concentration camp, I called him uncle, he was the loveliest man but would never speak of his past. The most heartbreaking thing was, he unfortunately got dementia and guess where his mind went back to. I was horrible watching him go back there. Rip uncle

    • @MarloSoBalJr
      @MarloSoBalJr Рік тому +85

      That's probably the most heartbreaking thing about dementia and probably the leading cause of it in the first place.
      Traumatic events that get bottled up and not accepted as "it happened, time to move on" ends up clouding a person's mind for the remainder of my life.
      My grandmother & grandfather went through that where they're just stuck in either 1930s Disenfranchisement of Negros and/or Post- WWII for blacks

    • @johnbewick6357
      @johnbewick6357 Рік тому +16

      So sad. I can only hope he didn't realise what was going on.

    • @nobbynobbs8182
      @nobbynobbs8182 Рік тому +22

      My god that sounds horrible

    • @leanie5234
      @leanie5234 Рік тому +29

      That is so sad !! My Mom got Alzheimer's, and her mind spent a lot of time on the death of her first child (at age 5 he was killed by a street sweeping machine). She would wring her hands, weeping inconsolably. Thankfully she passed this stage within a few weeks. I usually cannot watch anything to do with the nazis. I was not born until many years after the cessation of hostilities, but the wound feels too fresh.

    • @ggenie7489
      @ggenie7489 Рік тому +31

      @@leanie5234 i am so sorry your mum went through this horrible illness too. It is horrific to witness, he kept running away from the nursing home he was in, often in his striped pajamas, I was 14 or 15 at the time and a few times found him wandering around, strangely he always seemed to recognise me, so I thankfully could get him to a safe place. The absolute worse time was when he fled after hitting some staff after they tried to forcefully shave him as they thought he looked scruffy, I was so angry, especially after we had already explained what was done to them in the camps, they still thought that shaving him was a good idea. It is because of him, and many others I started volunteering for the British Legion, I think of him often.

  • @narrakasa81194
    @narrakasa81194 8 місяців тому +132

    My grandfather was at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. He said they knew, the locals absolutely knew what had happened there. They chose to ignore it.

    • @user-xk2ig4tc3f
      @user-xk2ig4tc3f 4 місяці тому +7

      What could they have done?

    • @Skyte100
      @Skyte100 3 місяці тому +2

      I've heard the people in towns near camps fully knew while many people in cities didn't know much. They knew SOMETHING was happening but didn't know or believe what.

    • @republitarian484
      @republitarian484 3 місяці тому

      So WWII was started due to Germany Invading Poland but no declaration of war was made against the Soviet Union when they invaded a few weeks later. And then at the close of WWII half of Europe was occupied under the Soviet Communists and the Iron Curtain. That doesn't sound like "Liberation" to me. Or maybe the Belin Wall was a commemoration for the Liberation of Europe?

    • @LeiRichardson-tj8fw
      @LeiRichardson-tj8fw 3 місяці тому

      My grandfather was also there. He said that some of them died upon seeing the American flag before they reached the gate. Then when they saw the American soldiers in the gates more died. Then they decided to take the chocolate bars out of their rations and that person died in his arms.

    • @Westpark16
      @Westpark16 3 місяці тому +1

      Well it's certainly one thing to know vs actively participate,help, assist? I would like to think I resisted strongly as a civilian but under theNAZI regime? I may have hoped to escape,survive?

  • @dragonfly264
    @dragonfly264 8 місяців тому +26

    My mother is 87 from Munich. She left at the age of 10 but her impression was that the Americans were the enemy. Consider that fact that information given to the citizens were extreme propaganda and you can understand her thinking. To this day, it’s still difficult to talk to her about the holocaust because it’s too painful for her to think ‘her people’ were capable of those atrocities.

  • @coltentackett892
    @coltentackett892 Рік тому +747

    i remember riding in the car with my mom a few days after i learned of what happened in the camps and was talking about how I'd stand up against the Nazis if i was alive in Germany then. she told me "you probably wouldn't have, you have blonde hair and blue eyes you'd probably be just as caught up as everyone else." that stuck with me because of course everyone has a bais to a system that benefits them, and that's what's scary.

    • @maiingan07
      @maiingan07 Рік тому +75

      Your Mom was quite intelligent and sounds very loving. You are ever so lucky to have had her as your Mom. Much respect for the both of you and the words of wisdom she spoke back then to yours now.

    • @joywebster2678
      @joywebster2678 Рік тому

      Getting the young involved in Hitler youth and the youngest in boyscout type movements instilled nationalism early, and the strong desire to be part of the exciting new leaders activities. Without parents balancing that, it would be hard to see clearly. It's much like the instilliation of having drag Queens reading to small kids, and five yr olds tucking bills In their g-string to much applause, then school teachers pushing the multi gender agenda, and forcing choice as a child, government overrding parents protesting kids taking puberty blockers, next is surgery, and boom adult regret. Parents, church are the only counter balance and teachers of critical thinking back in WW2 Germany, and in many US communities in 2023.

    • @tammyturowski6703
      @tammyturowski6703 Рік тому +64

      We saw it in 2021 and 2022. How many ppl stood up for the rights of the unvaccinated? To keep jobs. Travel. have basic human rights and access to medical care.
      It's ez to see who wld have went along with it...because we just did.

    • @SewardWriter
      @SewardWriter Рік тому +23

      Meanwhile, as much as I'd like to fight in the underground, I'd absolutely have died, given that I'm a disabled Jew.
      Makes current trends in the US all the more terrifying.

    • @maiingan07
      @maiingan07 Рік тому +1

      @@tammyturowski6703 - absolutely correct. Far too many with a platform made it their own duty to ostracize those who had not joined in among the sheep. It’s like they got off on the power, which had unnerved even me, especially with far too many agreeing with them. Calling the unvaccinated as them wanting to murder their family members let alone strangers. And far too many had cried out that none should receive any medical care whatsoever, especially if they fell ill to the flu they were so terrified of.
      And they got put out when they were called nazis.
      I still see far too many still wearing those dreadful masks out and about along with any medical facility that takes Medicare.
      My doctor’s office works with a number of others and the moment they had been given the choice, they put up a sign big enough for all too see stating, no one would be asked to wear one. However, if one of their patients were uncomfortable with it, they could ask and then the staff would put one on. It was pretty funny to see how quickly they’d all removed it once the patient had exited the office.

  • @vegan-cannibal714
    @vegan-cannibal714 Рік тому +2772

    A German immigrant live a couple doors down from my grandfather. As a child I was obsessed with the European/African part of WW2. How the Nazis were able to turn normal well educated people into mass murderers is fascinating. After a while of getting to know this man I asked what living in Germany during WW2 was like. Among other things he talked about how everyone knew the camps were murder factories, but that if you openly talked about it, the best possible outcome was becoming a soldier and being sent to the Russian front.

    • @salty_ball2565
      @salty_ball2565 Рік тому

      Yeah, unlikely story. What was he going to say? Not only that but today Germans aren't taught about the Holocaust at all. Sorry, I don't believe it.

    • @vegan-cannibal714
      @vegan-cannibal714 Рік тому +50

      @@salty_ball2565 I gotta ask what does what Germans are being taught today have to do with anything I said in that post?

    • @vegan-cannibal714
      @vegan-cannibal714 Рік тому +149

      That's one of the great things that comes with being a "boomer" I couldn't care less about someone who didn't read the post thinks. For the record my mom was a boomer I'm gen X.

    • @salty_ball2565
      @salty_ball2565 Рік тому

      @@vegan-cannibal714 making a point that 80 yrs later they know it happened but only in a token way. If you ask a current German to explain what happened they can't tell you. 40 yrs ago you ask a German immigrant what happened they told you what you wanted to hear and spent years under allied policy of group responsibility for what happened. It's perspective and current German's don't really want to know old Germans knew to tell them what they want to hear.

    • @arkoisagoodboy
      @arkoisagoodboy Рік тому

      They turned people into murderers by doing what American and UK political media does today: they blamed all the problems of group A on group B, then dehumanized group B so people would feel easier towards expressing the vitriol and hate that was always in them.
      "Punch a Nazi" has in the last several years become the rally cry of people who regularly label dissident thinkers as Nazis. You think people are equal regardless of race? Well guess what, Mr Hitler, "black excellence" says otherwise. You agree with the science on binary biology and gender? Sorry Mr Kristallnacht, it's a spectrum. But now that you've been identified as a Nazi, it's okay to exhibit violence and denial of human rights against you.

  • @Jambo1999
    @Jambo1999 8 місяців тому +18

    Powerful talk. Nice to be reminded of Captain Poletcki. I appreciate that you offered explanations for why many Germans would not believe what was happening. I believe you are being fair and even handed in the presentation.

    • @comradecam9530
      @comradecam9530 4 місяці тому +3

      I’ve never heard of this guy before. Poletcki’s story should be a movie.

  • @paulbennett4415
    @paulbennett4415 5 місяців тому +11

    Many years ago, I worked with someone had visited Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. He told me that the whole place was enshrouded in silence; no birds sang or flew overhead and you could hear a pin drop. But, unlike some vast natural plain, this silence was ominous, deathly, unnatural...

    • @kungfoochicken08
      @kungfoochicken08 4 місяці тому

      The devil stays there to protect the bodies of the people who killed Jesus.

  • @joschafinger126
    @joschafinger126 Рік тому +922

    Sometime in the late 60s, early 70s, my mom ol asked her parents if they had known. "Of course we knew, most of it if not the details," was the answer. "Everyone knew, but there was nothing we could do." Several of my family members of that generation actually got into trouble for not shutting up.
    "We didn't know" is a lie.

    • @justinchristoph3725
      @justinchristoph3725 Рік тому +88

      They knew enough to know they didn't want to know or let anyone know that they knew. Saying anything, even in private, could get you a visit from the Gestapo. People regularly informed on others because they knew they might be informed on for not informing. Don't cause trouble, don't ask questions and keep your opinions to yourself or you might come to the attention of the wrong people.

    • @hubertxxx5564
      @hubertxxx5564 Рік тому +6

      There where people of all European countries. Everybody knows, that they will not come back

    • @ganndeber1621
      @ganndeber1621 Рік тому +1

      They chose to do nothing. Sophie Schol chose to make a stand. They were moral cowards

    • @joschafinger126
      @joschafinger126 Рік тому +72

      @Gann Deber You may be right, but it's so much easier to laud rare heroes from the safety of your armchair and look down on others than to actually *be* one of those rare heroes... I've visited Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, seen lampshades made of human skin carefully tattooed before the owners of said skin were murdered.
      Would *I* have been a hero? To be honest, I don't think so. Instead, I would most likely have got into some serious mental health issues due to being such a coward and knowing it. Many, many people would have gone that direction, and it's generally safer to apply the assumption of mediocrity when speculating.
      All the more reason to stop fascists *before* they get too powerful.

    • @hubertxxx5564
      @hubertxxx5564 Рік тому +1

      @@ganndeber1621 you can choose easily about others

  • @user-bl1hh6mo3e
    @user-bl1hh6mo3e Рік тому +371

    My great grandfather was the only one to survive in his family. He lived with his family in Germany and when the war started, he was the only one with a passport. His father told him to go to England and they’ll all follow. They never did. He left for England at age 18 and never saw any of his family again. He later found out they were all killed in concentration camps. He joined the army in Britain and fought. When he had children, he had 5 daughters and although he loved them dearly, he was upset that he didn’t have a son to carry on his family name. His family name died with him.

    • @Author.Noelle.Alexandria
      @Author.Noelle.Alexandria Рік тому

      Your great-grandfather is full of shit for something. It's the family name bullshit. I come from a family like that, and it's harmful. My brother, the only male to the only male to the only male, grew up knowing his wants didn't matter, that he was expected to have a boy. I, the older sister, had less value because of a goddamned name. When my daughter was 10, my brother and his wife had their one and only child--a boy. And it was declared by all but one aunt that my dead father "finally" had a "real" grandchild. The difference in treatment between my daughter and her cousin over a fucking name is atrocious. I have cousins who kept the family name, and whose sons and daughters were given the name, but as they were kids of mothers, their kids don't count as real carriers of the name. Yeah, the name matters so fucking much that I have cousins who ignored their own fathers' names, and the names of their kids' fathers, to try to carry on our own name instead. My daughter of a daughter of a son doesn't even count as a real grandchild of my father.
      If what it takes to end this sexist bullshit is a name to die out, then it's best that that name dies out. How horrible for your great-grandfather's daughters to know that he was upset that they had vaginas instead of an almighty penis. They were lucky the didn't have a brother. They were a disappointment enough, but if they had to experience the difference in treatment, they'd have been more hurt.
      After losing his parents and siblings, your great-grandfather should have been ashamed that, rather than being fully happy for the daughters he was blessed with, that that wasn't enough for him because of a goddamned name that apparently has to be passed penis to penis.
      That male preference bullshit needs to end, and we need to stop feeling sorry for those who were upset over having only daughters. That continues the message that girls are worth less, and it's fucking disgusting. If you want to feel sad, feel sad for the girls who grew up knowing their father wished they had penises so they'd be worthy of keeping a worthless name.

    • @andreasevt1
      @andreasevt1 Рік тому +87

      His name, not his legacy.

    • @Stevie_D
      @Stevie_D Рік тому +30

      @@andreasevt1 Spot on! While the family name may be gone, the family and its contributions (be they large or small) to the world continue. A bigger thought might be what never discovered great minds or positive and inspiring influences were silenced when his family and fellow countrymen were senselessly murdered ...

    • @abhijithcheneri7827
      @abhijithcheneri7827 Рік тому

      His second, third , fourth and fifth daughters were just byproducts ... .

    • @YouTubeSupportSucks
      @YouTubeSupportSucks Рік тому

      lol imagine having 4 whole children you disregard as your real family because they don't have a penis.

  • @Keviin1977
    @Keviin1977 5 місяців тому +4

    My wife’s German Grandfather was a tank driver in the invasion of the USSR. He somehow lived to tell the tale. He came to America in 1948 and lived until 2003. A really nice guy. Great video by the way.

  • @Steve-dg3md
    @Steve-dg3md 8 місяців тому +14

    Looking at how things are today.... I can see how this could happen again. So sad.

  • @simonrichards6739
    @simonrichards6739 Рік тому +884

    Fair play to Germany today for teaching people this, my son who didn’t have a clue, he was was studying German and went on a school trip to Germany at high school, as part of the trip they visited a concentration camp. After seeing the room of the victims clothing, shoes etc he and his friends were all crying! He went there as a cocky 16 y/o tough guy and came back to England with an understanding “dad, how can anyone do that to anyone”?

    • @Westi1987
      @Westi1987 Рік тому

      maybe u should teach ur son about ur own history. the british empire killed way more ppl than the nazis. they murdered, tortured and enslaved everyone in their grasp. nazis were harmless compared to the empire.

    • @barbarafischbach8480
      @barbarafischbach8480 Рік тому +45

      Simon how come you never mentioned the Holocaust to your son?

    • @adamcummings20
      @adamcummings20 Рік тому +80

      @@barbarafischbach8480 Most would assume the school would educate their kids on this. The Holocaust wouldn't really come up in conversation at home unless it affected your family I assume

    • @alfredspic481
      @alfredspic481 Рік тому

      They all cried? Lmfao sissy

    • @lifemocker85
      @lifemocker85 Рік тому

      They only teach communist propaganda to demonize nationalism

  • @nana_hyuck
    @nana_hyuck Рік тому +227

    I'm German and my sister told me that she cried when she went to Auschwitz because there was a picture of a little girl that reminded her of me that had been killed there. I think that it's really important to learn about this and really see it to fully understand the severity. It makes it real and not just something you learn about almost like a tale.

    • @gratefulguy4130
      @gratefulguy4130 8 місяців тому +5

      Don't worry, I'm sure she made it through the war just fine. She may have changed her name, but there are countless instances where the individual is easily tracked after WWII.
      Global census numbers reveal that only around 160,000 of them died during the war. From *all* causes.
      I would point you to sources, but they are illegal in your country. That alone should make you skeptical.

    • @tokertalk9648
      @tokertalk9648 8 місяців тому

      LOL this is made up. stop lying psycho

    • @bunk95
      @bunk95 8 місяців тому +1

      I was in a shower building at [Dacau] and they even had a slave show where you could think a water pipe was replaced with a gas one while others were locked inside.
      Havent you been in the death camp system since you were created? Its wireless.
      You should know how to market it unless…appearing to possible be learning what others are.

    • @harrydehnhardt5092
      @harrydehnhardt5092 8 місяців тому

      I can show you lot‘s of sources that want to make you believe that the Earth is flat.
      It is forbidden by law in Germany to deny the Holocaust. And that is a good thing.

    • @Willy_Tepes
      @Willy_Tepes 7 місяців тому +3

      You were told many things in school that are simply not true..

  • @Cdr_Mansfield_Cumming
    @Cdr_Mansfield_Cumming 9 місяців тому +11

    Simon, that was an epic TIFO, thank you. I apportion no blame to the German people of today for what happened under the Nazis back then, even though I lost 26 relatives when Coventry was bombed in November 1940. I also lost my Grandad from wounds received during Operation Market Garden, he survived injuring during Dunkirk and was still recovering in a military recuperation centre in Hampshire the night he lost his parents, aunties, uncles and two sisters in the Coventry Blitz.
    The German people who I know today, are rather humble and are afraid to talk about the subject. I have a German friend who lives in Coventry, he attends the anniversary commemorations of the blitz in Coventry himself every year. I tell him he doesn't need to as I apportion no blame to him as a German. Rather humbly, he tells me he must say sorry for the action of his people in failing to stop them from coming to power and killing so many in a City that has given him a life he never had in Germany.

  • @josievaccaro
    @josievaccaro 10 місяців тому +13

    Poletski's line of thought to not normalise abuse, torture, political brainwash, etc., denotes such strength. When amidst such conditions, there comes a time when people feel powerless as such madness insinuates in the mind and behaviours of the population. He outlines it as it is. He takes action. Respect.

  • @jeannekstrole6891
    @jeannekstrole6891 11 місяців тому +241

    My Nan and my grandfather were both American WW 2 veterans. My grandfather was in the US ground infantry stationed in Italy, France and later in Germany. As far as I can figure out, my grandfather was in the infantry units that liberated the camps that the Nazis abandoned. He would never talk about his experiences. Later on, in the 1970's, we had neighbors, an older married couple, from Poland, and they both had serial number tattoos. Serial number tattoos...... A loving couple who found a life after the war, but never had children of their own. They were my baby sitters growing up and I can still see in my mind their serial number tattoos, the tattooes they were issued upon their arrival to the concentration camp.

    • @AnneNissen-lh1dg
      @AnneNissen-lh1dg 8 місяців тому +1

      I knew a

    • @ifv2089
      @ifv2089 7 місяців тому

      What were the tattoo numbers?

    • @jenellienostrabo725
      @jenellienostrabo725 7 місяців тому

      All concentration camp prisoners were not referred to by name. They had seriel numbers tattooed on their wrist or arm. They were not thought of as people, like branding a cow. There were other symbols used as tattoos or patches on clothes to identify different reasons for being in prison. One was the pink triangle for gay people who were killed regardless of race or religion. @@ifv2089

    • @jessicamartinez3613
      @jessicamartinez3613 6 місяців тому

      ​@@ifv2089Jews were tattooed as part of their processing into the concentration camp as a prisoner.

    • @lisathaviu1154
      @lisathaviu1154 6 місяців тому

      @@ifv2089 All prisoners in the concentration camps were tattooed with a serial number and a symbol of the so-called reason for their imprisonment, even the small children. Partly it was to dehumanize the prisoners by depriving them of names. Partly it was to be able to decide who to murder on particular days (they would randomly choose numbers and murder those prisoners in order to thin the ranks.)

  • @tobitaktlos3241
    @tobitaktlos3241 Рік тому +549

    I'm a Nurse in a german nursing home. I take care of the WW2 Generation. You would be suprised how many still carry a racist mindset. THEY KNEW. Most of them did. Nobody said anything because they were afraid that the gestapo sends them to a camp too, there were instances where neighbors would rat each other out because of jealousy.

    • @nightwish1000
      @nightwish1000 8 місяців тому +2

      Stop spreading unfactual stuff like "they knew", even if they did in your nursing home it wouldn't be representative. My anti-nazi Grandma also stated that "she knew" until I digged deeper and it turned out that she only knew about persecution but not about industrialised mass murder which she only learned about after the war. What and when they "knew" is the question, there's a difference between knowledge and rumours that turn out to be true and which inflict different kinds of behaviour.

    • @nickmyers3065
      @nickmyers3065 8 місяців тому

      I mean to be fair. Lots of people hated the jews all over the world... thats not why people went yo war lol.
      Pretty sure other euro countries were deporting jews out and america was still very racist then

    • @tokertalk9648
      @tokertalk9648 8 місяців тому

      if you had an evil tribe of small hatted psychopaths who tried to infiltrate and subvert you would hate them too. They are just in their hatred!

    • @silencedogood7297
      @silencedogood7297 8 місяців тому +1

      Photos of millions of Germans saluting HItler tell the truth - they knew. They didn't believe it would apply to them. Just like Trump-lovers today. beware.

    • @DerLobeerkranz
      @DerLobeerkranz 8 місяців тому +39

      Of course they knew! And everyone who knows a German for more than 3 days and two beers knows that they haven't changed a bit. German History is not an accident.@@nightwish1000

  • @Michal-je1hx
    @Michal-je1hx 6 місяців тому +8

    "First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist
    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist
    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist
    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew
    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me"
    -Martin Niemöller

  • @mattalley4330
    @mattalley4330 9 місяців тому +13

    I have been listening quite a bit to a UA-cam channel called WW2 Stories (highly recommended btw). It’s readings from diaries or transcripts of interviews of German soldiers. In many of their stories almost if not all front line soldiers, far away from the camps, were at the very least hearing troubling rumors about them. What they thought varied by the person, of course. Some believed it, some dismissed it as wartime propaganda, some tried turning in those telling about it, and so on.

  • @testboga5991
    @testboga5991 Рік тому +357

    While not a potential victim of the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to murder my great grandfather in their "mercy killing" scheme. My great grandmother was tipped off by a nurse and was able to get him out of the mental ward in time. He recovered fully and I just know him as a wonderful person. 😌

    • @brianbrady4496
      @brianbrady4496 Рік тому +9

      Wow. That's crazy... Im glad he survived and recovered...

    • @heatherwhittaker6169
      @heatherwhittaker6169 Рік тому +3

      Like Canada present day..ignoring the health care of seniors..10 minute doctors appointments,and news items about concerns for having enough euthanasia doctors..yes much more concern for those than for geriatric care...

    • @unclesamowitz9922
      @unclesamowitz9922 Рік тому

      @@heatherwhittaker6169 You forgot the part about Canada imprisoning their citizenry for the thought crime of question the bulls*it holocaust.

    • @Dragonomics42
      @Dragonomics42 Рік тому +32

      @@heatherwhittaker6169 There is NO COMPARISON.

    • @acidtwin
      @acidtwin Рік тому +3

      @@heatherwhittaker6169 Interesting and I was thinking Canada seems to be going that way too.
      It's fascinating to see similarities in the tactics being played out today and where they might lead to.

  • @RustyDust101
    @RustyDust101 Рік тому +546

    My parents, born in 1931 and 1938 respectively, grew up during the war in Germany as kids and young teenagers. They only met after the war.
    But during the war both of my parents heard, from their parents, that so and so down the street had gone, along with their whole family in the middle of the night. My grandparents never dared to explain what they meant that 'gone' meant "vanished by the Gestapo or SS" because they feared that if the children talked at school about their parents' opinions, they might have to suffer repercussions.
    The Gestapo was KNOWN to be brutal and ruthless in apprehending and brutally beating anyone not toeing the party line. So both my grandparents and parents all KNEW, with varying degrees of certainty, that the acts committed against anyone deemed a 'subhuman', an 'Untermensch', must be far, far worse.
    No, my grandparents were none of the heroes mentioned in this video. They were part of the silent masses that cowered in fear, silently accepting that fate or cruelty had decided to leave them alone, and others to suffer. Again, no, my grandparents never knew the exact details but suspected what happened in the extermination camps, still hoping against better knowledge, that all claims of such attrocities committed by Germans 'must be propaganda' heavily exaggerated by 'the others'. They didn't dare to believe that these attrocities were real; that Germany was the perpetrator. Because that meant that by their silence they were complicit in these actions.
    Not directly, not by pulling the trigger, not by opening the valve on the gas chambers toxin containers. But by not actively opposing these attrocities. Until given certainty they clung to the faint hope, that this had to be lies concocted by others to make them rise up. Or at least the extent of the attrocities committed must be lies. Once you start rationalizing a small bit, you tend to extend that rationalization bit by bit, day by day, in the hope of somehow surviving without tarnishing your soul further.
    It takes a far braver mind to face your own inadequacies, and put your own life on the line to stand up against such crimes.
    On top of all that came the very real threat of either being forcibly drafted into the army as a male; or being forced to work in the factories as a woman, all the while worrying about being bombed out of your house or apartment, or where to get your next meal from. When woe strikes everyone to some degree or other, it becomes far easier to rationalize the horrors facing others to become somehow 'lesser evils' in the eyes of the common civilian.
    Note: all of this does NOT excuse any behavior of Germany during the war. Not in the slightest.
    It is just an explanation of how things turned from bad to worse, slowly, bit by bit, normalizing each step of the attrocities along the way.
    Until unspeakable acts previously even unmentionable in the public became accepted as a 'solution' among the powerful.
    As a modern German I feel nothing but shame about this. Guilt, no; undelible shame, yes.
    I can't feel guilty for acts committed long before my birth by people who simply shared my nationality.
    But I can and will empathize with all the victims of these war crimes against humanity, as well as feel shame and sadness. This has caused such untold destruction on all involved, simply out of an extremist worldview that believes one human is better than the other due to the chance of birth.
    In the same way that many allied civilians couldn't directly influence the way of the war, I am currently relatively helpless when I see attrocities again committed in the Ukraine by a ruthless aggressor invading simply to further their leader's megalomania and self-aggrandizement.
    Yet at least I have never quit saying, that "never forget, never again" should be a mantra of all modern humans.

    • @pango8143
      @pango8143 Рік тому +31

      Respect
      Coming from a jew

    • @SlavicUnionGaming
      @SlavicUnionGaming Рік тому

      you grand parents didn't have a choice. Same shit happened with my people under stalin. You could end up taken away by Stalins NKVD secret police for saying one slight negative thing about his regime. For instance a video i watched showing one of the only surviving gulags in Perm Russia that is now a museum. One of the artifacts there is a book with stalins picture on it. it had a fist sized punched hole through it from a reader, he was of course taken away by the NKVD. all because he destroyed a picture of Stalin on a Book.

    • @erpoche1331
      @erpoche1331 Рік тому +9

      @@pango8143 i support juwesh ppl👀💪✡️

    • @christopherdowning7776
      @christopherdowning7776 Рік тому +23

      And yet we always do forget, and it always happens again.

    • @Itried20takennames
      @Itried20takennames Рік тому +17

      First, I don’t think many reading this could overly judge those Germans civilians who knew, but feigned ignorance for fear of disappearing as well…we all hope we would be hereos, but few are, and in some situations…not much a single or few can do.
      But, you also noted that people “ didn’t think their government could be that evil,” (paraphrase) - which doesn’t seem historically accurate.
      There were certainly prior well known episodes of German atrocities, such as the early 1900 extermination camps for native peoples in German colonies in Namibia, with labor camp death certificates pre-printed with “cause of death: exhaustion,” and letters home from soldiers saying “look, we need more land…we have to clear it of people.” Germany certainly was also responsible for crimes in WW1 (my own great grandparents left Germany for the US as they didn’t like where Germany was heading pre-WW1, as did many other Germans). And then Hitler was pretty clear in his speeches that he was hostile to Jewish people, and when trains of people would always come in full, and leave empty….not that hard to see 2+2=4.
      So seems like there was decent evidence for Germans that their government WAS more than capable of atrocities and mass extermination.

  • @HareHerder
    @HareHerder 9 місяців тому +9

    thank you for covering this topic

  • @johnwarner4809
    @johnwarner4809 3 місяці тому +6

    We went on a 3 week long central Europe tour some years back. I came to refer to it as "The Hitler Tour" because we visited a lot of the most famous concentration and death camps. Although many were remotely located in small forests, some were in close proximity to towns and villages, especially Auschwitz I (there's an Auschwitz I and an Auschwitz II). Auschwitz I is practically in the middle of town. Auschwitz II is a mile away on the other side of the tracks. The Warsaw Ghetto was right smack in the middle of Warsaw (it's now apartments and condominiums). Dachau was also in the middle of town. Sobibor was I think the worst case, at about 3.4 miles from the closest town. There's no way that everyday Germans (and people in countries around Germany, where a lot of camps were also located) didn't know what was going on, because many lived right next to the camps, and had neighbors who were running them. They would obviously see trains full of people going in, with no one coming out. And for sure they could hear and smell it all. Everyone knew. Even little kids knew.

    • @user-ev4ie2wx7k
      @user-ev4ie2wx7k 3 місяці тому

      Exactly so. “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”. Read it for corroboration of the truth your words.

    • @beneleonhard7915
      @beneleonhard7915 2 місяці тому +1

      the camps were quite different. Dachau wasn't an extermination camp. It was not really in the town at the time I suppose and much larger than today's remains. Yet, there was enough to witness. Plus there were the "Außenlager" where people were kept to do forced labour, mostly supporting the war industry. Living in the area and just back from Poland - I can relate to what you say: where ever you go, you stumble across not just "Stolpersteine" (memorial stones in pavements with the name of the deported inhabitants) as in many German cities. And still so much is related to those twelve years, much of what people experienced and carried over to the next generation, the whole suffering of Poland being forced to give up Eastern territories and gain Western ones. Communism to follow right on the heel of the German oppressors leaving. Luckily, these days the inhibitions to talk about it amongs Europeans have lessened. Still in the 1980s, you would hang your head low when going abroad and hoped to disguise your nationality. Well, that didn't apply to everyone though. And till today it is necessary to correct some people, if they repeat distorted stories or for instance whitewash the reasons why the Nazis seemingly had a functioning economy. Well, if you raid half a continent, enslave and rob people, I wouldn't call that an economy. It is barbarism, murder and theft.

    • @greyjamiesod4989
      @greyjamiesod4989 Місяць тому +1

      Yes, but think, if you were living near such a place, would you be proud and tell every one?

  • @frankhoffman3566
    @frankhoffman3566 11 місяців тому +105

    I had a relative, now passed, who arrived at a concentration camp a day after it was liberated by Patton's 3rd Army. He had passed through a nearby town to get there. He said the smell of death was in the air and got more pronounced the closer he got to the camp. "Everybody knew" he said. "No way they could have ignored the smell".

    • @kungfoochicken08
      @kungfoochicken08 4 місяці тому

      At that point in the war, the supply lines had broken down and everyone was starving. POWs and political prisoners are the last people to get resources when shit hits the fan.

  • @DocTight
    @DocTight Рік тому +204

    My family is from Berlin. My grandfather said just the same as HobRe Ra's further down in the comments. Paraphrasing: "What do you think we all thought when the jewish neighbors were taken away? The nazis always kept talking about exterminating them, that was no secret. We had no reason to believe anything other was done to them." He also said "dictatorship is terrible, but you have to fight it before it is established. Once in place, it is impossible to do anything about it."

    • @mirquellasantos2716
      @mirquellasantos2716 Рік тому

      Your grandfather was just like Hitler and his minions. Germans back then were evil and please spear me the part of mind control cause Hitler was not a mutant who could control minds. Germans hated Jews just like Hitler did and were happy when Hitler was torturing and exterminating them. They knew what was happening and were either happy or just didn't care.

    • @howtosober
      @howtosober Рік тому +1

      As capitalism fails worldwide and oligarchic governments establish more and more authoritarian controls over the world's alleged "democracies," that last thing you said should be burned into EVERYONE'S brains: "dictatorship is terrible, but you have to fight it before it is established. Once in place, it is impossible to do anything about it." In the United States, the way people here are content to sleepwalk straight into nuclear war with Russia- or climate apocalypse, whichever comes first- is absolutely infuriating. I feel like Pelensky when I look at my fellow citizens. Waiting for your countrymen to revolt against this dying neoliberal dictatorship is excruciating- especially when you know they NEVER will. No matter how bad it gets. If you speak out here, you're instantly labeled a "Trumper" or a "Putin puppet."

    • @BeckBeckGo
      @BeckBeckGo Рік тому +26

      Not to mention, and ok this is a bit gruesome, but anyone living anywhere near those camps would have known there was a lot of death and filth. Because they have noses. The smell of death is very distinct and it’s very emotionally troubling. I mean we’re genetically designed to avoid that smell. Near my school, a seagull had died and every day, that smell got worse. Eventually we could smell it in the school yard. We knew immediately that it was the dead bird. And it was cloying.
      There is no fucking way anyone proximate to those camps didn’t know something fucked up was going on .

    • @eara8426
      @eara8426 Рік тому +5

      And Anne Frank knew about it, too.

    • @DocTight
      @DocTight Рік тому

      @Gretchen K. What do you mean? That other fascists overthrew him briefly in 1943, because they were afraid of an antifascist mass movement, made conceivable by the disastrous Italian war effort? That was hardly the end of fascism in Italy, obviously.
      Or that he was killed at the end of April 1945, when it was all over anyway?
      Either way, I'm not convinced. But I'm sure you would have singlehandedly ended the nazi regime if you just had been around!

  • @zeppy2732
    @zeppy2732 5 місяців тому +7

    My 16 year old mother at the time living in a small town in Australia heard of these atrocities.

    • @bmahar
      @bmahar 4 місяці тому +1

      Australia?

    • @suekennedy1595
      @suekennedy1595 Місяць тому +1

      They printed stuff about what the Germans were doing in American newspapers before the Berlin Olympics that was why they the American Jews wanted to boycott the Olympics.

  • @MaelFurian-streetgonk
    @MaelFurian-streetgonk 8 місяців тому +6

    kinda applicable today, a scary proposition; history does not repeat, it rhymes

  • @pigpjs
    @pigpjs Рік тому +362

    My grandfather was part of a unit that liberated concentration camps. He said you could smell one for miles before you saw one. It got to the point where the soldiers would begin crying when they would smell the concentration camps because they had learned what they were about to find. It's also why my family never barbequed pork because the smell triggered my grandpa's PTSD.

    • @kelb6073
      @kelb6073 Рік тому +35

      Your grandfather was a hero!

    • @LegendStormcrow
      @LegendStormcrow Рік тому +23

      The city I live in can be smelt 100 miles out. I have no doubt that you could smell the camps 150 miles away, if not far more. That man did more for the world than he ever knew. Thank God for him and his unit.

    • @garlandgarrison3739
      @garlandgarrison3739 Рік тому +5

      @@LegendStormcrow they burned and cremated the bodies, so yeah, it makes sense.

    • @jonathandewberry289
      @jonathandewberry289 Рік тому +2

      Eh? What does this 'smell from miles away' thing have to do with anything? There is a restaurant near the back of my street and I can smell all kinds of things (some awful) so what about it? I should know they're what.. gassing prisoners?

    • @LegendStormcrow
      @LegendStormcrow Рік тому

      @@garlandgarrison3739 Even before the US entered the war, the smell of BO and feces would have been unimaginable.
      It was sheer madness to think that they could have hid the evidence, and by cremation no less. The fact the US spirited away their scientists sickens me. It's also probably why the CIA ended up such sick freaks.

  • @francisklambauer144
    @francisklambauer144 Рік тому +32

    My Mother (Born 1930's) remembered the "KRISTALLNACHT" day & evening. When going to bed the kids where not allowed to look out the windows facing the distant town, she remembers her mother crying watching the Synagoge being burned to the ground,hearing sporadic gun shots, people screaming and people (Jews?) running through the pasture at night TRYING to get away!

  • @lorraineroberts3035
    @lorraineroberts3035 5 місяців тому +3

    Great video Simon. Love your work. Love your videos

  • @wisecoonie
    @wisecoonie 6 днів тому

    Again I am struck by the extensive documentation and by the excellent narrative you put together. This should be shown in schools all over the world. Congratulations!

  • @oliversherman2414
    @oliversherman2414 Рік тому +497

    As a Brit I respect modern day Germans for teaching their children the true horrors of the Holocaust. In British history class I was only taught the "good parts" of my country's history (the school system even fully skipped over the British Empire). We need to take a lesson from Germany's school system and teach history honestly

    • @LawNerdAmber
      @LawNerdAmber Рік тому

      Same here in America. I'm sure it's why fascism is on the rise again

    • @RobespierreThePoof
      @RobespierreThePoof Рік тому +14

      That's quite strange. I'm wondering when you were educated. I thought that the British educational system has arrived at a point of dealing with the imperial past quite well - or, as well as one can with the limited time you have in secondary school education.
      A complete reckoning with the British Empire is something that will always be for those who go on to read history at university. It's a long and complicated history, after all.
      But the transatlantic slave trade, the Indian mutiny and the Raj, the history of the English in Irland and the famine, the scramble for Africa and it's racism ... All of these can be taught in secondary school and i thought they were.

    • @oliversherman2414
      @oliversherman2414 Рік тому +17

      @@RobespierreThePoof We learnt about stuff like the Spanish Armada and Sir Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh exploring the American east coast but that's about it. Basically the beginning of what would later be the 13 colonies. We didn't learn about British colonialism in Africa or India though. I assume because we did some messed up stuff there and teaching such a "sensitive" topic might not go down too well

    • @hedera1332
      @hedera1332 Рік тому +22

      Much better than Japan, which I have read accounts from Japanese people *conveniently* runs out of time to go into detail about WW2 by talking about other, earlier historical events in school (sounds similar to Britain). No hate to Japan, would visit there in a heartbeat, but this *is* on of the areas that twigs me about the country. I live in Australia, which historically brushed over or watered down the 'colonisation' of Australia (I think the word they were looking for was 'invasion'). Luckily for me, I was taught about a lot of the massacres and the overall horrible things that happened to the indigenous population (would have been in 2013/2014). I just wish we were taught more, like who the exact traditional owners of the land we lived on were and stuff.

    • @TaydolfSwifter
      @TaydolfSwifter Рік тому +2

      @@hedera1332 o don't think there are true owners of lands just like how animals has there territory it will change accordingly to supply of food and other animals who also do territories

  • @gammaraider
    @gammaraider 10 місяців тому +44

    One of my grandfathers survived a german labour camp, and one of my uncles was tortured to death for information. Over the years I've talked to many old Germans and seen loads of interviews with Germans of that generation, and I have NEVER seen one own up to their collective atrocity. It's always platitutes like "es war krieg". The young generation feels more shame for it than did the old one. In fact people who helped the Jews, like Oskar Schindler were hated post-war, unable to get jobs and treated like traitors until well into the 1970's.

    • @FragLord
      @FragLord 8 місяців тому

      Schindler had to flee because of the allies... Many of the Germans like Schindler and Kurt Gerstein who tried to contact the Swedish, the pope and the British during the war, were all condemned by the allies like they were Himler themselves. It's not as black and white as you try to portray it. Human history is a history of survival. Many people just tried to survive through those dark times. Should a mother with 8 children and no husband take it upon her to orphan her 8 children to do the right thing? I don't blame those people for trying to survive through those horrible difficult times.

    • @mortisrat
      @mortisrat 6 місяців тому +10

      That was common in the occupied areas too. The resistance and those who'd helped escaping jews were outcast and often didn't speak about what they'd done. I think it made people feel like cowards by proving that 'I couldn't do anything' was bollox.
      It's also worth bearing in mind that in Germany the people in power after the war were the same people who'd been in power during the war. They just took the badges off and spouted platitudes in public.

    • @annieannie2887
      @annieannie2887 4 місяці тому

      It's simple... You spoke up, you die. You spoke up, your FAMILY dies.
      I would not speak up if it means my child will perish.

    • @CloudWalkBeta
      @CloudWalkBeta 3 місяці тому

      To be real many Germans were practically hostage to the Nazi regime, if you spoke against it, you "disappeared" and very many Germans did disappear. Perhaps that experience stuck with them and they learnt to keep their silence for fear of becoming another victim.
      First they came for the communists, and i did not speak out because I am not a communist... ... ... ...
      Then they came for me, And there was no one left, To speak out for me...

  • @Whatever-mq7vy
    @Whatever-mq7vy 4 місяці тому

    Very good video. Well researched also on the contemporary front.

  • @timothywright1714
    @timothywright1714 7 місяців тому +4

    A very informative presentation. I do not doubt a single word!!!!!

  • @Kynos1
    @Kynos1 Рік тому +79

    I was born long after the Nazi era, but my grandfather always said that everybody knew. Soldiers who came back from the front told their families and friends about it and it spread like wildfire.

    • @Nanadina51
      @Nanadina51 6 місяців тому +8

      My mom, from Hamm, Luxembourg, told this story as well…trusted no one. It had lasting effect on her. Her two younger brothers were dragged off by Nazis. They somehow survived the ordeal although both suffered gunshot wounds. She was aware of the baker and butcher families having disappeared in their small village; they were Jewish. Many sad stories. My son saw Auschwitz on a trip he took in college; the pile of little kids’ shoes upset him; he cried. 😢😢

    • @BeckBeckGo
      @BeckBeckGo 5 місяців тому +5

      This is why I find this question so absurd. Only one person needs to start talking about this kind of crazy shit and everyone is going to know soon enough. That’s not gossip you keep to yourself.

    • @Astrid-jt8cd
      @Astrid-jt8cd 5 місяців тому

      What's your point in this
      The Germans were bombed very severely in the war and it's over now for eighty years
      There were many sufferings since. My family did not know. Do you want to now go after the German people still who simply did the mistake if picking the wrong leader. What do you want from the I'm sick of this. This has been done to death.i don't want to hear this anymore. The Germans were innocent pawns in Hitler's evil schemes. I cannot stand holier than thou people who always attack attack attack

    • @macarthurstudios
      @macarthurstudios 5 місяців тому

      No one knew

  • @katharina1439
    @katharina1439 Рік тому +747

    🇩🇪MY TESTIMONY AS A GERMAN🇩🇪 My grandfather was the only one who knew PART of what really happened. He was in Russia as a communication officer and came back to Germany for a short trip. In a tavern he told everybody LOUDLY what happened. The Barkeeper came to him quietly and told him he has to disappear NOW before they kill him. He ran, but got caught very soon after. The soldiers had orders to shoot my grandfather. The man who was alone on guard with my grandfather told him. "I will take a piss now... and when my pants are down, I can't run. You understand?" So he ran. Until the War was over he hid. Never went public about anything.
    Now we have internet and all means to find the correct information unlike 1940. But 95% of the population STILL believe the propaganda. 🙄

    • @thevegimeatatarian
      @thevegimeatatarian Рік тому +49

      This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

    • @neganrex5693
      @neganrex5693 Рік тому +92

      Looks like the guard knew what was going on and like your grandfather found it despicable and seen a window of opportunity to save someone's life. My grandfather fought in WW-2 and said most Germans was not NAZI's and most was good people that was misinformed. God bless.

    • @adielstephenson2929
      @adielstephenson2929 Рік тому +16

      Thanks for sharing that.

    • @ramonandrajo6348
      @ramonandrajo6348 Рік тому +5

      Bad propaganda.

    • @thefanification
      @thefanification Рік тому

      its stories like this that lead me to collect antiques, like letters and such, it shows the war from a 1 person's perspective at a time and adds in much needed context. history is complex and very grey, a fairly hardcore nazi, john rabe saved an estimed 200,000 innocent chinese from the japanese during the rape of nanking, schindler and Dr. hans muench were only able to save the lies they did by being in the nazi party. WW2 saw the end of many things, and the people being born now already can't even imagine these things as being real and think they are fictional, meaning history is doomed to repeat at this rate, and thats the greatest tragedy of all this IMO, knowing that someday its growing more and more likely that people will try to commit crimes on this level once again

  • @jakemistakeroberts2044
    @jakemistakeroberts2044 9 місяців тому +1

    Great job. I learned a lot😊

  • @binkwillans5138
    @binkwillans5138 9 місяців тому +3

    Very good. This video should be added to some historical archive.

  • @alfredomalchiodialbedi7901
    @alfredomalchiodialbedi7901 Рік тому +441

    My grandparents in Bavaria had a little farm in a village (Erpfting ,now incorproated into Landsberg) located several kilometers from Landsberg am Lech. In addition to farming, my grandfather was a carpenter who worked at a small, family business in Landsberg to supplement the family income to make ends meet.
    My mother's village school teacher, who had a lot of children to support and was a friend of my grandfather, took a job at Dachau to better support his family. I believe he confided in my grandfather (some of) what was going on in Dachau. He soon quit the job because it weighed heavily on him. Soon after the war, he committed suicide.
    An curious side-story to the village school is that my mother remembers one school project where every student was to research their family genealogy wherein it was revealed that only two village families still existed in the village which had survived the Black Plague and were original Bavarians. My grandmother's ancestors had migrated from Bohemia and my grandfather's ancestors had included a migrant from Genova, Italy.
    My grandfather was anti-Hitler and wouldn't let his children join the Nazis youth even though that was the only path for my mother to become a nurse as she wanted.
    My mother's story was interesting, too. Because she wasn't in the Hitler youth, her career options were limited despite having been an excellent student. She took a job at a pension/boarding house on Lake Starnberg as a maid. The woman, Frau Teem, who owned the boarding home was a stingy, mean woman who didn't feed her maids well and was a harsh taskmaster. She had a Jewsih boarder named Mrs. Rosenthal who was also heir of the Rosenthal china company that had had to sell out because of Nazi laws against Jews owning businesses. My mother used to like talking with Ms. Rosenthal. But when Ms. Rosenthal suddenly disappeared, Mom intuitively knew that Frau Teem had turned her in. In disgust, she left her job without permission so was in danger of being jailed for breaking the law which didn't permit employees to leave a job without the permission of the employer. After she took a job as a waitress in the officer's mess at the Luftwaffa base near Landsberg close to home,. the officers learned that Ms. Teem had filed a complaint against my mother in court. So, because they liked my mom, they had her drafted into the Luftwaffe so that she couldn't be tried.
    My grandmother, before marrying my grandfather, had worked as a cook at an hotel in Starnberg so that may explain connections that might have paved the way for my mother to be employed in Starnberg when she left school.
    My grandmother was a devote Catholic all her life but accepted when, as members of the small parish began showing up to mass in their Nazi uniforms, my grandfather quit the church because of the political collusion between the Nazis and the Catholic church that had helped Hitler to power by threatening excommunication for any Catholics who wouldn't abandon the only political party with the strength and power to thwart Hitler's efforts to become dictator.
    Although the village mayor was not officially in the Nazi party, he was a big Nazi and had my uncle prematureily drafted for not greeting him with "Heil Hitler" but instead with the Bavarian greeting of "Chris Gott." He was killed somewhere in the Caucus mountains when he agreed to take the night watch for a sick fellow soldier.
    My grandfather risked death by listening to foreign news broadcasts during the war with a radio that he himself had built. A small number of trusted young village men would come to the home to listen as well as to do so was a life or death activity.
    When the owner of the carpentry business died, his widow begged him to manage the business so that it could continue to operate and employ people. In order to hold that managerial position, he was forced to join the Nazi party as it wasn't possible by law otherwise. Ironically, at the end of the war, he served a few weeks/months in an Allied prison while the mayor, who had been a Nazi but not in the party, continued in his powerful role.
    How much exactly my grandfather knew about the atrocities of Dachau and the other camp outside the village near to Landsberg I can not know. I only know that my mother stated that she feared for her life every time she threw rolls of bread to the inmates of the camp nearby the village on her way to and from home and Landsberg. She didn't know what my grandfather may have done as well but she said that unknown reasons my grandfather's' home in the village was spared by former inmates when the Americans liberated the concentration camp and permitted them some time to freely loot German homes in the village.
    After I read "Hitler's Pope" some of the politics that influences my grandfather choices became clearer to me. He had had some cousins who worked for the German railroad in Munich and who had fled to America when persecutions of the union members began, so I'm sure Opa was politically awake.
    He died of leukemia in 1958. Oh how I wish I could converse with my grandfather today about his experiences and feelings.-His name was Franz Bihler- Anita Malchiodi Albedi.

    • @jennsimpson_backup3333
      @jennsimpson_backup3333 Рік тому +68

      This was really, really interesting to read. Thank you for posting it

    • @ggenie7489
      @ggenie7489 Рік тому +60

      I very rarely read long comments but your grandparents stories are fascinating. Thank you for telling it.

    • @sklxx7359
      @sklxx7359 Рік тому +41

      thanks very interesting read. may i throw in that the Bavarian greeting is not 'Chris Gott' but instead 'Grüß Gott' (=greet god).

    • @KateMossferatu
      @KateMossferatu Рік тому +20

      Grüß Gott*, not "Chris Gott"

    • @carolancarey992
      @carolancarey992 Рік тому +13

      amazing story of resistance thank you for telling us

  • @Outlier999
    @Outlier999 Рік тому +116

    A former inmate said that you could see a nearby town from the camp. They sometimes took inmates out of the camp to do slave labor in the towns. Some people slipped prisoners food. Girls refused to dance with SS guards. Somebody had to know something.

    • @roddyboethius1722
      @roddyboethius1722 8 місяців тому +3

      I live in a condominium. People talk a lot. You hear everything in town

    • @Willy_Tepes
      @Willy_Tepes 7 місяців тому

      Yes, so if it happened people would have known, but somehow they didn't. Weird, huh?@@roddyboethius1722

    • @karenaubert8852
      @karenaubert8852 7 місяців тому +2

      Remember, the camps were rarely in Germany, most being in Poland, which was occupied. The neighbors of those camps can be forgiven as there was nothing they could do.

    • @Willy_Tepes
      @Willy_Tepes 7 місяців тому

      All of the infamous camps were in Poland and were "liberated" by the Soviets who had full control. They could invent any story they wanted to, and as Commies they probably made the most of it..
      No scientific investigation was ever done so all we have to go by are witness accounts of people who stood to gain from it.@@karenaubert8852

    • @sloth6765
      @sloth6765 7 місяців тому

      ​@@karenaubert8852there were 1600 sub camps in a network of prison labor housing complexes across all of Germany and occupied territory. Surely anyone could see the prisoners walking to and from factories.

  • @jimmic41656
    @jimmic41656 9 місяців тому +1

    wow.. there are on UA-cam, some documents that are more important than others. Thank you for what I just could learn , thank you..

  • @HeadacheCentral
    @HeadacheCentral 6 місяців тому +5

    Hey Simon, I don't know if it's you or your microphone's sensitivity settings/audio mixing, but sometimes I find myself having to rewind a couple times because I didn't catch some words.
    It's good work otherwise, but that can be frustrating and it's not the only channel I've encountered this odd problem with.

    • @Heidi-ne6so
      @Heidi-ne6so 5 місяців тому

      Yeah, me too. The s sounds are quite harsh but as I am not native I cannot tell whether it comes from the accent or it is the microphone

  • @purplepeace2188
    @purplepeace2188 Рік тому +78

    Apologies if I'm repeating myself. When I was a teenager my mother showed me a newspaper her father had kept from WW2. She had kept it between two x-Ray sheets so it was still in very good shape. It was dated during the time of WW2 and one of the main Newspapers in Britain. The article denied the "rumours" of death camps in Germany. Britain was in serious danger of being invaded, so I think the denial was to keep the population calm.

    • @davidh9844
      @davidh9844 Рік тому

      The Brits, bless 'em, were about as antisemetic as the Germans and the Poles! The government knew, and was in full support of the extermination of the Jewish vermin. Even Churchill wouldn't put a stop to it.

    • @sergiram3484
      @sergiram3484 Рік тому

      Or protect their 🫏

    • @nikkisteer6054
      @nikkisteer6054 Рік тому +2

      I'd be interested to know which paper that was. I'd have a guess at it being the Daily Mail.

    • @RobespierreThePoof
      @RobespierreThePoof Рік тому +1

      Tricky issue. It's very true that the wartime government worked hard to avoid public panic. It was quite literally written into the national plan in the case of invasion. "Keep calm and carry on" was just the first of three posters. It was to be replaced with two others in the case of a Nazi invasion. Look them up. The entire point was to keep the population calm and orderly.
      However ... There's still some historical debate about how much the allies knew about the Holocaust and when they knew it. It's certainly true that there were people who could not accept the idea that the Germans would go THAT far. How much of a role they had to play in The widespread denialism is less clear

    • @RobespierreThePoof
      @RobespierreThePoof Рік тому

      ​@@nikkisteer6054 lol. You would think so. But actually British newspapers during the war and British newspapers in recent decades are not quite the same beast.

  • @robertsanders7060
    @robertsanders7060 Рік тому +36

    I asked my grandfather, who was 28 in 1945, what was known in Amsterdam about the fate of the Jews that were deported. Amsterdam had a sizable Jewish population.
    His answer was that while people in Amsterdam did not know exactly what happened, they knew it had to be absolutely terrible because nobody ever came back and nobody ever wrote a letter back. He also said that some people in Amsterdam speculated that they were all dead.

    • @SuperHns
      @SuperHns Рік тому +7

      people knew, my grandparents were in the war also at that age, in the south of Netherlands, 5 mins from the German border. Even the "allies" knew but they never bothered at least bombing the train tracks etc.
      Even the dutch railway tycoon NS got sued in 2013 because it was their tracks and trains who deported JEWS, because it was business trust me they knew what was going on.

    • @noneya2096
      @noneya2096 8 місяців тому

      There are thousands of letters that have survived today from the camps...not sure where you got that info that no one ever wrote but you're completely wrong.

    • @AnneNissen-lh1dg
      @AnneNissen-lh1dg 8 місяців тому

      Those who deared to listen to the BBC news knew what was happened to the Jews from 1943 and forward, because the allies had so strong suspicions that they send out messages that the Germans were gassing Jews in Poland.From Anne Franks diary. Also in 1943 prisoners had been able to escape from Auschwitz’s and reach the Western Allies with drawings and stories from their inmates.

  • @Heidi-ne6so
    @Heidi-ne6so 5 місяців тому +4

    Hey, amazing video. Little critic point, might you slow down your talking a bit. The information is dense and very interesting and, thus, it makes it hard to follow when you are talking very fast

  • @pamelaramos3481
    @pamelaramos3481 6 місяців тому +1

    I was going presently had the most beautiful chance of meeting Mr Simon Wacsburg from meeting him from a jewelry store that I worked at. He was 83 and the time and after conversation with him was so amazing. He was very well known in Memphis. And so sad the stories he told me. At 18 years old he lost his parents to the gas chambers. Him and wife was on the death March from Aushowitz. His wife name was Mina who has passed on after they came to the United States. It was such a remarkable moment for me listening to his stories and was unbelievable. Even after the war with Schindler stayed with him and from hiding because the people were looking for him. Most interesting person I have EVER met in my life!! Memphis TN I could say so much more about him! But look up Simon Wacksberg from Memphis Tn!!

  • @johnthomas2485
    @johnthomas2485 Рік тому +134

    I will say this, a paraphrased except from Patton's book. When the 3rd Army units liberated one particular camp, Patton ordered every prominent citizen brought out to the camp and forced to witness the condition of the inmates. The prevailing winds blew from the camp to the town. Burning human remains make a distinct smell. The mayor and his wife went home and hung themselves. You're damn right they knew.

    • @davidh9844
      @davidh9844 Рік тому

      When Eisenhower went into Dachau, he ordered everything, everything be filmed, because he knew there would be deniers. He demanded permanent records.

    • @castielsgranny4308
      @castielsgranny4308 Рік тому +12

      My dad was in Pattons 3rd Army. He told me a thing or 2.

    • @The_J0ker29
      @The_J0ker29 Рік тому +14

      I remember that story. The mayor and his wife left a very simple suicide note:
      "We didn't know!... But we knew."

    • @RobespierreThePoof
      @RobespierreThePoof Рік тому +10

      A commonly cited story, probably because Patton was treated as a hero after the war in the US (despite his obvious character flaws which we now understand a fair bit better.)
      I still think there's a part of Patton's narrative which people have struggled to understand well. I don't think any reasonable person would say that the way they shamed the local German citizens was unfair - not with THAT level of obvious atrocities. However, psychologically speaking, the denialism of everyday Germans makes a lot of sense. The actual horrors of those camps would have been **literally** unimaginable to most people no matter what their political views were. So it's very possible to have "known" that people were being murdered jn the camps but not really ever think about the d exteme brutality or to comvince yourself that it somehow "isn't that bad." especially when you're loving through a war time regime that relied on fear to take total power and control over almost all aspects of life. Everyone would have felt powerless at the time, even if they were comparatively safe. This would mess with your mind in all kinds of ways.
      I don't think Patton was capable of understanding this.

    • @johnthomas2485
      @johnthomas2485 Рік тому

      @EMS Every German city of even moderate size had a camp near it. These weren't extermination camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Büchenwald, but "work camps." The prisoners were simply worked to death instead of gassed. Quit making excuses. Patton was a hero because of his brilliant generalship. He was also right about the Soviets.

  • @claudballs5679
    @claudballs5679 Рік тому +38

    My dad was there a Navy medic attached with the Marines that marched into the concentration camps he told me before he died that there is no way in hell they didn't know those places were there because the stink from the dead bodies traveled for miles and miles. My dad went into World War II a Mormon returned missionary, and when he returned home he was a full-blown alcoholic for the next 60 years. He died in 2008 of cirrhosis of the liver.

    • @guano1274
      @guano1274 Рік тому +4

      So? Even if the few people living directly next to the camps knew there was some nasty stuff going on, what would they do about it? Not like they had smartphones to sneak around and take pic to share on whatsapp or talk about it on twitter. The best they could have done was maybe talk about it in the next pub, literally risking their life. Also keep in mind that all the death camps were actually outside of Germany, so the ones getting what was going on could do even less than maybe some German citizen.

    • @andrewmclaughlin2701
      @andrewmclaughlin2701 Рік тому

      There was the smell of death in Okinawa

  • @karenaubert8852
    @karenaubert8852 7 місяців тому +5

    I think of the average German citizen in the 1930s as the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. Even German Jews did not see the writing on the wall until it was too late. I blame those in power, and the citizens who enthusiastically supported them even after the horrors were well under way. The average person may have a hero inside him but few can actually overcome their fear enough to become a hero. That's why we applaud them and tell their stories.

  • @mikelowry6286
    @mikelowry6286 2 місяці тому

    This channel is so perfect when I'm bored this channel is so informative I love it

  • @trulsdirio
    @trulsdirio Рік тому +299

    I can say that my great grandfather seems to have known enough about it. He was ordered to fulfill his duty in a concentration camp but refused. As a consequence he was immediately sent to the front as a punishment and died near Stalingrad two days later, aged 24, leaving behind his wife and two children.
    I can understand why many people might have just not said anything. I also don't know how I would have reacted in such a situation, as it's so far removed from any experience I have ever had. Never was there a literal do or die moment for me and I guess for most other westerners it's the same.

    • @bobhaverbeck7585
      @bobhaverbeck7585 Рік тому

      Bullshit

    • @LegendStormcrow
      @LegendStormcrow Рік тому +52

      As horrible as it was, at least it could be said he died with honor.

    • @dodieodie498
      @dodieodie498 Рік тому +31

      I think many Westerners are now having to grapple with such questions, as they see governments and society changing around them.

    • @manub.3847
      @manub.3847 Рік тому +22

      Some also forget the systematic development of the Hitler Youth from 1926, which was the only youth organization allowed from 1933 (98% of the youth). And 7-10 years of indoctrination of approx. 8.7 + million children and young people already promotes a basic stock of obedient soldiers.
      And let's not forget that this form of systematic indoctrination was continued in the former GDR, among other places.
      Many citizens suspected and yet "officially" didn't want to know anything, didn't dare to talk about it with family or friends because they were afraid themselves.

    • @vegan-cannibal714
      @vegan-cannibal714 Рік тому +18

      The fact you admit that your not sure how you would react shows tremendous self awareness

  • @jennismith2
    @jennismith2 Рік тому +43

    I very good friend of mine is an older German woman who is now an American living in the US. She was a child orphaned during WW2, who was adopted by a German physician and his wife who had lost their own daughter. The psychological scars she and her family sustained from the War and from living under such a repressive regime were severe and long-lasting.

  • @magosofmars8410
    @magosofmars8410 4 місяці тому +2

    I had the honour of speaking with a jewish survivor of both the warsaw ghetto and the camps it shocked me when he told me the number of civilian collaborators the germans had at the time

  • @patriciamather5234
    @patriciamather5234 3 місяці тому +1

    Excellent reporting! Lest we forget…

  • @awkwardllama0509
    @awkwardllama0509 Рік тому +1310

    Much respect to the current day German people for teaching the horrors to their students. The United States could do with a nice, long look in the mirror too.

    • @Wolfietherrat
      @Wolfietherrat Рік тому +39

      Ok, and what will they see?

    • @time502
      @time502 Рік тому +202

      So could every other country that has ever existed

    • @salty_ball2565
      @salty_ball2565 Рік тому +102

      Germans aren't taught about the Holocaust. They barely talk about WWII. As for us looking at ourselves in the mirror... I'd say on balance we've done more good than bad and I admit our bad. However, we never had imperialism we didn't enslave countries and rob them blind like France, UK, dutch, Spain, Portugal. In fact,bi bet slavery will be brought up, the US was a minor player in the slave trade, literally a tiny player. About 5% of all slaves ended up in America most went to Caribbean, South America central America and they suffered way worse than us slaves, I'm not defending slavery or our role, however look into sugar plantation life and then ask if you'd rather be sent to the US or a sugar plantation in Cuba. Yet, somehow, we bear the brunt of criticism even though Portugal, Dutch and Spanish actually sold slaves to us. So yeah...

    • @tubensalat1453
      @tubensalat1453 Рік тому +253

      @@salty_ball2565 "Germans aren't taught about the Holocaust." Wrong. Source: I'm German.

    • @salty_ball2565
      @salty_ball2565 Рік тому +26

      @@tubensalat1453 unless that's recent... We had German exchange students, highschool, in the 1990's they didn't know crap about what happened. So maybe it's changed. I understand why, who would want to think their grandparents took part in such a thing. Like how we ignore all the starving and raping if civilians by our grandparents.

  • @yourmother2739
    @yourmother2739 Рік тому +67

    The sight of that little girl looking seven or eight years old holding her hands up in surrender is heart breaking. I was a child in London in world war 11 and I never forgot what happened to people in occupied Europe.

    • @jenniferalexander923
      @jenniferalexander923 Рік тому +11

      It’s called war…. there’s many Palestinian children who do the same things on a daily basis.

    • @bingolos9063
      @bingolos9063 Рік тому +1

      How old are you now ?

    • @aarontheruler
      @aarontheruler Рік тому +4

      Are you from the future

    • @carlmorris6744
      @carlmorris6744 Рік тому

      The first

    • @wyattgeorge5124
      @wyattgeorge5124 Рік тому

      @@jenniferalexander923 You're quite rude, the person you're talking to is supposedly like 90 years old. Have some respect, spoiled snowflake

  • @SandraLily2
    @SandraLily2 4 місяці тому +2

    My mother's family, totaling 14, experienced WWII firsthand and immigrated to the US in '57. They knew, and is was a great source of shame for them. They NEVER talked about it and if asked about the camps or what they knew, their answers (if any) were short with no details.

  • @user-ev4ie2wx7k
    @user-ev4ie2wx7k 3 місяці тому

    A brilliant video. Thank you so much for your erudition, fluency and evident profound interest in those (there are no further words to describe the unbelievable horror perpetrated by the Nazis and their silent accomplices - “Hitler’s willing executioners”) vicious times. Do give us more, and in reality, permit the world to never forget.

  • @philipinchina
    @philipinchina Рік тому +148

    I am from a Yiddish family. One of my forebears, who was alive at the time, once said to me, about the German nation: "They were all Nazis as long as they were winning".

    • @ThirtytwoJ
      @ThirtytwoJ Рік тому +7

      Yea they seem quite adept at lying to themselves and everyone else, dont see any freedom of speech or to bear arms there tho

    • @sirmalus5153
      @sirmalus5153 Рік тому

      There were over 100,000 camps for jews and other peoples in germany for various reasons. The germans knew about it all right and what was going on and CANNOT deny it.

    • @ThirtytwoJ
      @ThirtytwoJ Рік тому +6

      @@sirmalus5153 at this point most of the ones to blame have passed but they raised the ones still around and just looking at their personal rights loopholes proves they learned very little. Prisons seem half decent but may be the exception to the rule. Free speech is basically free to speak what we apporve in retrospect. Gun rights are more like never be able to learn til the payments start or from elders less they go to jail, spend a year paying fees, jumping through hoops, taking classes, registering on 3 lists thatll be used to harass and justify spying on you, never being able to have any sort of weapon outside the home after all that (must have a lot of deer overpopulation), really have nowhere to practice and if so its the most generic, restricted, scrutinized, paper target bs a child could do. Then after all that harassed by police and if someone breaks in youre still expected to just flee your own house because if you do shoot them for any reason youll be in jail too. When you let cowards and corrupt fks and weak frightful easily bought people do your thinking for you they will vote for self imprisonment and short sighted self defeating bs every time.. then blame others for the problems that result.

    • @jasonfuentz4282
      @jasonfuentz4282 Рік тому +1

      @@ThirtytwoJ 😂😂😂

    • @noinfo9130
      @noinfo9130 Рік тому

      Happening again too. Only this time the target fought back and theyve already shut down the camps.
      We will have justice. And this time it will be permanent.

  • @robertasirgutz8800
    @robertasirgutz8800 Рік тому +204

    My first recollection of the suffering of the Holocaust, was a close friend of my mother's. Anna Moskowitz was a survivor of
    Dachau. Her family emigrated to the States, and tried recreate
    their lives here.
    I noticed her tatoo, and didn't understand it's meaning. She was always so cheerful and lovely. Unfortunately, the past couldn't be unseen, and she was found in her kitchen with her head in the oven.
    She just couldn't endure the pain and depression. Many survivors
    committed suicide, in the ensuring years.
    I'll never forget her.

    • @Crytek98
      @Crytek98 Рік тому

      How did she die from head in the oven?

    • @happi0420
      @happi0420 Рік тому +10

      They didn't tattoo people in Dachau.

    • @markhumphreys5042
      @markhumphreys5042 Рік тому

      That’s bullshit the English had cracked the Enigma code and where intersepeting all codes from Alswitzs to Nazi high command including numbers of deaths daily at the labour camp also they never had the means to cremate the numbers that have been said also your mention of zyckon- B fails to mention it was vital (and used by the US and other allies) to stop the spread of Tyfus which was the major killer in labour camps

    • @markhumphreys5042
      @markhumphreys5042 Рік тому +5

      Check out the bombing of Dresden an old city built mainly of timber no military significance British and American bombers under the command of war criminals like “ bomber Harris” were gear to try a new method of bombing picking a civilian target and “ napalaming it . The first wave set the city alight every thing burning the second wave waited for the first responders and set them alight over 60,000 people burnt alive fight aircraft strayed people civilians in the parks who tried to escape the heat was so bad people where stuck to roads over 60,000 one night to see how Napalm works

    • @markhumphreys5042
      @markhumphreys5042 Рік тому +5

      Oh and let’s not forget about the Japanese holocaust

  • @hazmatt3250
    @hazmatt3250 9 місяців тому +7

    “They would not label this as a war or invasion, rather as repelling Polish attacks.”
    Hmm sounds a lot like a certain “special military operation” that totally isn’t a war or invasion.

    • @kungfoochicken08
      @kungfoochicken08 4 місяці тому

      Afghanistan and Iraq come to mind as well.

    • @snuucreations1202
      @snuucreations1202 3 місяці тому

      @@kungfoochicken08very different.

    • @kungfoochicken08
      @kungfoochicken08 3 місяці тому

      @@snuucreations1202 How were those any different? Preemptive invasion and occupation on dubious grounds. Sounds about right.

  • @alisonbarrett3379
    @alisonbarrett3379 5 місяців тому +1

    You speak quite fast, so it was hard to hear and understand everything. It's definitely worth another listen to pick up what I missed.

  • @rcyo-yo447
    @rcyo-yo447 Рік тому +114

    My grandmother in law was born in Austria in 1928. She said that they knew about “work camps” but didn’t know the details. One neighbor refused to fight in the war and was sent to a camp. When the war was over he was returned but was completely broken and committed _______ a few years later. Her brother on the other hand knew he couldn’t refuse and died on the front lines shortly after being drafted.

    • @gratefulguy4130
      @gratefulguy4130 8 місяців тому +3

      They were just work camps. You don't give swimming pools, theaters, commisaries, and arts & crafts to death camp inmates.

    • @AnneNissen-lh1dg
      @AnneNissen-lh1dg 8 місяців тому

      I hope you’re joking @@gratefulguy4130

    • @5hiftyL1v3a
      @5hiftyL1v3a 7 місяців тому

      @@gratefulguy4130 the best part of you became a brown stain on the sheets

    • @fridaysaintjude8926
      @fridaysaintjude8926 6 місяців тому

      ​@@gratefulguy4130 You do if you're building propaganda campaigns to convince people that the death camps weren't death camps. You've been taken in by the same propaganda.

    • @serpentines6356
      @serpentines6356 6 місяців тому

      ​@@gratefulguy4130 What a stupid comment.
      🙄

  • @Si_fly
    @Si_fly Рік тому +63

    My grandparents and great grandparents always mentioned that neighbors where vanishing or openly took away from the police. Until my great grandmother gave birth to my grandfather and suffered an aneurysm in the brain from that. Which lead to her getting taken and never been seen again, leading my grandfather as an orphan while his father was in war. So they knew something.

  • @ricky4145
    @ricky4145 5 місяців тому +1

    Band of Brothers scene sticks in my head whenever I hear this question
    "How about a human being? Are you one of those? Or are you going to tell me you never smelt the fucking stench " David Webster

  • @Cobbmtngirl
    @Cobbmtngirl 3 місяці тому

    I’ve always wondered what the German people were aware of regarding the Nazi’s atrocities. Ty! What an admirable man Mr. Poletski was.

  • @jahbern
    @jahbern Рік тому +347

    One of the most interesting assignments I ever had in college was to research when and what we knew about the Nazis here in the US. We used microfilm (remember that, old people like me???) to create a timeline of what the news was reporting. Turns out, we knew exactly what was happening by 1935. And we had a very good idea as early as 1933. We just didn’t care. There’s no other explanation for the way we flat out ignored what was happening. And it didn’t help that antisemitism was RAMPANT in the US. When I ended up teaching Freshman English at UF I assigned a similar, simplified research project for my students about propaganda in the newspapers of the 30s and 40s. Most people have no idea how incredibly transparent Hitler was. There is no excuse. None. And we should bear that guilt and do better. 😢

    • @l.b.7543
      @l.b.7543 Рік тому +23

      My dad and grandfather left Germany in 1938. They knew back then what was coming

    • @shanephillips4011
      @shanephillips4011 Рік тому +12

      WW1 had barely ended and then world's economy was just holding on. It's no mystery why everyone was holding their breath and keeping out of it. We aught to be doing that today with regards to Russia and Ukraine.

    • @melissahouse3488
      @melissahouse3488 Рік тому +1

      @@shanephillips4011 my father was a nuclear physicist cal tech educated, and he told me never hashing it out with Russia would backfire on the world at some point. He was absolutely correct & predicted this. You don't ignore a world menace unless you want them showing up on YOUR doorstep!! Not only is it humanly immoral, anti-American but UNWISE. I don't agree with devoting billions & neglecting your people/country, but if you suggest allowing Russia to do its destructive wars and taking over of other nations is something of no concern, you must be one of them or brain dead.

    • @ekrinsky67
      @ekrinsky67 Рік тому

      @@shanephillips4011 If everyone held their breath and wanted to keep out of it, you would be speaking German today, or better still, be confined to a concentration camp. You cannot be an isolationist, because if you advocate that, the cancer will come crawling and invade you. Freedom is not free…..

    • @jamcamp22
      @jamcamp22 Рік тому +1

      Can you explain to me how I opened a 1968 encyclopedia and their was nothing about the holocaust or auswitz

  • @TheGruffchickJournal
    @TheGruffchickJournal Рік тому +122

    You are the first person I've ever heard acknowledge the Romani genocide during WWII. THANK YOU! I remember the scars on backs and legs, numbers on arms, and sorrowful eyes of my oldest family members. We were still marginalized after WWII, but those that immigrated to America worked hard to achieve an American Dream.

    • @gedeon2696
      @gedeon2696 Рік тому +14

      I'm not sure, but believe that even Israel's Holocaust Museum has articles about the Genocide of the Romani. I myself had been taught that the Romani were in fact the FIRST sent to the death camps.

    • @KennaDeMerkedo
      @KennaDeMerkedo Рік тому +1

      People in Easter Europe are taught about porajmos

    • @lyndsaybain3845
      @lyndsaybain3845 Рік тому +3

      It’s there at Yad Vashem- the exhibition of the Romani Genocide.

    • @goby999
      @goby999 Рік тому +3

      You should read some history. The US Holocaust Museum talks about the Romani Genocide too.

    • @LMB222
      @LMB222 Рік тому

      Are you also going to America? So far your group is still unfortunately known for stealing.

  • @Rice_peace
    @Rice_peace 8 місяців тому

    Out of all the horror in this video... The last lines got me. It gives me hope.

  • @claudiodeugenio
    @claudiodeugenio 5 місяців тому +3

    "Yes, 10s of millions of average Germans knew all the way. No, no military intelligence of all the allies knew anything."
    ... because the principle of "Trust-me-bro" must be applied here.
    OMG!

  • @Lodrik18
    @Lodrik18 Рік тому +70

    I am from germany:
    The people knew something horrible was going on and most didnt care. There are letters of ordinary people to the SS asking: "My neighbor is a Jew and has a bigger apartment then me, when is he getting deported?" There is also the fact that the "de-nazification" only went so far. You need judges, architects ect to run a country and germany was devastated from the war... Lastly there is the point that the younger generation was indoctrinated and many people held onto those believes for life (my grandfather held people with disabilities in contempt for his whole life...) I think the greatest gift the post war generation got was that they were NOT raised on those believes, newer generations were raised with knowledge of the nazi atrocities and germans later confronted the nazi heritage...

    • @jeremygreenwood1021
      @jeremygreenwood1021 Рік тому +8

      Germany is a fine example to us all. I just hope the Russians take note.

    • @jenniferg2771
      @jenniferg2771 11 місяців тому +2

      "most didn't care" ... Was it this or their fear of getting swept up into either side? I am 1/2 of german descent, emigrated to the US in the mid 1800s.

    • @MrLugubrious
      @MrLugubrious 10 місяців тому

      ​@@jenniferg2771See the literal letters op referred to asking for their Jewish neighbors to be deported. I'm so tired of this bs propaganda promoted by operation paperclip, that the Germans by and large had any legitimate reason to fear for their safety through most of the war. The fact is they were eager to steal their neighbor's possessions and property and atrocities were perpetuated from bottom up, by the common people inspired to action by hateful rhetoric. There is abundant scholarship on this. Stop making excuses for it

    • @RafaelRodrigues-rx9ry
      @RafaelRodrigues-rx9ry 8 місяців тому

      ​@@jenniferg2771you are in a country that hosts neo-nazis. How many people care about it?

    • @laughs150
      @laughs150 8 місяців тому +3

      ​@@jenniferg2771well some were participants especially early on before Germany industrialized human slaughter.

  • @eleonoremichaelis5519
    @eleonoremichaelis5519 Рік тому +54

    My grandfather born in 1924 was a French resistant. He never uttered a word of the war, the memory was too much and he decided to lock that part of his life away. I hope that now he is finally free from this trauma and rests peacefully.

  • @IFtwIxJewJitsu
    @IFtwIxJewJitsu 8 місяців тому

    First thing I thought when I saw the video was that it was going to be a full hour ad free lol.

  • @Katherine_02
    @Katherine_02 8 місяців тому +4

    This was very well done! So much to contemplate. Horror upon horror. It's an uncomfortable truth, but a necessary one.

  • @Nero-dz5gr
    @Nero-dz5gr Рік тому +42

    "the Nazis tried to convince everyone that the german brass was all about peace and had a responsibility to protect the germans and take up arms to protect the peace."
    "They further pushed hard for the fact that they needed to defend against supposedly agressive poland"
    "They stated that Poland was extremely agressive against germany iself by flagrantly attacking "
    "Once germany invaded poland the press was instructed to not reference this as a War nor Invasion but simply Germany repelling polish attacks"
    This SEEMS VERY VERY familiar ...

    • @GGysar
      @GGysar Рік тому

      Literally every modern war. The Russians do it, The U.S. does it too, North Korea wants to do it.

    • @bobboo101
      @bobboo101 Рік тому

      What?

    • @rewdwarf123
      @rewdwarf123 Рік тому +7

      'Special military operation'?

    • @Nero-dz5gr
      @Nero-dz5gr Рік тому +11

      @@rewdwarf123 exchange poland with ukraine and germany with russia ... its the EXACT same situation

    • @PhillipJermakian
      @PhillipJermakian Рік тому

      100%... you should go at them hard, when they flex their mind reading tech it is disturbing to say the least.

  • @jozsefizsak
    @jozsefizsak Рік тому +283

    You did a very special thing by creating this remarkably thoughtful and detailed video. The Nazis killed almost everyone in my family and today we see a new acceptance of present day Nazis which I did not imagine happening in my lifetime. Thank you for pushing back against that development with your powerful look backward.

    • @imalrockme
      @imalrockme Рік тому +29

      It's only a matter of time and of choosing the right victims, I'm afraid. No matter how many pictures of pogroms, forced ghettos and camps, and of course registered depositions of victims, the haters will deny it to the end. Still, it's up to us human beings, to never forget. Just like slavery and civil rights in the US, to never forget.

    • @jozsefizsak
      @jozsefizsak Рік тому +24

      @@imalrockme Yes. Apparently, being open minded can mean entertaining the possibility that every historic site, eye witness account and all the documentation might be faked. Perhaps some people can't be reached.

    • @imalrockme
      @imalrockme Рік тому +24

      ​@@jozsefizsak At 42 I've already realized that some people can't be reached. It's only a matter of not letting them spread lies and reach power.

    • @bluesea2023
      @bluesea2023 Рік тому +3

      @imalrockme Do some people deny that Jews have been persecuted, imprisoned and killed or left to die in WWII? Because i have never met or heard of any such person.

    • @imalrockme
      @imalrockme Рік тому

      ​@@bluesea2023 The proof that such person exists is that the German Government had to criminalize the denial of the Holocaust. That's what Hitler's little helpers do.

  • @MissteriousMisstress
    @MissteriousMisstress 2 місяці тому

    The fact they were worried about "wasting bullets" sends shudders down my spine.

  • @terryfowler6090
    @terryfowler6090 2 місяці тому +5

    I was stationed in Germany during the 70s. Most of the Germans i met denied aving any knowledge of what was going on. I can believe that for towns that had no camps nearby. I found it hard to believe for towns that had a camp nearby. The smell of burning bodies didn't stop at the fence.

  • @gerhardh5690
    @gerhardh5690 Рік тому +32

    I am born 1962 and my father was 8 years old when WWII ended. He lived in a small village under very poor circumstances. Nobody had the money go pay for newspaper or had Acces to international radio and so on. But he told me, that people did know. They did not talk about it, but evrybody knew. So he told me, they had a soap, and the soap used to swim in the water. And the people said, it is swimming on the water, because it is made out of Jews. As a child he could not understand it. But later he remembered. Actually I think this rumor was proven false, but it shows, that people had been well aware, that terrible things happend in the KZ, even in the remotest areas.

  • @Anonymous-vr6ph
    @Anonymous-vr6ph Рік тому +366

    I‘m German and can say one thing about this before I’m going to watch the video. The German public knew a lot. They may have not known exactly what happened to the people that were deported but they did know and notice that their neighbours were disappearing or even being deported on public. There are still a lot of people in Germany denying that they or their parents or grandparents had known anything and many even claim that they helped. That’s factually not true. Under one percent of the German population at the time has engaged in activities opposing nazi rule or just helping people that were particularly affected (like Jews, poles, other minority groups or just groups deemed lower or unworthy by the nazis). The people that lived at the time knew that those people that were deported, harassed and in speeches declared enemies or lower “races“ were killed or enslaved. And after all there were still a lot of people living nearby concentration camps and those are - considering their size - hard to hide. So over all it is very certain that the German public knew a lot about what was going on and were at least able to speculate that those who were deported or just disappeared over night, were probably send to camps to be executed or enslaved.

    • @mturynP
      @mturynP Рік тому

      I recall a German reporting 'I asked my father where the Jews were going, and he said "Nowhere good." and left it at that .'
      Germany, even before the Nazis, wasn't a place where a child would ask their father to elaborate where or to explain why. Not to excuse anybody, but modern people can not easily understand how dictatorial and often violent _fathers_ were back then…which is one way you get Nazis.

    • @strugglingcollegestudent
      @strugglingcollegestudent Рік тому +1

      Germany is tiny logistically there’s no way to hide that they saw the thick clouds of black smoke and they certainly saw the Jews being loaded on the trains at the train stations. They certainly knew about the ghetto as it was right in front or their face and the Jews / other victims were being used as slave labor so even rural Germans knew because the Jews were out in their fields being beat and whipped.
      You can’t discreetly kill 8 million people you just can’t

    • @ginadoyle4089
      @ginadoyle4089 Рік тому +33

      Thank you for further insight. I’m so worried about the echoes that are happening now in the U.S

    • @pjsmith4369
      @pjsmith4369 Рік тому +27

      @@ginadoyle4089I read a true story about a Jewish woman who was something called a “sub “ or something similar. Many could pass as German.
      This woman moved around after her mother and members of her family were, as far as she knew, taken to a work camp.
      She ended up marrying a German low level soldier who knew she was Jewish but did not care. She became a mother.
      She lived in a city that was in eastern Germany. It was after she heard on British news, which was not allowed for anyone, near the end of the war, that she began to figure out something.
      When she started to hear rumours about concentration camps, she was shocked.
      She truly believed that her mother was in a labor camp and that she would see her after the war.
      As far as her neighbors, they also had the same idea.
      I truly believe that if you did not live near the Camps, you may not have known.

    • @saphorr
      @saphorr Рік тому +20

      There is a memorable collective statement in the museum at Buchenwald by the survivors shortly after the camp was liberated. The general theme was "you all knew, don't tell us you didn't know" and mentions in particular that many of the prisoners were sent on forced-labour work gangs into local towns and cities such as Weimar and Jena, where they would have been witnessed by and even worked alongside ordinary Germans.

  • @jw1343
    @jw1343 2 місяці тому +2

    They absolutely knew, that is, the people near the camps absolutely knew. Post war witnesses even admit it. They knew. They fucking knew

  • @martinj.fowler6262
    @martinj.fowler6262 9 місяців тому

    My Great-Uncle Reg "Titch" Snowling was part of the unit that liberated Belsen. He didn't like to talk about what he saw but it's obvious from what his daughter and son-in-law told me that he suffered PTSD for the rest of his life.

  • @user-gp5kh5tu4k
    @user-gp5kh5tu4k Рік тому +71

    There's a story about the great filmmaker Billy Wilder, who was Austrian, but had gone to America and then was director of a US Army film crew that made a film about the liberation of the camps. The film was shown in towns and villages across the country, but no one stayed, everyone kept walking out early. So they took their food vouchers on going into the cinema and only gave them back when the film was finished. It was the only way they could make German citizens sit through the entire film.

    • @RobespierreThePoof
      @RobespierreThePoof Рік тому +12

      Any chance you know the source for that interesting story. It has a slight whiff of being a little "too perfect."

    • @Jimpiedepimpie
      @Jimpiedepimpie Рік тому

      Every single camp labelled as "for extermination" was liberated by the soviets, guy's full of it.

    • @Factchekka
      @Factchekka Рік тому

      ​@Trevor Brannon Mate, you are the same as letter-droppers delivering junk mail to every house. No-one reads your s***, it just goes straight in the bin. Try and be relevant.

    • @gaminawulfsdottir3253
      @gaminawulfsdottir3253 Рік тому +3

      @Trevor Brannon You can't film something "20 years later".

    • @saris9487
      @saris9487 3 місяці тому

      Billy Wilder was himself a survivor. He found out the Gestapo was looking for him and fled to France.
      His family was killed. He had a hard time getting us residency and was in fear of being deported.

  • @rosalinaayala5963
    @rosalinaayala5963 Рік тому +91

    My mother in law was a survivor she told me that even if you wanted to leave you ccould not because the Nazis took all your money and the other countries didn’t let you in unless you had a certain amount. So they were trapped until a cousin in UK sponsored her.

    • @Petra44YT
      @Petra44YT Рік тому +8

      Yeah, the so-called "Reichsfluchtsteuer". I once researched archive documents on Jews emigrating to Paraná, in South America, as "farmers". And I remember this one very wealthy Jew from Berlin, a shop owner, who had over a million Reichsmark to her name. She managed to escape, but they took 96% of her money. 😳

    • @andrewmclaughlin2701
      @andrewmclaughlin2701 Рік тому +3

      @@Petra44YT Whenever a pogrom occurs, there is an exit tax. Egypt did it when they deported their Jews in the 50s

    • @unclesamowitz9922
      @unclesamowitz9922 Рік тому

      The Jew says completely oblivious to the fact that IT WASN'T THEIR MONEY. You STOLE it from the good noble Germanic people and patriot of humanity Hitler GAVE IT BACK TO THEM. Tough.

  • @johnwilkin5941
    @johnwilkin5941 8 місяців тому +3

    People don't like to admit that human beings can do horrific things let alone admitting they would do them, themselves. Given the circumstances, people who you may think are lovely people can do the ugliest of acts.

  • @ms.sherlock
    @ms.sherlock 3 місяці тому +2

    How could they not know- they knew. They knew.

  • @eagle1de227
    @eagle1de227 Рік тому +238

    As a german thinking of myself as being historically very well informed i must say this is one of the rare very well made and accurately researched and produced document on the topic.
    Imho it could and should be used for educational purposes right away.
    I'm now a long time follower of your videos and various productions but i want to state this is undoubtedly one of your masterpieces. Thank you!

    • @TodayIFoundOut
      @TodayIFoundOut  Рік тому +14

      Thanks! -Daven

    • @AdrianOkay
      @AdrianOkay Рік тому +7

      @@hkchan1339 I wouldn't want to imagine brain blaze simon reading this script,
      allegedly

    • @ryno4ever433
      @ryno4ever433 Рік тому +4

      I recommend the channel "Three Arrows" for more in depth content about Nazi Germany.

    • @damonmelendez856
      @damonmelendez856 Рік тому +2

      @@ryno4ever433 I’d like to know more about the swimming pool in Auschwitz.

    • @corranhuss
      @corranhuss Рік тому

      @@ryno4ever433 i’d recommend world war two by Indy and Spartacus

  • @dalestark3343
    @dalestark3343 Рік тому +596

    Love the longer videos that go into greater depth!

  • @Namenlos_1312
    @Namenlos_1312 3 місяці тому +1

    I just can tell what i know from my grandmother who was raised around the now polish city of Ratibor , as i asked her before her death she told me that they knew that they werent very welcome anymore but never ever in her and she said also in the minds of the people she knew before the war , during the war and after the war , nobody would have ever came to the idea that sometimes such gruesome would take place and thats still over 70 years after it it was beyond imagination that this would have taken place , not in a manner of denying that it happend but more like still shocked of it .