Edit: He survived that but was executed after the war by the Poles after a show trial and conviction for espionage. He'd been collecting evidence of Soviet atrocities in Poland.
[0] https://facesofauschwitz.com/gallery/witold-pilecki/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki#Auschwitz
> The metal device visible in the left picture was part of a spinning chair. It held the head in the correct position during the photographing.
[0] http://www.marinamaral.com/blog/2018/4/9/faces-of-auschwitz-...
There were not "very fine people on both sides".
Let's take Britains rule in India, particularly the Bengal famine of 1943 that killed 2-3 million people (as it happened around the same time as concentration camps).
https://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide/
Let's not even get into Belgium rule in Congo.
Is this just a "History is Written By the Victors”? I'm not trying to vindicate Hitler, but what's up with this?
In Germany, the Jewish population was blamed for the countries problems and their extermination was a stated objective of the government’s policy. Concentration camps, gas chambers - they even extended this to other countries: Belgium, France, Poland, Russia
Famines are caused by environmental issues, a monsoon affects crops or bad policy like Mao in China or Kim in NK
Maybe — but at the same time tonnes of grains — which should have been sent to provide relief to the affected — were being sent to British troops fighting all over the world.
Nice use of a meme word. My point was that you need to look at history in context.
> a big difference is EIC or Churchill did not try to depopulate Bengal or target it’s native population.
This is disputed https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-fines...
> Famines are caused by environmental issues, a monsoon affects crops or bad policy like Mao in China or Kim in NK
Famines can be manufactured which I believe the Bengali famine was. Holodomor was planned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
This does not mean that other atrocities done by any other group of people (including the "allies") are not horrific and should not be condemned or remembered. But, the final solution should always be remembered as an extreme, unique and singular event in modern human history.
Read the history of Indian subcontinent from around 1000 AD to 1947 AD. Events of the same magnitude as the holocast (or worse) happend again and again. Read about the ‘conquests’ of the likes of Mahmood Ghaznavi, Muhammad of Ghor, Taimur the Lame, Ahmad Shah Durrani, Nader Shah, Mughals and countless others. Read about the atrocities committed by them to the people they conquered and tell me that the Nazi holocast was a singular event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_Telegram:_Nixon,_K...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Blood#The_Blood_teleg...
Again, there's for example the Bengali famine.
> But, the final solution should always be remembered as an extreme, unique and singular event in modern human history.
If you consider singular events maybe. Other countries did it slower and over longer periods and there were multiple events. Idk if efficacy really makes a moral difference to me.
If you consider modern history maybe. However the problem with this formulation is that modern history generally starts around WW2 so in some sense, holocaust was the last event of this colonial style of thinking.
Someone in another thread mentioned a lack of museums about the American holocaust. That stuck in my head. Now I’m thinking about how we fund historians and museums to teach that timeline better.
Now, as to why we are still talking about it, I believe it's a pretty good thing.
This does not mean that we should not also talk about other atrocities. Definitely, they should be taught and discussed and shown.
