That's interesting and kind of surprising. It would have to assume some extraordinary events...to get the US to that extreme.
Holocaust
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That's interesting and kind of surprising. It would have to assume some extraordinary events...to get the US to that extreme.
policemedic
Verified SWAT
There was a lot of frog-in-the-pot social engineering in play. I don't believe it would happen here but learning how it did happen there was well worth the trip.
Red Flag 1
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Kraut783
SOF Support
Great museum....very humbling. The museum is very LEO friendly and allows carry inside.
policemedic
Verified SWAT
I'm unsure how many agencies attend. I know every FBI recruit attends while at Quantico, and we send all our new hires--including support personnel--to the program. When we started going, all of our people went. It took some time but everyone attended.
policemedic
Verified SWAT
Good to see them being consistent with the other museums in the area. If we can carry in Air & Space we should be able to at a museum that actually has had an attack made against it...
Rest easy sir.
Amazing man
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It's interesting what people take away from visits to places like the Holocaust Museum. I went there once, but I'm a little more familiar with the one in Israel, Yad Vashem. It's on the agenda every year during the annual trip we take to Israel and the Palestinian Territories with a group of college students and West Point cadets.
Yad Vashem is pretty emotionally wrenching, and we always do a processing session afterwards. One of the thinks I always think about in those times of reflection is, "What if those six million Jews who died in the Holocaust had six million guns, and the means, training, and most importantly the will, to use them?"
Who knows. If Europe's Jews had been armed, maybe the Nazis would have seen them as a bigger threat and sped up the Final Solution and even more Jews would have died. I mean, after all the Germans absolutely steamrolled most of the European mainland. So maybe more would have died in battle or in their own homes. But if the population would have been armed, and resisted sooner, in a more unified and committed fashion, I guarantee a lot fewer of them would have died by starvation or disease or firing squad or gas chambers at death camps.
...then there are people who are straight up Holocaust deniers, like this guy (who is on the short list to take over as head of the Palestinian Authority) who we ran into in Bethlehem one year:
Jibril Rajoub
Yad Vashem is pretty emotionally wrenching, and we always do a processing session afterwards. One of the thinks I always think about in those times of reflection is, "What if those six million Jews who died in the Holocaust had six million guns, and the means, training, and most importantly the will, to use them?"
Who knows. If Europe's Jews had been armed, maybe the Nazis would have seen them as a bigger threat and sped up the Final Solution and even more Jews would have died. I mean, after all the Germans absolutely steamrolled most of the European mainland. So maybe more would have died in battle or in their own homes. But if the population would have been armed, and resisted sooner, in a more unified and committed fashion, I guarantee a lot fewer of them would have died by starvation or disease or firing squad or gas chambers at death camps.
...then there are people who are straight up Holocaust deniers, like this guy (who is on the short list to take over as head of the Palestinian Authority) who we ran into in Bethlehem one year:
Jibril Rajoub
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I think I wrote about it on the site before... during one of our visits to Yad Vashem, we had the opportunity to speak with a Holocaust survivor. Tattoo and everything. He was very young when the Nazis came for his family. He said that he remembered a policeman came into the courtyard of the complex where his family and numerous other Jews lived, fired his rifle into the air and ordered everyone to get on the trucks. They eventually ended up in a death camp and most of his family died there.
After he shared that vignette with us I recall thinking to myself, "Why didn't your father put the muzzle of HIS rifle out the window and shoot that Nazi fuck in the face?" But I know that's from a place of ignorance on my part. I don't know the whole picture. Maybe if they would have done that, all of them would have died. Going along, at least some of the family survived.
My point of view also has the extraordinary benefit of hindsight. There wasn't a direct line from "leave your homes" to the crematorium. There were a LOT of interim steps. Kristalnacht, forced deportations, confiscations, Jew-specific "uniforms," discrimination, other-ing, ghettos, trains, forced marched, work camps... then death. I think if the people who died in the Holocaust knew what the end result was going to be, they would have fought harder at the beginning and things may have been different. But they had no way of knowing, and something like the Holocaust is absolutely inconceivable to some people.
And that's perhaps the most important takeaway--it didn't happen at once. There was a steady program of demonization, other-izing, discrimination, and deprivation of rights before the Nazi felt comfortable enough to say "fuck it, kill everyone." That's why you ALWAYS have to protect your rights--all of them--jealously. Because one day you're warm and cozy in your humble but happy apartment complex, and the next you're starving and naked in a locked and crowded room and someone is pumping in Xyclon-B.
The key is to not let it get to that point. And to do that, you have to resist. Early and often.
After he shared that vignette with us I recall thinking to myself, "Why didn't your father put the muzzle of HIS rifle out the window and shoot that Nazi fuck in the face?" But I know that's from a place of ignorance on my part. I don't know the whole picture. Maybe if they would have done that, all of them would have died. Going along, at least some of the family survived.
My point of view also has the extraordinary benefit of hindsight. There wasn't a direct line from "leave your homes" to the crematorium. There were a LOT of interim steps. Kristalnacht, forced deportations, confiscations, Jew-specific "uniforms," discrimination, other-ing, ghettos, trains, forced marched, work camps... then death. I think if the people who died in the Holocaust knew what the end result was going to be, they would have fought harder at the beginning and things may have been different. But they had no way of knowing, and something like the Holocaust is absolutely inconceivable to some people.
And that's perhaps the most important takeaway--it didn't happen at once. There was a steady program of demonization, other-izing, discrimination, and deprivation of rights before the Nazi felt comfortable enough to say "fuck it, kill everyone." That's why you ALWAYS have to protect your rights--all of them--jealously. Because one day you're warm and cozy in your humble but happy apartment complex, and the next you're starving and naked in a locked and crowded room and someone is pumping in Xyclon-B.
The key is to not let it get to that point. And to do that, you have to resist. Early and often.
.
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Two books by Gitta Serany can provide insight: Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth & Into That Darkness on Fran’s Stangl, commandant of Treblinka.
Albert Speer was the only one at Nuremberg who acknowledged some responsibility.
To your point @Marauder06 on a gradual escalation, it was happening quite a few years before the outbreak of WW2. Memory isn’t precise on this but deportations started about 1935.
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If anyone ever finds themselves in Marseille, France, there is a small little museum near the port that covers the Nazi’s “deporting” the “deplorables” to various concentration camps. They don’t allow children in, but have a fantastic movie they play.
Maybe when I was younger I learned about the great round up and the follow on blowing up of the city, but I don’t recall. Fantastic learning experience.
Présentation du Mémorial des déportations
Maybe when I was younger I learned about the great round up and the follow on blowing up of the city, but I don’t recall. Fantastic learning experience.
Présentation du Mémorial des déportations
Very well stated sir. I wish I could have spoken to my bloodline that survived regarding this. I'm told my great grandfather never spoke on it. He was a cobbler, he tended to his rose garden and walked around with his head bowed down.
