what's interesting is that the true horror of the nazi regime is generally always worse than you think.
picking an area - at random - of social policy in the third reich demonstrates just how incredibly overriding the racial determinism of the nazi regime was.
for example; the nazis continued hanging children until february 1945. some of these children were merely classed as politically undesirable due to their upbringing in 'ideologically contaminated' households. i've seen pictures of clearings in forests where fifty children under ten swing from makeshift one-stop gallows. when you consider that these were predominantly German children; children with mentall illness, or communist parents; then you begin to appreciate the full scale of the horror.
it really was almost arbitrary. the nazi's determination to create a people's community - the much-vaunted volksgemeinschaft - was a binary division that naturally proposed the 'community aliens' - people who lived outside that community, and would have to be treated accordingly.
everyone knows that jews, gypsies and homosexuals were sent to camps; but the very first nazi concentration camp was in the crowded city centre, a small affair packed with mostly the homeless. among those who were later dispatched to the far more destructive and barbaric eastern camps:
-jews
-gypsies (roma were divided into 'ethnic' & 'social' groupings)
-the homeless
-the 'work-shy'
-alcoholics
-the 'genetically inferior' (this meant, in practice, anyone with hereditary illness - or even a history of such illness)
-the 'racially impure'
-communists
-socialists
-political activists
-common or petty criminals
-those who had 'endangered the wellbeing of the german people'.
most people - i wouldn't entirely believe the metro's poll - who think of the holocaust think of auschwitz.
in a way, it makes sense; simply because of the scale of the killing there, the size of the place, the resonance that pictures from auschwitz still emit.
to me, however, auschwitz is not the most sinister aspect of the nazi regime. auschwitz was not intended to be a death camp; it was a KZ, a concentration camp - an invention of the british - and later a labour camp.
what's most disturbing for me are the Aktion Reinhard camps. these were literally factories of death; built for one reason, and one alone: the extermination of entire subsections of humanity.
treblinka, sobibor, belzec, chelmno - these were the places which were hastily constructed and just as hastily taken apart once they'd fulfilled their regional purposes. there's something just so intrinsically evil about it; a facility, built in the forests, which operates for a few months - during which it serves merely to exterminate people. it's just so creepy.
another example of the sheer fucking atrocity was found by a young albert speer jr. (son of 'hitler's architect'). he was taken to Himmler's mistress's house; upstairs there was a 'special room' which she showed the children - who were 4 & 10 at the time.
inside this room were some strange objects; a large, pale-bound copy of mein kampf, a funny looking three-legged table, a chair that seemed odd. then it dawned on him that everything in the room was made out of people.
the book was bound with what himmler called the best skin of a person, from the back; the chair had human legs, the backrest was made of arms... i just cannot imagine the horror that this represented, in a civilised nation.
i lost family in the holocaust; both on my grandfather's side (fighting as partisans in the tatra mountains) and my grandmother's (wealthy society jews in budapest).
picking an area - at random - of social policy in the third reich demonstrates just how incredibly overriding the racial determinism of the nazi regime was.
for example; the nazis continued hanging children until february 1945. some of these children were merely classed as politically undesirable due to their upbringing in 'ideologically contaminated' households. i've seen pictures of clearings in forests where fifty children under ten swing from makeshift one-stop gallows. when you consider that these were predominantly German children; children with mentall illness, or communist parents; then you begin to appreciate the full scale of the horror.
it really was almost arbitrary. the nazi's determination to create a people's community - the much-vaunted volksgemeinschaft - was a binary division that naturally proposed the 'community aliens' - people who lived outside that community, and would have to be treated accordingly.
everyone knows that jews, gypsies and homosexuals were sent to camps; but the very first nazi concentration camp was in the crowded city centre, a small affair packed with mostly the homeless. among those who were later dispatched to the far more destructive and barbaric eastern camps:
-jews
-gypsies (roma were divided into 'ethnic' & 'social' groupings)
-the homeless
-the 'work-shy'
-alcoholics
-the 'genetically inferior' (this meant, in practice, anyone with hereditary illness - or even a history of such illness)
-the 'racially impure'
-communists
-socialists
-political activists
-common or petty criminals
-those who had 'endangered the wellbeing of the german people'.
most people - i wouldn't entirely believe the metro's poll - who think of the holocaust think of auschwitz.
in a way, it makes sense; simply because of the scale of the killing there, the size of the place, the resonance that pictures from auschwitz still emit.
to me, however, auschwitz is not the most sinister aspect of the nazi regime. auschwitz was not intended to be a death camp; it was a KZ, a concentration camp - an invention of the british - and later a labour camp.
what's most disturbing for me are the Aktion Reinhard camps. these were literally factories of death; built for one reason, and one alone: the extermination of entire subsections of humanity.
treblinka, sobibor, belzec, chelmno - these were the places which were hastily constructed and just as hastily taken apart once they'd fulfilled their regional purposes. there's something just so intrinsically evil about it; a facility, built in the forests, which operates for a few months - during which it serves merely to exterminate people. it's just so creepy.
another example of the sheer fucking atrocity was found by a young albert speer jr. (son of 'hitler's architect'). he was taken to Himmler's mistress's house; upstairs there was a 'special room' which she showed the children - who were 4 & 10 at the time.
inside this room were some strange objects; a large, pale-bound copy of mein kampf, a funny looking three-legged table, a chair that seemed odd. then it dawned on him that everything in the room was made out of people.
the book was bound with what himmler called the best skin of a person, from the back; the chair had human legs, the backrest was made of arms... i just cannot imagine the horror that this represented, in a civilised nation.
i lost family in the holocaust; both on my grandfather's side (fighting as partisans in the tatra mountains) and my grandmother's (wealthy society jews in budapest).