May I partly disagree, George - although of course thanks for your words!
I don't think, the (pre-)war generation managed at all to deal with they did or allowed to do. In majority, at least.
I summarize what Otto Preuss (that's the social-democrat prisoner the quoted dvd/fim focuses at) said at one point: he was trying to re-fresh his memory about the various places of the camp, because it is (and soon became after the war) a housing area. So he asked the gate keeper of a factory, if he knew that he was sitting in what was former the gate house of a KZ. "Here was no KZ at all, never been on", was the reply of that local person ... who must have been a youth at the end the war. And only after being confronted with "I have been here imprisoned nearly two years and all of my comrades died here" he admitted, "Yes, maybe, but it wasn't one of the really bad."
It is our past. Correct.
The history of German WWII POW's is interesting as well but should be differed from the KZ's, I think. [As an aside: my father was the only family doctor in Douai, 1945, imprisoned 'privately' in the house of the local chef de la gendarmerie, and became in 1948 the leading surgeon of the interior department of the Hôpital militaire (sic!) in Cherbourg = the French needed various professionals. Thus, the French POW's were the last to be released by the Western Allies, and that only due to the fact to hold some more aces against the new enemy Russia.]
I don't think we disagree at all. I said Germany as a whole had dealt well with the matter. For those directly involved, as with all humans, repentence is rare - deniaL and forgetfulness are the rule. We can all be grateful we weren't given the choices that confronted people of that gebneration - all across continental Europe. Virtue ansd the absence of temptation are not the same thing.
<But I like more to disagree with you!>
Joeblow wrote:Lash wrote:I didn't suggest he stop posting.
I just said that it offends me.
Wish I had gotten similar treatment when I said something most everyone else found offensive. They DID think I should not be able to speak what I said.
I hope someone will see the injustice. Just one person.
I don't know about injustice, per se, but I certainly believe you have been repeatedly misunderstood in this thread.
The pictures...what they represent... conjure many feelings for me, as well, and offence is one of them
they outrage moral senses
the word was aptly chosen I think.
Walter, this is very interesting and edifying thread.
Thank you so much. People don't seem to take words at face value anymore. I appreciate you reading the words I wrote, and leaving it at that.
It was important for me to say I was offended by those pictures. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't about Walter, or Germans. It was about those images.
Yesterday, the Guardian (and today other papers all over Europe) published photos from a post WWII torture, British authorities tried to hide:
The postwar photographs that British authorities tried to keep hidden
Revealed: victims of UK's cold war torture camp
I like the way the French daily "Libération" reports today about this, because they've added an internet with an historia. She explains that concentration and torture camps can be seen as a symbol of the 20th century and were to be the "appropriate thing" in mayn countries (including France in 1944/45).
(To enlarge, click on the thumbnails.)
I was shocked and horrified when this story first broke in December. What else is there?
walter, go to the post:
.
Revealed: victims of UK's cold war torture camp.
.
It is being discussed there.
On with the 'show.'
