The “Auschwitz concentration camp personnel” database

http://en.truthaboutcamps.eu/

by caio1982 • 9 years ago

43 38 9 years ago

en.truthaboutcamps.eu

ffef• 9 years ago

I wonder if any point the Germans thought they had took it to far

From my reading on the subject, many Germans did. Some of them were intimidated into silence on the matter, while others acted in support of the genocide directly or indirectly.

Many Germans - whether or majority is up for debate - supported the Holocaust as they understood and/or admitted it to themselves at the time.

As an aside, your grammar is incorrect in your comment. I mean absolutely no offense by this and I'm hesitant to point it out, but if it were me I would want to be corrected. "had took" should be "had taken".

Cozumel• 9 years ago

You must be a Grammar Nazi because you're anti-semantic! :p

Y201K• 9 years ago

I don't doubt your intentions and it was nice of you to preface your correction with such reservation, but I gotta give a shout-out to descriptivism: if you can understand what's meant, maybe it's not incorrect!

xyzzy4• 9 years ago

People could think anything they want, but if they let those "we are taking things too far" opinions be known to others, they'd be removed from any position of government power at the very least.

dtien2• 9 years ago

There's a great movie that's worth a watch if you are interested in this history. It's a fictionalized ( and likely highly dramatized ) version of a real meeting[0] that took place between the SS leaders and German governmental types at the midway point of the War to discuss the "final solution" for the Jews.

But it does illustrate how regular men whether through self-interest, fear, bullying, or expediency will let themselves be talked into, or rationalize themselves into some truly horrific things by fanatical types.

I believe I caught it on Netflix or HBO[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(2001_film)

jacquesm5• 9 years ago

Why watch movies about the past when you can observe these things in real life all around you?

The biggest question in my head is where do these power types find the large numbers of people to execute their ill plans? It seems like someone is always ready to jump into the role of camp guard at the first opportunity.

vermontdevil• 9 years ago

If you visit Dachau, you might be surprised to learn that the camp is right in middle of the town.

When I visited, there was a story about some locals taking a peek over the wall and were apprehended. They were put in the camp for a month or so (going by memory now). After they came out, they refused to talk about it and told everyone else to stay away.

This was before the extermination of the Jews began though - maybe around 1935.

knz• 9 years ago

The Germans were certainly not universally behind the Nazi's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism

jdietrich• 9 years ago

Imagine you're living in Detroit in the 1970s. All around you, people are vilifying the Japanese car makers for ruining their livelihoods. Nobody would dare buy a Toyota or Honda, for fear of finding it burned out and being labelled a traitor. You might know that American manufacturing is inefficient, you might know that Japanese cars are of higher quality, you might know that your community is doomed, you might suspect that everyone around you knows it, but are you going to voice those concerns?

Multiply that by a hundred and you've got Nazi Germany. The country was humiliated and impoverished after the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar crisis and the Great Depression. Hitler promised food, jobs and pride, and he delivered on those promises. The Jews were just convenient scapegoat.

You might disagree with all sorts of things being done by the Nazis, but you can also see that Herr Schmidt next door has a job, that the children in the street have shoes, that people have a sense of hope and purposefulness. Kraft durch Freude gave you your first beach holiday, they put on plays at the town hall, they're teaching your daughter ballet. When the war is won, you'll get the brand new car you've been saving for, you'll have a beautiful new home in the suburbs, your son will be the first in your family to go to university.

Would you speak out, or would you turn a blind eye? Would you resist, or would you just go with the flow?

gwbas1c• 9 years ago

I don't get this. The link is titled The “Auschwitz concentration camp personnel” database, but it just appears to be a page that basically gives an opinion towards the holocaust that, to me, is somewhat obvious.

Where's the database?

bbarn3• 9 years ago

http://pamiec.pl/pa/form/60,Zaloga-SS-KL-Auschwitz.html

After clicking through a few links you can find it, it's tough because the content is repeated in several languages rather than via the commonly used "language switcher" UI we're all used to.

LyndsySimon6• 9 years ago

Under the "SS KL Auschwitz Garrison" link in the navbar, at the bottom of the page, there is a link to another site which seems to have a list of members of the SS garrison.

Direct link: http://pamiec.pl/pa/form/60,Zaloga-SS-KL-Auschwitz.html

Here's a document in English that appears to outline the project: http://truthaboutcamps.eu/th/zaloga-ss-kl-auschwitz/document...

bbarn3• 9 years ago

Look at the job titles from clicking around. You'll see nothing but things like "farmer", "bank clerk", "shop keeper", "businessman" after translating.

Food for thought, that you don't have to be the one pulling a trigger to be complicit in atrocities.

elcapitan4• 9 years ago

There's also a lot of people missing description though. Obviously, "professional sociopath" wasn't a job description they would have put in there, although it was probably quite characteristic for many of those "careers". I think they recycled a lot of criminals. The SS in general, while having started as a weird "aryan" elite group in the 30s, became a mercenary organization with divisions from all parts of the world later in the war. There were even muslim SS members.

bbarn3• 9 years ago

It was also full of draftees.

donquichotte• 9 years ago

Wow. After a quick glance at the database, it seems like many of the guys working at the KZ had little to no education. Many of the ones where there are photos look like they have some kind of mental handicap. I wonder whether some of the people who worked there were also taken advantage of.

elcapitan4• 9 years ago

Keep in mind that that's true for almost the entire population in the 30s and 40s. Large quantities of the population had no better education than primary school plus job training. In the 1950s, only 5% of Germans had Abitur (which is 13 years of school and required for studying), in the 70s it was still only 10%. Most likely even less in the other countries (Hungary, Romania) where many of the garrison workers came from.

owlee• 9 years ago

Great documentary about Treblinka, the death camp in which one-third of the killings occurred. It's not talked about very often, so it's refreshing to get an in-depth look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFq--lStmgs

artek• 9 years ago

The motivation behind publishing this database is interesting. It's a response to the western media using the term "Polish Death Camps", which enrages polish public. Personally I didn't think it was a big issue until I saw Obama use that term.

splawn• 9 years ago

flagged? why? Did the alt-riech get their feelies hurt?

gumby• 9 years ago

Not sure why this was flagged as it's a historical page, and in that sense no different from, say, the Atlas Obscura pages that make it to the HN front page from time to time.

The “Auschwitz concentration camp personnel” database

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