I couldn't help writing this article after I opened an e-mail sent to me by my Triond friend, Judy Sheldon. It contained pictures of the Nazi's senseless depravity, evidenced in their complete disregard of human lives known as the Holocaust.
While researching this article, it became crystal that the Nazis; even though they were the ones who acted upon their grossly overblown disillusions of grandeur; they are not the only ones who caressed insane, self-obsessed impressions about their superiority inside their hearts.
Some of us today, although we would never accept it, even to ourselves, feel that not all human lives hold the same value. This unequal duet of values becomes clearer in times of war and world-wide crisis. Before I continue to set out my findings about the holocaust, please allow me to illustrate this particular claim.
Why did the Nazis do what they did? The short answer is because they believed that they were the superior race, therefore it behooved them to move into to other people's countries, kill them and their children, wreck their lives, take them prisoner to a land to which they had never been, and ultimately decide who could live, who would die, and diabolically, even how these innocent victims would die. Here is how they showed their superiority and self-claimed right over human lives.
The Experiments
Many of these experiments happened at Auschwitz. The victims were frozen then thawed; chemicals were injected into their children's eyes just to see if they would change from brown to blue. One particular doctor Josef Mengele, a prominent worker for the "cause" liked working on twins and even befriended children to the point of them calling him "uncle". 'Onkle Mengele' would then lead them to the gas chambers to conduct his nasty experiments.
One survivor distinctly remembers that Mengele took four-year old twins away one day and when he returned them, they were stitched together back to back. Once he had done his experiment, he left them without care, painkillers, or even a second human look. They became infected and screamed day and night. Their parents had to eventually have them killed in order to release them from their misery. What parent wouldn't do this in that situation.
The Slave Labour
While the Nazis were still heady with the power gained by their invasions, they killed their victims quickly, and were contented to line them up and shoot them like tin cans on on a mechanical line. However, soon they realised that this was a "waste" of what was essentially healthy slaves. It dawned on their vastly superior brains that they could use up (work) that person to death, soaking up their essence without food, water or health care. Then, when they had no use for them anymore, they could bin them. The victims basically had the evilest choice anyone could experience - if you didn't want to die, you had to work long after your body had given up the ghost.
They were made to use sandpaper for toilet roll and had strict regimes to make sure they actually did use it. At the very end, the point of death, when they could no longer be used for work, they were told to go for a bath but were given the gas chamber and a poisonous shower instead.
Mandatory Sterilisation
(A picture of an actual pink triangle homosexuals were made to wear on their "uniforms")
Homosexuals were made to wear a pink triangle for quick identification because it (homosexuality) was thought to be catching. They would be terribly abused and targeted, and were especially hated because their practises were seen as no way to advance the superior Aryan race. When eventually dealt with, a lot of them were castrated.
Hitler believed that mixed race people were created either by rape, or in the case of white mothers and black fathers (that their mother was a whore). People today judge Hitler for being a wicked man, and would be appalled if told they had something in common with him - but they hold this very view. The way he took care of this "unnatural, freak of nature" was to forcibly sterilise all mixed race people to stop them from perpetuating their "vile, impure" blood lines.
The mentally ill and physically deformed (in all of these cases Germans were included as well) were also hunted down and sterilised, as a perfect, supreme race had no place for imperfect bodies and minds.
Spoils of the dead
The innocent people, merely spoils of war, were divided into groups as soon as they arrived at the camps (the blindfolded Arab man with the gun pointed at his head still won't leave my mind). The weak and sick went one way, the healthy the other. The healthy were wrung out until physically dry, at nights they stayed in rooms like brooms carelessly thrown in a cupboard, no wash, no food, no books to read.
At sunrise they worked, but not only in factories, they were also made to chop up and burn their diseased and starved dead; a steady reminder of what they were to become and had done to them.
One of their most important tasks was to separate the human assets from the dead, by whatever means necessary. This involved shaving off women's hair to use for making socks and mats, and prying open jaws to extract gold teeth.
Death Marches
Between 1944 to 1945, towards the end of the war the Nazis decided that since the Allies were approaching from both the east and west, it was time to get rid of the evidence of their atrocities.
They killed numerous Jewish prisoners in the camps, the rest, ill and weak from overwork and starvation, they marched for tens of miles to railway stations in snowy conditions. They stacked them into freight trains made for cattle without food, adequate clothing, or heat.
When they arrived to their destination, they were again made to march in very hostile conditions. Those who could not keep up were shot on the spot. The biggest death march took place in January of 1945 between Auschwitz and Wodzislaw which is 35miles away. 60,000 people were marched out of the concentration camps and 15,000 died on the way.
Frantic to get rid of their insane lust for power over lives they felt were below them, the Nazis forced 8,000 weak and ill Jews to march for 10 days straight. They shot 700 people and seemingly hoped for the rest to die on the way through this very gruelling march. This "hope" to me, is evidenced in the next action they took, as those who were still alive when they reached the coast, were forced into the Baltic Sea and shot.
So the Holocaust - fact or fiction? I would say beyond a shadow of a doubt - fact! Not only is this all documented in pictures, but the solid acid test of its authenticity remains the contemporary people who have spent the rest of their lives telling their stories to make sure that this slaughter does not happen again. Together, we should resist examples like the one above (the Digg story) so that all humans are treated with the equal respect we all rightly and justly deserve.
