LOL. Urban is your space tonight. So let's see what you can do with it...
Why didn't the Jews resist?
- Thread starter butchersapron
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LOL. Urban is your space tonight. So let's see what you can do with it...
gorski
customised free radical
The Serbs, for instance, did, even in the concentration camps... See the Jasenovac story, for instance, where they went for an uprising and simply went for it, rather than wait for the "inevitable" with sheepish attitude and "stoicism" of slaves. The first free territory in EU was in Serbia, to the best of my "knowledge of history"... liberated by Tito's Partisans. Who, then, kept some sort of free territory ever since, tying many German divisions there, delaying the attack on CCCP, sabotaging the supply lines of the Third Reich etc. etc.
In general, some of the "wild and uncivilised" Eastern and Southern Europeans... Well, let's just say that the Westerners embraced or tolerated irrational authority of that sort much more easily than "them subhuman Slavs"...
Hmmm... The most civilised and cultured country at the time - Germany - went under with a whimper, by comparison to the others, who then suffered for it greatly...
And there are [even modern] studies [from Reich to Adorno and co.] showing that is not by an accident!
In general, some of the "wild and uncivilised" Eastern and Southern Europeans... Well, let's just say that the Westerners embraced or tolerated irrational authority of that sort much more easily than "them subhuman Slavs"...
Hmmm... The most civilised and cultured country at the time - Germany - went under with a whimper, by comparison to the others, who then suffered for it greatly...
And there are [even modern] studies [from Reich to Adorno and co.] showing that is not by an accident!
gorski
customised free radical
The question "What were you doing during the war, dad?" remains the big cleansing Q and the issues are only trashed out properly with a new generation arriving and inquiring, soberly. See Croatia and Bosnia etc. now.
The Germans had to go through it, too. There was no proper trashing of the issues, no proper debate and cleansing then, immediately after the war.
The first, unedited version of "Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus" [and other early works left to Humanity] by Wilhelm Reich and Adorno and co.'s "Authoritarian Personality" are excellent books to understand the times and places...
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Given that most of the work the einsatzgruppen did involved liquidating communities that were (until then) predominantly Jewish, your question is rather foolish, as is the seeming assumption that many Jews felt that they stood outside of the societies they lived in, and yet many Jews were nationalists of the nations they resided in, be that Poland, the Ukraine or any of the Baltic or eastern and central European states.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I'd hazard the opinion that at least part of that was to do with the strong ties between the Catholic church and the people (and the church's propagandising against helping the Jews), and that's been partially borne out by conversations I've had with the parents of British-Pole acquaintances.
Predominantly Jewish communities suggests otherwise to your argument. (i do understand the history)
Creating enclaves within the society is a pretty standard response for a religious/cultural group. It also lays those people wide open to a state response, and the propaganda that serves it.
Spion
I hear ya
Because most of the German resistance to the Nazis was before 1933? After that any ootential resistance to the nazis was unarmed and knew it stood little chance against the new state structures.
Most round ups of jews etc after 1933 wold have been in the course of military conquest. Civilians don't tend to take on armies too often.
There was the Warsaw resistance tho
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Almost a million Germans alone were interned for active resistance post-1933. And partisan units sprang up in every single place the Germans conquered - sometimes in enormous numbers (Yugoslavia for example).
Honest question, I am not an historian, and I don't know the answer.
How did British Servicemen behave when in Japanese camps for PoWs? Now I understand that there were no killings as in Germany's camps, but I do understand that in some camps the conditions were really quite brutal and the closest match I can think of in terms of horror, degredation and suffering within a closed system against a single group.
Were there many escape attempts, did many of the camps riot, did many fight back, even if they lost?
I am just wondering if there is a difference between people that are brought together by the armed forces, given a little training, but handed a hierarchy, as compared to civilians who are just forced together.
Or whether under such brutal conditions it doesn't matter.
I suppose the question raised by this is, can a group fight back in any meaningful way under such conditions and if so, does it require an outside influence to organise such resistance.
Obviously the escapes of British soldiers from German camps, I don't think can be directly compared as while things were not exactly comfortable, I don't think they matched the horror of either the Japanese PoW camps or particularly the German concentration camps.
How did British Servicemen behave when in Japanese camps for PoWs? Now I understand that there were no killings as in Germany's camps, but I do understand that in some camps the conditions were really quite brutal and the closest match I can think of in terms of horror, degredation and suffering within a closed system against a single group.
Were there many escape attempts, did many of the camps riot, did many fight back, even if they lost?
I am just wondering if there is a difference between people that are brought together by the armed forces, given a little training, but handed a hierarchy, as compared to civilians who are just forced together.
Or whether under such brutal conditions it doesn't matter.
I suppose the question raised by this is, can a group fight back in any meaningful way under such conditions and if so, does it require an outside influence to organise such resistance.
Obviously the escapes of British soldiers from German camps, I don't think can be directly compared as while things were not exactly comfortable, I don't think they matched the horror of either the Japanese PoW camps or particularly the German concentration camps.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Perhaps you don't understand the history as well as you believe if you're of the opinion that many of the communities were enclaves in the way you describe them, most of them were where they were because of the Pale of Settlement, and not because they were clannish or wished to enact some form of cultural separatism.
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
The Serbs, for instance, did, even in the concentration camps... See the Jasenovac story, for instance, where they went for an uprising and simply went for it, rather than wait for the "inevitable" with sheepish attitude and "stoicism" of slaves. The first free territory in EU was in Serbia, to the best of my "knowledge of history"... liberated by Tito's Partisans. Who, then, kept some sort of free territory ever since, tying many German divisions there, delaying the attack on CCCP, sabotaging the supply lines of the Third Reich etc. etc.
In general, some of the "wild and uncivilised" Eastern and Southern Europeans... Well, let's just say that the Westerners embraced or tolerated irrational authority of that sort much more easily than "them subhuman Slavs"...
Hmmm... The most civilised and cultured country at the time - Germany - went under with a whimper, by comparison to the others, who then suffered for it greatly...
And there are [even modern] studies [from Reich to Adorno and co.] showing that is not by an accident!
gorski, did you see the thing about paris under german occupation?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3998943.ece
easy to have loads of orgies and be liberated with german soldiers, when hitler hasn't decided that he wants to kill everyone in your country
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
Here is my take on why the Jews didnt resist - well, not enough, anyway.
Dont forget that the Jews had been oppressed for thousands of years,and "resistance was futile." The Jews, while making up quite a sizeable proportion of the Eastern European population (I remember reading in some parts of romania, they made up an absolute majority of about 60-70% before the fash murdered them) were historically extremely oppressed with a history of it stretching back thousands of years.
The attitude of the Jewish leaders didn't help either with their view of "save a thousand by handing over a hundred" as had "worked" as a response to pogroms of the past, nor did the religion itself, which at the time placed emphasis on extreme non violence and "obeying the law of the land" rather like the style of buddhism that is seen in burma etc. Nor did the "middle class" attitudes/morality prevalent in especially German Jewery and the tensions between Western European and Eastern European Jews - this prevented them from putting on a united front against fash.
Then there is the unpleasant truth that for a few years after the Nazis' took power, many (mostly wealthy, or self emploed) Jews were able to live an easier standard of life in Germany than the hardships of the 1920s, up until 1936. The racial laws in Germany, while horrific, until the outbreak of WWII were very similar to those which had already existed and did exist in many European countries. SOME Jewish leaders of Western Europe (although not all) actually welcomed anti-semitism as a way of preserving the culture against assimilation which was seen as a bigger threat, especially in societies like Italy, France and Germany which had assimilated Jews far better than countries like Poland etc.
They didn't know what Hitler planned becuase none of the Jews' "enemies" had ever planned the annihilation of every Jew on earth.
Dont forget that the Jews had been oppressed for thousands of years,and "resistance was futile." The Jews, while making up quite a sizeable proportion of the Eastern European population (I remember reading in some parts of romania, they made up an absolute majority of about 60-70% before the fash murdered them) were historically extremely oppressed with a history of it stretching back thousands of years.
The attitude of the Jewish leaders didn't help either with their view of "save a thousand by handing over a hundred" as had "worked" as a response to pogroms of the past, nor did the religion itself, which at the time placed emphasis on extreme non violence and "obeying the law of the land" rather like the style of buddhism that is seen in burma etc. Nor did the "middle class" attitudes/morality prevalent in especially German Jewery and the tensions between Western European and Eastern European Jews - this prevented them from putting on a united front against fash.
Then there is the unpleasant truth that for a few years after the Nazis' took power, many (mostly wealthy, or self emploed) Jews were able to live an easier standard of life in Germany than the hardships of the 1920s, up until 1936. The racial laws in Germany, while horrific, until the outbreak of WWII were very similar to those which had already existed and did exist in many European countries. SOME Jewish leaders of Western Europe (although not all) actually welcomed anti-semitism as a way of preserving the culture against assimilation which was seen as a bigger threat, especially in societies like Italy, France and Germany which had assimilated Jews far better than countries like Poland etc.
They didn't know what Hitler planned becuase none of the Jews' "enemies" had ever planned the annihilation of every Jew on earth.
interesting analysis frogwoman
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
The germans are intrinsically evil.
is that why most of their cars have a lot of electrical problems?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
because he brought pride back to Deuschland and made the people feel better??
Great. So they sat by while he euthanized their retarded kids etc.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
What is the point of this rhetorical question, btw?
If we conclude that it was some sort of character failing that they didn't resist more, does that make the germans less culpable for killing them?
Sort of like, if I throw a right hook at your head, and you don't block it, then you were somehow asking for it?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Why didn't the blacks resist slavery more?
Maybe by not fighting enough, they were sort of asking to be enslaved?
Why did it take until the 20th century for women to demand equal rights, like the vote? I guess by being docile for so long, they deserved everything they got. Or didn't get, as the case may be.
Maybe by not fighting enough, they were sort of asking to be enslaved?
Why did it take until the 20th century for women to demand equal rights, like the vote? I guess by being docile for so long, they deserved everything they got. Or didn't get, as the case may be.
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
Yes, it's god's punishment for them being born with the mark of Cain.
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
nobody deserves that.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
I think you're reading something into Butchers' motivation for askingf the question that isn't there.
And on a historical btw - slavery and, before, the slave trade, was ended because of black resistance. We've aready heard mention of the liberated zones in Serbia - ex-slaves liberated similar areas in Jamaic and Haiti, etc.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Thank you - he knows full well that what he's insinuating is absolute rubbish. And if he doesn't he really should - and maybe get himself up to date with serious historical writings on just this question before poining fingers. Unless he thinks scholars (including Jewish writers) of the quality of Arno Mayer, Yehuda Bauer, Isiah Trunk, Ian Kershaw, Tim Mason, Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Raoul Hilberg and so on and on are also sneakily (like me) seeking to suggest that the jews had it coming simply by investigating this question. If you come back on this thread Johnny please have something to say.
Early on there was considerable public outrage at this, partly organised by churchmen, and this caught the Nazi authorities by surprise. There was a brief period when the sterilisation and murder of 'defectives' had to be scaled back as a result.
iirc of all groups targeted by the Nazis for extermination, the Gypsies were among the most determined in resisting being rounded up and fighting back.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Indeed there was - in fact i think it was stopped completely and was only able to be restarted under war condtions.
Yes, the SS were instrumental in pressing for the killing program to be resumed, on the grounds that hospital beds occupied by 'useless bread-gobblers' were needed for wounded soldiers. Plus of course being in a state of war made suppression of dissent much easier.
gorski
customised free radical
gorski, did you see the thing about paris under german occupation?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3998943.ece
easy to have loads of orgies and be liberated with german soldiers, when hitler hasn't decided that he wants to kill everyone in your country
The article you mentioned quotes someone:
Dunno, it would make me very hungry...
There's the answer to my Q's: they felt liberated, "never as free", says Sartre...
Oh, well...
Slavery was, it appears, abolished primarily because of technological and other advances, not so much because of slave's reaction to slavery as an abomination. They became "inefficient" and "in the way of progress" [read "greater profits to be had if all was done by technology and science"]...
Also, many millions of whities have stood up and said "this is not right for moral [etc.] reasons".
It's a complex story, but similarly to feudalism - which didn't disappear because of peasants revolt - it's not straight forward and it brings into question Marx's idea of prols-caps gigantomachia as the grounds for Socialism as an order...
Well, a long and a slightly different story, for a different thread, I suppose...
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