Holocaust

[SuperSquirrel]

I was wondering if anyone knew any good books on the holocaust. I've been wanting to learn more about it but I'm not sure what books to try on it.

[Pope130]

"The War Against the Jews 1933-1945" by Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

A thorough, well documented and surprisingly unemotional account.

[abenja1]

Night by Elie Wiesel.

[dudalb]

'The Holocaust" by Martin Gilbert.

[volatile]

"The Racial State" by Michael Burleigh - it's a great account of the transformation in a very short amount of time of a democratic, 'normal' country into one where racism, violence and hatred were if not accepted then certainly tolerated by the civilian population. It's not on "the Holocaust", per se, but on the sociology, ideology and anthropology that allowed it to happen.

[dudalb]

"The Racial State" by Michael Burleigh - it's a great account of the transformation in a very short amount of time of a democratic, 'normal' country into one where racism, violence and hatred were if not accepted then certainly tolerated by the civilian population. It's not on "the Holocaust", per se, but on the sociology, ideology and anthropology that allowed it to happen.

Burleigh's "The THird Reich" is also quite good. To be honest, he does a certain amount of recylcing from "The Racial State" (Not a grave sin; many non fiction writers who write a lot about the same topic do this) but he covers a lot that he did not cover in "The Racial State" because it was outside the main subject of the book (Foreign Affairs, which he only touched on in "The Racial State", get full treatment here).

[MaGZ]

I know one good book on the "Holocaust".

[blutoski]

I was wondering if anyone knew any good books on the holocaust. I've been wanting to learn more about it but I'm not sure what books to try on it.

I guess it depends on what aspects interest you.

Wiesel's Night, Dawn, and Day are personal accounts.
Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism attempts to put it in context as a consequence of a certain political style, by comparing and contrasting Stalin's blood purges on the other side of the Iron Curtain
Michael Shermer's Denying History is written as a refutation of denialists.

[timhau]

I know one good book on the "Holocaust".

No, you don't.

[Ian Osborne]

I know one good book on the "Holocaust".

You must ask someone to read it to you sometime.

[RobRoy]

Night by Elie Wiesel.

Seconded. This was my first thought when I read the OP. Perhaps one of the best first-hand accounts.

[dudalb]

I know one good book on the "Holocaust".

Mein Kampf?

[timhau]

Silly MaGZ, he's not looking for a how-to manual.

[Nick Terry]

A good-ish starting point would be Saul Friedlaender's The Years of Extermination, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year, and should be out in paperback. The preceding volume The Years of Persecution is also good.

Dawidowicz is outdated and contains some major errors. Gilbert is really just a chronicle without analysis, but covers a lot of ground.

I'd recommend Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, but the latest edition is more than $100 and the abridged edition is nae good. If anyone reads German then Hilberg auf deutsch is the cheapest, most comprehensive study available.

[ddt]

I'd recommend Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, but the latest edition is more than $100 and the abridged edition is nae good. If anyone reads German then Hilberg auf deutsch is the cheapest, most comprehensive study available.

The German translation is EUR 19,95 at amazon.de (http://www.amazon.de/Die-Vernichtung-europ%C3%A4ischen-Juden-Bde/dp/359624417X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213486674&sr=1-1). What a difference in price :jaw-dropp . Do you have any idea why (and no, hardcover vs. paperback doesn't account for more than 10-20 dollar/euro).

[mrbaracuda]

The German translation is EUR 19,95 at amazon.de (http://www.amazon.de/Die-Vernichtung-europ%C3%A4ischen-Juden-Bde/dp/359624417X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213486674&sr=1-1). What a difference in price :jaw-dropp . Do you have any idea why (and no, hardcover vs. paperback doesn't account for more than 10-20 dollar/euro).

Hm, maybe we subsidize it? ;)

[ddt]

Hm, maybe we subsidize it? ;)
You'd nearly think at that price, yes :). That's even cheap for German paperbacks. High time to clean up a bit, put up another bookcase and drive to Kleve/Cleves :D

[Loss Leader]

Eichman in Jerusalem does a great job of making the Holocaust a real event.

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

The Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler's List as well as The Pianist.

If you're looking for a movie, I'd recommend Shoah and if it's about WW2 in general, I'd strongly recommend The Sorrow and the Pity.

My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor and if you're interested in her story, you can PM me or email me at JaneSchmo@hotmail.com.

[mrbaracuda]

You'd nearly think at that price, yes :). That's even cheap for German paperbacks. High time to clean up a bit, put up another bookcase and drive to Kleve/Cleves :D

Is it correct that it's three books by the way?

[Nick Terry]

Is it correct that it's three books by the way?

Yes. Three volumes. I bought my set in Stuttgart in 1997... it's definitely subsidised, too.

The original 1961 English edition was one volume, and the 1985 2nd edition was more or less one very fat volume, but then Hilberg added some extras for the 1991 German version of the 1985 English 2nd edition... and added more for the 3 volume 'definitive version' he completed a few years before he died last summer.

Given the way prices have gone with hardbacks for academic books, all it can take is a reduced 'library only' type print run and they go right out of ordinary consumers' reach. It's like trying to buy two volumes from the publisher Praeger, whose works always used to cost £50 in the mid-90s, when other hardbacks were £30. That's $100 and $60 these days...

Some German academic hardbacks are an eyewatering 79 euro these days.

[mrbaracuda]

* mrbaracuda orders

:)

[parky76]

I know one good book on the "Holocaust".

How can there be a book about the Holocaust if it didnt happen?

:D

[Mondial]

DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE? by Richard Harwood
www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html (http://www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html)
LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST by Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/GB/Books/loth/ The author is currently in prison in "democratic" Germany for writing this book. There are other titles with revisionist/skeptic details at the following link -
http://vho.org/GB/Books/HHS.html
As for Elie Wiesel and his book NIGHT this is nothing but a pack of lies. When he was in Auschwitz, a supposed hell on earth, Wiesel had the opportunity to stay behind and be liberated by the Soviet red army or retreat with his Nazi captors. He went with the Nazis! For the lowdown on the pathological liar Wiesel see -
www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml (http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml)

[Nick Terry]

* mrbaracuda;3782588 orders

:)

Ah, if only I could collect on the recommendation fees...

[mrbaracuda]

LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST by Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/GB/Books/loth/ The author is currently in prison in "democratic" Germany for writing this book.

Why "democratic" instead of democratic - or just nothing? We got this law, as bad as it might be, but you got to live with the consequences when you say the holocaust is a "gigantic lie" and base this on calling Dachau a holiday camp or say you can't burn bodies next to a swamp in Auschwitz and therefore the mass murder there never happened (http://www.moz.de/index.php/Moz/Article/category/Nachrichten/id/177436). :rolleyes:

Ah, if only I could collect on the recommendation fees...

Aaw, poor you. :rub::D

[Nick Terry]

Why "democratic" instead of democratic - or just nothing? We got this law, as bad as it might be, but you got to live with the consequences when you say the holocaust is a "gigantic lie" and base this on calling Dachau a holiday camp or say you can't burn bodies next to a swamp in Auschwitz and therefore the mass murder there never happened (http://www.moz.de/index.php/Moz/Article/category/Nachrichten/id/177436). :rolleyes:

Germar Rudolf admitted his real aims in a 1990 'strategy paper':

"We have no problem with calling belief in the Holocaust or the gas chambers the central crux of all German and even international politics. All dogmas of postwar politics are based on it liberalism, tolerance, parliamentary democracy, equality of men, multi-culture etc. With it the anti-fascist club becomes a deadly weapon, all bigger problems are declared taboos and factored out (democracy, national identity, culture, policies regarding women, foreigner issues etc.). He who destroys 'Auschwitz' destroys this order of the world (at least in the heads of people). This fact is recognized only by few, and of these in turn only few favor the destruction of the myth, even if they consider it justified (Golo Mann: Auschwitz is desirable under popular-educational aspects)."


This exposes very neatly the anti-democratic, anti-constitutional aims of 'Holocaust revisionists' in Germany, and also their total misunderstanding of postwar history and politics.

One hardly knows where to begin with the idiocy of the idea that "Auschwitz" is somehow the foundation of the post-1945 western world or even of post-1945 Germany.

[bruto]

If the personal level is interesting, after Anne Frank, one might try Primo Levi's two memoirs (in the US, they're published as Survival in Auschwitz, and The Reawakening.

I found The Warsaw Diaries of Adam Czerniakov pretty interesting too.

[parky76]

DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE? by Richard Harwood
www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html (http://www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html)
LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST by Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/GB/Books/loth/ The author is currently in prison in "democratic" Germany for writing this book. There are other titles with revisionist/skeptic details at the following link -
http://vho.org/GB/Books/HHS.html
As for Elie Wiesel and his book NIGHT this is nothing but a pack of lies. When he was in Auschwitz, a supposed hell on earth, Wiesel had the opportunity to stay behind and be liberated by the Soviet red army or retreat with his Nazi captors. He went with the Nazis! For the lowdown on the pathological liar Wiesel see -
www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml (http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml)

the holocaust is a fact. take it to "conspiracy theories".

[geni]

Should we be worried that someone is aparently asking for a book on how to kill ~6 million people.

[stilicho]

I was wondering if anyone knew any good books on the holocaust. I've been wanting to learn more about it but I'm not sure what books to try on it.
While it isn't a book "on the Holocaust", Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning is centred on his experiences in concentration camps as a psychiatrist and an inmate. Possibly the most remarkable part of the book is his observation that there were both decent and despicable people among both guards and inmates. He claimed that decency is independent of culture, upbringing or living conditions.

He also worked to prevent suicide and depression in one of the most unlikely environments one could imagine and concluded that both conditions are largely influenced by individual choice.

[Mondial]

DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE? by Richard Harwood
www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html (http://www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html)
LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST by Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/GB/Books/loth/ The author is currently in prison in "democratic" Germany for writing this book. There are other titles with revisionist/skeptic details at the following link -
http://vho.org/GB/Books/HHS.html
As for Elie Wiesel and his book NIGHT this is nothing but a pack of lies. When he was in Auschwitz, a supposed hell on earth, Wiesel had the opportunity to stay behind and be liberated by the Soviet red army or retreat with his Nazi captors. He went with the Nazis! For the lowdown on the pathological liar Wiesel see -
www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml (http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml)

I also recommend THE HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Arthur Butz http://vho.org/GB/Books/thottc/
If you get tired of reading books ONE THIRD OF THE HOLOCAUST is a video series explaining the holocaust skeptic position -
www.onethirdoftheholocaust.com (http://www.onethirdoftheholocaust.com)

[mrbaracuda]

I'd recommend Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews

So I started yesterday with the first book of the three and I was surprised that it's talking about five million Jews and not the six millions one always hears about.

[Beady]

The OP asked for books, but movies have also been suggested. A couple of miniseries available on Amazon are Holocaust and Skokie. The latter is about an attempted American Nazi Party rally in the late '60s in Skokie, Illinois, home to a large number of concentration camp survivors.

[bobrayner]

So I started yesterday with the first book of the three and I was surprised that it's talking about five million Jews and not the six millions one always hears about.

It's very difficult to get an accurate number. Documentation is sparse and contradictory. However, there seems to be a kind of consensus on the "six million" figure from what little I've read.

Also, there were lots of other people killed - not just jews; if somebody might have been jewish but was killed for some other reason, do you count them among the six million? What about people in camps who died of disease/starvation after the nazis retreated? What about somebody who was summarily executed because some nazi on the spot thought they were jewish, whereas in fact they weren't? What if multiple sources disagree on the population of some jewish village before it was wiped off the map? What about people who died after being recaptured by soviets? It would be almost impossible to count "from the bottom up". However, counting from the "top down" has just as many flaws...

But why get hung up on it? Several million jews were killed - and so were several million non-jews. That's an appalling atrocity regardless of the exact number.

[Chaos]

So I started yesterday with the first book of the three and I was surprised that it's talking about five million Jews and not the six millions one always hears about.

Yeah... so it turned out that, base villains that they were, the Nazis didn´t keep meticulous records on all their crimes for the benefit of their enemies after the war. Inconsiderate of them, but unfortunately true.

[Sunni Man]

All of the Holocaust books should be in the "Fiction" section of the library.

[Undesired Walrus]

Next to the Quran?

[Sunni Man]

Next to the Quran?No, it's in the Non Fiction Religious section.

[bobrayner]

No, it's in the Non Fiction Religious section.

Why do you think that the quran is true and that the holocaust is fiction?

That's two gigantic, appalling absurdities in one neat little package.

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

It's very difficult to get an accurate number. Documentation is sparse and contradictory. However, there seems to be a kind of consensus on the "six million" figure from what little I've read.

Also, there were lots of other people killed - not just jews; if somebody might have been jewish but was killed for some other reason, do you count them among the six million? What about people in camps who died of disease/starvation after the nazis retreated? What about somebody who was summarily executed because some nazi on the spot thought they were jewish, whereas in fact they weren't? What if multiple sources disagree on the population of some jewish village before it was wiped off the map? What about people who died after being recaptured by soviets? It would be almost impossible to count "from the bottom up". However, counting from the "top down" has just as many flaws...

But why get hung up on it? Several million jews were killed - and so were several million non-jews. That's an appalling atrocity regardless of the exact number.

The way that Holocaust figures were counted was by the following way: for every country in Europe, the estimated Jewish population before the war is compared to the number of survivors left in each country after the end of WW2. Then the number of survivors is subtracted from the number of the original pre-war population. That's how historians eached a figure of 6 million. Estimated figure, that is.

I certainly consider my father's mother and her relatives that survived to be Holocaust survivors, even though they themselves are not Jewish. I have sworn to never forget the atrocities perpetuated upon them by the Nazis and upon the Polish and Jewish people as a whole. This is enspecially important given that there are people today who claim that it didn't happen. Allthough I don't think these so-called people deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as my family, we are living proof that it did happen.

[Foolmewunz]

So now comes the SunniMan... The big three have arrived! Why is that not a surprise? Garden variety anti-semites, all (to borrow freely from a long ago post by, I believe, Nick Terry - or could've been KiwiWriter... which stated that there's a direct linkage, no matter how much they pretend otherwise, between Holocaust Deniers and Anti-Semites - all of 'em).

How nice of us to make a comfy home for these people. Keep 'em all in one place where you can keep an eye on 'em in their anonymity, and let the Forum world see them for what they are. Fortunately, for them, we're not allowed to, nor I assume would we want to, close the doors and slip in a little Zyklon B, so they could see, first hand, what an effective way that is to control typhus. (That's the nazis' and nazi-apologists' version of what the gas was used for. You can find reams of material on the subject in the pseudo research of Butz and his supporters, as he's their current favorite calm-headed revisionist.)

[Travis]

Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen is a good one. It examines the reasons ordinary Germans would do the things they did.

[SDC]

Goldhagen's book wasn't so well-reviewed (by scholars). My own vote for a scholarly work exploring the ordinary Germans who did the killing is Christopher Browning's appropriately named "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland." Short book, just 200 pages or so, but a prize.

[SDC]

Yeah... so it turned out that, base villains that they were, the Nazis didn´t keep meticulous records on all their crimes for the benefit of their enemies after the war. Inconsiderate of them, but unfortunately true.

Actually, the Holocaust is recognized as one of the best documented historical events. The German archives which have been controlled by the International Red Cross are finally being digitized and distributed to research centers in the US, Israel, and Poland (at least). I think Nick Terry has pointed out that deniers have already started on working out ways to deny the significance of the archives.

Which gives me a chance to offer (again) my own conspiracy theory. The reason that Germany lost WW2 was because so much in the way of human and material resources went into the vast deception of creating an enormous amount of false documentation of the allegedly non-existent Holocaust, that Germany was unable to defeat the Soviets and the Western Allies. Think of it ... all those bureaucrats, furiously creating precise documentation of non-existent events ...

For any literal minded folks out there, that is a sarcastic fantasy.

The real problem with the numbers, as someone has noted, is that they rely in part on pre-war censuses, which are not famous for accuracy. (Including the 1931 Polish census and 1939 Soviet most notably, the two states which provided the majority of the Jewish victims.) Remember a lot of the victims were simply rounded up, shot, and buried, especially in the Soviet Union, without any bureaucratic counting. Many others died of disease or abuse in the ghettos.

[Travis]

Goldhagen's book wasn't so well-reviewed (by scholars). My own vote for a scholarly work exploring the ordinary Germans who did the killing is Christopher Browning's appropriately named "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland." Short book, just 200 pages or so, but a prize.

Yes there were some issues with it but it was pretty comprehensive. I'll have to check out Brownings book.

[Chaos]

Actually, the Holocaust is recognized as one of the best documented historical events. The German archives which have been controlled by the International Red Cross are finally being digitized and distributed to research centers in the US, Israel, and Poland (at least). I think Nick Terry has pointed out that deniers have already started on working out ways to deny the significance of the archives.

My (sarcastic) point was that the Nazis didn´t keep a single nice, orderly, unified list with the name, place of death and cause of death of every single victim, each signed by the executioner, countersigned by the victims themselves and confirmed by a notary. That´s about the level of "evidence" which Holocaust deniers are demanding.

Which gives me a chance to offer (again) my own conspiracy theory. The reason that Germany lost WW2 was because so much in the way of human and material resources went into the vast deception of creating an enormous amount of false documentation of the allegedly non-existent Holocaust, that Germany was unable to defeat the Soviets and the Western Allies. Think of it ... all those bureaucrats, furiously creating precise documentation of non-existent events ...

For any literal minded folks out there, that is a sarcastic fantasy.

And it makes one wonder why Holocaust deniers in general admire the Nazis so much.

The real problem with the numbers, as someone has noted, is that they rely in part on pre-war censuses, which are not famous for accuracy. (Including the 1931 Polish census and 1939 Soviet most notably, the two states which provided the majority of the Jewish victims.) Remember a lot of the victims were simply rounded up, shot, and buried, especially in the Soviet Union, without any bureaucratic counting. Many others died of disease or abuse in the ghettos.

Aw, but you know that this is all part of the conspiracy, don´t you? The Poles and Soviets intentionally kept bad records, so they could inflate the numbers of jewish dead later on.

[bruto]

I think the deniers are just jealous that the Germans thought of it first.

[Dancing David]

DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE? by Richard Harwood
www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html (http://www.ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html)
LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST by Germar Rudolf
http://vho.org/GB/Books/loth/ The author is currently in prison in "democratic" Germany for writing this book. There are other titles with revisionist/skeptic details at the following link -
http://vho.org/GB/Books/HHS.html
As for Elie Wiesel and his book NIGHT this is nothing but a pack of lies. When he was in Auschwitz, a supposed hell on earth, Wiesel had the opportunity to stay behind and be liberated by the Soviet red army or retreat with his Nazi captors. He went with the Nazis! For the lowdown on the pathological liar Wiesel see -
www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml (http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/wiesel.shtml)


Oh, so all the Germans who testified to the death camps were liars too?
And all the documents that the Germans hod on what they were doing?

You are a jerk.

[Dancing David]

So I started yesterday with the first book of the three and I was surprised that it's talking about five million Jews and not the six millions one always hears about.


the figure is 13 million, there were many more than just the jews of europe, the roma, the devlopmentaly disabled, the mentaly ill, the communists, socialists, masons, etc...

[Dancing David]

All of the Holocaust books should be in the "Fiction" section of the library.

Ah, all the books about genocide then, I suppose the Crusade did really happen.

You are a shame to all people who call themselves Islam, a liar is not adored by the BogeyMan in the sky.

[SDC]

Aw, but you know that this is all part of the conspiracy, don´t you? The Poles and Soviets intentionally kept bad records, so they could inflate the numbers of jewish dead later on.

Gasp!! I didn't think of that! All of a sudden, everything becomes clear...

[Dancing David]

No, it's in the Non Fiction Religious section.


Oh, I see, so the fairyTales of the Brothers Grimm are also non fiction.

A schizophrenic thinks that an angel talks to him and starts a fairly cool religion. Which you shame with your bigotry and prejudice. I suppose Allah (the source of wonder and life) approves of your lies and bigotry, despite the fact that his chosen Prophets (Skydaddy pile blessings upon them) told you otherwise.

Another jerk who shames the alleged god (imaginary superstition be praised) they pretend to follow.

But the devil has worked thier hatred into your heart and you follow a false idol of arrogance and hatred.

Why is it that religous haters ignore the central tenants of thier faith? I am so sure that the prohet (imagination bless him) would be so thrilled that yet another hate filled bigot pretends to follow the teachings.

Fortunatly I don't have to worry that in some after life that i will have to listen to you whine about how you were decieved by the false teachers. Nope, dead is dead.

[Chaos]

Gasp!! I didn't think of that! All of a sudden, everything becomes clear...

Glad to have been of service.:D

[Aquila]

How can there be a book about the Holocaust if it didnt happen?

:D

Hello Parky,

I've seen your avatar and wondered if you were a freemason...?? Just to let you and everyone else know that there are some recent posts about the holocaust in the "Members Only" section of this forum, under the "Ask Me About Being A Freemason" thread.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=64460&page=4

[ddt]

My (sarcastic) point was that the Nazis didn´t keep a single nice, orderly, unified list with the name, place of death and cause of death of every single victim, each signed by the executioner, countersigned by the victims themselves and confirmed by a notary. That´s about the level of "evidence" which Holocaust deniers are demanding.

:dl:

Nominated.

But the scenario would fit in with the German renown for bureaucracy, wouldn't it? ;)

[Chaos]

*snip*
But the scenario would fit in with the German renown for bureaucracy, wouldn't it? ;)

Dude, I´ve lived in Germany for all my life, and I can tell you that, while we are really good at creating bureaucracies, we are really bad at creating *effective* bureaucracies.

But then, the real masters of bureaucracy can be found with the European Union. It is a sadly underappreciated fact that the Regulation on the Import of Toffee in European Union Member States is about 100 times as wordy as the Declaration of Independence, despite its slightly less world-shattering content.

[SDC]

Dude, I´ve lived in Germany for all my life, and I can tell you that, while we are really good at creating bureaucracies, we are really bad at creating *effective* bureaucracies.:)

But then, the real masters of bureaucracy can be found with the European Union. It is a sadly underappreciated fact that the Regulation on the Import of Toffee in European Union Member States is about 100 times as wordy as the Declaration of Independence, despite its slightly less world-shattering content.

Link? Please, honest. ETA: German or French welcome as well as English.

[ddt]

Dude, I´ve lived in Germany for all my life, and I can tell you that, while we are really good at creating bureaucracies, we are really bad at creating *effective* bureaucracies.

I didn't say anything about "effective", only about reputation. BTW, you forgot the stamps. A real bureaucracy needs not only signatures on the forms, but also stamps; many stamps :D.

My personal experience - I lived a couple of years in Germany in the early 90s - doesn't indicate that German bureaucracies are very ineffective. The only difference I noticed with the Dutch bureaucracies I have encountered were cultural - e.g., a pre-occupation with forms, witness the German term "formloses Schreiben" (a non-form letter) that is used every time when you can do something without using a form.

This post is a derail anyway, so let's do one story. One of the first things that I needed to do after moving was to apply with a public sector health insurer. The system of health insurance in Germany was quite familiar to me, as that system had been exported to Holland in 1940-1945 :). After some enquiry with my colleagues, I settled on a branch-specific insurer and phoned their local office. It turned out I was a couple of days too late - officially, I should have registered within a week - but they were happy to take my application over the phone. That sounded quite unbureaucratic to me. That's all I had to do to get registered for all social security things.

However, half a year later I got my "social security passport" in the mail, from a wholly different social security institution. It contained a spelling error in my name - whereas my Dutch surname ends in "-man" (indeed, man in English), it now ended with "-mann", as is to be expected with German names. I wrote a letter to complain my name had been Germanized and if they would fix it. I got a letter back: two pages full, with deep apologies and an explanation how it had come. And I hadn't even made my PhD yet :). I would have never expected such courtesy from a Dutch bureaucracy.

[mrbaracuda]

:dl:

Nominated.

For what?

we are really bad at creating *effective* bureaucracies.

Effective does not equal quick.

I got a letter back: two pages full, with deep apologies and an explanation how it had come. And I hadn't even made my PhD yet :). I would have never expected such courtesy from a Dutch bureaucracy.

That's how much we hate foreigners. Go ask the Turks who always complain we Germans don't do enough for their integration. I think it's time for an integration summit for migrants with Dutch heritage and roots.

[Aquila]

I'm not sure whether this is the best place to put this, but I've been having a conversation with some freemasons over in the "members only" part of this forum,

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=64460&page=4

and would like to bring it into the regular part of the forum, so everyone can see it.

Stimulated by that discussion, I recently found some websites which describe Hitler's obession with the occult, especially the German Thule society.

http://www.crystalinks.com/thule.html

and

http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-2/adolf-hitler.htm

and

http://www.shoaheducation.com/secret.html

So what do you guys think?

[SuperSquirrel]

Wow, I never thought that my question would get so many people worked up. I basically wanted a book to tell me what happened, and even have some survivor stories. Being part German myself I always got teased about it growing up once people heard that my great grandma came from German. Just thought it would be nice to learn something about it.

[timhau]

If the personal level is interesting, after Anne Frank, one might try Primo Levi's two memoirs (in the US, they're published as Survival in Auschwitz, and The Reawakening.

I found The Warsaw Diaries of Adam Czerniakov pretty interesting too.

In addition to these, I'd like to put in a recommendation for Fateless by Imre Kertész. It is fiction, but it's deeply rooted in the author's own experiences

[Beady]

Wow, I never thought that my question would get so many people worked up. I basically wanted a book to tell me what happened, and even have some survivor stories. Being part German myself I always got teased about it growing up once people heard that my great grandma came from German. Just thought it would be nice to learn something about it.

This place will teach you enough to keep you awake at night. I don't know where you are, but it's definitely worth a visit.

http://www.ushmm.org/

[MG1962]

I was going to start a new thread, but thought I would tack on here, and see what happens. I have a couple of questions

When do historians consider the Holocaust to have begun. I have seen 1933 and 1939 given as dates - while staying with the generally accepted figure of 5.7 million deaths

Is the figure for the Holocaust only include those who were subjected to the death camps and concentration camps - Or do the activites of the death squads and SS units in the Soviet Union get included?

[drkitten]

I was going to start a new thread, but thought I would tack on here, and see what happens. I have a couple of questions

When do historians consider the Holocaust to have begun. I have seen 1933 and 1939 given as dates - while staying with the generally accepted figure of 5.7 million deaths

The most common event I have seen for the "start" of the Holocaust was Krystallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass" (9-10 November 1938). Although there were of course many anti-Jewish events in the decade or so prior (for example, passage of the Nuremberg Laws), this was the first instance of large-scale, state-sponsored anti-Semitic violence. Before, most of the anti-Semitic policies involved economic and social limitations, now violence was on the table.

ETA: I.e. it doesn't matter that much, since there weren't many deaths due to anti-Semitic activity between 1933-1938. Even Krystallnacht itself resulted in fewer than 100 deaths (but was the first large-scale shipment to concentration camps). When you're looking at killing 5+ million, 100 more or less is unfortunately just a bit of statistical noise.





Is the figure for the Holocaust only include those who were subjected to the death camps and concentration camps - Or do the activites of the death squads and SS units in the Soviet Union get included?

The death squads and SS units definitely get included.

[MG1962]

The most common event I have seen for the "start" of the Holocaust was Krystallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass" (9-10 November 1938). Although there were of course many anti-Jewish events in the decade or so prior (for example, passage of the Nuremberg Laws), this was the first instance of large-scale, state-sponsored anti-Semitic violence. Before, most of the anti-Semitic policies involved economic and social limitations, now violence was on the table.

ETA: I.e. it doesn't matter that much, since there weren't many deaths due to anti-Semitic activity between 1933-1938. Even Krystallnacht itself resulted in fewer than 100 deaths (but was the first large-scale shipment to concentration camps). When you're looking at killing 5+ million, 100 more or less is unfortunately just a bit of statistical noise.

Okay thanks for that - I had always had the impression that after '33 Once the NAZIs had finished with the Communists and Catholics, they started on the Jews well before '38 in pretty big numbers.

The reason I asked about the death squads - most tallies I see that come to 5.7 million usually only attribute 1 million Jews in Russia, yet the death squads own paper work point to at least 1.1 million, plus SS activity which seems to have an agreed value of around 300,000. So that blows almost a 400,00 hole in the accepted value, which to me should be closer to the 6 million mark

[Oliver]

Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen is a good one. It examines the reasons ordinary Germans would do the things they did.


Oh, please educate us about the difference between Germans, Humans and Caucasians when it comes to genocide -aka- Holocaust... :rolleyes:

[ddt]

The reason I asked about the death squads - most tallies I see that come to 5.7 million usually only attribute 1 million Jews in Russia, yet the death squads own paper work point to at least 1.1 million, plus SS activity which seems to have an agreed value of around 300,000. So that blows almost a 400,00 hole in the accepted value, which to me should be closer to the 6 million mark
With the death squads, you mean the Einsatzgruppen, I presume?

The operated not only in Russia, but also in Poland and in the Baltic countries. The latter may not be included in the 1 million figure for Russia. This table (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_War_Against_the_JewsTable.png) from wiki with numbers from Dawidowicz suggests your 1 million figure for Russia does not include victims from Belarus or the Ukraine either (so Russia indeed means nowadays Russia or the then Russian RSFSR).

[drkitten]

The reason I asked about the death squads - most tallies I see that come to 5.7 million usually only attribute 1 million Jews in Russia, yet the death squads own paper work point to at least 1.1 million, plus SS activity which seems to have an agreed value of around 300,000. So that blows almost a 400,00 hole in the accepted value, which to me should be closer to the 6 million mark

My understanding -- and I am far from a Holocaust specialist -- is that many of the "Russian" deaths get lumped under the Polish category when you do the overall deaths by nationality, as they were Polish refugees. The spot at which the SS would report your death is not necessarily the same as the spot where you had lived prior to the war....

[Ian Osborne]

The most common event I have seen for the "start" of the Holocaust was Krystallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass" (9-10 November 1938).

I would have suggested 20th January 1942, after The Wannsee Conference. It was then the Nazis' systematic persecution and violence turned into the outright genocide which defined the Holocaust.

[MG1962]

Thanks ddt and drkitten - both explanations make sense. When I think of Russia I think of the whole Soviet Union - Clearly this was why the numbers did not add up

[MaGZ]

I was going to start a new thread, but thought I would tack on here, and see what happens. I have a couple of questions

When do historians consider the Holocaust to have begun. I have seen 1933 and 1939 given as dates - while staying with the generally accepted figure of 5.7 million deaths

Is the figure for the Holocaust only include those who were subjected to the death camps and concentration camps - Or do the activites of the death squads and SS units in the Soviet Union get included?

The Holocaust began around 1970.

Before that there was no reference to it in any dictionary or encyclopedia.

[MaGZ]

The most common event I have seen for the "start" of the Holocaust was Krystallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass" (9-10 November 1938). Although there were of course many anti-Jewish events in the decade or so prior (for example, passage of the Nuremberg Laws), this was the first instance of large-scale, state-sponsored anti-Semitic violence. Before, most of the anti-Semitic policies involved economic and social limitations, now violence was on the table.

ETA: I.e. it doesn't matter that much, since there weren't many deaths due to anti-Semitic activity between 1933-1938. Even Krystallnacht itself resulted in fewer than 100 deaths (but was the first large-scale shipment to concentration camps). When you're looking at killing 5+ million, 100 more or less is unfortunately just a bit of statistical noise.

The death squads and SS units definitely get included.

Krystallnacht was a one time thing. The German people were angry over the murder of their ambassador in Paris by a Jew assassin. Modern history today overlooks this fact. Hitler intervened to stop the attacks on Jewish shops.

[bruto]

Oh, please educate us about the difference between Germans, Humans and Caucasians when it comes to genocide -aka- Holocaust... :rolleyes:Presumably you mean that it could happen to anybody, and that genocide is not unique to Germans. True enough, but in this case the holocaust in question is not being discussed in the abstract, but as a particular event that occurred. Since the holocaust in question was perpetrated by Germans, it does not seem particularly odd or eye-rollingly inappropriate for an author to discuss how the relevant Germans came to accept and participate in it.

It may be true that the factors that lead people to accept and participate in genocide are universal, but the instances of genocide are not. To dismiss the idea of discussing them at the particular level seems short-sighted. Of course, the book in question may or may not be any good - I haven't read it - but I don't see why that should disqualify the idea of analyzing the holocaust in context.

[drkitten]

Krystallnacht was a one time thing. The German people were angry over the murder of their ambassador in Paris by a Jew assassin. Modern history today overlooks this fact. Hitler intervened to stop the attacks on Jewish shops.

... according to the convicted liar David Irving; the proof was amply demonstrated in H.M. courts that, in fact, Hitler did not intervene to stop the attacks. Actually, he encouraged them by demanding that the police NOT intervene in the attacks except in cases of arson where Aryan-owned property might be at risk.

Basically, every sentence in your post above, MaGZ, is a lie. I know this. You know this. The regular readers of this forum know this. But just on the off chance that a casual reader drifts in, I thought I would point out yet another deliberate untruth by a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier.

[mrbaracuda]

the NAZIs

Sorry, what are NAZIs? I only know Nazis.

[Gregory]

The Holocaust began around 1970.

Before that there was no reference to it in any dictionary or encyclopedia.

How often do you think encyclopedias and dictionaries are updated, MaGZ? The revised fourteenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, for example, was published from 1933–1973. So ... yes. The first reference to the Holocaust in that encyclopedia would have had to have been in the 1970's. Proving ...?

Besides, so what? There were many, many books on the subject prior to 1970. What makes encyclopedias and dictionaries so special?

[ddt]

The Holocaust began around 1970.
Ah, the resident Holocaust denier comes again with his lies.

Here is the truth about the Holocaust, from the horse's poultry farmer's mouth:

7_XS3Xra0Xs

The October 4, 1943, Posen/Poznan speech.

[abenja1]

The Holocaust began around 1970.

Before that there was no reference to it in any dictionary or encyclopedia.

So MAGZ (the coward) you would like to get off topic? Okay, I shall too. You have yet to answer my question: Do you think it is normal to deny historically proven facts?

[abenja1]

All of the Holocaust books should be in the "Fiction" section of the library.

Anyone with the name Sunni Man should be put into the "Idiot" section of a human databse.

[a_unique_person]

Oh, please educate us about the difference between Germans, Humans and Caucasians when it comes to genocide -aka- Holocaust... :rolleyes:

They are no different.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/06/28/1214472835128.html



'IS IT possible for a photograph to change the world?" muses Errol Morris at the beginning of Standard Operating Procedure, his film about the soldiers convicted of torturing prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It is four years since those photographs of near-naked men with bags over their heads — one on the end of a leash, one standing on a box with wires attached to him — were released into the world, but nobody who saw them will forget them easily. They were brutal and sordid. Those photographs, says Morris, "changed the war in Iraq and changed America's image of itself".

[Oliver]

Presumably you mean that it could happen to anybody, and that genocide is not unique to Germans. True enough, but in this case the holocaust in question is not being discussed in the abstract, but as a particular event that occurred. Since the holocaust in question was perpetrated by Germans, it does not seem particularly odd or eye-rollingly inappropriate for an author to discuss how the relevant Germans came to accept and participate in it.

It may be true that the factors that lead people to accept and participate in genocide are universal, but the instances of genocide are not. To dismiss the idea of discussing them at the particular level seems short-sighted. Of course, the book in question may or may not be any good - I haven't read it - but I don't see why that should disqualify the idea of analyzing the holocaust in context.


Well - but then I should add that Hitler grew up under an openly anti-semitic regime in Austria, that while rumors existed, most of Germanies Public didn't see what's actually happening in their name and that Jewish People surely weren't the only target for the Nazis.

So I assume it's rather a "Conservatives -vs- Liberals" issue. Liberals are more tolerant by their very mental nature.

[gtc]

The Holocaust began around 1970.

Before that there was no reference to it in any dictionary or encyclopedia.

The Dictionary in Microsoft Word didn't recognise the word internet until around the turn of the century. It didn't mean that it didn't exist.

[bruto]

Well - but then I should add that Hitler grew up under an openly anti-semitic regime in Austria, that while rumors existed, most of Germanies Public didn't see what's actually happening in their name and that Jewish People surely weren't the only target for the Nazis.

So I assume it's rather a "Conservatives -vs- Liberals" issue. Liberals are more tolerant by their very mental nature.I'm not sure why what you say, true or not, is relevant to the question of whether or not a study of the factors that led to the acceptance of, and participation in, Nazi policies by the Germans should discuss the Germans. This is true even if others participated, and even if Hitler was born in Austria, and even if he and his henchmen borrowed their ideas from somewhere else. Other studies of other things might well refer to other subjects, but if the book is about what the Germans did, then I don't see why its subjects would not be the Germans! My argument is not to the question of whether or not the book is any good or its conclusions and arguments good or bad, but whether or not it is ridiculous (as you implied) to discuss the Germans when discussing the holocaust. The conservative/liberal issue makes no sense at all to me in this context.

[ddt]

Well - but then I should add that Hitler grew up under an openly anti-semitic regime in Austria, that while rumors existed, most of Germanies Public didn't see what's actually happening in their name and that Jewish People surely weren't the only target for the Nazis.

IIRC, Goldhagen's book tried somehow to prove that Germans were inherently more evil than others, and it has been heavily criticized for it - that is a ludicrous idea. But I haven't read the book (yet).

There may of course have been some traits in German culture, like stronger obedience to superiors than in other Western European countries, that have somewhat eased the Nazi's goals. But overall, the Nazis have tried to keep the Endlösung out of the sight of the common German, as Himmler also said in his Poznan speech (see my previous post). That is, enough out of sight that who wanted to close their eyes could close their eyes and their minds as to the fate of their fellow citizens who happened to be Jewish.

On the other hand, those common soldiers who were drafted into participating were quite carefully immersed into a gradual dehumanizing of their (future) victims.

As to Austria: There was no openly anti-semitic government. There was quite open anti-semitism in Vienna at the time that Hitler tried to get into art school there, though, and some of his most fanatic followers were from Austria. There was a reason that the top Nazis in Holland, one of the few countries without an anti-semitic tradition to speak of, were Austrians.

As to other victims: yes, the Nazis persecuted and murdered many other people. Communists, socialists, Jehova witnesses, parts of the clergy ("Bekennende Kirche"), Roma and Sinti (aka gypsies), Slavs. Next to the 3 million Jewish Poles, also 3 million non-Jewish Poles were murdered, everyone who was considered an "intellectual", which boiled down to having a high school diploma. Yes, they're often forgotten, and the term "Holocaust" is mostly only applied to the Endlösung of the Jews. But what's your point?



So I assume it's rather a "Conservatives -vs- Liberals" issue. Liberals are more tolerant by their very mental nature.
I don't see the relevance to the rest of your post. Could you expand?

[SDC]

Well - but then I should add that Hitler grew up under an openly anti-semitic regime in Austria, that while rumors existed, most of Germanies Public didn't see what's actually happening in their name and that Jewish People surely weren't the only target for the Nazis.

So I assume it's rather a "Conservatives -vs- Liberals" issue. Liberals are more tolerant by their very mental nature.


Don't do this, Oliver. Don't go there. (The bolded part.) Germany as a whole was deeply involved in the Holocaust.

ETA: by which I mean, don't do this damage to what is left of your reputation around here. You are certainly entitled to say anything you like.

[Nick Terry]

Postwar, 60% of the German population admitted to knowing something of what was going on.

For this and much more detail, read the excellent recent work by Bernward Doerner, Die Deutschen und der Holocaust, which covers just about every angle of the 'what did they know' question. That certainly goes for German-speakers like Oliver.

[-=Vagrant=-]

Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen is a good one. It examines the reasons ordinary Germans would do the things they did.

Seconded. I'm reading it now. Its a real eye-opener on how many levels the German society was antisemitic.

[mrbaracuda]

"The Night of Broken Glass" [...] was the first instance of large-scale, state-sponsored anti-Semitic violence.

Your evidence? It's the first time I hear about it being a state-sponsored event. The recommended book I am reading does not concur; quite the opposite: since the property destroyed and stolen had to be compensated for by German insurance firms it was a heavy burden on them. I remember the book quoting Göbbels saying that the windows which were destroyed were also part of the Reich.

The NSDAP turnt a blind eye to it if anything and made their dislike for these spontanteous actions clear, especially the industrials. The party and industrials weren't at all happy about uncontrollable situations like this and were in favour of a controlled approach on how to handle the Jews.

The only thing that could fall under the state-sponsored category is that they didn't pursue murder of Jews much, although they pursued rapists, which is an interesting nuance to note.

They also seem to have muzzled Göbbels quite a fair bit, who is made out to be the one mainly responsible for this culmination as part of a power grab.


When do historians consider the Holocaust to have begun. I have seen 1933 and 1939 given as dates - while staying with the generally accepted figure of 5.7 million deaths

Depends on whether or not you want to include the preparations, ie the laws targeting Jews, which started as early as 1933 if I am not mistaken.

[Chaos]

Your evidence? It's the first time I hear about it being a state-sponsored event. The recommended book I am reading does not concur; quite the opposite: since the property destroyed and stolen had to be compensated for by German insurance firms it was a heavy burden on them. I remember the book quoting Göbbels saying that the windows which were destroyed were also part of the Reich.*snip*

In 1990, on their 100th anniversary, German insurance company Allianz (you´ve probably heard of them) hired a historian to write an account of their involvement in and conduct during the Nazi regime (Allianz was already known, among other things, to have insured several forced labour concentration camps). I read that account a couple of years ago; IIRC on the Reichskristallnacht and insurances it said more or less the following:

Insurance companies initally refused to pay any damages, as building and household insurance generally excluded damage caused by internal unrest, which the Reichskristallnacht was (or would be if it had been spontaneous).
However, the Nazi powers-that-be (I don´t recall who exactly) expressly forbade this, stating that in the Third Reich, there was by definition no internal unrest - in fact the jews, they said, had been the target of "the elemental force of the people´s fury" ("elementarer Volkszorn" I think was the term they used), and thus was covered by the clause concerning elemental damages (which IIRC usually covers flooding, landslides, avalances and such).
Due to this, insurances were forced to pay all damages of people who had bought coverage for elemental damage - and in case of their jewish customers, those payments were immediately confiscated to pay the fines imposed on the jews for "causing" the Reichskristallnacht.

So, insurance bottom line is: those non-jews smart enough to take elemental damage coverage didn´t suffer financial damage from the Reichskristallnacht, the Nazis soaked those jews who had such coverage, and insurance companies paid for it. But don´t cry for insurance companies - Allianz, at least, made good money cheaply buying "aryanized" property throughout the Nazi regime.

[mrbaracuda]

Yea that's also covered. Even the term Volkszorn I think. Can't remember it being a case of natural disaster though.

[ddt]

Your evidence? It's the first time I hear about it being a state-sponsored event.
I haven't heard other than that it wasn't only state-sponsored but state-initiated. The German wiki page (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novemberpogrome_1938) mentions:
Die Täter waren Angehörige von SA und SS. Sie traten in Zivilkleidung auf, um wie normale Bürger zu wirken und die übrige Bevölkerung zum „Volkszorn” wegen des Attentats in Paris aufzuhetzen
In English: The perpetrators were SA and SS men. They wore civil clothes in order to pose as normal citizens and to incite the rest of the population into "Volkszorn" for the assassination in Paris.

I'm sure others will be able to quote real authoritative sources :)


The only thing that could fall under the state-sponsored category is that they didn't pursue murder of Jews much, although they pursued rapists, which is an interesting nuance to note.
That's logical. The Nazis pursued a policy of racial segregation. You don't want to have some half-Jews as result of such a pogrom, do you? :rolleyes:

[Oliver]

As to Austria: There was no openly anti-semitic government.


Let me rephrase that:

Lueger was known for his antisemitism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism) and was an admirer of Édouard Drumont (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Drumont). Decades later, Adolf Hitler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler) saw him as an inspiration for his own virulent hatred of anything Jewish. Lueger advocated racist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racist) policies against all non-German speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary). Léon Poliakov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Poliakov) wrote in The History of Anti-Semitism:
It soon became apparent that especially in Vienna any political group that wanted to appeal to the artisans had no chance of success without an anti-Semitic platform. [...] It was at that time that a well-known phrase was coined in Vienna: "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools." The situation was exploited by the Catholic politician Karl Lueger, the leader of Austrian Christian-Social party with a program identical to that of the Berlin party of the same name led by Pastor Stoeker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Stoecker). In 1887, Lueger raised the banner of anti-Semitism. [...] However the enthusiastic tribute that Hitler paid him in Mein Kampf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf) does not seem justified, for the Jews did not suffer under his administration.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger#cite_note-0) *snip*
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger#Lueger_and_antisemitism

[Oliver]

Added for the German-skeaking readers:

Während seiner Zeit in Wien begann er sich immer mehr für die Politik zu interessieren und er bewunderte den Oberbürgermeister Wiens Dr. Lueger und seine Christlich Soziale Partei genauso wie das nationalistische Programm des Georg Ritter von Schönerer. Die beiden waren außerdem wie Hitler überzeugte Antisemiten (Judenhasser). Nach fünf Jahren verließ er die Reichshauptstadt weil ihm das Völkergemisch aus Tschechen, Polen, Ungarn, Ruthenen, Serben, Kroaten und Juden zuwider wurde. Der Gedanke daran für dieses Land einmal kämpfen zu müssen ließ es ihm ratsam erscheinen Wien zu verlassen und nach München zu gehen.

http://www.abipur.de/hausaufgaben/neu/detail/stat/231851218.html

[SDC]

If I recall correctly, Lueger is most famous (nowadays) for the statement that he would decide who was a Jew. This meant that he, as Mayor of Vienna, would decide who would be the target of anti-semitism.

However, last I checked, Vienna was not the entire Habsburg Empire. Look at a map. And the emperor (Franz Josef) refused to acknowledge Lueger for many years over the issue of anti-semitism. Not that the emperor was a liberal; but he had his own favorite Jews.

Look, what is the point here? Yes, there was a lot of popular and political anti-semitism in the Habsburg Empire, where Hitler was born and raised. But it was pretty endemic throughout Europe. Is Oliver trying to say the Austrians did it, but not the Germans? I'm a little puzzled. I can only assume that Oliver is trying to pretend, counter to Nick Terry's fact-based post above, the Germans were unaware of the Holocaust, mostly.

Eh? Is that the point? Is there a point?

[Oliver]

If I recall correctly, Lueger is most famous (nowadays) for the statement that he would decide who was a Jew. This meant that he, as Mayor of Vienna, would decide who would be the target of anti-semitism.

However, last I checked, Vienna was not the entire Habsburg Empire. Look at a map. And the emperor (Franz Josef) refused to acknowledge Lueger for many years over the issue of anti-semitism. Not that the emperor was a liberal; but he had his own favorite Jews.

Look, what is the point here? Yes, there was a lot of popular and political anti-semitism in the Habsburg Empire, where Hitler was born and raised. But it was pretty endemic throughout Europe. Is Oliver trying to say the Austrians did it, but not the Germans? I'm a little puzzled. I can only assume that Oliver is trying to pretend, counter to Nick Terry's fact-based post above, the Germans were unaware of the Holocaust, mostly.

Eh? Is that the point? Is there a point?


Nope. While Anti-Semitism was popular throughout Europe during this time, Hitler most probably got it from local Anti-Semitism, namely Austrian Press and Politics. ... Caucasians, so to speak ... ;)

[SDC]

Well, that's just a historical truism; Hitler learned his anti-semitism in prewar Vienna, in a time when open political anti-semitism was gaining increased strength throughout Europe. No points for knowing that, or one point at most.

[Oliver]

Well, that's just a historical truism; Hitler learned his anti-semitism in prewar Vienna, in a time when open political anti-semitism was gaining increased strength throughout Europe. No points for knowing that, or one point at most.


Unfortunately - it isn't well known that Austrian History mainly coined Hitlers agenda. Being German, I acknowledged that quite some time after I left school were they didn't tell anything about Anti-Semitism outside Germany in the early "nineteen hundreds"...

And it wasn't meant as "a point for me" - it was meant to mention it for those who didn't know this as well.

[mrbaracuda]

I haven't heard other than that it wasn't only state-sponsored but state-initiated.

I'm sure others will be able to quote real authoritative sources :)

Hm, I had a look at the German Museum of History's website and their "Lebendiges Museum Online", LEMO ("Living Online Museum") and it's not very clear. It mentions leaders of the NSDAP were celebrating the anniversary of the Hitler-Putsch in Munich and the article written by a contemporary witness, a journalist living in Berlin, says the directive for the pogrom came from Göbbels, so it seems it supports my notion and comes down to the definition of state (sponsored) and whether or not Göbbels had a run for power by initiating the pogrom without the others (Hitler, Göring, Himmler) agreeing or even knowing. The use of, or that it was a majority of SA-men alone and Göbbels inciting them to do so does not mean to me it was state sponsored; with the aforementioned outcome described by me I'd rather say it was state sanctioned, but not actively supported. Hm, tough one. ddt, know where I could listen to speeches by Göbbels; preferrably the one before the 9th/10th?

Oh, links: http://www.dhm.de/lemo/forum/kollektives_gedaechtnis/070/index.html http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/antisemitismus/kristallnacht/index.html

[SDC]

One thing that always baffles me is that holocaust deniers, especially, seem to avoid religiously the Polish testimonies about the holocaust. This includes non-Jewish Poles who were witnesses, including translated into English (Borowski, "This Way for the Gas," or Nalkowska, "Medallions," to include a couple of collections of short pieces published in cheap Penguin eds.), or even Polish-language sources, whether translated or not, whether by Jews or not (I am reading Vogler's "Wstep do fizjologji strachu," recently translated/ published as "Introduction to the Physiology of Fear," I think. That's the exact translation, anyhow). Approximately half of the Jews killed were Polish citizens; another couple of million of non-Jewish Poles died in the war due to German action, military or operations against the civilian population. The main extermination camps were all in occupied Poland as well, and most of the Western European Jews (France, Low Countries) were deported and killed there.

Frankly speaking, I assume this failure to pay attention to Polish sources is a transfer of anti-Polish prejudice. Reading deniers, one would think that there was no such place as Poland. Here is a question for German readers: are Polish holocaust testimonies being translated or read in Germany? (I honestly don't believe many non-Poles learn Polish. I only learned because I'm a language nut and had already studied Russian, which is closely related.)

[ddt]

It mentions leaders of the NSDAP were celebrating the anniversary of the Hitler-Putsch in Munich and the article written by a contemporary witness, a journalist living in Berlin, says the directive for the pogrom came from Göbbels,
I found a couple of other sites with detailed accounts. HolocaustResearchProject (http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/kristallnacht.html) mentions the dinner Hitler had with the Nazi-top and that he left; however, before Hitler left, he briefly conferred with Goebbels:
Upon receiving the news, Hitler conferred in private with Joseph Goebbels, and then left the dinner party without giving his planned speech. Goebbels immediately took the floor in his stead and after announcing the death of Vom Rath, (which he of course blamed on a Pan-Jewish conspiracy), he went on to say that anti-Jewish demonstrations (pogroms) although not organized by the Nazi Party "would not be hampered."

While Goebbels made the case for the death of Vom Rath as the catalyst for the pogrom, plans were already in place, and orders given to unleash terror on the streets:
and then goes on to quote a directive from the previous day.

Holocaust-History (http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/kristallnacht.shtml) also mentions Hitler leaving the dinner party and going to his hotel room:
The timeline of events that night supports the centrality of the Nazi regime’s and Hitler’s active role in the pogrom. Hitler’s actual role in the events is shrouded in shadows, lack of primary documentation, and the contradictory self-serving statements made later by those who had been around him. However, some things can be safely asserted. After slipping out of the dinner meeting and foregoing his usual speech, Hitler returned to his hotel room, where he was most likely kept informed of the events as they progressed.
and then cites various instructions given by Müller, Heydrich and Hess to local authorities, and concludes
It is unthinkable that these men would have transmitted these instructions without authorization from Hitler.
From this, it seems that the absence of Hitler was more one of not being particularly interested in the detailed planning than that he didn't know about what happened.


The use of, or that it was a majority of SA-men alone and Göbbels inciting them to do so does not mean to me it was state sponsored; with the aforementioned outcome described by me I'd rather say it was state sanctioned, but not actively supported. Hm, tough one.
From these sources, I conclude that it wasn't just Goebbels and a couple of fanatical Gauleiter and SA-men who instigated it, but the whole state apparatus was involved in the planning, with some "plausible deniability" built-in to not make it look like that.


ddt, know where I could listen to speeches by Göbbels; preferrably the one before the 9th/10th?
I found this site (http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goebmain.htm) with a lot of Goebbels speeches transcribed and translated in English. It doesn't have the one you ask for, but then it wasn't a public (radio) speech but only delivered in private for a (small) circle of top-Nazis (small in comparison to the whole population; I gather that at least all Gauleiter were present, so the dinner party must have run into the tens of people present).

PS. I notice you spell Goebbels as Göbbels. I know both are equivalent in German, but nearly all source use the 'oe' spelling. Do you know why?

ETA. In the hands of Holocaust deniers, questions like "did Hitler authorize X" are just the prelude to trying to deny that X happened. Think of Irving's quest to find an instruction from Hitler himself for the Endlösung. So, while your question, mrbaracuda, as to who ordered what during the Reichskristallnacht, is interesting, I should also give out the warning: Feind hört mit! :)

[Childlike Empress]

PS. I notice you spell Goebbels as Göbbels. I know both are equivalent in German, but nearly all source use the 'oe' spelling. Do you know why?


Goebbels was from Rheydt, today part of Mönchengladbach, ~15 km away from the dutch border. In that region, Niederrhein, it's not unusual that names of people and cities are spelled without Umlaut. Think of Uerdingen, Moers, Kevelaer, Voerde etc.

[drkitten]

the article written by a contemporary witness, a journalist living in Berlin, says the directive for the pogrom came from Göbbels, so it seems it supports my notion and comes down to the definition of state (sponsored) and whether or not Göbbels had a run for power by initiating the pogrom without the others (Hitler, Göring, Himmler) agreeing or even knowing.

Except that Goebbels' diaries specificalliy mention Hitler's support for his actions. No credible historian suggests that Goebbels acted in this instance without Hitler's direct support, even if there's not a written order. And there is a written order, originating from Hitler, that the police are not supposed to interfere except in cases of arson (where Aryan-owned property might be at risk).


The use of, or that it was a majority of SA-men alone and Göbbels inciting them to do so does not mean to me it was state sponsored;

Why do you assume Goebbels was acting without the knowledge and consent of Hitler?

[drkitten]

PS. I notice you spell Goebbels as Göbbels. I know both are equivalent in German, but nearly all source use the 'oe' spelling. Do you know why?

Well, in my cases, it's because my keyboard lacks an o-umlaut key.

[Childlike Empress]

Well, in my cases, it's because my keyboard lacks an o-umlaut key.


In this case you don't have to worry - Goebbels was his real name.

[mrbaracuda]

From these sources, I conclude that it wasn't just Goebbels and a couple of fanatical Gauleiter and SA-men who instigated it, but the whole state apparatus was involved in the planning, with some "plausible deniability" built-in to not make it look like that.

Let's recap the situation. Grynszpan shoots vom Rath on the 8th, who dies two days later. On the 8th according to your 2nd link Goebbels orders news papers to spread the news and first small riots ensue. On the evening of the 9th news that vom Rath died reach Hitler and Goebbels, who are celebrating the Putsch's anniversary, Hitler leaves early but agrees with Goebbels that no action against rioters should be taken in the future in case more riots break out. Goebbels then talks to the Gauleiters and others who were present at the celebration and most likely the Gauleiters relay the information to SA-men in their Gaus.

In the book by Hilberg it says that Himmler, who is in a meeting, receives word from his chief of staff Wolff at about 11:15 PM and Himmler arrives at his office at around 1:00 PM on the night of the riots. Himmler writes down his feelings about the riots. Although he mildly condemns Goebbels' attitude and calls this an airheaded attitude, he's indifferent to the riots themselves but dispatches orders to SS and police to protect 'Aryan property' and to get 20.000 Jews for the concentration camps. Before calling Goebbels' attitude 'airheaded', he also mentions he's been noticing an aspiration in Goebbels to assume more power. The book mentions a couple of pages earlier that the NSDAP itself, except for the SS, didn't serve any important functions regarding the "Jewish question" anymore, and especially not the SA's brownshirts and the Ministry of Propaganda. Eventually Himmler notes that when he telephoned with the 'Führer', he had the impression Hitler didn't know about the situation/procedure.

The Minister for Economic Affairs Funk asks Goebbels on the telephone whether or not Goebbels is crazy and that he will stop working if the mess does not cease after mentioning the bad foreign relations.

Göring doesn't know anything about the riots until he arrives in Berlin on the 10th, after travelling by train. He immediately contacts Hitler after knowing about what took place while he was on his way to Berlin and complains about the riots and Goebbels. He also calls a meeting on the same day, where Goebbels, Hitler and others are present. Hitler apologizes mildly to Göring for Goebbels, but says this kind of action shouldn't repeat itself. In this meeting, Goebbels, to Göring's surprise, proposes the 1 billion RM the Jews should pay.

The book goes on with Göring complaining more and eventually that Goebbels was 'beaten', his hopes were shattered, his lust for power not settled and that from now on, in the book, the reader won't hear much more about Goebbels in regards to the Holocaust.

I found this site (http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goebmain.htm) with a lot of Goebbels speeches transcribed and translated in English.

Thanks, I'll have a look.

PS. I notice you spell Goebbels as Göbbels. I know both are equivalent in German, but nearly all source use the 'oe' spelling. Do you know why?

The version with ö was me being lazy. Well, that and the fact I don't see the name itself so often. When you just hear it a lot and remember it from hearing you just do the Umlaut I guess. :D


ETA. In the hands of Holocaust deniers, questions like "did Hitler authorize X" are just the prelude to trying to deny that X happened. Think of Irving's quest to find an instruction from Hitler himself for the Endlösung. So, while your question, mrbaracuda, as to who ordered what during the Reichskristallnacht, is interesting, I should also give out the warning: Feind hört mit! :)

While having spend only very little time on Irving, I am surprised you'd bring this up. It's not a matter of "did Hitler authorize X" to deny that X happened, but whether or not it was state sponsored, and I still don't think it was state sponsored but a power grab by Goebbels after Hitler mentioning the rage of the people should freely flow. I think state sanctioned (in the process and afterwards) is more appropriate to use in this context than state sponsored.


From these sources, I conclude that it wasn't just Goebbels and a couple of fanatical Gauleiter and SA-men who instigated it, but the whole state apparatus was involved in the planning, with some "plausible deniability" built-in to not make it look like that.

I find it rather strange to speak of a state sponsored action when the head of police and Ministry of the Interior and the heads of Economics (Göring, Himmler and Funk; Hitler aside, I also think he at least expected the 'Volkszorn' to come) don't know about an event of this size. Thus, speaking of the 'whole state apparatus' being involed is something I don't agree with and I think it was just that - a power grab by Goebbels, with Hitler uttering words he didn't expect to cause an event of this magnitude, while eventually agreeing. Everyone, Himmler, Göbbels, Hilter and Funk, agreed with the outburst of what they called 'Volkszorn', even if instigated by SA-men, but they had worked hard (strange to write this in this context :() to solve the 'Jewish question' in a controllable and more legal way.

[mrbaracuda]

Except that Goebbels' diaries specificalliy mention Hitler's support for his actions.

I don't know how much you can trust Goebbels' diaries. :D

And there is a written order, originating from Hitler, that the police are not supposed to interfere except in cases of arson (where Aryan-owned property might be at risk).

Dating?

No credible historian suggests that Goebbels acted in this instance without Hitler's direct support, even if there's not a written order.
Why do you assume Goebbels was acting without the knowledge and consent of Hitler?

I am not, but I think Hitler was not expecting something of this magnitude and still favoured a controllable solution while at the same time having sympathy for an 'eruption of the people'.

[Zenskeptical]

The only problem I have with Holocaust Literature is Night.

The book should not be forced upon all 10th grade english students. It has nor ever will contribute anything to do with the english language or literature. I don't get why they just don't make people read it in a history class?

[Childlike Empress]

mrbaracuda, if you google for goebbels reden und aufsätze you'll find some extensive compilations hosted mostly on neo-nazi sites. While it's quite an interesting and gruesome read, unfortunately the documents i've collected start at new years eve 1939.

[mrbaracuda]

I forgot to mention how strange it was to read the following, coming from a The Netherlandserian (:D):

I should also give out the warning: Feind hört mit! :)

Der Feind kann mich doch mal. ;) Ist ja nicht so, als hätte Hitler bis auf den wirtschaftlichen Aspekt gerade ein großes Problem mit der Reichskristallnacht gehabt. :p

[drkitten]

I don't know how much you can trust Goebbels' diaries. :D



Um,.... yeah.


Dating?

From the night of Krystallnacht, about an hour or so into it (IIRC). Hitler specifically ordered the police to be "withdrawn" and not to interfere. This is one of the major points that came up at the Irving trial, so if you want to see the full documentary chain, you can either check out the transcripts or the summarized expert report under the title "Lying about Hitler."



I am not, but I think Hitler was not expecting something of this magnitude

Well, there's no evidence to support this.


and still favoured a controllable solution

What does "controllable solution" mean in this context? Hitler deliberately acted to foster the pogram against Jews, believing (correctly) that it wouldn't result in the destruction of universe or anything like that. In that sense, he created a "controllable solution"; the only people killed and property damaged, by and large, were Jewish. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether or not the pogram itself was state-sponsored.

while at the same time having sympathy for an 'eruption of the people'.

An "eruption" that the state-operated media was at pains to create and the state-operated law enforcement was at pains to worsen? Sounds pretty state-sponsored to me.


The fact that Goebbels took this action as part of his duties as minister of propaganda alone makes it state-sponsored, even if he did it without Hitler's direct order. (That's part of how governments have to work; lower-level functionaries are part of the state, too.) Hitler's actions in support of the pogram are sufficient to demonstrate that it was supported at the very highest level.

Let me turn it around, then. What would it take to prove to you that Krystallnacht was indeed state-sponsored? I fear we're wandering down the "oh, sure, there's an attested order over Hitler's signature, but I believe, totally without reason, that it was a post-war Israeli forgery" path of Holocaust denial.

[Hawthorne]

Saints and Villians by Denise Giardina is a good one...about the life of Deitrich Bonhoeffer's and his role in the assisination attempt on Hitler. Bonhoeffer was a minister who spoke out against Hitler and was executed for it.

[mrbaracuda]

What does "controllable solution" mean in this context?

Not having 'Aryan property' damaged by a wild and violent mob.

[SDC]

Sometimes one reads, or hears, a person saying, "Well, I would have resisted! I would have refused to be shot so quietly!" I just finished reading a story (probably based on personal experience) from Henryk Vogler's "Introduction to the Physiology of Fear" (in the Polish). "Czary w miasteczku" (Spells in the Small town), about the last night of a Jewish family waiting for murder or deportation the next day by the Germans. Viewpoint character is a young or youngish man, with a pregnant wife, and also included are the sickly mother, the strong minded mother in law, children... He thinks about flight, yes, but there is nowhere to run; perhaps he would survive (as Vogler did), but no one else in his family would -- old people, children, pregnant women would be killed without a second thought for potential usefulness. The town is surrounded by the German forces plus the Polish police. The mother in law says that about the best thing to do is to try and stay together and, at least, die as a family, and take some small comfort in the family relations.

Brutal story. Bitter tears. No one should assume that they would behave differently. Vogler himself survived seeing his family taken away (I believe to Belzec, one of the actual death camps, with several hundred thousand killed in 1942-43), and survived the labor camps, including even digging his own grave at one point -- the execution was stopped at the last moment because someone needed a work gang.

[SimonD]

National Socialism and the Religion of Nature by Robert A. Pois. Why the holocasut was inevitable in a Nazis State

The Book Theif By Markus Zusak. While it's a book based on true events, it is a good read on how "normal" people react to the States persecution of a people

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

One thing that always baffles me is that holocaust deniers, especially, seem to avoid religiously the Polish testimonies about the holocaust. This includes non-Jewish Poles who were witnesses, including translated into English (Borowski, "This Way for the Gas," or Nalkowska, "Medallions," to include a couple of collections of short pieces published in cheap Penguin eds.), or even Polish-language sources, whether translated or not, whether by Jews or not (I am reading Vogler's "Wstep do fizjologji strachu," recently translated/ published as "Introduction to the Physiology of Fear," I think. That's the exact translation, anyhow). Approximately half of the Jews killed were Polish citizens; another couple of million of non-Jewish Poles died in the war due to German action, military or operations against the civilian population. The main extermination camps were all in occupied Poland as well, and most of the Western European Jews (France, Low Countries) were deported and killed there.

Frankly speaking, I assume this failure to pay attention to Polish sources is a transfer of anti-Polish prejudice. Reading deniers, one would think that there was no such place as Poland. Here is a question for German readers: are Polish holocaust testimonies being translated or read in Germany? (I honestly don't believe many non-Poles learn Polish. I only learned because I'm a language nut and had already studied Russian, which is closely related.)

Zgadzam sie z panem w stu procentach. :) Kretyni co rozpowszechniaja te bzdury zupelnie zapominaja o tym ze oprocz Zydow, Polacy i ludzie o wielu innych narodowosciach takze cierpieli mocno z rak Hitlerowcow podczac okupacji.

Moj wlasny pradziadek byl zabity przez Niemcow a moja babcia i prababcia ledwo co przezyly Zaglade. Moja babcia do dzisiejszego dnia nienawidzi o tym rozmawiac; dopiero w tym roku znalazlam wywiad ktory zrobila dla amerykanskiej fundacjii i dokumenty o jej przezyciach. Po wielu latach, nareszcie sie dowiedzialam prawde o historii mojej rodziny.

Przeciez moja babcia zobaczyla Majdanek i Sztuthof na wlasne oczy i zdala swoje relacje. Malo to, same obozy istnieja do tego dnia. Ale ci warjaci nie uwierzyliby w oczywista prawde gdyby sam Hitler sie przyznal.

[mrbaracuda]

Hm, in the Polish you say, SDC. Hm, in the Polish you write, EeneyMinnieMoe. Maybe one of you wants to tell me what this one is about or can translate it roughly? :)

p212848xPzM

I know about 'Hava Nagila', but the rest a German can not comprehend. :(
You can find the lyrics written down for examplehere (http://www.rootwater.pl/index.php?mod=lyrics&nr=2) at the bottom.

[SDC]

MrB, I'm not going to translate Henryk Vogler's book or even the story. He's been translated into English and perhaps German, I suggest you look it up. His memoirs are well known in the field though published well after the war. Book is "Introduction to the Physiology of Fear," in English (the title is an exact translation of the Polish, for once), and the story I was referring to is "Czary w Miasteczku," which is pretty much "(Magical) Spells (or Charms) in the Small Town." Book is only 100-odd pages, story is 10-15.

Eeney etc is simply saying that he thinks I'm correct (I blush) and that members of his family were killed or barely survived the war. Grandmother saw Majdanek camp and Sztuthof (that's the Polish spelling, I forget the German), and provided story to an American foundation. (Doesn't say which.) Says that many non-Jews were killed as well, which is certainly true. I gather Eeney's family is Polish, not Jewish.

I don't understand the Hava Nagila reference, which is a Hebrew song. I don't use YouTube plugins because heaven only knows what might end up on my laptop, so I don't know what you meant to convey.

ETA: my mistake. It was translated into English as "Lessons in Fear," which is neither exact, nor as powerful as the original. So it goes. Amazon.de only lists an English translation, no German.

[mrbaracuda]

Urm, I am talking about the song I linked to in that youtube-box. Silly you! Pay more attention! :D

I am requesting a rough translation of this: http://www.rootwater.pl/index.php?mod=lyrics&nr=2 at the bottom. Last song.

If you don't mind. :)

[SDC]

Urm, I am talking about the song I linked to in that youtube-box. Silly you! Pay more attention! :D

I am requesting a rough translation of this: http://www.rootwater.pl/index.php?mod=lyrics&nr=2 at the bottom. Last song.

If you don't mind. :)

You want a translation from a Polish version of Havah Nagilah?? Sorry. I don't do songs or poetry; my soul is in prose.

If I understand correctly you are in Germany. My advice is to find a translation into German from the original Hebrew. Shouldn't be hard, except that transliterations of the title (as well as translations) will vary significantly.

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Sure thing.

"Matka mej matki kłamała, kłamała
Jej matka tak żyła, ty w ciszy żyj
Ojciec mej matki nie mówił nic
Oszczędzał jej bólu, oszczędzał jej krwi
Umarli, zdechli z nazwiskiem na –ski
Zmienieli na -ski, nazwiska na -ski
W ryj mi dawali za tę tajemnicę
W ryj mi dawali za oczy nie te
Na dół ulicą, pomiędzy światłami
Spotykam twe oczy genami cuchnące
Nie mów nic, a w ciszy przejdziemy bez znaku
Jesteśmy holo-, holo-, holo-wnukami"

means

The mother of my mother lied, lied
Her mother lived like that, you live in silence
The father of my mother didn't say anything
He was sparing her pain, sparing her blood
They died, died with a last name ending in "ski"
They changed it to "ski", last names ending in "ski"
They hit me for this secret
They hit me for the wrong eyes
On the bottom of the street, between the lights
I meet your eyes, gene-filled
Don't say anything, in the silence we'll pass without a sign/ word
We are holo-, holo-, holo- grandchildren

"Miriam, matko mojej matki, Miriam
Popiół twego ciała w ziemi od lat
Poli kibuci bronuje nieświadom
Że brona co wiosnę popiołów tnie płat
W dupie mam to, czy zarżnął cię Polak
Czy zarżnął cię Niemiec, Rosjanin czy Żyd
Matkę mą, córkę swą rzuciłaś przez mur
Ja twojej śmierci do dziś noszę ślad
Nie obrzezali mnie i tajemnica matki trwa
Córka ochrzczona, o ciszę wszystkich dbam
Polska – nienawiść, ejwa ve ejma
Nienawiść i strach"

means

Miriam, mother of my mother, Miriam
The ashes of your body have been in the ground for years
...the next two lines I'm not sure of, I'll get back to you on that...
[Profance term for I don't care] if you were murdered by a Pole,
Or if you were murdered by a German, a Russian or a Jew
My mother, your daughter, you threw over the wall
I wear a sign from your death to this day
They didn't circumcise me and my mother's secret lasts
My daughter's baptized, everyone's silence I'm careful for
Poland- hatred, [what "ejwa ve ejma" means, I don't know]
Hatred and fear

"Nigdy nie będę u siebie
Nigdzie nie będę u siebie
Nie przyznam się

Ma córko, zaśpiewaj, córeczko, zaśpiewaj…"

means

Phrase that roughly translates to "I'll never be at home here"
I'll never be at home here
I'll never admit to it

My daughter, sing, ["coreczko" diminutive of daughter, term of enderment], sing

[mrbaracuda]

Appreciated! :)
SDC, you're weird. :D

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

You're welcome.

I apologize to the OP for the derail.

My grandmother provided her story to the Shoah Foundation in California. I was absolutely astonished when I discovered it and will forever be thankful that, even though she never talked about it, she provided a record I'll be able to show future generations of my family.

All of my family is Polish gentile (as far as I know, at least) but they were persecuted in Nazi-occupied Poland almost as badly as the Jews and other "undesirables" were and if the Nazis had had their way, I would never be here.

[SDC]

No, I'm not weird.

Whatever that poem or song is, it isn't the original; "Hava Nagilah" is something like "Let us rejoice." This poem -- what EeneyMinnieMoe translated -- looks like someone's bitter commentary on what remains of Jewish life in Poland. For what it's worth, Hava Nagilah has been endlessly parodied, including the classic, "Have a nagilah,/ Have two nagilahs,/ Have 3 nagilahs,/ They're very small."

This is from Wikipedia, and should be checked, but it seems to fit:

TransliterationHebrew textEnglish translationHava nagilaהבה נגילהLet's rejoiceHava nagilaהבה נגילהLet's rejoiceHava nagila ve nis'mechaהבה נגילה ונשמחהLet's rejoice and be happy (repeat stanza once) Hava neranenahהבה נרננהLet's singHava neranenahהבה נרננהLet's singHava neranenah ve nis'mechaהבה נרננה ונשמחהLet's sing and be happy (repeat stanza once) Uru, uru achim!!עורו, עורו אחיםAwake, awake, brothers!Uru achim b'lev sameachעורו אחים בלב שמחAwake brothers with a happy heart (repeat line three times) Uru achim, uru achim!!עורו אחים, עורו אחיםAwake, brothers, awake, brothers!B'lev sameachבלב שמחWith a happy heart

ETA Sorry ...

[mrbaracuda]

It's okay. It was just a bit strange you still didn't get it. :D

[SDC]

Well, MrB, it's probably best that I don't get it, if I haven't gotten it yet. After all, as it is said in German (or so I have been told): "C'est la vie/ C'est la guerre/ C'est la pomme de terre." Such wisdom.