“We must be ruthless…Only thus shall we purge our people of their softness…and their degenerate delight in beer-swilling…I don’t want the concentration camps transformed into penitentiaries. Terror is the most effective political instrument…It is my duty to make use of every means of training the German people to cruelty, and to prepare them for war…There must be no weakness or tenderness.”..Adolf Hitler
It might seem a tasteless thing to do …and rest assured, it probably is, but then again , if you’ve read much of what I’ve written before, you’ll understand the way my mind operates and the mad tangents it can sweep off in .I was cooking a roast chicken dinner for my wife ,one of my daughters and her husband . All the trimmings .. creamed mash, roast spuds , mashed turnip, buttered carrots, some sprouts and even some garden peas …and of course , my secret gravy including a nice glass of wine and some herbs and a dash of this and that…i almost forgot the homemade stuffing with more chopped fresh sage and parsley… and lots of onion fried soft in more butter. It’s Sunday, you see and somehow it’s what to do on a winter Sunday, especially when there’s a bit of company….Hungry?
Anyway, there I was putting the bird back into the oven after a quick check to see if all was well and adding a few roasties around it , when my mind flew to another kind of oven and the documentary I ‘d watched the night before . I was thinking …chicken soup with the leftover meat and stock , for tomorrow…. and then I thought of the Jews exterminated at Dachau …and the specially -built ovens. Jewish mothers are known for their chicken soup ..the cure -all for all ills ….you see…..Unfortunately there would never be enough chicken soup to cure the Holocaust. The film aired ,uncensored for the first time ,was another harrowing look into the diseased minds of the Nazi regime within Germany during the Second World War.
They also aired , for the first time in thirty years, the first part of the nine -hour “Shoah” which documents the Holocaust in detailed matter-of -fact banality. The minutae of production- line slavery and slaughter of human beings in a quest to fulfil the Nazis “Final Solution”. Of course , this horror was actually some two thousand years in the making.It was arrived at insidiously over eons …a mixture of Christian hatred, jealousy, cultural fear and superstition. There was also the Jews’ own sense of “chosen otherness” ,isolation and abandonment by their god. A willingness to accept their “fate” .
It was, finally ,a behaviour cultivated in the everyday world of human relationships. Hitler’s Nazi regime were simply the organisational tools to bring it about. There was talk of German efficiency , but in fact , as in most things in life , the Final Solution was the culmination of of a series of little human mistakes that the regime made as they perfected their killing skills. The massive crematoria were a “needs must” solution to the disposal of so many thousands of suppurating, gaseous ,dead bodies . The stink was abominable .What to do? They had already tried burying them all but the scale of killing was such that the ground could not conceal it all.The ground was moving with the gas and decay. Concealment was the thing . They wanted no trace left behind. They had to dig them up again.They had tried smaller cremation units but had to finally accept that they needed a crematorium on a massive industrial scale. They had also a compliant surrounding population , already softened to accept the deaths of millions ,as almost a normal everyday experience.There was fear of course, but people will get used to anything. They can be trained to accept any iniquity. Trainloads of people arrived noisily at the camps …. and then there was silence.Daily they arrived , thousands at a time ,in crammed cattle cars on trains and the locals sniffed the stinking air and thought little about it, seemingly. People disappeared from their homes to be lost forever..Days…weeks …months of this…The Jewish people had been reduced to the level of beasts for slaughter by a seemingly compliant population; scooped up like victims of an over- ambitious child- catcher from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
Which brings me to the seething underlying hatreds in Norneverland that are cultivated daily in a thousand tiny little ways. Death on a daily basis is something we all know that we can get used to. We got used to it and accepted it as part of a daily routine, just as we accepted body- searches while shopping ,or checkpoints on the road while driving to work. We all accepted that as normal , for some thirty years.We accept huge” peace walls” that only ghettoise communities and we accept our children being educated in separated schools to further encourage them to think that there is an inherent difference in them.We know where that kind of thinking leads .Schools could do worse than include “Shoah” as part of their curriculum. The uncensored truth might teach them more than any sociology lesson.
Dachau blues those poor jews
Dachau blues those poor jews
Down in Dachau blues, down in Dachau blues
Still cryin’ ’bout the burnin’ back in world war two’s
One mad man six million lose
Down in Dachau blues down in Dachau blues
Dachau blues, Dachau blues those poor jews
The world can’t forget that misery
‘N the young ones now beggin’ the old ones please
T’stop bein’ madmen
‘Fore they have t’ tell their children
‘Bout the burnin’ back in World War Three’s
War One was balls ‘n powder ‘n blood ‘n snow
War Two rained death ‘n showers ‘n skeletons
Danced ‘n screamin’ ‘n dyin’ in the ovens
Cough ‘n smoke ‘n dyin’ by the dozens
Down in Dachau blues
Down in Dachau blues
Three little children with doves on their shoulders
Their eyes rolled back in ecstasy cryin’
Please old man stop this misery
They’re countin’ out the devil
With two fingers on their hands
Beggin’ the Lord don’t let the third one land
On World War Three
On World War Three
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band [ AKA Don Van Vliet}
Just another tangent, Harry:
As awful an atrocity, in the same era, but over a much shorter timescale was the atomic bombing of of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The physical repercussions lasted so much longer.
It is impossible to say which atrocity was worse, but we have seen the beginnings of commemorations of the suffering in the death camps, with Angela Merkel the German Chancellor in attendance.
But will we ever see the American government represented at commemorations for the atomic bombs? Maybe they have and someone will enlighten me, but I have not seen or heard of it.
A striking point, Sherdy. And one worth drawing to people’s attention. The impossibility of the very thought of the US attending a Hiroshima/Nagasaki commemoration virtually makes the horror of the events invisible.
Jude/Sherdy
According to the Huffingtonpost from June 2012 reporting on the 67th anniversary memorial in Tokyo;
“Truman’s grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel, and the grandson of a radar operator who was on both of the planes that dropped the atomic bombs, joined in the memorial.”
and,
“The U.S. government sent a representative – the American ambassador – to the annual commemoration for the first time two years ago. Ambassador John Roos attended the Hiroshima ceremony on Monday.”
Of course that does not take away from the horror of those events.
Fair point, gio. Mind you it took them only 68 years to do it. Quietly. And at ambassador level. No top brass, no president, no secretary of state…
“little human mistakes that the regime made as they perfected their killing skills.” (?)
Remember
In 1915, 20,000 Amenians were butchered by Turkish and Kurdish soldiers. There are estimates that more than 900 women were drowned in the Tigris river. Thousands of corpses were found in the Euphrates. The American ambassador , Henry Morgenthau described, rape, pillage and murder. Mr Morgenthau was told that the Armenians were being ‘resettled’.
The genocide of 1915 was remembered at Westminster Abbey with an inscription carved in stone. The inscription reads,
“Remember all innocent victims of oppression, violence and war. Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?”
It’s a fact Iolar , that given the opportunity and the method , that the human being is capable of murdering on a huge scale if it suits.We can each pluck out examples from across the world and throughout history. This was something of a novel thing though…to arrive at industrial murder by trial and error….but finally perfecting it in a calm an coldly barbarous way ,in such a short timespan .The A- bombs were every bit as loathsome , of course. It is what human beings are very good at and religions condone when it suits them..