You’ve surely seen them, in fact you’ve probably seen them in our series; the pictures of piles of dead bodies and the inmates in their dismal state of suffering. As a principle we usually show that to make sure that it is understood, but we chose to not show any dead bodies, images of torture, or the emaciated ailing victims in this episode. We didn’t do that to avoid UA-cam mis-censorship, but we did it to not continue the dehumanization of the victims. They are heroes of the War Against Humanity, and deserve to be remembered as they were before the Nazis pressed them into their terrible machinery. Join us in our quest to keep the memory of our past alive, so that we can build a better future together by signing up for the TimeGhost Army at timeghost.tv/signup/ or www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory Never Forget
You said here that the Holocaust ended. It's true from a chronological standpoint. However, for Holocaust survivors, and their descendants, the Holocaust never ended. The Holocaust lives with us every day. The stories, the testimonials, the nightmares... live with us every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every month, and every year. The Holocaust lives on, as a testimony not only to the suffering of the Jewish people, but as a symbol of the depths of man's depravity when left to fester unchecked. Never Again. #NeverAgainIsNow
@@deshaun9473then why, why is antisemitism so much on the rise? Why are there Holocaust deniers? The world must not forget. But they already are. We forget the gulags too. I must not forget. It is my personal responsibility.
Indeed…I think the subject of eg willful denial of the evidence and personal witnesses could if not should even ought to be a University examination paper….Heads should be almost permanently bowed in humility …But then and of course and in all humility such a subject could / would / might well broaden out to reach and touch upon other horrors of human experience eg the four years of trench warfare of WW1, or the abject failure of appeasement policies - well maybe not « abject » after all many there were - millions throughout the civilised world - who did their utmost to prevent the pursuit of war to solve arguments…Take the lives lost for so little gain in WW1 but not only, take the lives shattered with limbs lost and faces disfigured … What price glory indeed…but it wasn’t for glory but to defend one’s own interests by s/o just jealous or greedy…But how to determine who is/was jealous or greedy? It is the nasty side of base human nature…To great extent reduced to competition in trade or invention, sport and so on…but sport has been unable to harness all the human weaknesses towards domination… For the sake of «peace » should the threatened accept surrender without redress…the Armenians bow before the Ottomans….? The Austrians weakened before the Anschluss, even welcomed it. Shameful? I would say so, yet ‘respected’ politicians like Karl Renner - a socialist - and opponent of the Austrofascist Chancellor successor to the assassinated Dollfuss - voted in favour of the German national socialist murderers of Dollfuss - and still somehow found favour six years later of the Russian liberators…How to reconcile that? The moral is that there is only one way to deal with a school bully - by giving back more but more of his own medicine… But it doesn’t say much for scientific progress does it? The League of Nations tried but didn’t try hard enough and failed…As for the present UN…how long will it last without solving abject really abject and covert false accusations and threats of violence?
I am from a village in south germany. For hundreds of years it had a vast and prosperouse jewish community. It was majority jewish....until the nazis came...since then...there was never any jew in the area as a resident
"We have been told the American soldier doesn't know what he's fighting for. Now, at least, he knows what he is fighting against." - Gen. Eisenhower after visiting the Ohrdruf concentration camp.
A revealing statement in its way. Generally speaking, US service personnel fighting the Japanese had a sense of retaliating for Pearl Harbor. Those fighting Germans and Italians were often less sure of their motivation. American troops in WW2 were somewhat unique in often travelling thousands of miles to get to a combat zone.
“We have been told the American soldier doesn’t know what he’s fighting for. Now, at least we can project the crimes against humanity onto the Germans. As long as we don’t set foot in Soviet Union Russia, they will never know that we aided and abetted the Stalin regime and his NKVD in their mass genocide of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and so on. Let us bring in Hollywood producers and directors so we can provide a smoke and mirror for the citizens of any allied country and not let them know they aided a country that was already committing mass murder long before FDR dragged us into this senseless war with Germany.”
My Great Great Uncle was a Mexican bracero laborer sent to work on the railroads. He was drafted into the Army and went to Europe as a part of the 45th Infantry Division. He was present when they liberated Dachau and was forever traumatized by what he witnessed. Just mentioning the war brought forth traumatic memories that I cannot comprehend. My Grandparents told me that he would weep uncontrollably and violently shake when he had flashbacks. Never Forget 🇲🇽🇺🇲
Oh dang, he probably knew my grandfather. I'm not sure what division he was in, but he had also been drafted into the arm and was also there when Dachau was liberated.
My great uncle was also at the liberation of Dachau, the only time I ever saw him cry was when he talked about what he saw when he liberated the camp. He said he could still smell the camp right up to the day he died at 95 years old . NEVER FORGET
That description of Treblinka giving up the evidence of the dead is one of the most hauntingly visceral descriptions I've ever heard, and all without being a gruesome description of the events. The poetry really lets you feel the sheer wrongness of the place that Grossman and all the others finding it must have felt. Thank you for sharing it. Never forget.
That's from The Hell of Treblinka, a report he wrote for publication in 1944, which was submitted to the Nuremberg Trials as evidence for the prosecution.
My father, Staff Sgt. Tom Osman, visited the Gardelegen barn on April 18th, 5 days after the holocaust. He spoke with a survivor that had lain for two (2) days under a stack of bodies. Miracle that he survived the fire and suffocation. Never forget,
My uncle, Capt. John Wargo was the first US officer to reach the Ebensee camp (sub camp of Mauthausen) on a reconnaissance in front of his combat engineering team. He didn’t talk about the camps much other than to say “the stories are true, they are all true”
Dear spartacus, I have loved every war against humanity episode tremendously. The amount of emotion and gravity of your voice fits perfect to the severity of the issue. Thank you very much for this series.
Sparty, I salute you, and everyone helping you making it, for this series. More than 5 years of telling the most horrific and evil stories of the war. It is a masterpiece in itself (like the whole ww2 series). A tribute to all who suffered, on all sides. It must have been really rough reading the countless documents and watching the hours of film to make this. I am actually impresssed you have managed to keep your sanity, reserching so many terrible stories. NEVER FORGET....
Honestly? I can't agree more. Sparty is probably among the most mentally tough Historians by now. He would kind of need to be by now. Well done, Sparty, well done!
I can't imagine anyone who has watched just one of these episodes to ever forget. Thanks to Spartacus and the team to do the research and bring this series.
My wife's grandad was an interpreter at Nuremberg having been on the kinder transport from Austria in the 30s. I'm glad he got to see some of the people responsible receiving the justice they deserved
Nuremberg pioneered simultaneous interpreting. IBM developed and installed the system. The official languages in use were German, English, French and Russian.
My maternal grandfather served with the allied forces that liberated Dachau. He only ever discussed it with me once or twice, specifically for school. He preferred not to talk about it whenever possible; but when he did? You knew he was haunted by the s**t he saw. Back in 98, my senior class trip was to Poland. We went to see Auschwitz and the memorial there - to see first hand what was left behind of the mass genocide. It was haunting as hell.
My Grandfather was a Jewish American POW held at a slave labor camp attached to Buchenwald, he was one of only five survivors. Stalag IXB-90. The others were taken on a death march but my grandfather was left behind because he had broken his back after falling off some scaffolding.
My god, Sparticus, I don't know how you managed to do 131 episodes of this series without losing your soul. I tried watching them all from the beginning recently but just couldn't do it. Each episode merged into the next to become like a constant, relentless whine inside my head, building and building mercilessly into a maddening scream. I don't mind telling you that I broke down weeping uncontrollably while watching this last episode. I just don't understand how people can be so utterly, irredeemably terrible to each other. To children! But what horrifies me even more is the realization that human beings are certainly no different and no better today than they were a mere 80 years ago, and that this could happen again if we let it. Never Forget.
It is worse than that - his team have to research the horrors that could not be included too! The pictures, the accounts, the trial transcripts, the lives of survivors and perpetrators.
There's a monument, one of many, at Dachau today. It depicts an inmate, with the inscription (translated to English; original in German) "Think of those who died here." Always remember, and learn the lesson.
I was stationed in West Germany in the early '80's. I had a chance to to go to Oktoberfest in Munich. We had a few hours before going to the fairground, so I took a bus out to Dachau since it's nearby. There are no words that can describe the experience. We can never forget.
Nobody learned any lessons from this. Concentration camps have operated in many places around the world since 45 and they're still being used to imprison enemies of the state and various ethnic groups. Hardly any politician wants to hear about it.
My father, Norman Wilhelm, served in the US Army in WW2 as a Private First Class in the 217th Military Police Company, an independent unit (not part of a division) attached usually to the 15th Corps of the 7th Army. He served in Northern Ireland, England, France (entered a few weeks after D-Day), southern Germany, and ended the war in Salzburg, Austria. In small detachments, they generally directed military traffic and handled German prisoners. He didn’t talk a lot about the war, but wrote his memoirs years later. He was 20 years old when his unit entered Dachau Concentration Camp on 29 April 1945. Here are excerpts from his memoirs: After a couple of days in Erlangen, small group of us, about 16 or 17, gathered on a dank, misty morning to take a truck to our next town. I felt down that day and recall remarking to Blackie that I felt that something bad was going to happen. We pulled into the town square of the town of Dachau. I had never heard of the place. Blackie, Joe, and I started walking. We went only about two blocks when the odor became very strong. Rounding a curve we could see the cause of the odor. A freight train was parked on a siding, and on the cars were piled dead human bodies - maybe 50 or more to a car, and probably 50 or 60 cars. All were naked or only scantily clad; all had obviously not been fed much in months; arms and faces were like mere bones with skin stretched tightly over them. We kept walking and saw the buildings of a concentration camp. Then we started to see people. Thin, dirty men in ragged prison clothing were around a wall - some running and some milling in groups. A pile of SS soldiers were lying in their own blood by the wall of a building that looked like it might be a camp headquarters. None of the live people were German. Papers and furniture lay strewn about. A couple of infantry soldiers from the 36th Division, a Texas National Guard unit, came into sight. Their unit, they said had come to this place a couple of hours before and had freed the prisoners. Some of the SS guards were shot in their attempts to stop the Americans, a few SS guards were taken prisoner; some guards were caught by the released prisoners and beaten so badly that they died. The horror of the scene made believable the story that some of the Americans had lost their composure and shot some of the SS men who lay together near a wall. There was no order or discipline and no one wanted to attempt establish any. The prisoners were celebrating, and we had no desire to curtail their celebration. We walked around the camp, into the barracks, the offices, the crematorium, and looked unbelievingly at the filth and crowded condition of the prisoners. Many were still in their beds, too sick to move. They wanted to touch us, I suppose to see if their eyes were really seeing us instead of the SS guards. About an hour later a group of high-ranking American officers arrived. Before long an announcement was being passed along that the medical officer was placing the camp “Off Limits” because of the diseases among the prisoners. We went back to our truck, went to our billet, and went about our duties. Very little was being said. One of the guys near me said, “Well, Willie, you called that one right about some bad going to happen.”
Spartacus has made the inhumanity series an excellent stand alone production as well as an appropriate parallel to the military series presented by Indy. To everyone concerned well done but it’s not over yet as Japanese atrocities are yet to be ended.
Props to Grossman and whoever translated that, holy shit, I've read some horrible stuff while in university and that is up there with the most grim things I've ever seen put into writing
i am jewish and i have been to some of the ghettos and camps, Auschwitz and Treblinka, i think its important for people to see them, in like an unholy pilgramage going to these places filled me with waves of anxiety and mourning. the sheer awe of some of the sights is humbling and a reminder of how blessed i am to not be going through this but also a reminder that people are capable of evil and that there are those who still want the same as the Nazi's. i thank you all Sparty and everyone on the crew for doing so well to broach a subject so difficult to put into scale and understanding and you all did a justice to all those who perished.
The British were so overwhelmed at Belsen that they sent medical students to handle the care. It took months to get the inmates stabilized, moved, and out of immediate danger.
This episode comes out just few days after Yom Hashoah. I have a candle of rabbi Regina Jonas. The first ever female rabbi, she died in Auschwitz’s in 44. To say that this episode isn’t emotional for me would be a lie. Thank you for doing this series sparty. And may the memory of every victim of the Holocaust forever be a blessing. All love, Am Yisrael Chai
Seems like ,some people still don't care and are continuing the horrid, evil and irrational hate; that led to war and more!!! Regards to people against the hate!
I come to Israel for over 20 years now and have met the most amazing people there and made many true friends.I will never forget my first step on the holy land. It changed me forever... Shabbat Shalom!
May the victims of this genocide find peace. Thank you so much for telling the worst of humanity, a lesson we need to repeat time and again, because it’s both the duty and redemption of humanity
@@JimHussvids Burke's qoute is "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." which different however the same meaning and can not be said enough by who ever!
My grand father was on the Arcona he was taken off the boat just before the departure for an exchange with sweden, prisonners vs medicament. Arounds 200 frenchs were saved with him thx to Bernadotte
Goering is reported to have said after the showing of the films of the camps at Nuremberg: "That's it, we will get the death penalty". And all the Nazis efforts to cover up traces of the atrocities at the camps ended up or nought once former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess decided to confess, and as a prosecution witness at Nuremberg described all that went on there in great detail. Hoess wasn't trying to save his own skin as he knew that he was already a dead man walking. He was later executed by the Poles.
I just want to say as we get near the end of this series: Thank you, Spartacus. This undertaking has no doubt been a toll, I can't imagine anyone who would be unaffected by the amount of research that goes into these incredibly harrowing and upsetting topics. But it's so vitally important that we know this history, and it's part of what makes this channel one of the most incredible and historically significant pieces of content on the net. Again, we thank you.
My grandfather was with the 82nd airborne. He earned a purple heart when a stuka attacked a medical camp he was guarding. During his time with the 82nd airborne he typically drove a medic truck. He later went on with the 82nd to help liberate the Wöbbelin concentration camp. I assume his medic truck had to transport victims of the camp. He was 19 during all of this. Growing up I often heard stories about how he got his purple heart. I didn't learn about his involvement with the liberation of concentration camps until after his passing. It was something my family didn't talk about and part of the horrible trauma he would never talk about. Thank you for documenting this history.
I wish to share a story of my family my great grandfather. He was born in Poland in a place called Lodz in 1921 in 1941 or 42 he was turned in by a fellow pole due to his anti German sentiments for 1000 Reichsmark's. He ended up in 5 camps 4 he talked about 1 he never did due to to it being the worst he would be liberated by the Americans in 1945 at Dachau camp. He would be given a watch by an American private which is still in the family when I was born in 2000 he took a picture with me his Nazi camp ID tattoo still on his arm. After his liberation he was always afraid of trains and kept an emergency suitcase at the foot of his bed at all times he would pass away in 2002 in Scotland leaving behind a story that I can never forget to quote him on the day of my birth " This is and he is my victory " rest in piece grandpa peter ... Never forget
My great grandfather was at the liberation of Dachau (157th infrantry regiment). I love hearing stories like yours. Never stop sharing these stories. We must be the bridge that connects the next generations to the greatest one.
@@TheMasonK No idea sadly a retirement home destroyed all my grandpa's stuff 2 days after he died without telling us that included all his diary's, pictures from when he was liberated and an american M1 helmet and combat jacket they destroyed every last item only pictures that survived are in the family photo album and there are only modern pictures in it and pictures from my other polish grandad who fought in the war from 39 to 45
@@maxy1172 that’s horrible. I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps there’s more than one copy of the photos though. I would go on some Facebook pages or any site dedicated to regiments that were there at Dachau to see if there is any photos from inside the camp on liberation day. You might find additional copies of the photos of your Great Grandpa that were sadly burned.
My Grandpa was there when the British army arrived at Belsen! (He was also at Dunkirk North Africa and Sword Beach on D Day) He rarely ever spoke of what he saw at Belsen!
This was incredibly well done, after finishing this video I can honestly say it gave me the same feeling as when I visited Sachsenhausen myself, you could still feel it in the air. I feel it’s important now, more than ever, we remember these people and what they went through, and what rhetoric/de-humanisation that caused it all to happen in the first place. It’s all becoming too common place once more.
My Dad had a friend from his VFW Post. Jerry was his name. He used to talk about taking one of the camps. I believe it was Dachau he liberated. Many soldiers couldn't talk about their war memories. Not Jerry. He made a special effort to tell people about the camp and the filth, and nastiness and the evil evident there. It wasn't always easy for him, but he literally soldiered on to make sure people didn't forget, at least on his watch anyway! Thanks Jerry, RIP
If the sights of those camps broke men’s spirits (and even broke hardened Soviet men’s hearts) after surviving D-day, then they truly saw Hell on earth. I read a at least two stories where soldiers found dying Jewish women, literally picked them up, and refused to leave their sides. They knew they could not save everyone around them, but they could save this one person. One woman was the last of her family, was dying on the ground, a US soldier found her, and literally refused to leave her side. He was instrumental in nursing her back to health.
This series has been on of the most difficult things I've ever had to watch, but it has to be watched. Even as a person who was aware of what happened, the true scale of the horror of these atrocities that Spartacus and the TG team have brought to the attention of the world is almost inconceivable. Yet we know it did. I can only salute you and the team for this work that must have been extremely difficult. Never forget.
Meyer Levin probably said it best. “We had known. The world had vaguely heard. But until now no one of us had looked on this. Even this morning we had not imagined we would look on this. It was as though we had penetrated at last to the very center of the black heart, to the crawling inside of the vicious heart. Now we knew. Nothing afterward told us more."
I reread *Maus* by Art Spiegelman a few days ago. This is a masterpiece, obviously. One thing that I didn't remember as well as I should have from my numerous previous readings, years ago, was how the horror went on to the very last second of the war, and probably for some time after that. The death marches, the last minute massacres... This is absolutely terrifying. A must-read. Especially now that some "concerned parents" in the US have pushed for the censorship of this book in schools' libraries for the stupidest of "reasons".
Thank you for what you people have done and shown us, I cannot imagine how hard it must have been on your team to produce this week after week for years. It is a small comfort to know that for most their suffering is done. It is astonishing to hear that just a small fraction of those they targeted survived.
In as much as history has long interested me, it had usually been presented fairly sanitary, good guys fighting a just war and the alike. Spartacus' series truly presented the horror and the ugly side of the " noble" struggle. A side that needs to see the light of day so, that as he often reminds us, we never forget. Thank you Spartacus and the Time Ghost team.
@@therealjaystone2344 Like any major historical event, it is hard to pinpoint an exact beginning or end of WW2. Things like "this battle started on X date" can be documented, but to understand why it happened on that date and what lead up to it, you need to consider what went on before, with exact chains of causality being somewhat murky. Hence Time Ghost's Between Two Wars series. Looking at the ending of the Great War series that Indy worked on before coming here, there were a few extra episodes on the immediate aftermath of the war. Of course that channel continued (and continues) to put out content after Indy came here. I expect we will continue to get European updates in both the main series and WAH until the end of the Japanese part of the war is resolved. I also expect some wrap-up episodes as they transition into covering the Korean War.
Thank you once more to the timeghost team, and especialy to those involved with the war againat humanity series. I cant imagine pouring theough auch grisly documents to create a comprehensive timeline was easy on the heart and soul. All the best from canada, have a great day,y yu all deserve it!
31:03 For some reason I wasn't expecting Wobbelin to come up. My step grandfather was in the 8th Infantry Division. Wobbelin happened to be on the operational boundary line between the 8th ID and the 82nd Airborne. He was never a very talkative man, but we swapped war stories after I left the US Army. These stories were the most that I had ever said to him up to that point and I think it was the most I had ever heard him speak. We talked about many things but he only briefly mentioned the Hurtgen forest and the Wobbelin concentration camp. I knew better than to press him for details. I looked up the camp online many years ago and am familiar with the general story of the camp. Hearing Spartacus say the name of the camp kind of made it real for me in the same way that seeing Treblinka did for Vasily Grossman.
Thank you so much for your incredible work, Sparty. I am convinced that the War Against Humanity series contributes a lot to remember and honor each and every of the 17 million heroes of this war. Never forget.
Kinda surreal hearing my (small, largely insignificant) home town metioned in such an important context. I knew of the Außenlager and its liberation (school history did its job for once) but I had no idea what the inmates were actually forced to do. Thank you as always for excellent work Sparty and to everyond behind the camera. Never forget.
I watched every single episode of this channel but this episode is one of many who manages to make me feel sorrow once again for people I never met in person. The stories are more horrific than any horror movie. During this episode I ate a few gummies and a slice of garlic bread. And then it hit me. The sudden realisation that this might haven been more than those poor people got to eat in those places of torture. The thought made me sick and even 15 minutes later I still feel like so. I will never forget the overall story of those who suffered through this. I simply cannot forget it, nor forgive the people that where responsible. This whole thing is revolting beyond my vocabulary.
Thank you for sticking with us so far. There’s still a path to go, but there’s lighter times ahead. We shud also never forget that although not a complete and clean victory, humanity did not lose this war, and what followed was a better world. Not perfect, perhaps not even good, but better.
With this episode, I remember my maternal grandfather, who was liberated from Mauthausen on May 5, 1945. He had arrived there three months earlier after surviving one of the very last death marches from Auschwitz which left just 10 days prior to the Soviets' liberation of all three main Auschwitz camps (Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II - Birkenau, Auschwitz III - Monowitz) on January 27, 1945. Despite not being a death camp (it was a hard labour camp), Mauthausen had one of the highest death tolls in the system, not least of which was due to the quarry and the steep stairs leading from there up to the rest of the camp. Those who were held at the camp were made to haul heavy rocks from the quarry up those stairs and they were chained together in groups of three at the ankles. If one lost their balance, the other two would fall as well, usually into the other prisoners behind them on the steps. This is how many of the inmates at the camp were killed. For a few days prior to liberation, the Nazi guards ordered the prisoners, including my grandfather, to run into underground tunnels as part of a drill in the event the Allies were coming. The idea was that the Nazis would force them into the tunnels and then seal off the openings with explosives if the Allies were close, burying everyone alive. Fortunately, this wasn't done on May 5th when US forces liberated the camp and its three subcamps. My grandfather (who was 17 when war broke out in 1939) survived the Zaslav Ghetto, Auschwitz and a couple of its subcamps, the Death March and Mauthausen. After liberation, he was reunited with his youngest sister at the Ebelsburg DP camp next to Linz (his parents, elder and younger sister didn't survive). After three years at the DP camp, he, his sister and her new husband (another survivor she met at the DP camp) emigrated to Uruguay (where my mother was born) and then Israel in 1978 until the rest of their lives. My great-aunt's husband died in the mid-1990s, my grandfather passed away on June 5, 2015 aged 93 (I was the last family member to have seen him alive the day before, and was present at his funeral 2 days later), and my great-aunt passed away on March 17, 2021. May they all rest in peace.
@@spartacus-olsson thanks Sparty. I believe I mentioned this before in a video several years ago that marked the opening of Belzec (my great-grandparents were transported and murdered on arrival there on Yom Kippur 1942; my great-aunt died on the 79th anniversary of its opening), but felt it was worth mentioning again now that Mauthausen was liberated (per the chronological timeline of this series now that this point of the war was reached).
This was amazing to read. I honestly don't know how even one person survived Mauthausen. The torture done there was insane. I read some stories about Americans that were imprisoned there and the Nazi's of course targeted them and pushed them off the top of the quarry one by one. Also the brother-in-law of the then mayor of NYC was imprisoned there and he was beaten to death over the course of several weeks. I loved reading the story about how when the camp was liberated the Nazi's ran into the mountains to hide and the Soviet POW's that had been held there hunted them down.
A sidenote to the Buchenwald camp: The prisoners there took an oath. It says, among other things, "Destruction of Naziism with it's roots is our slogan! Building a world of freedom and piece is our goal!".
How the mighty have fallen. Himmler once the most feared man in Germany and the occupied territories is now trying to save his own hide, they say the bigger you are, the harder the fall.
@@CrazyYurie I don't know I had already taken a college Calculus course by the time I made it to College. All I know is half my roommates in the Honors dorm would constantly come to ask me questions about the college algebra course.
It is so late after this episode but I have only been able to watch to the end now. My grandfather fought as a British Infantryman having been drafted from a reserved occupation (working for Ransomes and Rapier in Ipswich) which according to family lore was because he was a trade unionist. He would never talk about his bandaged leg nor about any of his experiences of combat and it was only in a letter from a friend, kept by his wife, that we found that he had been witness to some of what the liberated camps were like. He always said that we should love the Germans but hate the Nazi's and after brushing off our attempts to glean any tales of his time in uniform that we could use as boasting currency in the playground, he would use words so perfectly summarised by Spartacus "never forget". Thankyou.
My Bubbe and Zeide were both in concentration camps. My Bubbe was contracted out to work for 4 other camps before she and her sister escaped and wandered through the forest for a month until they finally arrive to safety. My Bubbe spoke about this just once, for her Shoah testimony, then put the recording away and never spoke of it again. Never Forget.
Thank you for this episode Spartacus! I was worried that it would never come. I have been as attached to this as the main series. Thank you for the important work you and the team have done
It is outrageous that the counts of 10s of thousands of deaths seem relatively small. Mind numbing. Each was a person with untold potential. May we never forget these evils. Honor the fallen, each and every one!
Absolutely brilliant and detailed series. Make all other documentaries on the Holocaust feel like they just glossing over the topic. Nicely done Spartacus.
It was the ultimate moment of them drinking their own Kool-Aid They assumed that the title was both entirely literal and deeply powerful, rather than an entirely civilian entity
April 4th, 1945 the US Army liberated the Ohrdruf Nord concentration camp near Gotha, Germany and it was the first camp seen by US forces. My father's unit, 273rd AA Ordinance attached to the 3rd Army was part of that liberation. My father carried a small camera throughout the war and he took photos of the horrors of the camp that day. He brought those photos home with him in a small album that I remember seeing as a young child. He explained to me what they meant but later my mother threw that album away because they troubled her. I do have all of his other photos taken during the 5 major campaigns he was in including one taken of him in Gotha outside of the camp.
I know that as WWII comes to a close you'll be pivoting to Korea. However, I really hope that you make a few more videos in this series. I'd like to see a WAH follow-up showing the integration of the camp inmates back into society after the war. And I'd really, really like to see the Nuremberg trials in real time.
@@spartacus-olsson I have a question: will there be a WAH epilogue covering how the atrocities of 1939-1945 continue to affect us into the modern day? The denial of German and Japanese war crimes, the development of atomic weapons during the Cold War, the establishment of communist regimes such as East Germany and the People's Republic of China in the aftermath, the rise of US hegemony, etc.?
@@sirhenrymorgan1187The Muslim Arab involvement in the Holocaust and the Waffen SS involvement in the attacks on Israel in 1948 and training the PLO (Yasser Arafat was personally trained by Otto Skorzeny).
@@sirhenrymorgan1187 not to any great extent on this channel, but we will touch on such issues in our several upcoming series covering the second half of the 20th century - that we be on the TimeGhost channel, or for larger series like the Korean War on their dedicated channels.
I saw a few videos about *_Kitty Hart Moxon._* Her story on living through Auschwitz is an amazing story of survival and luck. Something that is also not talked about much is; _What life was like for them after liberation._
@@ZebraLens I don't know about that, but everyone was trying to process the years and years of war (depending on how long your country was involved) in their own ways with varying levels of lingering trauma, not always processed in the... most healthy ways. To your point though, my country has "moved on" from Covid alarmingly quickly...
Please checkout her video here on UA-cam, where she revisits Auschwitz with her son and walks the cameras through her story. It's a video from, I believe, 1979-ish (somewhere around that timeframe).
Stutthof was way out east in the Danzig 'pocket'. "Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on 9 May 1945, rescuing about 100 prisoners who had managed to hide." Odd- Gdansk had surrendered on March 30
'Many hardships' was what the father of an aunt of mine told about his experiences in Neuengamme and on board the Cap Arcona. He didn't elaborate much more on it. Recent research showed that Kamp Amersfoort (NL) had a bigger role in the Holocaust than was thought of. (Published on NOS (Dutch public broadcaster) 25-4-2024)
Though ordered to withdraw so that white troops could take the credit, it was the men of the 442nd who discovered Dachau on 29 April 1945. My sainted father-in-law, Masami Hayakawa- who had volunteered to join the Army, leaving the camp and his family behind- was among the men who made the discovery.
Imagine the PR that Japanese-Americans did a brave thing. It could have damaged morale over in the Pacific for the troops taking the fight to the Japs. In hindsight it was the sensible decision at the moment but now it tastes bitter.
@@iconoclastic12007 Mas returned home a sergeant- as high as non-white men could generally go in those days (thanks a ton, Woodrow Wilson, you racist!), completed his degree in mathematics, but minored in German. Converted from Shinto to confessional Lutheran, married a girl whose grandparents all emigrated from Saxony, and raised his family in Honolulu, as a hardware engineer for IBM. Mas was a loyal American to the end (he ran the computer for Hawai'is' statehood vote), and when he retired, and was presented with goggles, a leather helmet and flight jacket, and a cake wishing him luck as IBM's first kamikaze pilot, I think Mas was still chuckling about it six months later! When I asked about the farm his folks lost when they were interned, he looked startled and said 'oh hell no! I *hated* farming!' - he took the racism shoveled on him and used it to grow a remarkable life. As I'm an old retired fellow now, Mas is still my hero. And I miss him.
The men of the 442nd, specifically the men of the 555th artillery, liberated a sub-camp of Dachau. While it was true that the army buried their deed to avoid bad publicity, Dachau was such a big network of the main camp and sub-camps that numerous units can all say that they liberated Dachau.
@Dragunov8808 yeah, that does tend to be an issue. I do know the 45th ID, 157th Infantry were the first in the gates and were the ones responsible for the massacre of the guards. A battalion commander, Felix Sparks talks about it in his memoirs.
We Americans avoid a detail of Eicke's work. He based the concentration camp regime on the prison system of the U.S. state of Alabama. Between 1870 and 1900 no prisoner in Alabama who was sentenced to ten years or longer lived to complete his sentence.
Thank you for all you have done to bring these horrendus and despicable crimes to the world. As I have watched over the years and felt anguish over the sheer brutality. I realize that I can not imagine the mental strain that researching, writing, editing, rehearsing and filming has had on the whole team. Thank you Spartacud and the Time Ghost Team and Army for all that you have done. NEVER FORGET!
You’ve surely seen them, in fact you’ve probably seen them in our series; the pictures of piles of dead bodies and the inmates in their dismal state of suffering. As a principle we usually show that to make sure that it is understood, but we chose to not show any dead bodies, images of torture, or the emaciated ailing victims in this episode. We didn’t do that to avoid UA-cam mis-censorship, but we did it to not continue the dehumanization of the victims.
They are heroes of the War Against Humanity, and deserve to be remembered as they were before the Nazis pressed them into their terrible machinery. Join us in our quest to keep the memory of our past alive, so that we can build a better future together by signing up for the TimeGhost Army at timeghost.tv/signup/ or www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Never Forget
You said here that the Holocaust ended. It's true from a chronological standpoint. However, for Holocaust survivors, and their descendants, the Holocaust never ended. The Holocaust lives with us every day. The stories, the testimonials, the nightmares... live with us every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every month, and every year. The Holocaust lives on, as a testimony not only to the suffering of the Jewish people, but as a symbol of the depths of man's depravity when left to fester unchecked.
Never Again.
#NeverAgainIsNow
We have seen that which you cannot show here, and we will never forget.
I swear to you, and to everyone, that as long as I am alive, there is somebody on this earth that remembers. I will never forget. Never.
@@Icicle_Racing the world will never forget. And even if it does, the Jewish people will never forget.
@@deshaun9473then why, why is antisemitism so much on the rise? Why are there Holocaust deniers? The world must not forget. But they already are. We forget the gulags too. I must not forget. It is my personal responsibility.
And people STILL try to deny that this slaughter ever happened. Never forget
Or downplay it as overblown.
Humans have killed one another for centuries
Indeed…I think the subject of eg willful denial of the evidence and personal witnesses could if not should even ought to be a University examination paper….Heads should be almost permanently bowed in humility …But then and of course and in all humility such a subject could / would / might well broaden out to reach and touch upon other horrors of human experience eg the four years of trench warfare of WW1, or the abject failure of appeasement policies - well maybe not « abject » after all many there were - millions throughout the civilised world - who did their utmost to prevent the pursuit of war to solve arguments…Take the lives lost for so little gain in WW1 but not only, take the lives shattered with limbs lost and faces disfigured … What price glory indeed…but it wasn’t for glory but to defend one’s own interests by s/o just jealous or greedy…But how to determine who is/was jealous or greedy? It is the nasty side of base human nature…To great extent reduced to competition in trade or invention, sport and so on…but sport has been unable to harness all the human weaknesses towards domination…
For the sake of «peace » should the threatened accept surrender without redress…the Armenians bow before the Ottomans….? The Austrians weakened before the Anschluss, even welcomed it. Shameful? I would say so, yet ‘respected’ politicians like Karl Renner - a socialist - and opponent of the Austrofascist Chancellor successor to the assassinated Dollfuss - voted in favour of the German national socialist murderers of Dollfuss - and still somehow found favour six years later of the Russian liberators…How to reconcile that? The moral is that there is only one way to deal with a school bully - by giving back more but more of his own medicine… But it doesn’t say much for scientific progress does it? The League of Nations tried but didn’t try hard enough and failed…As for the present UN…how long will it last without solving abject really abject and covert false accusations and threats of violence?
It's on the rise, in fact, which is so hard to grapple with
I am from a village in south germany. For hundreds of years it had a vast and prosperouse jewish community. It was majority jewish....until the nazis came...since then...there was never any jew in the area as a resident
"We have been told the American soldier doesn't know what he's fighting for. Now, at least, he knows what he is fighting against." - Gen. Eisenhower after visiting the Ohrdruf concentration camp.
A revealing statement in its way. Generally speaking, US service personnel fighting the Japanese had a sense of retaliating for Pearl Harbor. Those fighting Germans and Italians were often less sure of their motivation. American troops in WW2 were somewhat unique in often travelling thousands of miles to get to a combat zone.
“We have been told the American soldier doesn’t know what he’s fighting for. Now, at least we can project the crimes against humanity onto the Germans. As long as we don’t set foot in Soviet Union Russia, they will never know that we aided and abetted the Stalin regime and his NKVD in their mass genocide of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and so on. Let us bring in Hollywood producers and directors so we can provide a smoke and mirror for the citizens of any allied country and not let them know they aided a country that was already committing mass murder long before FDR dragged us into this senseless war with Germany.”
Americans had an excellent reason to fight the Germans and the italians, in that Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the US.
@@stevekaczynski3793yep but that will always be true because our geography is unique for a “great power”
My Great Great Uncle was a Mexican bracero laborer sent to work on the railroads. He was drafted into the Army and went to Europe as a part of the 45th Infantry Division. He was present when they liberated Dachau and was forever traumatized by what he witnessed. Just mentioning the war brought forth traumatic memories that I cannot comprehend. My Grandparents told me that he would weep uncontrollably and violently shake when he had flashbacks.
Never Forget 🇲🇽🇺🇲
Oh dang, he probably knew my grandfather. I'm not sure what division he was in, but he had also been drafted into the arm and was also there when Dachau was liberated.
My great uncle was also at the liberation of Dachau, the only time I ever saw him cry was when he talked about what he saw when he liberated the camp. He said he could still smell the camp right up to the day he died at 95 years old . NEVER FORGET
That description of Treblinka giving up the evidence of the dead is one of the most hauntingly visceral descriptions I've ever heard, and all without being a gruesome description of the events. The poetry really lets you feel the sheer wrongness of the place that Grossman and all the others finding it must have felt. Thank you for sharing it.
Never forget.
To me Grossman's poem seems like a antitheses to the poem "Grass" by Carl Sandburg in some sense.
That's from The Hell of Treblinka, a report he wrote for publication in 1944, which was submitted to the Nuremberg Trials as evidence for the prosecution.
In the service for burial at sea, there is a reference to the "seas giving up their dead." In post-War Germany, the Earth was giving up its dead.
Agreed, it gave me goosebumps, so evocative and visceral as you say.
well said @Pluemas! Thank you Sparty
The quote of the Soviet journalist was both brilliant and utterly devastating. That man could write.
Vassily Grossman was a brilliant novelist. Read "Life and Fate'!
@@lauradekeyzer1945wonderful book! One of my favourites!
Wonder what he said about his own state's GULAG re-education camp system.
@@tylerbozinovski427 Maybe you'd know that if you read the book ;)
@@tylerbozinovski427”what about” is the refuge of the very stupid and fundamentally uncurious. Be better.
My father, Staff Sgt. Tom Osman, visited the Gardelegen barn on April 18th, 5 days after the holocaust. He spoke with a survivor that had lain for two (2) days under a stack of bodies. Miracle that he survived the fire and suffocation. Never forget,
My uncle, Capt. John Wargo was the first US officer to reach the Ebensee camp (sub camp of Mauthausen) on a reconnaissance in front of his combat engineering team. He didn’t talk about the camps much other than to say “the stories are true, they are all true”
Dear spartacus, I have loved every war against humanity episode tremendously. The amount of emotion and gravity of your voice fits perfect to the severity of the issue. Thank you very much for this series.
Sparty, I salute you, and everyone helping you making it, for this series. More than 5 years of telling the most horrific and evil stories of the war. It is a masterpiece in itself (like the whole ww2 series). A tribute to all who suffered, on all sides. It must have been really rough reading the countless documents and watching the hours of film to make this. I am actually impresssed you have managed to keep your sanity, reserching so many terrible stories.
NEVER FORGET....
Honestly? I can't agree more. Sparty is probably among the most mentally tough Historians by now. He would kind of need to be by now. Well done, Sparty, well done!
I can't imagine anyone who has watched just one of these episodes to ever forget. Thanks to Spartacus and the team to do the research and bring this series.
It’s amazing how often the wrong doer wants to “bury the hatchet” when the consequences arise. Then are surprised that the wronged do not want to.
Same with the Confederacy after the civil war.
@@1984isnotamanual really? Where are the confederate tanks and people arresting you and taking over forts in the 2020s?
My wife's grandad was an interpreter at Nuremberg having been on the kinder transport from Austria in the 30s. I'm glad he got to see some of the people responsible receiving the justice they deserved
Nuremberg pioneered simultaneous interpreting. IBM developed and installed the system. The official languages in use were German, English, French and Russian.
My maternal grandfather served with the allied forces that liberated Dachau. He only ever discussed it with me once or twice, specifically for school. He preferred not to talk about it whenever possible; but when he did? You knew he was haunted by the s**t he saw.
Back in 98, my senior class trip was to Poland. We went to see Auschwitz and the memorial there - to see first hand what was left behind of the mass genocide. It was haunting as hell.
My Grandfather was a Jewish American POW held at a slave labor camp attached to Buchenwald, he was one of only five survivors. Stalag IXB-90. The others were taken on a death march but my grandfather was left behind because he had broken his back after falling off some scaffolding.
My god, Sparticus, I don't know how you managed to do 131 episodes of this series without losing your soul. I tried watching them all from the beginning recently but just couldn't do it. Each episode merged into the next to become like a constant, relentless whine inside my head, building and building mercilessly into a maddening scream. I don't mind telling you that I broke down weeping uncontrollably while watching this last episode. I just don't understand how people can be so utterly, irredeemably terrible to each other. To children! But what horrifies me even more is the realization that human beings are certainly no different and no better today than they were a mere 80 years ago, and that this could happen again if we let it. Never Forget.
It is worse than that - his team have to research the horrors that could not be included too!
The pictures, the accounts, the trial transcripts, the lives of survivors and perpetrators.
There's a monument, one of many, at Dachau today. It depicts an inmate, with the inscription (translated to English; original in German) "Think of those who died here."
Always remember, and learn the lesson.
I was stationed in West Germany in the early '80's. I had a chance to to go to Oktoberfest in Munich. We had a few hours before going to the fairground, so I took a bus out to Dachau since it's nearby. There are no words that can describe the experience. We can never forget.
Nobody learned any lessons from this. Concentration camps have operated in many places around the world since 45 and they're still being used to imprison enemies of the state and various ethnic groups. Hardly any politician wants to hear about it.
My father, Norman Wilhelm, served in the US Army in WW2 as a Private First Class in the 217th Military Police Company, an independent unit (not part of a division) attached usually to the 15th Corps of the 7th Army. He served in Northern Ireland, England, France (entered a few weeks after D-Day), southern Germany, and ended the war in Salzburg, Austria. In small detachments, they generally directed military traffic and handled German prisoners. He didn’t talk a lot about the war, but wrote his memoirs years later. He was 20 years old when his unit entered Dachau Concentration Camp on 29 April 1945. Here are excerpts from his memoirs:
After a couple of days in Erlangen, small group of us, about 16 or 17, gathered on a dank, misty morning to take a truck to our next town. I felt down that day and recall remarking to Blackie that I felt that something bad was going to happen.
We pulled into the town square of the town of Dachau. I had never heard of the place. Blackie, Joe, and I started walking. We went only about two blocks when the odor became very strong. Rounding a curve we could see the cause of the odor. A freight train was parked on a siding, and on the cars were piled dead human bodies - maybe 50 or more to a car, and probably 50 or 60 cars. All were naked or only scantily clad; all had obviously not been fed much in months; arms and faces were like mere bones with skin stretched tightly over them.
We kept walking and saw the buildings of a concentration camp. Then we started to see people. Thin, dirty men in ragged prison clothing were around a wall - some running and some milling in groups. A pile of SS soldiers were lying in their own blood by the wall of a building that looked like it might be a camp headquarters. None of the live people were German. Papers and furniture lay strewn about.
A couple of infantry soldiers from the 36th Division, a Texas National Guard unit, came into sight. Their unit, they said had come to this place a couple of hours before and had freed the prisoners. Some of the SS guards were shot in their attempts to stop the Americans, a few SS guards were taken prisoner; some guards were caught by the released prisoners and beaten so badly that they died. The horror of the scene made believable the story that some of the Americans had lost their composure and shot some of the SS men who lay together near a wall.
There was no order or discipline and no one wanted to attempt establish any. The prisoners were celebrating, and we had no desire to curtail their celebration.
We walked around the camp, into the barracks, the offices, the crematorium, and looked unbelievingly at the filth and crowded condition of the prisoners. Many were still in their beds, too sick to move. They wanted to touch us, I suppose to see if their eyes were really seeing us instead of the SS guards.
About an hour later a group of high-ranking American officers arrived. Before long an announcement was being passed along that the medical officer was placing the camp “Off Limits” because of the diseases among the prisoners.
We went back to our truck, went to our billet, and went about our duties. Very little was being said. One of the guys near me said, “Well, Willie, you called that one right about some bad going to happen.”
I am a child of survivors and I will never forget and the narrator of this video has enlightened me with the atrocities of this war thank you
Be a genuine relief for Spartacus to finish this series. It must have had an impact on his psyche studying such cruelty for years on end
Alas the series isn't over, Japan still has a ways to go.
Spartacus has made the inhumanity series an excellent stand alone production as well as an appropriate parallel to the military series presented by Indy.
To everyone concerned well done but it’s not over yet as Japanese atrocities are yet to be ended.
Probably one of the most important episodes of WaH as it gives a very good overview. Thank you Sparty for having done this series for years and years.
Props to Grossman and whoever translated that, holy shit, I've read some horrible stuff while in university and that is up there with the most grim things I've ever seen put into writing
"To continue the fight and to honor the fallen, we must never forget!"
i am jewish and i have been to some of the ghettos and camps, Auschwitz and Treblinka, i think its important for people to see them, in like an unholy pilgramage going to these places filled me with waves of anxiety and mourning. the sheer awe of some of the sights is humbling and a reminder of how blessed i am to not be going through this but also a reminder that people are capable of evil and that there are those who still want the same as the Nazi's. i thank you all Sparty and everyone on the crew for doing so well to broach a subject so difficult to put into scale and understanding and you all did a justice to all those who perished.
The British were so overwhelmed at Belsen that they sent medical students to handle the care. It took months to get the inmates stabilized, moved, and out of immediate danger.
This video is a true tour de force. The entire “War Against Humanity” series is.
This episode comes out just few days after Yom Hashoah. I have a candle of rabbi Regina Jonas. The first ever female rabbi, she died in Auschwitz’s in 44.
To say that this episode isn’t emotional for me would be a lie.
Thank you for doing this series sparty. And may the memory of every victim of the Holocaust forever be a blessing.
All love,
Am Yisrael Chai
Never Forget.
@@deshaun9473 never
Seems like ,some people still don't care and are continuing the horrid, evil and irrational hate; that led to war and more!!! Regards to people against the hate!
This episode should be emotional for any person with humanity, It should make all humans wonder how such hate could happen.
I come to Israel for over 20 years now and have met the most amazing people there and made many true friends.I will never forget my first step on the holy land. It changed me forever...
Shabbat Shalom!
May the victims of this genocide find peace. Thank you so much for telling the worst of humanity, a lesson we need to repeat time and again, because it’s both the duty and redemption of humanity
Professionalism, dedication, eloquence... we WILL NEVER FORGET your splendid job. Thank You Sparty and great respect Mr. Olsson.
Evil wins if good men do nothing. If good men do nothing they cease to be good men.
How long have you been waiting to use this generic and overused quote to not even cite the person that said it?
That happened in 1939, if the UK and France invaded Germany they could’ve saved millions of people
@@JimHussvids You can't own an idea. Once you transmit it is replicated without control. The important part is the message.
@@JimHussvids Burke's qoute is "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." which different however the same meaning and can not be said enough by who ever!
@@JimHussvids how long are humans going to suck? That should answer your question.
My grand father was on the Arcona he was taken off the boat just before the departure for an exchange with sweden, prisonners vs medicament. Arounds 200 frenchs were saved with him thx to Bernadotte
Goering is reported to have said after the showing of the films of the camps at Nuremberg: "That's it, we will get the death penalty".
And all the Nazis efforts to cover up traces of the atrocities at the camps ended up or nought once former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess decided to confess, and as a prosecution witness at Nuremberg described all that went on there in great detail. Hoess wasn't trying to save his own skin as he knew that he was already a dead man walking. He was later executed by the Poles.
I just want to say as we get near the end of this series: Thank you, Spartacus. This undertaking has no doubt been a toll, I can't imagine anyone who would be unaffected by the amount of research that goes into these incredibly harrowing and upsetting topics. But it's so vitally important that we know this history, and it's part of what makes this channel one of the most incredible and historically significant pieces of content on the net. Again, we thank you.
Thank you Spartacus for teaching us over and over again that the only way we can stop inhumanity is with our memories and our compassion.
My grandfather was with the 82nd airborne. He earned a purple heart when a stuka attacked a medical camp he was guarding. During his time with the 82nd airborne he typically drove a medic truck. He later went on with the 82nd to help liberate the Wöbbelin concentration camp. I assume his medic truck had to transport victims of the camp. He was 19 during all of this. Growing up I often heard stories about how he got his purple heart. I didn't learn about his involvement with the liberation of concentration camps until after his passing. It was something my family didn't talk about and part of the horrible trauma he would never talk about. Thank you for documenting this history.
They need to show this full series in school..
"If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgivness." Scratched into the wall at Auschwitz. NEVER FORGET.
that's my fav quote of all time
@@dudezombie1498 Mine too.
This is a stunning, remarkable quote. As a believing Christian I am confident that God had no problem with the expression of this sentiment.
Thank you for sharing. That is incredibly powerful
@@hannahp1108 I thought so, thats why I posted it. Less we forget.
I wish to share a story of my family my great grandfather. He was born in Poland in a place called Lodz in 1921 in 1941 or 42 he was turned in by a fellow pole due to his anti German sentiments for 1000 Reichsmark's. He ended up in 5 camps 4 he talked about 1 he never did due to to it being the worst he would be liberated by the Americans in 1945 at Dachau camp. He would be given a watch by an American private which is still in the family when I was born in 2000 he took a picture with me his Nazi camp ID tattoo still on his arm. After his liberation he was always afraid of trains and kept an emergency suitcase at the foot of his bed at all times he would pass away in 2002 in Scotland leaving behind a story that I can never forget to quote him on the day of my birth " This is and he is my victory " rest in piece grandpa peter ... Never forget
My great grandfather was at the liberation of Dachau (157th infrantry regiment). I love hearing stories like yours. Never stop sharing these stories. We must be the bridge that connects the next generations to the greatest one.
Do you happen to know who the American private’s name was?
@@TheMasonK No idea sadly a retirement home destroyed all my grandpa's stuff 2 days after he died without telling us that included all his diary's, pictures from when he was liberated and an american M1 helmet and combat jacket they destroyed every last item only pictures that survived are in the family photo album and there are only modern pictures in it and pictures from my other polish grandad who fought in the war from 39 to 45
@@maxy1172 that’s horrible. I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps there’s more than one copy of the photos though. I would go on some Facebook pages or any site dedicated to regiments that were there at Dachau to see if there is any photos from inside the camp on liberation day. You might find additional copies of the photos of your Great Grandpa that were sadly burned.
@@maxy1172 Those bastards... probably a neo-nazi among that home.
I'm glad you gave the tally at the end, Sparty.
My Grandpa was there when the British army arrived at Belsen! (He was also at Dunkirk North Africa and Sword Beach on D Day) He rarely ever spoke of what he saw at Belsen!
This was incredibly well done, after finishing this video I can honestly say it gave me the same feeling as when I visited Sachsenhausen myself, you could still feel it in the air.
I feel it’s important now, more than ever, we remember these people and what they went through,
and what rhetoric/de-humanisation that caused it all to happen in the first place.
It’s all becoming too common place once more.
My Dad had a friend from his VFW Post. Jerry was his name. He used to talk about taking one of the camps. I believe it was Dachau he liberated. Many soldiers couldn't talk about their war memories. Not Jerry. He made a special effort to tell people about the camp and the filth, and nastiness and the evil evident there. It wasn't always easy for him, but he literally soldiered on to make sure people didn't forget, at least on his watch anyway! Thanks Jerry, RIP
If the sights of those camps broke men’s spirits (and even broke hardened Soviet men’s hearts) after surviving D-day, then they truly saw Hell on earth.
I read a at least two stories where soldiers found dying Jewish women, literally picked them up, and refused to leave their sides.
They knew they could not save everyone around them, but they could save this one person.
One woman was the last of her family, was dying on the ground, a US soldier found her, and literally refused to leave her side. He was instrumental in nursing her back to health.
This series has been on of the most difficult things I've ever had to watch, but it has to be watched. Even as a person who was aware of what happened, the true scale of the horror of these atrocities that Spartacus and the TG team have brought to the attention of the world is almost inconceivable. Yet we know it did.
I can only salute you and the team for this work that must have been extremely difficult.
Never forget.
Thank you ❤️
Meyer Levin probably said it best.
“We had known. The world had vaguely heard. But until now no one of us had looked on this. Even this morning we had not imagined we would look on this. It was as though we had penetrated at last to the very center of the black heart, to the crawling inside of the vicious heart. Now we knew. Nothing afterward told us more."
I reread *Maus* by Art Spiegelman a few days ago. This is a masterpiece, obviously. One thing that I didn't remember as well as I should have from my numerous previous readings, years ago, was how the horror went on to the very last second of the war, and probably for some time after that. The death marches, the last minute massacres... This is absolutely terrifying.
A must-read. Especially now that some "concerned parents" in the US have pushed for the censorship of this book in schools' libraries for the stupidest of "reasons".
Infinite thanks to Sparty and the Time Ghost Crew. No words of mine can do this episode justice except NEVER FORGET.
Thank you for what you people have done and shown us, I cannot imagine how hard it must have been on your team to produce this week after week for years. It is a small comfort to know that for most their suffering is done. It is astonishing to hear that just a small fraction of those they targeted survived.
In as much as history has long interested me, it had usually been presented fairly sanitary, good guys fighting a just war and the alike. Spartacus' series truly presented the horror and the ugly side of the " noble" struggle. A side that needs to see the light of day so, that as he often reminds us, we never forget. Thank you Spartacus and the Time Ghost team.
Will you guys cover the Nürnberg trial? There Will be a time skip, but I think it's important but you'll be the best to cover this.
After WW2
@therealjaystone2344 Of course its after ww2. This is why I asked.
@@therealjaystone2344 Like any major historical event, it is hard to pinpoint an exact beginning or end of WW2. Things like "this battle started on X date" can be documented, but to understand why it happened on that date and what lead up to it, you need to consider what went on before, with exact chains of causality being somewhat murky. Hence Time Ghost's Between Two Wars series.
Looking at the ending of the Great War series that Indy worked on before coming here, there were a few extra episodes on the immediate aftermath of the war. Of course that channel continued (and continues) to put out content after Indy came here.
I expect we will continue to get European updates in both the main series and WAH until the end of the Japanese part of the war is resolved. I also expect some wrap-up episodes as they transition into covering the Korean War.
@@therealjaystone2344I think it should continue through 1946, Operation Magic Carpet is part of the war after all.
Well Said Spartacus, well said. Never Forget!
Thank you once more to the timeghost team, and especialy to those involved with the war againat humanity series. I cant imagine pouring theough auch grisly documents to create a comprehensive timeline was easy on the heart and soul. All the best from canada, have a great day,y yu all deserve it!
That image of the mountain of shoes….my God
That one ruined my desire for lunch.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
31:03 For some reason I wasn't expecting Wobbelin to come up. My step grandfather was in the 8th Infantry Division. Wobbelin happened to be on the operational boundary line between the 8th ID and the 82nd Airborne. He was never a very talkative man, but we swapped war stories after I left the US Army. These stories were the most that I had ever said to him up to that point and I think it was the most I had ever heard him speak. We talked about many things but he only briefly mentioned the Hurtgen forest and the Wobbelin concentration camp. I knew better than to press him for details. I looked up the camp online many years ago and am familiar with the general story of the camp. Hearing Spartacus say the name of the camp kind of made it real for me in the same way that seeing Treblinka did for Vasily Grossman.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Never, ever forget.
Thank you so much for your incredible work, Sparty. I am convinced that the War Against Humanity series contributes a lot to remember and honor each and every of the 17 million heroes of this war. Never forget.
Thank you for this series, damning.
Kinda surreal hearing my (small, largely insignificant) home town metioned in such an important context. I knew of the Außenlager and its liberation (school history did its job for once) but I had no idea what the inmates were actually forced to do.
Thank you as always for excellent work Sparty and to everyond behind the camera.
Never forget.
I watched every single episode of this channel but this episode is one of many who manages to make me feel sorrow once again for people I never met in person.
The stories are more horrific than any horror movie.
During this episode I ate a few gummies and a slice of garlic bread. And then it hit me.
The sudden realisation that this might haven been more than those poor people got to eat in those places of torture.
The thought made me sick and even 15 minutes later I still feel like so.
I will never forget the overall story of those who suffered through this.
I simply cannot forget it, nor forgive the people that where responsible.
This whole thing is revolting beyond my vocabulary.
I think the quote from a Soviet eyewitness summed it up "I realized it was all true"
Thank you for sticking with us so far. There’s still a path to go, but there’s lighter times ahead. We shud also never forget that although not a complete and clean victory, humanity did not lose this war, and what followed was a better world. Not perfect, perhaps not even good, but better.
With this episode, I remember my maternal grandfather, who was liberated from Mauthausen on May 5, 1945. He had arrived there three months earlier after surviving one of the very last death marches from Auschwitz which left just 10 days prior to the Soviets' liberation of all three main Auschwitz camps (Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II - Birkenau, Auschwitz III - Monowitz) on January 27, 1945. Despite not being a death camp (it was a hard labour camp), Mauthausen had one of the highest death tolls in the system, not least of which was due to the quarry and the steep stairs leading from there up to the rest of the camp. Those who were held at the camp were made to haul heavy rocks from the quarry up those stairs and they were chained together in groups of three at the ankles. If one lost their balance, the other two would fall as well, usually into the other prisoners behind them on the steps. This is how many of the inmates at the camp were killed.
For a few days prior to liberation, the Nazi guards ordered the prisoners, including my grandfather, to run into underground tunnels as part of a drill in the event the Allies were coming. The idea was that the Nazis would force them into the tunnels and then seal off the openings with explosives if the Allies were close, burying everyone alive. Fortunately, this wasn't done on May 5th when US forces liberated the camp and its three subcamps.
My grandfather (who was 17 when war broke out in 1939) survived the Zaslav Ghetto, Auschwitz and a couple of its subcamps, the Death March and Mauthausen. After liberation, he was reunited with his youngest sister at the Ebelsburg DP camp next to Linz (his parents, elder and younger sister didn't survive). After three years at the DP camp, he, his sister and her new husband (another survivor she met at the DP camp) emigrated to Uruguay (where my mother was born) and then Israel in 1978 until the rest of their lives. My great-aunt's husband died in the mid-1990s, my grandfather passed away on June 5, 2015 aged 93 (I was the last family member to have seen him alive the day before, and was present at his funeral 2 days later), and my great-aunt passed away on March 17, 2021. May they all rest in peace.
May they indeed rest in peace, my thoughts are with them, and I give thanks for their survival ❤️
@@spartacus-olsson thanks Sparty. I believe I mentioned this before in a video several years ago that marked the opening of Belzec (my great-grandparents were transported and murdered on arrival there on Yom Kippur 1942; my great-aunt died on the 79th anniversary of its opening), but felt it was worth mentioning again now that Mauthausen was liberated (per the chronological timeline of this series now that this point of the war was reached).
This was amazing to read. I honestly don't know how even one person survived Mauthausen. The torture done there was insane. I read some stories about Americans that were imprisoned there and the Nazi's of course targeted them and pushed them off the top of the quarry one by one. Also the brother-in-law of the then mayor of NYC was imprisoned there and he was beaten to death over the course of several weeks.
I loved reading the story about how when the camp was liberated the Nazi's ran into the mountains to hide and the Soviet POW's that had been held there hunted them down.
A sidenote to the Buchenwald camp:
The prisoners there took an oath. It says, among other things, "Destruction of Naziism with it's roots is our slogan! Building a world of freedom and piece is our goal!".
the horrors of war are many... Never Forget... never repeat..
i guess israelis forgot the last part. because they are celebrating the genocide in gaza
@@Kapi.23”Never Again (for us)!”
@@Kapi.23 I guess hamas forgot WW2 after the pogrom on the 7th..
@@WayoutthereOctober 7th was bad but it wasn’t a Pogrom unless you really really stretch the definition of Pogrom
@@Wayouttherehamas wasn't handed someone else's land out of pity
How the mighty have fallen. Himmler once the most feared man in Germany and the occupied territories is now trying to save his own hide, they say the bigger you are, the harder the fall.
And negotiating with a Jew no less! I can´t even imagine how humiliating that must have been for him.
He realized he followed a Jew guy all along
Thanks for this episode and for the whole series of War against Humanity.
Thank you for watching them! -TimeGhost Ambassador
Moved me to tears. Unimaginable numbers. So sad.
Can't believe that I ran into people that hadn't heard about any of this in college. Then again, many show up without knowing algebra...
And they protest in defense of terrorist governments against Israel.
How? I took Algebra in my early teens.
@@CrazyYurie I don't know I had already taken a college Calculus course by the time I made it to College. All I know is half my roommates in the Honors dorm would constantly come to ask me questions about the college algebra course.
@@Ryan66437 That's wild.
@@Ryan66437congnitive disability is real along the masses
I hope you plan on including the Nuremberg Trials as part of your coverage.
It is so late after this episode but I have only been able to watch to the end now. My grandfather fought as a British Infantryman having been drafted from a reserved occupation (working for Ransomes and Rapier in Ipswich) which according to family lore was because he was a trade unionist. He would never talk about his bandaged leg nor about any of his experiences of combat and it was only in a letter from a friend, kept by his wife, that we found that he had been witness to some of what the liberated camps were like. He always said that we should love the Germans but hate the Nazi's and after brushing off our attempts to glean any tales of his time in uniform that we could use as boasting currency in the playground, he would use words so perfectly summarised by Spartacus "never forget". Thankyou.
My Bubbe and Zeide were both in concentration camps. My Bubbe was contracted out to work for 4 other camps before she and her sister escaped and wandered through the forest for a month until they finally arrive to safety.
My Bubbe spoke about this just once, for her Shoah testimony, then put the recording away and never spoke of it again. Never Forget.
My father was a member of the 602 TD battalion he got a good dose of Ohrdruf. He was in supply and HA to deliver medical supplies and food. Thank you
Thank you for this episode Spartacus! I was worried that it would never come. I have been as attached to this as the main series. Thank you for the important work you and the team have done
I just cannot compliment the TimeGhost Army enough. This series is something I'm going to show my kids when I have them.
It is outrageous that the counts of 10s of thousands of deaths seem relatively small. Mind numbing. Each was a person with untold potential. May we never forget these evils. Honor the fallen, each and every one!
Absolutely brilliant and detailed series. Make all other documentaries on the Holocaust feel like they just glossing over the topic. Nicely done Spartacus.
I need to watch this again.
25:29 Sparty's spanish pronunciation is on point
Whoever first opened that letter must have had their brain seize up.
Hitler: "I need a favor"
World Jewish Congress: "Are you sh-tting me"
It was the ultimate moment of them drinking their own Kool-Aid
They assumed that the title was both entirely literal and deeply powerful, rather than an entirely civilian entity
Got to the end of this and it still feels like an open wound.
An incredibly sobering episode thank you
Thank you for watching.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Thank you Spartacus, very powerful...
April 4th, 1945 the US Army liberated the Ohrdruf Nord concentration camp near Gotha, Germany and it was the first camp seen by US forces. My father's unit, 273rd AA Ordinance attached to the 3rd Army was part of that liberation. My father carried a small camera throughout the war and he took photos of the horrors of the camp that day. He brought those photos home with him in a small album that I remember seeing as a young child. He explained to me what they meant but later my mother threw that album away because they troubled her. I do have all of his other photos taken during the 5 major campaigns he was in including one taken of him in Gotha outside of the camp.
May we never forget the horrors of these horrific events.
Amen
I fear many have forgotten or now willfully ignore what occurred and are in danger of repeating it here and elsewhere.
And those who have forgotten have been spotted on college campuses in recent weeks.
I know that as WWII comes to a close you'll be pivoting to Korea. However, I really hope that you make a few more videos in this series. I'd like to see a WAH follow-up showing the integration of the camp inmates back into society after the war. And I'd really, really like to see the Nuremberg trials in real time.
You will
@@spartacus-olsson
I have a question: will there be a WAH epilogue covering how the atrocities of 1939-1945 continue to affect us into the modern day? The denial of German and Japanese war crimes, the development of atomic weapons during the Cold War, the establishment of communist regimes such as East Germany and the People's Republic of China in the aftermath, the rise of US hegemony, etc.?
@@sirhenrymorgan1187The Muslim Arab involvement in the Holocaust and the Waffen SS involvement in the attacks on Israel in 1948 and training the PLO (Yasser Arafat was personally trained by Otto Skorzeny).
@@sirhenrymorgan1187 not to any great extent on this channel, but we will touch on such issues in our several upcoming series covering the second half of the 20th century - that we be on the TimeGhost channel, or for larger series like the Korean War on their dedicated channels.
Thanks!
I saw a few videos about *_Kitty Hart Moxon._* Her story on living through Auschwitz is an amazing story of survival and luck. Something that is also not talked about much is; _What life was like for them after liberation._
It's unfathomable that society just expected the survivors to just go back to normal and go about life as if nothing happened.
@@ZebraLens I don't know about that, but everyone was trying to process the years and years of war (depending on how long your country was involved) in their own ways with varying levels of lingering trauma, not always processed in the... most healthy ways. To your point though, my country has "moved on" from Covid alarmingly quickly...
I grew up with many Holocaust survivors as parents of friends and classmates. They never really recovered.
Please checkout her video here on UA-cam, where she revisits Auschwitz with her son and walks the cameras through her story. It's a video from, I believe, 1979-ish (somewhere around that timeframe).
Never Forget! Thanks for all your hard work guys!
Thank you for all your hard work doing 131 videos on Nazi atrocites. It can't have been easy but it's so important. Never Forget.
cooking dinner while watching this episode was a bad decision
Danke Julian! Never forget
Thank you!
The Stutthof camp was captured by Allied forces on the 9th of May, 1945, which was after all of the Flossenbürg camps were captured.
Stutthof was way out east in the Danzig 'pocket'.
"Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on 9 May 1945, rescuing about 100 prisoners who had managed to hide."
Odd- Gdansk had surrendered on March 30
I have seen may camps. It always makes me sad. Never, ever forget...
'Many hardships' was what the father of an aunt of mine told about his experiences in Neuengamme and on board the Cap Arcona. He didn't elaborate much more on it.
Recent research showed that Kamp Amersfoort (NL) had a bigger role in the Holocaust than was thought of. (Published on NOS (Dutch public broadcaster) 25-4-2024)
I'm stunned...... Spartacus just keeps mentioning camps I'd not heard of.😢
And a couple of weeks ago, 60 Minutes did a story on one camp that I don't recall him talking about at all (unless he did and I've long since forgot).
Though ordered to withdraw so that white troops could take the credit, it was the men of the 442nd who discovered Dachau on 29 April 1945. My sainted father-in-law, Masami Hayakawa- who had volunteered to join the Army, leaving the camp and his family behind- was among the men who made the discovery.
Imagine the PR that Japanese-Americans did a brave thing. It could have damaged morale over in the Pacific for the troops taking the fight to the Japs. In hindsight it was the sensible decision at the moment but now it tastes bitter.
Thank you for sharing this fact. It is a perverse irony.
@@iconoclastic12007 Mas returned home a sergeant- as high as non-white men could generally go in those days (thanks a ton, Woodrow Wilson, you racist!), completed his degree in mathematics, but minored in German. Converted from Shinto to confessional Lutheran, married a girl whose grandparents all emigrated from Saxony, and raised his family in Honolulu, as a hardware engineer for IBM. Mas was a loyal American to the end (he ran the computer for Hawai'is' statehood vote), and when he retired, and was presented with goggles, a leather helmet and flight jacket, and a cake wishing him luck as IBM's first kamikaze pilot, I think Mas was still chuckling about it six months later! When I asked about the farm his folks lost when they were interned, he looked startled and said 'oh hell no! I *hated* farming!' - he took the racism shoveled on him and used it to grow a remarkable life. As I'm an old retired fellow now, Mas is still my hero. And I miss him.
The men of the 442nd, specifically the men of the 555th artillery, liberated a sub-camp of Dachau. While it was true that the army buried their deed to avoid bad publicity, Dachau was such a big network of the main camp and sub-camps that numerous units can all say that they liberated Dachau.
@Dragunov8808 yeah, that does tend to be an issue. I do know the 45th ID, 157th Infantry were the first in the gates and were the ones responsible for the massacre of the guards. A battalion commander, Felix Sparks talks about it in his memoirs.
Superb presentation. Thank you.
We Americans avoid a detail of Eicke's work. He based the concentration camp regime on the prison system of the U.S. state of Alabama. Between 1870 and 1900 no prisoner in Alabama who was sentenced to ten years or longer lived to complete his sentence.
Such a powerful video, we must never forget!
Thank you for all you have done to bring these horrendus and despicable crimes to the world.
As I have watched over the years and felt anguish over the sheer brutality.
I realize that I can not imagine the mental strain that researching, writing, editing, rehearsing and filming has had on the whole team.
Thank you Spartacud and the Time Ghost Team and Army for all that you have done.
NEVER FORGET!