Guilt – History of Sorts

You Have Nothing to be Guilty About

I love to walk to work, even though it is a 45 minutes walk, often in bad weather, I don’t mind it. It clears my mind and gives me the chance to listen to music.

Yesterday on my way to work, I listened to the song “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” by Sammi Smith. One line in it kept coming back to me throughout the day. The line was “Yesterday is dead and gone.” I couldn’t help but think of those who survived the Holocaust.

For some of them, their yesterdays are still alive. Their yesterdays come back to haunt them during the night in their dreams, and the horrors they were subjected to and witnessed—are forever etched in their minds.

In their nightmares, they relive every moment vividly, even after 7+ decades. Aside from the memories of the camps and ghettos, they are haunted by a sense of guilt. They ask themselves ” Why did I survive?” They question the validity of their survival, why them and not their siblings or parents.

This guilt sometimes transferred to their children and grandchildren. For them, the Holocaust is far from over.

Dear souls, I know you must have heard this before, but you have nothing to be guilty about. You have nothing to feel guilty about. You did nothing wrong.

The guilt belongs to those who put you in an awful situation. It belongs to the evil men and women who tortured and murdered your loved ones. The guilt belongs to those who helped those evil men and women. The guilt belongs to those who stood by and did nothing. Absolutely no guilt belongs to you.

I hope you are able to recognize this because I know all of you are coming close to the end of your lives. I want you to live a time that remains in peace, and hopefully, you wake up one day without the nightmares.

All I want and can give you is my love and my undying commitment that your loved ones will not be forgotten, I will continue to tell their stories, let that be your comfort.

Who was responsible for the Holocaust?

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I know this blog will probably stir some controversy and I will more then likely be criticized for it, but I hope you all will read this with an open mind, if you do you will realize the question of “Who was responsible for the Holocaust?” is a valid one.

Believe it or not but that question came into my mind when I was watching something which could not be further removed from WWII and the Holocaust.I was watching “My 600lb life”I am totally hooked to the show because I am amazed to how people get to that weight, and the answer is in each episode. Each one of these people have others who enable them. family members and/or friends to not help them lose weight or look for the causes but rather they give them the food they want, often to keep the peace.

The thought then came to me “Enablers who want to keep the peace” which could be shortened to the word appeasement.

No one in their right mind will deny that the Nazis are responsible for the Holocaust.

But they did get help from others by ignoring their actions.In 1925 Hitler already detailed his plans for the Jews in Mein Kampf, he made no secrets of it. In 1925 of course he had not become the leader of Germany as of yet, however 10 years later,on September 1935 he introduced the Nuremberg Laws. At that stage it was clear to see where Germany was going. At that stage the Nazis still could have been stopped, as they should have been because they violated Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain.

On 7 March 1936 Germany re-occupied and re-militarized the Rhineland, the world did nothing

In 1937 German troops were actively involved in the Spanish civil war, the world did nothing.

In 1938 the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia and Austria(although the Austrians were happy enough about this) the world did nothing. In fact British PM Neville Chamberlain gave Hitler his blessing.

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But it is unfair to single out only Neville Chamberlain, the whole League of Nations stood by ,looked on and did nothing. Even when crimes against Jews were increasing rapidly , the world did nothing.

Between 6–15 July 1938 the Évian Conference was held, at Évian-les-Bains, France, to discuss the Jewish refugee problem and the plight of the increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution by Nazi Germany. A great number of nations had sent delegates

Hitler said this about the conference:

“I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.”

The conference failed. It is said that If each nation at the Evian conference had agreed on that day to take in 17,000 Jews at once, every Jew in the Reich could have been saved.

I know that some people will say that no one could have imagined the scale of the Holocaust.But in fact they could have imagined it. there was plenty of evidence. The picture at the start of the blog was taken on August 25,1944 of the Auschwitz Birkenau camp.

On September 19, 1940, Witoldi Pilecki deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup, and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 civilians. After two days’ detention in the Light Horse Guards Barracks, where prisoners suffered beatings with rubber batons, Pilecki was sent to Auschwitz and was assigned inmate number 4859.

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While in the camp, he organized a resistance movement and informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz atrocities as early as 1941.

In 1941 a series of comprehensive reports by the exiled Polish government were published under the name “The Polish White Book”

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“The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland” was a publication published by the Polish government-in-exile on 10 December 1942 and sent to the foreign ministers of the united nations,it was the first official document informing the Western public about the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland.

From April 1942 to February 1943, British Intelligence intercepted and decoded radio messages sent by the “German Order Police”, which included daily prisoner returns and death tolls for ten concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

There were many other reports which were published throughout the 1930 and WWII. Even the 1936 Olympics should have been a clear sign, but it was ignored.

It is true that the Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of millions, responsible and accountable.

However since 1925 the world was warned time and time again what was going to happen, but rather then taking actions, all they did was to tell the German leadership how bad they were, but they did not put one obstacle in the way to stop them.

The Nazi were the perpetrators but the allies government were the enablers by their inaction.

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Sources

CIA

USHMM

WikiPedia

NY Times

Denazification-a small price to pay for a Genocide.

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After the liberation of Germany in May 1945 the Allied Powers initiated a comprehensive denazification program. Its purpose was to eradicate National Socialist thought from political, economic as well as intellectual and cultural life. As a first step the NSDAP and its subdivisions were prohibited, Nazi laws were abolished and the external signs and symbols of National Socialism removed. The main focus of the program was the systematic screening of all former members of the NSDAP – party membership was defined as the criterion for their dismissal from executive positions in industry and from public office.

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The term denazification was first coined as a legal term in 1943 in the Pentagon, intended to be applied in a narrow sense with reference to the post-war German legal system. Soon afterward, it took on the more general meaning.

The denazification program in Germany mandated the elimination of Nazi names from public squares, city streets, and other venues. US, Soviet, and British soldiers enthusiastically removed Nazi emblems and renamed public spaces.

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The process of denazification was carried out diversely in the various zones. The most elaborate procedures were instituted in the United States zone, where investigated individuals were required to complete highly detailed questionnaires concerning their personal histories and to appear at hearings before panels of German adjudicators. In the British and French zones, denazification was pursued with less vigor because the authorities thought it more important to reestablish a functioning bureaucracy in their sectors.

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Denazification was most rigorous in the Soviet sector. Civil servants, teachers, and legal officials with significant Nazi pasts were thoroughly purged. Denazification was also used as an instrument for seizing the resources of the so-called “class enemy”: former Nazis who owned factories or estates were denounced and their property confiscated. After participating in the social transformation, some former Nazis were pardoned and even gained high positions within the new communist ruling class.

The denazification process mandated that simpler cases involving lesser offenders be tried before more complicated cases involving officials higher up in the Nazi regime. With time, however, prosecution became less severe, and the United States came to be more concerned with the Cold War. When denazification ended in March 1948, the more serious cases had not yet been tried. As a result, numerous former Nazi functionaries escaped justice, much to the regret of many Germans.

Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld! (“These atrocities: your fault!”) One of the posters distributed by U.S. occupation authorities in the summer of 1945

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Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, and it was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951.

After the defeat as part of the Denazification the German and Austrian populations were forced to visit the concentration and deaths camps to be confronted with the crimes committed by their leaders.

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German prisoners of war were forced to see footage of the atrocities in movie theatres.

German soldiers react to footage of concentration camps, 1945 2

The U.S. conducted opinion surveys in occupied Germany.Tony Judt, in his book Postwar: a History of Europe since 1945, extracted and used some of them.

A majority in the years 1945–49 stated National Socialism to have been a good idea but badly applied.
In 1946, 6% of Germans said the Nuremberg trials had been unfair.
In 1946, 37% in the US occupation zone said about the Holocaust that “the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans”.
In 1946, 1 in 3 in the US occupation zone said that Jews should not have the same rights as those belonging to the Aryan race.
In 1950, 1 in 3 said the Nuremberg trials had been unfair.
In 1952, 37% said Germany was better off without the Jews.
In 1952, 25% had a good opinion of Hitler.

British historian Ian Kershaw in his book The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich writes about the various surveys carried out at the German population:

In 1945, 42% of young Germans and 22% of adult Germans thought that the reconstruction of Germany would be best applied by a ‘strong new Führer’.
In 1952, 10% of Germans thought that Hitler was the greatest statesmen and that his greatness would only be realised at a later date and 22% thought he had made ‘some mistakes’ but was still an excellent leader.
In 1952, roughly 33% opposed the assassination attempt of Hitler in the 20 July plot in 1944.
In 1953, 14% of Germans said they would vote for someone like Hitler again.

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Holocaust – the statistics

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Victims	Killed
Jews	5.93 million
Ethnic Poles	2.7–3.2 million
Ukrainian Slavs	3 million
Soviet POWs	2–3 million
Belarusian Slavs	1.5 million
Serbs	300,000–500,000
Disabled	270,000
Romani	90,000–220,000
Freemasons	80,000–200,000
Slovenes	20,000–25,000
Homosexuals	5,000–15,000
Jehovah’s Witnesses	2,500–5,000
Spanish Republicans	7,000

The numbers are truly staggering but to be honest I don’t really care if 500,000 or 15 million got killed, for these numbers are statistics and that is all they are.But every number has a story.

I am interested in the first victim, for the Holocaust didn’t start at the 6th million Jewish victim but the first.

On April 12th 1933 Arthur Kahn was executed in the newly build concentration camp,Dachau.

Ernst Goldmann, Rudolf Benario and Erwin Kahn were executed shortly afterwards. This fact is important to determine where the guilt lies for the Holocaust. In April 1933 the world knew about Dachau and although there are no records about it but these executions most have certainly being mentioned in the global media.

Because of the political situation in Germany there were thousands of international reporters working and living in Germany, and they surely most have heard of the executions of 4 Jewish men.

In 1933 Germany wasn’t yet the powerful nation it became in later years and it would have been so easy for the allied governments and the league if nations to intervene and hold Hitler and his henchmen to account ,for Germany was still bound to the treaty of Versailles. And if they would have read “Mein Kampf” they would have seen the blueprint of things to come

But they failed to do so therefor giving Hitler a cart blanche to do whatever he wanted to do.

Nazi Germany were the executioners but they were empowered by the league of nations.

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Survivor Guilt

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Survivor guilt is a particular type of guilt that may develop in people who have survived a life-threatening situation. Individuals who believe it is unfair that they survived when others died and/or believe they did not do enough to save the lives of others may come to experience survivor guilt after trauma or a catastrophic event.

Waylon Jennings was a guitarist for Buddy Holly’s band and initially had a seat on the ill-fated aircraft on The Day the Music Died on February 3 1959.

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But Jennings gave up his seat to the sick J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, only to learn later of the plane’s demise. When Holly learned that Jennings was not going to fly, he said, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.” Jennings responded, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.” This exchange of words, though made in jest at the time, haunted Jennings for the rest of his life. Jennings, who later became a country music star, expressed survivor’s guilt about Richardson’s death.

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https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/02/03/the-day-the-music-died/

In 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank in the Philippine Sea. Most of the crew survived the sinking but were left adrift for days. Only 317 survived the whole ordeal. The Captain of the USS Indianapolis, Charles B. McVay III was court-martialed for hazarding his ship. Despite the captain of the Japanese sub standing up for McVay, he was convicted of gross negligence. Living with survivor’s guilt and hate mail for years, McVay killed himself in 1968.

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In an interview on Lifetime TV’s Unsolved Mysteries, Lawrence “Larry” Geller, one of Elvis Presley’s closest friends, reported that Elvis, as a “twinless twin”, was plagued by guilt over the death of his infant brother, Jesse Garon, who was stillborn.

Elvis had confided to Geller about his concerns that maybe he had absorbed more than his share of the nutrients while he was developing inside his mother’s womb, causing his twin brother to starve to death before he was born. Elvis had also related to Geller about how his mother had tried to comfort her son by assuring him that “they would all meet in Heaven” after their lives on Earth were completed.

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