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Is Auschwitz Haunted?

I'm a bit torn thinking about whether the "aura" of a place could leave behind traces. I'm sympathetic to the idea of the "genius loci" :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_loci

But on the other hand I'm an admirer of the Dutch artist Armando who laments about the insensivity of places and of nature, because they will keep silent about the suffering they saw, and eventually will erase all traces of it:

... Armando has lived in Berlin for some twenty years as a writer, painter and film-maker. He is an intense observer. His insatiable curiosity about Nazism and the War is very much tied to places, streets, buildings, the silent witnesses of the past. That is why he speaks of a ‘guilty landscape’, meaning the trees and houses that watched impassively as history ran its course.

... he puts his theme of war on the canvas in an increasingly monochromatic fashion. Represented by means of a landscape, trees and flags. A guilty landscape, which has seen all the horrors but just keeps on growing as if nothing has happened.

... Armando writing about the woods around Amersfoort,
around his home where the Germans had a prisonercamp: guilty
landscape.

... Throughout his career, Armando has been haunted by the realization that he can’t prevent the trees and flowers from overgrowing the site of Kamp Amersfoort. He writes of the “guilty landscape,” and paints the trees that were there but refuse to bear witness to the horrors of war.
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And I've found some thougt inspiring photographs of Auschwitz where nothing shows the suffering that took place there - making it even more poignant:

http://www.voxphoto.com/fd/artiste_select.php?artiste=69
Scroll down to: Camp (périphérie) : les champs. Auschwitz-Birkenau.
 
LordRsmacker said:
OldTimeRadio said:
Race?
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Yes, "race".
I believe the posting about big noses referred to Jewish people, who were considered by the Nazis to be a different race, even to the point of being able to pick out physical racial traits.
In the past, Jews have even seen themselves as a seperate tribe, or race, to the point of saying that anyone could convert to Judaism, but they wouldn't become "proper" Jews, it was a blood thing, not a faith thing. Which I guess fuelled anti-Semitism throughout the ages, bolstering the "them and us" charges.
British law was changed many years ago to include anti-Semitic offences under Anti-racist laws probably because the average anti-Semitic offence is a whole lot more violent and disturbing than calling someone a big nosed Kike, and until very recently, committing offences against a person on the grounds of their religion was considered to be a thing of the past and not worthy of enforcable laws. If you commit an anti-Semitic offence, you are a racist.

To the OP, re the "stone tape theory", perhaps the deaths there were not violent enough to create an impression. That is not to trivialise the horrors of the place, but from accounts I have read, people filed into their deaths in a pretty orderly fashion, despite being warned by other inmates what fate awaited them. There seem to be few, if any, reports of trainloads of people panicking and having to be forced into the "de-lousing" areas. Indeed, these camps were overseen by relatively few armed men, certainly not enough to stop a terrified mob trying to escape their deaths.
It seems that the inmates were resigned to their fates through either extermination, disease or by being worked to death. For many, their death would have been a long drawn out process, they would have been well aware of it's approach. Perhaps that lessens the efficacy of the surroundings to make a "recording"?
Compare that to Dresden or Hamburg, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in one night in bombing raids which they thought they would be able to weather, as they had done previously, I would have thought they would be more likely candidates for "soaking up" the effects of multiple sudden violent deaths.
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Well, call me whatever you like, but I am much less moved by the "sufferings" of the people of Dresden and Hamburg (who if they did die, at least died quickly with minimal suffering) than I am by that of the poor souls at Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps, who were victims of slow torture and planned, systematic extermination.

I don't see how being aware of death's approach makes it any less horrifying.

Given a choice, I would rather not see it coming, myself.

Not to mention being in the shoes of most Holocaust victims, who witnessed not only their own impending deaths, but those of their parents, siblings, spouses, children...and God knows how many other loved ones.

And when it comes to the "sufferings" of people who faced death by bombing--I rate the citizens of any German city far below those who died in, say, Coventry or London.
 
Synchronicity: "And when it comes to the "sufferings" of people who faced death by bombing--I rate the citizens of any German city far below those who died in, say, Coventry or London."

John Donne, extract from Meditation 17: "Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

Usually it's just the famous tag at the end of that bit that gets quoted but it's worth reading in context to get the full momento mori implication.

http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html

I am unsure of the validity or use of comparing sufferings, even if they are put into inverted commas. Is there a scale or set of boxes to tick?

Kath
 
I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau back in November last year. I thought it was important to go as both of my grandfathers were pilots in the war, and also to see such an important part of recent history.

There were quite a few sparrows outside Aushwitz as we were eating our lunch, but once inside both camps there was just silence, despite there being plenty of roosting/nesting opportunities.

There is definitley an oppressive atmosphere, and i walked around feeling numb and slightly sick. What got me the most where the huge rooms of possessions, piles and piles of shoes, glasses, clothes. As we filed thorugh the gas chamber I really had to struggle to stay in there, i felt so sick and if there werent people standing behind me i would have gone straight out again. As it was i had to walk all the way through.

The feeling didnt leave me until we were in the bus and well away from the area. We went on a tour and our leaders father was a camp survivor.

I just cant imagine the horror even after having been there and i often still think about it. I took a few photos to help me remember but it felt so wrong to do so. Although it is a disturbing and awful place i feel that it is somwhere that everyone should go, and Im really glad i did.
 
It's strange how different people react differently. When I visited Auschwitz I felt pretty much like you - but was surprised, to put it mildly, to see a group of grinning Jpanese tourists having a group photo taken under the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign.
 
stonedog2 said:
Synchronicity: "And when it comes to the "sufferings" of people who faced death by bombing--I rate the citizens of any German city far below those who died in, say, Coventry or London."

John Donne, extract from Meditation 17: "Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

Usually it's just the famous tag at the end of that bit that gets quoted but it's worth reading in context to get the full momento mori implication.

http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html

I am unsure of the validity or use of comparing sufferings, even if they are put into inverted commas. Is there a scale or set of boxes to tick?

Kath
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Hi, Kath.

I agree it's distasteful to "rate" peoples' sufferings. But if you notice, I was quoting Lord Rsmacker, who it seemed was doing just that.

I was disturbed by several of Lord Rsmacker's remarks. (And I was primarily responding to his post(s).)

First--why mention the deaths of people bombed in Dresden and Hamburg (both German cities) and not one mention of Allied victims of bombing raids--such as people in the London Blitz (which lasted for months) or Coventry??? It seems to me he was implying that German lives matter more than those of the English or Europeans who died in bombing raids carried out by Germany and its allies. (Maybe you should refer him to John Donne?)

I was also very disturbed by Lord R's claim that Jews were a "minority" of victims at Auschwitz/Birkenau (I am inclined to dispute that, but again, what difference does it make?? They were ALL human beings!) and most especially I was disturbed by his assertion that this idea stems from what he terms the "Holocaust 'Industry'".

:shock: :shock: :shock:

That sounds to me periously similar to the claims of some notorious "Holocaust deniers". Will we next being hearing that the entire Holocaust is some kind of "myth"?!

Kath, I think it anyone is making "comparisons" (and pretty odious ones too, IMO) it is Lord Rsmacker. I was responding in outrage to his assertions--because not only does it seem to me that he is making these comparisons, but inplying that somehow German lives matter more than any others, God help us all. (I am not anti-German, BTW--I have quite a bit of German ancestry myself--but I am vehemently and unabashedly anti-Nazi.)

Lord Rsmacker, if you feel I have misrepresented your opinions, I apologize...and please feel free to respond.
 
I'd like to add--Lord R, whatever gives you the impression that it would have been easy for inmates of any Nazi extermination camp to escape??

There were more than enough guards--esp. when you consider that they were armed and the inmates, unsurprisingly, were not--besides being half-starved, worked to death, demoralized and overall totally traumatized (which, I concede, you did mention).

But the idea that a large group of inmates could have successfully escaped from one of those Nazi hell-holes is downright laughable (excuse the term--clearly there was nothing amusing about it.)

The "camps" were encircled not only by guard towers (whose armed guards shot and killed anyone even attempting to escape) but by electric fences of lethal power. In fact I have heard of some inmates, driven to despair by their sufferings, who committed suicide by deliberately placing their bodies in direct contact with those electronic fences.

And don't forget that the Nazis kept vicious guard dogs--I don't even want to think what happened when they send one or more of these dogs after a would-be escapee.

Finally, the Nazis chose the location of their camps with great deliberation. Even in the rare cases when inmates DID manage an escape, they had nowhere to go.

They were in the depths of enemy territory, surrounded by Nazi-sympathizers, and many many miles from "friendly" territory.

They were trapped, and they knew it.
 
Re: Auschwitz

Kazza34 said:
If some ghosts are the product of the stone tape theory (i.e. a powerful emotional or tragic nature is somehow captured within the stonework of a location and replayed – like a tape – in a fixed location, to certain people or under certain circumstances). would you not think that places like Auschwitz, Belsen and other places that had witnessed mass genocide would be heaving with stone tape activity?

Has anyone ever read anything about such activity at places like this? I have yet to read of one but would be interested to know if others had come across such accounts.
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What is just as intriguing is areas which by rights should be absolutely heaving with ghosts, but aren't.

The battlefield of Towton is the site of the bloodiest battle in English history, with between 20000 and 26000 casualties occuring either on the day of the battle, or the few days of clean-up that happened afterwards. Excavated skeletons tell a grim tale of the place; the soldiers involved were all professionals, and when the rout began seemed to possessed of a great fury; the skeletons show a very great deal of injury in most cases.

The rout its self was caused mostly by one unreliable commander seeing a latecoming troop of horses approaching, and panicking, and running off. His running made his men give way, and panic spread from that until the Lancastrian side gave ground, then ran for it, pursued over a very steep escarpment by the enraged Yorkists who took the opportunity to cripple their enemy's forces.

The river at the bottom ran red with blood for days afterwards, and by all accounts the battle was very, very nasty with no quarter given, no surrender accepted; it was so big and on such a confined area of land that no cavalry was used, making all the fighting hand-to-hand and personal.

In other words, all the conditions to make very strong emotional impacts on the landscape. The place should be heaving with ghosts, and should have a terrible reputation. Horses should shy at every bush, dogs be uneasy at every step and an evil menace lurk over the landscape.

None of the above happens.

Horses don't shy more than anywhere else, and the local hunt reckons the area to be a very good area to operate in; hounds like the place. Ghosts are not seen on the roads, and no evil reputation is accorded to the area; it all feels nice, clean, quiet and peaceful (though there's always a bitter wind on the top of that escarpment).

So, why no ghosts?
 
Synchronicity - everything you say about the chances of escape is right, which makes it even more extraordinary that some prisoners DID escape.

They were mainly Polish people, who could of course speak the local language and may have had some knowledge of the geography of the area.

Many were caught but I seem to remember reading that a few got clean away.

I'd recommend a visit. Like nowhere on earth, and makes you count your blessings.
 
Middle daughter went there on an art college trip to Poland. Said excitedly 'Dad, we're going to Auschwitz. What's that? Have you heard of it?' Erm...

She came back much wiser. Took some good b/w pics, I particularly remember the massive pile of spectacles.
 
Yup. After I went, I told a colleague where I'd been, and she asked, 'Was it pretty?
:roll:
 
synchronicity said:
Not to mention being in the shoes of most Holocaust victims...
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What shoes?

Snook25 said
What got me the most where the huge rooms of possessions, piles and piles of shoes, glasses, clothes.
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Hey, back to that stone tape theory, this author has an alternate suggestion about how ghosts get "taped"....




Some Musings on Things Paranormal

For many years paranormal investigators have spoken about the 'Stone tape' theory as a possible explanation for certain classes of ghostly activity.
The hypothesis being that rather like a TV programme can be recorded onto iron particles coated onto a plastic tape, then events can be recorded into the very fabric of buildings or indeed the surrounding Earth. The events can be played back at a later time thus causing the viewer to interpret the playback as a ghost.

The main problem with the Stone tape theory has always been that nobody can find a satisfactory explanation as to how or why the recording actually takes places or how the solid structure and fabric of a location is able to retain the events that took place.

There is another possible hypothesis that is emerging that may well explain how such a mechanism might work and it is supported by some scientists although their research has been in an unrelated area of study and they do not seem to have made the link to it being a potential explanation for some classes of ghost.

The answer might lie in a substance that is a part of just about every location where ghosts might be found - common water!

For well over 200 years people have been using homeopathic medicines and remedies, they are used by millions of people worldwide with much reported success.
A natural therapeutic agent is given to the sufferer but this agent is often an antagonist and toxic so that in order to prevent the person from being further harmed they diluted the therapeutic agent in water. In fact they diluted the original substance down so much that effectively all trace of the original agent was removed and the patient was given nothing more than ordinary water.

Of course, science could never accept this as a real world treatment - you can't give someone nothing but water and expect them to get better - but they got better regardless. Science simply ignored it and people continued to use the treatments without really caring how or why they treatment worked.

This all changed in the 1980's when an eminent French scientist Jacques Benveniste, an expert in the field of allergy, made a rather strange discovery.
In particular he was studying a type of blood cell involved in allergic reactions - the basophile. When basophiles come into contact with something you're sensitive to they become activated causing the telltale symptoms. Benveniste had developed a test that could tell if a person was allergic to something or not. He added a kind of dye that only turns inactive basophiles blue, so by counting the blue cells he could work out whether there had been a reaction, but then something utterly unexpected started to happen.

A technician reported that something appeared to have gone wrong with an experiment, a solution had been wrongly diluted - to levels similar to those used by homeopaths, and yet a reaction had been observed in the basophiles, they reacted just the same as if they had been placed in the presence of the allergen.
Suspecting an error had been made the experiment was repeated but again the basophiles reacted - this did not seem to be possible.

Baffled the team carried out hundreds of experiments in which the results remained consistent. The water, diluted until all trace of the original substance was removed continued to react as if the substance was still present - the water appeared to have a memory!

The experiment was repeatable and since that time has been repeated by many researchers in labs around the World. Although there remains some controversy about this repeatability many scientists now accept that the water molecules do seem to be able to retain a memory for the substances in which they have been in contact.

Now for the purposes of this musing it serves little purpose to continue with a discussion as to pros and cons of homeopathy but let us consider the possibility that water might indeed be able to develop a memory. Instead of a Stone tape how about a 'Water Tape' theory?

Water exists as a component of most things - an average brick wall for instance is between 7 and 15% water, the ground also has high water content, as indeed do we!
Let us imagine that by some mechanism the water in everyday objects could have a memory of events placed into its molecules - how could that happen?

Homeopathic practitioners may again be able to help us out here - they have realised that in order to make a remedy it is an important step to strongly agitate the water at every dilution stage - they stress that this is important in order for the water to pick-up the therapeutic properties of the agent being diluted.
When they agitate the water in this vigorous fashion they are releasing large amounts of kinetic energy into the water, the water also develops a small and slight electro-magnetic charge by this rapid motion, this may well be the energy that is then used to allow the memory to be implanted into the water.

Now let's substitute an event or person who by their actions or mental processes emits sufficient energy to allow the water molecules in nearby structures to become 'fixed' with a memory or record of an event that was taking place. The method may even be easier than that; imagine that our person instead simply exhales, that simple act releases a large quantity of water vapour in the exhaled air, that water vapour has an imprinted memory of the person. The water vapour droplets float free eventually bonding with water droplets in the fabric of the building or location. As they bond, the memory becomes shared and so becomes fixed into the building or landscape.

It is possible to reinforce our case for the existence of a 'Water tape' still further by examining some aspects of ghostly activity that are often associated with the former stone tape theory.

Ghosts seem to have a limited lifespan and almost a 'half-life', fading with time until they are no longer observable. Water in time evaporates and as the original molecules evaporate and disperse the copy of the memory they hold becomes weaker and fainter. The original molecules would continue to pass their imprinted memory to neighbouring molecules but with each successive copy the memory becomes less clear and distinct - this would be similar to making many successive copies of a video tape, each copy generation being less clear and more fuzzy than the ones that went before it. The water may evaporate completely for example when the location is subject to high levels of heat or other desiccating factors; this would cause the imprinted memory to disappear completely.

Sometimes ghosts are seen to become 'active' following a disturbance such as when renovation or demolition is carried out. Again, the water tape may offer an explanation for this particular phenomena:
Deep inside some structures the water may be 'locked' and prevented from evaporation - deep inside the ground or inside a wall or in the foundations of a structure for example. Disturbing that security may cause the water that has been stored perhaps for decades to be released and thus permit its stored memories to be replayed. This stored water would retain a higher quality copy of the original event memory and thus the ghost may be witnessed as a strongly perceived event. Once the water has evaporated then the ghost will fade in a short time - a feature seen in certain reported ghost cases.

Ghosts are also frequently reported in places where there is a close association with water in the environment, such as a stream for example, this constant supply of water may help to retain the imprinted memory or the high levels of saturation may reduce the amount of the original memory molecules evaporating and thus retain the 'freshness' of the event memory recording.

Of course all this is simply nothing more than a series of speculations and musings and full of problems and pitfalls.

There remains no hard evidence for the ability of water to be able to develop a memory in the first place but it is interesting how many times in the various labs and experiments the results seem to show this ability.

How then can these imprinted memories be replayed, this could be by a reverse of the recording mechanism for example - the witness has the correct brain physiology and is able to read these recordings as they are played back. Perhaps more simply, the witness may inhale a droplet of water vapour from the air that contains a memory imprinted within it - as this molecule reaches the brain it triggers a wave of copies across the Cerebral Spinal Fluid and thus the brain sees the event as a playback of the encoded events.

How can we devise experiments to test these ideas - simply put, currently we can't - not yet. Scientists are still struggling with the idea that water even has the ability to develop a memory. The Stone tape idea has only been tested in a very limited way and no evidence other than anecdotal has been put forward to support he notion of solid matter being able to record events. With a little time to develop the Water tape theory further and a few more minds working on the idea then perhaps a few experiments will start to be developed and tested in labs and in the field.

The whole concept is currently nothing more than the ramblings of an over active imagination but the more one thinks about it, the better the hypothesis that instead of a Stone tape we should thinking of a 'Water Tape'.
Part 2 - Update

The initial article mused on the possibilities that water may have an ability to retain information - in effect a memory. It also suggested that the same possibility might provide a better hypothesis for the recording ghost than does the frequently quoted 'Stone Tape' idea. It ended by saying the whole thing is currently nothing more than the ramblings of an over-active imagination and that it is currently attestable. Further research by us has revealed that much of this musing was far from an original idea and also that a great deal of active research is currently being conducted into the possibilities of water being a viable medium for recording.

In the early 1960's following his retirement, archaeologist and paranormal investigator T. C. Lethbridge visited a beach close to his home in Devon with his wife. After they had both experienced unusually powerful emotions close to a small stream at the site of an earlier suicide. The unexpected emotions led him to develop a theory that the water could tape record strong emotions. He developed this idea over a number of years suggesting that what does the recording is some kind of magnetic field associated with the water.

Science has now brought this idea right up to date with many eminent scientists subscribing to and testing the notion that water can retain some form of memory.

Almost echoing Lethbridge's pioneering suggestion is the work of the Heartmath research Centre who has developed technology that can detect and measure the capacity of water to amplify weak electromagnetic fields. They have found that the electromagnetic field produced by the human heart can be detected in a glass of water placed several feet away. They have also demonstrated that water exposed to weak electromagnetic fields has the property of amplifying the signal many times.

In another line of research Dr. David Schweitzer, the grandson of Albert Schweitzer is the first scientist to photograph the effects of thoughts captured within water. Following from the pioneering research of French scientist Jacques Benveniste, Schweitzer has developed a fluorescent microscope that enabled him to see how minute particles within the water were changed in response to thoughts and other influences.

Prior to his recent death, Benveniste continued with his original studies with water in relation to it's homeopathic abilities and discovered that electronic circuits can impress lasting information into the water and that low frequency electromagnetic radiation also affects the ability of the water to retain the 'memory information'.

Professor Emeritus William Tiller working with co-researcher Walter Dibble Jr. in the USA have had a great deal of success in significantly altering the pH of water by getting test subjects to 'impress' their thoughts and intentions into the water. They describe the water as being "A special material, well suited for information / energy transfer from the intention domain into our conventional domain of cognition".

Dr. Glen Rein has gone on the record stating that Physicists are aware of the existence of energy fields with properties, which are not explained by classical equations. He refers to these non-classical fields as quantum fields. Work by Rein and his team has shown that this non-electromagnetic information from the primordial vacuum of space can be stored in water and can later be communicated with living cells.

The above represent but a fraction of the ongoing work at more than a dozen Universities and Research Institutes around the World who are looking closely at the ability of water to retain information. Even NASA is exploring the uses of water as a memory medium for future space exploration probes!

It is also clear that water on it's own is not the simple solution to the creation of recording ghosts (if they actually exist!). If it were then we must surely be inundated with spooky recordings being played back all over the place. There are many more factors that must be considered.

Some of the research suggests that electromagnetism also plays a key part in the process of water memory and it would seem that the individual too as recipient or donor of the original 'event memory recording' is part of the process.

So, it would appear that the Stone tape - that 'cornerstone' of paranormal explanations is dead. The 'Water Memory' should now be given the serious consideration of us all. There is even scope for some relatively simple research to be commenced by the field investigator. Perhaps we could start the ball rolling by making serious observations and measurements of the amounts of water present within the 'haunted' locations themselves. A simple hygrometer can keep an eye on the humidity levels and there are also meters available that can be used non-invasively to measure the amounts of water within the structure and fabric of a building. Over time we will start to build a database of the water and humidity levels at 'haunted' sites and also the important control sites with no 'haunted' reputation.
With sufficient data we may see sufficient evidence emerge which will mean that we can finally cease to explain one mystery by invoking another (The Stone Tape) and instead be able to refer to the demonstrable and repeatable Water-Memory to explain some classifications of ghostly phenomena.
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http://www.parascience.org.uk/articles/musings.htm
 
Water Memory theory (WMT): I'll disregard the fact that Homeopathy is still a very contentious subject, but I still can't seriously accept WMT.

Water is part of the global atmospheric circulation and mixing system - the water in the ground at Auschwitz, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, came down in the last shower of rain. And that water was probably sucked up days earlier somewhere over the Atlantic.

Calculations show that the chance that every breath you take contains at least one molecule exhaled in the last dying breath of Julius Caesar is at least 99% - maths here:
http://www.hk-phy.org/articles/caesar/caesar_e.html

Similar figures would apply to water molecules, which travel around by land and air, right around the globe.

The only water molecules that remain more or less in one place for long periods would be

a) those in the ice of glaciers: but glaciers move, so the water is only locked up for a few thousand years; and

b) those in very deep groundwater reservoirs: but these have accumulated over thousands of years, and would predate modern history by a wide margin.

By and large, water is in continuous circulation. Every water molecule in London's water supply is said to have been recirculated there seven times, but even those eventually escape captivity and return to the wild!

Water is excreted by most living creatures in both liquid and vapour form - if WMT is correct, what a huge host of memories of all life on this planet (including extinct species) each molecule must hold!

The theory is (literally) too airy-fairy for me, and can probably be consigned to the dustbin of history, along with other imaginings like WMD... :twisted:
 
My friend told me he'd been on a trip to Auschwitz. I asked whether the birds had been singing, and he said they had, definitely.
 
In answer to Rynners response to the WMT, I agree that the water cannot be responsible for retaining the memory of events around it, as Rynner quite rightly states water moves about the planet constantly.

But, perhaps the actual movement of the water causes some type of change to whatever surrounds it? Flowing water erodes the surrounding rocks,etc, dissolving some salts in it and on occasion depositing minerals as it goes along (stalacites and petrifying waterfalls). Is it possible that it is whatever is holding the water that has the recording and it is the movement of the water that somehow facilitates the effect? If of course there is any such recording phenomena occuring.
 
synchronicity said:
First--why mention the deaths of people bombed in Dresden and Hamburg (both German cities) and not one mention of Allied victims of bombing raids--such as people in the London Blitz (which lasted for months) or Coventry??? It seems to me he was implying that German lives matter more than those of the English or Europeans who died in bombing raids carried out by Germany and its allies.
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No, I wasn't implying German lives were more important. What I was saying was the sheer ferocity and scale of deaths in those German cities late in the war dwarfed the deaths in the whole of the Blitz. Of course I accept a violent death during an air-raid is much the same wherever it occurs, the end result is the same, just that with so many more victims in Dresden, perhaps it would be easier to find "lingering traces".


synchronicity said:
I was also very disturbed by Lord R's claim that Jews were a "minority" of victims at Auschwitz/Birkenau (I am inclined to dispute that, but again, what difference does it make?? They were ALL human beings!) and most especially I was disturbed by his assertion that this idea stems from what he terms the "Holocaust 'Industry'".

That sounds to me periously similar to the claims of some notorious "Holocaust deniers". Will we next being hearing that the entire Holocaust is some kind of "myth"?!
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Not from me, it was real. Really.
However, I do think that too many people simply think that Hitler marched 6 million Jews in stripey pyjamas into the gas chambers and that was that. Even some "educated" people think Auschwitz was simply a place where Jews were exterminated. Obviously, it wasn't that simple, my point was that all manner of humanity went through those gates, yet it seems to be held up as an example of Jewish suffering. I am in no way making any anti-Semitic comments here, but feel uncomfortable that those who make the most noise about their suffering have made a solid gold industry out of it.
Actually, not "their suffering", but the suffering of their people, the former inmates haven't had anywhere near a whiff of the money the guardians of the Trust-funds have refurbed their offices with. Auschwitz was an abomination for humanity, for Gypsies, Poles, Hungarians, Communists, Gays etc. AND Jews. As has been said somewhere above, you can't rate suffering.
To understand and learn from history, and to prevent any such recurrence, I feel it is important to see the whole picture, else Revisionist Reptiles crawl out from under their stones and sew the seeds of doubt in peoples' minds. It would be too easy to say "Ah well, I'm not Jewish, I'd have been OK", but we need to remember it could have happened to YOU, or ME, and we must ensure nothing like that gets chance to happen again.

Once again, before any cretin jumps on his high horse and accuses me of being a Nazi or a revisionist, I am NOT, nor am I downplaying any suffering or persecution of ANY race or creed during those dark years in those hellish camps.
 
synchronicity said:
I'd like to add--Lord R, whatever gives you the impression that it would have been easy for inmates of any Nazi extermination camp to escape??

There were more than enough guards--esp. when you consider that they were armed and the inmates, unsurprisingly, were not--besides being half-starved, worked to death, demoralized and overall totally traumatized (which, I concede, you did mention).

But the idea that a large group of inmates could have successfully escaped from one of those Nazi hell-holes is downright laughable (excuse the term--clearly there was nothing amusing about it.)
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Firstly, I didn't say it would be easy to escape from a camp. My point was that the vast numbers of people arriving by train seemed to have already abandoned hope and were compliant in the extreme in going meekly to their deaths. If even a handful of arrivals, a couple of able-bodied men, had resisted, caused a commotion, this would have spread very quickly to the massed crowd, and no doubt would have resulted in a machine gun massacre in no time. However, there seems to be no reports of this sort of thing, their spirits were broken beforehand. Panic is a powerful, infectious force, even if you are starved and demoralised, and to have a large number of anxious, panicky people alight from the cattle trucks would have been a completely different prospect for the guards tasked with getting them "processed". Why didn't an anxious crowd facing certain death resist, or choose the option of turning on the guards rather than head towards the "showers"? Surely mob mentality would prevail, despite the dangers of having guns turned on them? Would it have been worth the gamble, the chance to turn on their tormentors, maybe seize a gun?

I'm glad you find the idea of large scale escape laughable, I'm sure the 600 odd inmates of Sobivor didn't think so when they revolted in October 1943, resulting in 300 getting clean away. 100 of those were caught and killed, but the others remained at large, joined Partisan groups etc.
Camps like Auschwitz weren't guarded by large detachments of elite SS troops, far from it. They were staffed by a handful of Command Staff, backed by a small number of armed guards, mostly unwilling transfers from the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, along with convalescing Waffen SS troops or transfers for disciplinary reasons. Certainly not cohesive armed units, trained and focussed.
Most camp discipline was done by inmates, they were pretty much self-run from the inside, evidently the most vicious thugs were given special privileges and this obviously worked just fine. Armed soldiers rarely went into the camps, rather staying on the perimeters.
Once again, I'll never know what it was like to be in one of those camps, thank God, but I think it is very interesting how large numbers of able-bodied men simply accepted their fate, their mistreatment, rather than gamble on overpowering the Capo, attempting to get close to and seize at least a single gun and go down fighting. How could so many people have simply chosen to be worked/starved/gassed to death rather than attempt an escape with even the smallest of chance of success?

Total and utter despair, the complete abandonment of hope, that must surely be the reason. They were already dead from the inside. My original point was maybe this is the reason for the apparent lack of ghosts there, those souls were already getting a headstart on the next stage of their journey.
 
For the details and particulars of Auschwitz life, I reccommend Mauschwitz by Art Spiegelman....somehow the little cartoons of cats and mice brought home to me what film reels and documentaries never could.........
 
ghosts/auschwitz

Maybe the amount of victims has something to do with the lack of ghost sightings? Maybe one ghost is easier to see than a crowd. Supposing such things exist maybe the departing souls 'helped' one another pass on, whereas a single one can't. Also ghosts in houses - maybe they stay because they have good memories of the place. Ghosts in deathcamps would not, I imagine. Also, to see a ghost one usually has to spend a lot of time in a place, something surely only the staff at the camps have time for.
 
The subject of birdsong at the camp sites raises somes interesting parallels. As a small child in the nineteen sixties I didn't know anybody who had visited any of the camps. However, many people had visited the war graves of the Western Front. There was, in my memory at least, a degree of consensus that birds did not sing at the grave sites.

There are a number of factors that might influence the perception of birdsong. Firstly, birdsong is at its loudest in spring and summer. The 'dawn chorus' occurs during these seasons. Many song birds are migratory so will not be present during the autumn and winter.

Secondly, song birds will be attracted to areas where food is most available and accesible for species with their physcial characteristics.

It would be interesting to know whether people who do not hear birdsong visit the camps during the winter and whether the locations are hospitable for song birds.
 
I visited Auschwitz in late March, which is still very cold there, and I saw plenty of birds outside the camp but not inside.

They were roosting in trees and on wires. There are plenty of both trees and wires inside the camp but no birds roosted on them.

Also, everywhere else we went outdoors, all through the winter, we were followed at a discreet distance by birds who presumably know a snack-munching tourist when they see one.
We ate as we walked along in Auschwitz, as did several coachloads of Israelis, but no birds followed either us or them.

So, to me it seemed that the birds were the same there as everywhere else, except that they stayed outside the fence.
 
Abendstern said:
For the details and particulars of Auschwitz life, I reccommend Mauschwitz by Art Spiegelman....somehow the little cartoons of cats and mice brought home to me what film reels and documentaries never could.........
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You mean Maus.
Mauschwitz used to be an employee nickname for Disney (cf. Duckau)
 
I know Wiki can be a bit suspect, but these numbes are fairly accurate and up to date so far. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_camps_of_Nazi_Germany
LordR, hello. Your point about a potential uprising is a good one, however the people being herded off trucks and taken into the extermination chambers straight away, they did not know they were to be gassed, They did predominantly believe they were showers. A survivor of the gas chamber near the end of the war described the sheer fear and panic as people began to realise gas was being pumped into the room and not water. They did not know.
Auschiwtz was also not just an extermination camp, it was also a concentration/work camp. And they worked till they dropped.
I believe there was also an Abwehr camp alongside. So any attempt at an uprising would have been crushed very quickly by the resiedent Abwher soldiers and SS guards. They did not stand a chance.
At one of the camps the Germans continued to shoot even after the British had taken over. These German guards (I think they wer eHitler Youth!) were then taken aside and a bullet put in their heads.

The bird thing: This has been discussed on the WW2 history forum I am a member of. Some members claim no birdsong at all, others claim there was. My father visited Belsen in the 70's and he claims there were no birds or insects there. it was deathly silent. Odd. As escargot says it was probably merely the time of year.
As to ghosts, I am not aware of many sighting there, but the camp was liberated and the torturers were themselves hanged, so i suppose those who died there could rest. It is a very unique situation.
 
Yup, about the hanging of the camp bosses - the portable gallows have been re-created and placed in the spot where the executions happened.

And the people on the transports certainly did not know they were going directly to their deaths. They believed they were being 'resettled'. They were anyway exhausted and demoralised after long journeys packed into goods wagons. They were not in any state to put up resistance when they arrived.

My friend and I travelled overnight north to Krakow from Budapest, in late March. We'd been wearing teeshirts and shorts on the Wednesday, but found the weather colder and colder as we moved north on the train.
By the time we reached Krakow on the Thursday morning we'd had to put on our coats, scarves and woolly hats again.

It occurred to us that we had followed the exact route taken by many thousands of Hungarian and other victims of the holocaust. It was pretty uncomfortable for us, but we chose to go, and it was something of an adventure.
It must have been hell on earth for those poor people. :(
 
Does anyone know of any film crew or simillar who have done any paranormal investigations there?
 
Snook25 said:
Does anyone know of any film crew or simillar who have done any paranormal investigations there?
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I'd be surprised if it has ever happened. Political/emotional minefield for sure.
 
This summer I visited Verdun where hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in one of the worst meat grinders of the great war. But while visiting Fort Vaux we saw this rather tame family of swallows living inside the fortress. They entered and exited the fortress through the opening housing one of the cannons and liked to perch on the barbed wire. Urban legend disproved?

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/birds_verdun01.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/birds_verdun02.jpg
Note: My son made the pictures.

I'm reading several WW I books now and the story is constantly repeated. For example in his "The price of glory" Alistair Horne writes: "When I gave a lecture for the Grenadie Guards one of them told me - You know, there are no birds here ..."

Note: We might merge this thread with this one :
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29618
 
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