Germans were compelled to see the victims of the concentration camps. 1945.

It bothers me that when people watch documentaries on YouTube about the Holocaust, the images are blurred. (Creator’s choice to keep it monetized I know, but it feels wrong)

Just went to Dachau last week, where they had the famous occurrence of american soldiers showing the mountains of dead bodies to the inhabitants. There is literally no way they didn’t know. Houses were right next to the camp at that time, prisoners had to walk from the station through the town to the concentration camp and so on. Literally impossible to not realize what was going on. Shame on our (not so) great grandparents for this and also for the way it was handled afterwards. Way too many Nazis had a good life after the war.

My mom is from Germany and her father was in the Wehrmacht. When I was in my teens, I asked her if my grandparents were nazis. She said, “we don’t talk about that.” It gives me chills when I think about it.

Reality is far more complicated of course. Not all Germans knew and those who did, found out at different times. The Nazis told the public the trains full of Jews were headed east, to live on former Soviet/Slavic territories. Some believed that bullshit, some chose to believe, others did not. Even those who thought it was bullshit were powerless to do anything about it. The Nazis had total control over all of the information Germans consumed. Kinda like the MAGAts glued to FoxNews (which is the entire reason for FoxNews’ existence!)

My mother in law is German and her parents fled Germany for Canada in ’46. They were unfortunately from the German part of Poland, so when the Nazis rolled onto Poland in the fall of ’39, there was an uncle who stood at the roadside and waved that Nazi flag, welcoming them. When he later found out what the Nazis did to his Jewish friends, he was so wracked with guilt that he commited suicide.

Like I said, real life is far more complicated. Many Germans knew and chose to look the other way, others did not know. Don’t get your information from Reddit.

Requiring them to see the atrocities committed in their name firsthand is correct. But what should the average German citizen, someone horrified by the Holocaust, have done during the war? What would you have done if you were in their place?

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So the comments are saying “they knew.” I just finished Band of Brothers and the concentration camp scenes are like this, they made the German citizens bury the bodies. So if they knew, or even seriously suspected, what is the moral choice for a German citizen under that regime? I imagine speaking out was dealt with harshly. Should they leave the country and tell others? What if they don’t have the means? Honest question because I like to think of myself as a moral person, and worry if I am ever put in this position, what should people like me do?

Good. We’ve got some memorials here in the US that e-v-e-r-y-s-i-n-g-l-e-o-n-e of our citizens should absolutely be mandated by law — and DRAGGED, kicking and screaming if necessary — to visit, walk through, hear EVERY FUCKING WORD of the lecture on, and see EVERY FUCKING PHOTO OR ARTIFACT of the TRUE events.

We need to bring American citizens to Gaza to see what their tax money is funding

This is the societal equivalent of holding your face up to the rug you pissed.

did we learn from it

And now anything thought provoking is immediately censored.