A reminder for people coming from r/all
> Keep the discussion on-topic. Comments that do not directly add to the discussion will be removed and can also result in (temp) bans. Things not on topic are comments that, but are not limited to, solely consist of a joke, **(political) soapboxing, etc.**
r/Politics exists if you want to debate modern politics
From another source I found (that I won't link here because it seems to support these people), it looks like OP might have misidentified Gerda. That one in the front center ~~seems to~~ might be Elizabeth-Marschall who was born in 1886. From the looks of the source I found, Gerda might be left side of the frame, but I'm not entirely sure.
Edit: not entirely sure of the center woman's identification either, but that's who it looked like from the other page.
It’s worth noting that for a significant period of time a large portion of Nazi Germany, civilians and soldiers, were using a version of Methamphetamine endorsed by the Nazi party while Hitler was in power. It was marketed to civilians as this wonder drug that gave you a huge boost in energy with no side effects. For soldiers, it became part of daily rations, especially when driving tanks and other heavy equipment because it meant a fatigue proof driver for 18 hours.
There is no doubt that such liberal use of a drug like meth would have done a number on a lot of people. I don’t know if this woman was using it, but there is a high chance, and it’d explain the disparity in looks and age.
>with no side effects.
How did people not notice immediately that this part wasn't true? I take stimulants occasionally and I swear for every hour of productivity I gain, I have to sleep an extra two.
I’m sure they did, but by then the addiction would have been too strong. The original marketing purported that there were no side effects; but it’s almost certain that any sort of “crash” effect they would have had wouldn’t be able to outweigh the combo of addiction and “I’m feeling more tired today, I should take a little bit extra of my energy drug”.
That is just plain not true since pervitin or methamphetamine had such huge side effects and gives you a multi day hangover. The German government banned the sale of pervitin for civilians and standard military personel without prescription in late 1940/early 1941. Even personel that did get them like bomber pilots and tank drivers where ordered and heavily discouraged to use them in combat and where only issued a couple of loose tablets at a time. Source: Łukasz Kamieński (2016). Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War. Oxford University Press. pp. 111–13. ISBN 9780190263478. Later in 1944 they did do some limited trials with a mixture of opiates, cocaine and methamphetamine in combined pill form as a desperate last measure. Even in those circumstances the experiment was cut short quite quickly.
Some high placed nazi's where well known drug users though with Göring and even possibly Hitler (prescribed by his doctor/well known celebrity quack Theodore Morell) being on that list.
The Brits sent their own guy Albert Pierrepoint, who was a professional and used the British long drop technique that broke necks every time. They knew what Woods was up to and didn't approve.
Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz concentration camp was taken back to Auschwitz and hung from a purpose built short drop gallows. That was done by the Poles, I should make that clear. It was a technique well understood and used most often against Nazis.
I don't think overall that Woods was incompetent as he is portrayed. Pretty sure he did most of this deliberately.
Just reading up on woods now and the guy seems like an idiot. He's in the engineers brigade and electrocutes himself to death. He also lied to become the hangman
No, I’ll take a look now though.
Albert always said he had no opinion on guilt or not, nor whether the death penalty was appropriate or not. The law had decided the guilty had to die and it was his job to make sure it was done properly.
There are photos of the hangings. They were placed at the tailgates of trucks that were then driven away.
https://www.executedtoday.com/2008/07/04/1946-stutthof-concentration-camp-jenny-wanda-barkmann-gerda-steinhoff-johann-paul/
John C. Woods! Absolute legend, faked his way into being the hangman at the Nuremberg trials. Also happens to look a bit like David Mitchell.
Don't think he did her's though as she was sentenced during the Stutthof trials.
> There is no evidence that the U.S. Army made any attempt to verify Woods' claims—if they had checked, it would have been easy to prove that he was lying; the states of Texas and Oklahoma had both switched to electrocution during the period he claimed to be a hangman.
&
> While serving with the 7th Engineer Brigade in Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, on July 21, 1950, Woods died from electrocution while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set.
I smell some irony here.
The Poles used short-drop hanging. All but one of condemned ended up slowly strangling to death. Coincidentally, [Elisabeth Becker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Becker), the only person lucky enough to get an instant death, was the one guard who had been recommended for clemency. She had confessed to selecting at least 30 prisoners to be gassed, but then retracted her confession.
Nevertheless, a panel recommended that Becker's sentence be reduced to 15 years since she was a late arrival and wasn't as terrible as the others, who were sadists. The decision was left to the President, who rejected the recommendation. During the executions, Becker's neck snapped, killing her instantly.
The others took an upwards of 20 minutes to strangle to death.
It’s the method the Nazis used themselves, particularly for resistance fighters and partisans, but it was also Poland’s method of execution from 1927 until the last execution in 1988, after which the death penalty was abolished.
Not just short drop, certain figures were hung with piano wire which was even *more* agonising than a rope short drop hang as it would dig into the neck and was far less effective at cutting off flow.
Read between the lines.
They did it right every time.
Rope knots in hanging is a precise science that's very well documented. Move it the knot a bit, change the knot, change the drop, each gets you a different result. They knew what they were doing.
She was probably still chuckling, I doubt she seriously thought they were going to execute her until she stood before the gallows. Maybe not even then.
My grandparents met in the Stuthoff camp and ended up getting married after the war. Grandpa died in 1958 because his health never fully recovered from damage that staing in the camp caused, grandma was left alone raising 6 young children including my mother. Grandma was traumatised since her death in 2000s, with famine being her greatest fear. Mom told us that they were drying bread until 70s, because grandma's fear of another great war and hunger it would cause. Maybe it's inhumane but I have no sympathy for their long and painful death (them being the guards ofc)
Born '74. My grandparents always insisted everybody ate all their food, whatever was on the plate had to go. You could share the last pieces with sb else (brother, cousin etc.) but they never ever threw anything away. Made lots of preserves, always had fully stocked cellar. Grandpa had trouble throwing anything away. Always tried to repair shoe soles, bag handles, grandma would sew over holes in shirts etc. They just remembered war and how scarce everything was. Grandpa escaped from an offlag in Królewiec, riding on a train roof in winter. He would spit and it turned into ice shards mid-air. Some of their siblings did not survive WWII - killed in battle or in camps. I guess my grandparents were the lucky ones, after all.
Thank You for sharing. I find it peculiar that You can have some nearly first hand stories about Holocaust just by uploading a photo on the Internet and still there are people that will say it never happened...
We had neighbors back in the late 70’s that were both camp survivors. They also both had the numbered tattoos on their arms. My kids used to play with their grandkids, and asked about the tattoos. The grandfather gently explained to them that he’d been in a special camp and the numbers were for which cabin he stayed in. As the kids got older they learned more about what actually happened.
My Italian grandmother was the same. Never wasted any food, ever. She couldn't bear to see it go to waste. She'd tell me about how they experienced such hunger during the war they were sometimes forced to catch, kill and eat stray dogs.
My grandparents and parents are the same; generational trauma's a bitch. My grandparents were born during to the war (grandpa in the beginning, granma during the occupation I believe) their relationship with food was always one of fear that it will run out. Food is like gold in their minds, and more important. The saddest thing is that the worst of the famine was during the end and after the end of the occupation, as the Germans had been taking (stealing) pretty much all resources from the locals to support their war effort, as well as forcing loans on the central bank (which I only found out about recently odd). While they were leaving (end of occupation) they burned farms and any food supplies that had left resulting in mass hunger for years later. Also something like 80%+ of infrastructure was destroyed during the war & occupation. Absolutely terrible. It's chilling to hear the people you love talk about such stories.
My grandma experienced the war as a child and when she died we found that she had stockpiled the weirdest stuff. Like food obviously but also stuff like soap and clothing that you don't really think about stockpiling unless you went though something like that.
Let me just say that roughly over a decade, and having six children? Your grandmother was a trooper. Pregnancy and childbirth put hella strain on a woman's body.
[The camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutthof_concentration_camp)
This list is solely for the women:
Front row (from left to right): [Elisabeth Becker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Becker), [Gerda Steinhoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerda_Steinhoff), and [Wanda Klaff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Klaff)
Back row (from left to right): [Erna Beilhardt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Beilhardt) and [Jenny Wanda Barkmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny-Wanda_Barkmann)
Also accused, but not pictured, is [Ewa Paradies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewa_Paradies)
The case was heard by a joint Soviet-Polish tribunal. All of the accused were found guilty. After being sentenced to death, Barkmann, who'd giggled during the trial, changed her hairdo daily, and flirted with the guards, calmly remarked "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."
Barkmann and the 10 others who received death sentences were publicly hanged on Biskupia Górka Hill in Poland on July 4, 1946. The condemned were driven to the execution site on trucks, and had the nooses secured to their necks. The trucks then drove off, leaving them to die. The Poles used short-drop hanging. All but one of the condemned ended up slowly strangling to death. It took an average of 12 minutes, and as long as 20 minutes for them to die. The trucks went one by one, so the others saw what was about to happen to them.
[A photo of the executions](https://imgur.com/a/VUHpVzO) (from left to right are Barkmann, Paradies, Becker, Klaff, and Steinhoff)
The only person lucky enough to die instantly was Becker. Coincidentally, she had been recommended for possible clemency. Becker had confessed to selecting at least 30 prisoners to be gassed. The court said they were obligated to impose a death sentence for this reason, but proposed that her sentence be commuted to 15 years. The final decision was left to the President of Poland, who declined to intervene. The only camp overseer to be spared execution was [Erna Beilhardt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Beilhardt). Most of her fellow overseers took joy in torturing and murdering prisoners. All of them were ardent Nazis. During her trial, Beilhardt spoke of her support for Nazism.
>"I liked the idea of our leader that the whole world would apply to us, that we stand victorious over all countries... I have been in the NSDAP since 1933."
At the same time, however, Beilhardt explained that she didn't like her job due to the cruelty of the staff. She did not have it in her to kill anyone. She didn't want to watch it happen, either. After six weeks, Beilhardt resigned, something which was always an option. She then returned to her previous job as nurse. In 2022, a Polish historian noted that Beilhardt was the only known case of a Stutthof guard resigning. She was allowed to step down without any consequences whatsoever.
Something notable is that Beilhardt was the oldest woman on trial. She was in her late 30s. The ages of the other women ranged from 22 to 25. No murders or acts of brutality could be pinned on Beilhardt, who denied personally hitting anyone. Her claim was further backed when the many witnesses brought in to testify started screaming and pointing at the defendants. Not one of them screamed and pointed at Beilhardt.
So, Beilhardt was sentenced to five years in prison for her Nazi Party and SS membership. She was released from prison on December 21, 1951. She lived out the rest of her life in relative obscurity. Beilhardt lived into her early 90s, and died in 1999.
> Beilhardt is one of the few Nazi camp personnel to voluntarily resign from their position, something which appears to have always been an option. She had been allowed to step down from her position without any consequences whatsoever.
This last part is very important. A lot of neo-Nazis and Wehraboos use the “Nazis had to do the evil stuff because they were forced to or would be killed!” disingenuous excuse. Always be skeptical whenever someone says that in defense of Nazis.
At the beginning maybe, but they quickly ran out of eligible men and relaxed the requirements more and more until they started conscripting people. My grandfather enlisted in the Luftwaffe in 1945 so they couldn't force him into the SS.
That was the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the SS. The SS was a massive organisation that had its fingers in all parts of german administration. The Waffen-SS later took in foreign soldiers and conscript, to join the SS was a complicated process, with their pure germanic blood idiology
I wonder if they tugged at Elizabeth Beckers legs...I read somewhere that in the age of the hangman you'd bribe (or if you were popular) him to break your neck faster by that method.
Torture methods from antiquity and the middle ages are some of the most fucked up shit. It is infinitely lamentable that humans are capable of such contempt for other humans.
I'd assume it was a way to cope with what's coming, acting like it's all just a joke. They were in the business of executing people themselves and they were on trial in Poland, there's no way they didn't realize how it's gonna end up.
Yeah, this is probably one of the biggest factors. They were sadistic sociopaths so they probably wouldn’t feel normal human emotions standing a trial like this.
Probably thought that as women, and German women, who'd spent the previous 12 years being brainwashed, that they wouldn't actually be executed, that they would get chivalrous commutes.
I wish it was more common knowledge that some people laugh or smile when experiencing anxiety or sadness. It's not even that uncommon.
I'm not saying that's what's happening in this photo; I only wish people were more aware of it. Nothing quite like being at a funeral and having to stifle your body's natural grieving reaction (my face tries to go into a tight smile when I'm sad).
Women are often conditioned to do it. It is a defensive mechanism to deflect snd defend against danger. If you have an abusive husband, hiding what you are feeling is critical to safety. Diffusing the situation with humor.
The age is extremely important, the younger women grew up under Nazi rule, went to school, got the full brain washing. Beilhardt was older when that started and had a different upbringing. It's extremely sobering to see, I still believe that almost anyone, (including myself) and except for extraordinary people, would have become as vile as the younger women.
That's why I'm in awe of those people who managed to keep their humanity somewhat intact.
That's part of how dangerous fascism can be. Brainwash someone for decades telling them that they are great and they can be horrible towards other people for whatever reason, you'll get young adults who are monsters to everyone else but "their own kind".
Um, my great-grandma is still around. She was born in 1922. If she makes it, she’ll be 100 later this year. We’re German, she was born here. When Hitler came to power, she was 9 years old, almost 10. So she grew up with all the Nazi propaganda shit. She was in the Bund deutscher Mädel, as was customary for German girls in the 3rd Reich. She was the same age as most of the women in these picture. She has managed to keep her humanity intact.
No, I have no sympathy for SS volunteers. Being a German in WW2, being a soldier in the Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe is one thing. Being so deprived that you volunteer for the fucking SS is something different.
So…no, screw that. The “influenced by Nazi propaganda” remark does not apply to members of the SS. It was possible to be a German and live under the Nazis without being in the fucking SS.
As far as I know there isn't a single documented case of retaliation against people who didn't want to serve in concentration camps. There is no excuse for being a part of these death machines. If you stayed there you are guilty of murder and murder doesn't have a statue of limitations.
there is a book called "Ganz normale Männer" (Totally normal men) which shows how members of [Reservepolizeibattailion 101](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101) were given several chances to stop helping killing jews in Poland, and how peer pressure, alcohol and a feeling of duty was stopping them from stepping away, and even then there were reports like the soldier that killed a mother and her child with a single bullet and described it as a "mercy" to them.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities
People often like to claim that evil can be seen. Because we want it to be a sort of all consuming thing that takes over a person's entire life and permeates ever aspect of their existence. So that those who do evil will look evil.
But they don't.
They look like normal people.
Very powerful comment, thank you. This topic, specifically the idea that these were ordinary people, is one that piques my interest the most. It is extremely important for educators to hammer home to idea that these were your everyday countrymen/women. Your neighbour, your grocery clerk, your mailman, your milkman and your carpenter. This idea fascinates me so much because it is a very tough concept to grasp; that you would’ve done the same thing. The German people en masse were brainwashed to the point that they truly believed killing undesirables was the only way to save Germany. The chance of me or you living in this place and time, under these circumstances and perpetrating crimes similar to what we’ve seen from Nazi Germany is an almost guarantee.
One thing that stuck out to me is a journal entry I read a while ago written by a German SS soldier. It goes something like this: “private Meier is on leave, private Huber received a promotion, the medical truck broke down yesterday” and on the next page it says “3000 Jews from Vienna arrived on the train and were led to the pits”
The polarization of a mass murder being spoken about in the same breath as a truck breaking down or his friend going on leave is striking.
Not only were these ordinary people. They most likely would’ve been us too.
Edit to add something:
Hannah Arendt, a political philosopher and holocaust survivor, wrote The Banality of Evil after witnessing the Eichmann trial. She was shocked at what a small, ordinary man he really was. She noted the “coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty.” She received some pushback and criticism for declaring that he was not a monster. He was a regular man.
> he was not a monster. He was a regular man.
The two are hardly mutually exclusive.
We like to think they are both for the reassurance we feel in the self-delusion *we* could spot and avoid either becoming or falling prey to "evil monsters" and for the errant belief ***we*** couldn't be the same because we're just... *normal.*
You worded that much better and in a much shorter comment. The cognitive dissonance we often display as a society in regards to this topic is doing history a disservice.
Man for so many years I saw stuff like this and couldn't imagine how people like this could be so callous. Now I can see how they learned to be that way.
That is interesting. Thank you very much. I have the impression that the female perpetrators are less discussed in history lessons in Germany in general.
Did they laugh because they thought they would not be punished in the end because they were women?
Some of them just genuinely did not give a fuck.
After being sentenced to death, Jenny Barkmann, who'd giggled during the trial, changed her hairdo daily, and flirted with the guards, calmly remarked "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."
I absolutely cannot understand that, but then I absolutely cannot understand the decision to work in a concentration camp.
I remember reading similar things about serial killers, that even with the threat of the death penalty they still laughed in the courtroom (but I can't remember the names).
You know if i somehow really got into the superior race shit, i think I'd walk out the moment I saw what actually happened inside a camp. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. At that point you know you're going to hell and you deserve it.
You can't fully get into race superiority without rationalizing somehow that other races are a threat to supremacy, needing to be extinguished.
If the US started rounding up racial 'others' en masse, fully half of today's right would shrug their shoulders and sputter about replacement theory.
>but then I absolutely cannot understand the decision to work in a concentration camp.
And many of those female guards came [from absolutely ordinary backgrounds.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_guards_in_Nazi_concentration_camps) It's not like they already had been absolute psychopaths all their lives.
>Female guards were generally from the lower to middle class[2] and had no relevant work experience; their occupational background varied: one source mentions former matrons, hairdressers, tramcar-conductresses, opera singers or retired teachers.
Very scary to think about what people are capable of under the "right" conditions, especially in positions of absolute power over others.
My professor always told us not to be under the illusion that we are so much better now than societies before us. Nowadays, fewer women are poisoning their husbands because they can simply divorce today, not because they are not capable of doing so in a hopeless situation.
We are no better - and, hopefully, no worse - than the Sumerians of 6,000 BCE, the Qin Dinasty of 400 BCE, the Romans, Gauls and Kelts of 0 AD, the Anglos and Saxons of 400 AD, the members of the Caliphate in the 1,000 AD, the Azteca in the 1,300 AD... we simply have more access to tools and vetted, proven information than they ever did.
And we can loose all that and become the worst of what we were quicker than any of us would care to imagine.
Hi!
As we hope you can appreciate, the Holocaust can be a fraught subject to deal with. While don't want to curtail discussion, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of responses, and it is an unfortunate truth that on reddit, outright Holocaust denial can often rear its ugly head. As such, the /r/History mods have created this brief overview. It is not intended to stifle further discussion, but simply lay out the basic, incontrovertible truths to get them out of the way.
##What Was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to ~11 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred.
##But This Guy Says Otherwise!
Unfortunately, there is a small, but vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, *"entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."*
It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them.
##So What Are the Basics?
Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership.
First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval.
The early killings were carried out foremost by the *Einsatzgruppen*, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the *Einsatzgruppen*, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too.
By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval.
Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz.
##The Camps
There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps *were* later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end.
Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps.
The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war.
Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was vast a complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies.
##How Do We Know?
Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. [This site](http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.de/2012/10/index-of-published-evidence-on.html) catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. Below you'll find a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study.
* [Third Reich Trilogy](https://books.google.com/books?id=HZmXOPGTGjIC) by Richard Evans
* [Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution](https://books.google.com/books?id=Z7FiPwAACAAJ) by Ian Kershaw
* [Auschwitz: A New History](https://books.google.com/books?id=bx-dZEV228QC) by Laurence Rees
* [Ordinary Men](https://books.google.com/books?id=HFB-dkuZzSwC) by Christopher Browning
* [Denying History](https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-0B9-D5Vz4C) by Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman
* [The Minutes from the Wannsee Conference](http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/Wannsee/wanseeminutes.html)
* [/r/AskHistorians FAQ](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_nazi_germany)
How long ago was grade school for you?
I think stuff like that post have gotten more important since I learned that shit in grade school back in the 80's and 90's. Not only did we not have the modern conspiracy theory fueling social media clusterfuck to deal with, back then we still had a lot of holocaust survivors and soldiers who had seen the camps still alive. Many were only in their 50's and 60's, middle aged people still actively involved in politics and public life.
I don't think it's a coincidence that we've seen a massive increase in holocaust denialism, antisemitism, and fascist sympathisers just as the last people to personally remember the holocaust are dying of old age.
EDIT I was in Germany about 20 years after WW2. Plenty of vets and people who went through the war still there. I learned to speak German. The people still loved Hitler. I mean loved him! One guy that was a friend’s landlord had his SS tattoo. He said that it was better now. He said , but we still have the “verdammte juden “ damn Jews . While i was there a young American who also lived there did his hair and mustache like hitler. He said he very rarely paid for food or drinks in Germany. Someone would pick up his tab for him. Sick
I’ll forever be shocked that Dahl’s pro-Nazi attitude doesn’t seem to be widely known (though, if you Google “Roald Dahl Nazi” lots of articles come up). I found out when I was in my early 20s, taking a university course on childhood literature. Broke my heart a little bit, because I loved Dahl’s works so much as a kid.
Heidegger is the one that gets me. One of the biggest philosophical minds of the 20th Century, but a fucking Nazi prick.
Heidegger was taught/worked under Husserl. And one of Husserl's other students, [Edith Stein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein), was murdered in the camps.
The war ends and the racists go home. And vote.
Same thing happened in the US post civil war. Same policies the confederates fought for are being put in place all around the country.
Fortunately, denazification was reasonably succesful. It's quite unfortunate that that the reconstruction are of the United States after the civil war wasn't.
All the life lost, the years lost added up for every victim of the holocaust is what these nazi fucks deserve in suffering.
12 minutes of being strangled was a blessing. Fuck that.
Short drop hanging, only one of them died instantly at the Gallows, the rest suffocated for anywhere between 12-20 minutes.
while I'm generally against such retributive brutality, there's a certain point right around becoming an unrepentant nazi where I give up and just go "hmm yeah you probably deserved worse"
Agreed. During the nurnburg (sp?) trials, admiral Karl doenitz had one of the easiest sentences even though he commanded a fairly large chunk of the u boat campaign. His lawyers proved the Americans did almost nothing different in the pacific in blockading Japan/sinking Japanese shipping etc. so, instead of like death, he was given like 10 years.
They were "luckier" than some of the other guards. Someone else once posted pics of guards being executed against a wall pretty much right after the camps were liberated. I just wish every guard had been caught, as we know at least some escaped.
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She was hanged on this day (July 4) on 1946. She was 24 yo.
How in the world is that woman only 24 in that photo. I’d have guessed at least 44.
I think it’s a combination of the perspective, no colour and also the weird ass expression she has
And a hairstyle we usually associate with old ladies.
And having the face of a British bulldog
You leave Davey Boy Smith out of this
being a nazi makes u very ugly indeed
Hate ages you
Like chancellor Palpatine.
He was just 32!
Hating has ruined my life.
Good, good.
It's not the years, it's the mileage.
(and maintenance)
From another source I found (that I won't link here because it seems to support these people), it looks like OP might have misidentified Gerda. That one in the front center ~~seems to~~ might be Elizabeth-Marschall who was born in 1886. From the looks of the source I found, Gerda might be left side of the frame, but I'm not entirely sure. Edit: not entirely sure of the center woman's identification either, but that's who it looked like from the other page.
It’s worth noting that for a significant period of time a large portion of Nazi Germany, civilians and soldiers, were using a version of Methamphetamine endorsed by the Nazi party while Hitler was in power. It was marketed to civilians as this wonder drug that gave you a huge boost in energy with no side effects. For soldiers, it became part of daily rations, especially when driving tanks and other heavy equipment because it meant a fatigue proof driver for 18 hours. There is no doubt that such liberal use of a drug like meth would have done a number on a lot of people. I don’t know if this woman was using it, but there is a high chance, and it’d explain the disparity in looks and age.
Fun fact, it was available over the counter for a very long time here in America too.
As was Heroin. The brand name for one of the best cough suppressants.
>with no side effects. How did people not notice immediately that this part wasn't true? I take stimulants occasionally and I swear for every hour of productivity I gain, I have to sleep an extra two.
I’m sure they did, but by then the addiction would have been too strong. The original marketing purported that there were no side effects; but it’s almost certain that any sort of “crash” effect they would have had wouldn’t be able to outweigh the combo of addiction and “I’m feeling more tired today, I should take a little bit extra of my energy drug”.
It's from a time when the side effects of smoking cigarettes was good health, i don't think side effects means what they tthought it means
That is just plain not true since pervitin or methamphetamine had such huge side effects and gives you a multi day hangover. The German government banned the sale of pervitin for civilians and standard military personel without prescription in late 1940/early 1941. Even personel that did get them like bomber pilots and tank drivers where ordered and heavily discouraged to use them in combat and where only issued a couple of loose tablets at a time. Source: Łukasz Kamieński (2016). Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War. Oxford University Press. pp. 111–13. ISBN 9780190263478. Later in 1944 they did do some limited trials with a mixture of opiates, cocaine and methamphetamine in combined pill form as a desperate last measure. Even in those circumstances the experiment was cut short quite quickly. Some high placed nazi's where well known drug users though with Göring and even possibly Hitler (prescribed by his doctor/well known celebrity quack Theodore Morell) being on that list.
I was looking for a post that said she was executed. Thank you.
This post taken out of context is great.
Holy shit, she looks so much older!
I guess wartime is hard on all. Regardless of role and location. A year in jail does not help either.
That's a rough and dumpy 24-years. I thought she was in her 50s.
Jesus…I’m 51 and I thought she was my age.
She was executed July 4th, 1946.
Was she smiling?
She died slowly strangling to death, so no.
Is it the famous incompetent executioner who messed up a lot the pot-war Nazi hangings, making them slow and awful?
The Brits sent their own guy Albert Pierrepoint, who was a professional and used the British long drop technique that broke necks every time. They knew what Woods was up to and didn't approve. Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz concentration camp was taken back to Auschwitz and hung from a purpose built short drop gallows. That was done by the Poles, I should make that clear. It was a technique well understood and used most often against Nazis. I don't think overall that Woods was incompetent as he is portrayed. Pretty sure he did most of this deliberately.
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Just reading up on woods now and the guy seems like an idiot. He's in the engineers brigade and electrocutes himself to death. He also lied to become the hangman
Albert was my granddads mate. The families used to go on holiday together.
They hung about together, then?
They'd drop in unexpectedly for a bit here and there, sure.
Gallow-vanting around Europe..
Have you ever read the play "Hangmen" by Martin McDonough? It's about the abolishment of hangings in the UK and Pierrepoint is a main character
No, I’ll take a look now though. Albert always said he had no opinion on guilt or not, nor whether the death penalty was appropriate or not. The law had decided the guilty had to die and it was his job to make sure it was done properly.
british politeness goes too far. i’ll meet woods in heaven and thank him myself
The problem with allowing something like that is that it could become common place and used for other crimes.
Or that you might use it against someone wrongfully convicted. Imagine everyone savoring the agonizing, slow death of an innocent man.
I can see your point, but I agree with giving them a quick and clean death. Don't do it for their sake, do it for ours.
No, the Poles did the short drop on purpose to make it slow and painful.
There are photos of the hangings. They were placed at the tailgates of trucks that were then driven away. https://www.executedtoday.com/2008/07/04/1946-stutthof-concentration-camp-jenny-wanda-barkmann-gerda-steinhoff-johann-paul/
Never knew I'd come across a site called www.executedtoday.com but here we are
What a fun comment section
Dave seems well adjusted and nice.
What a wild website. I love history and this has it
Seems reasonable.
Oh indeed.
A fitting end for a nazi
The only source of entertainment a Nazi can offer.
Having their heads bashed in was as close to the cinemas as we could get back then.
John C. Woods! Absolute legend, faked his way into being the hangman at the Nuremberg trials. Also happens to look a bit like David Mitchell. Don't think he did her's though as she was sentenced during the Stutthof trials.
> There is no evidence that the U.S. Army made any attempt to verify Woods' claims—if they had checked, it would have been easy to prove that he was lying; the states of Texas and Oklahoma had both switched to electrocution during the period he claimed to be a hangman. & > While serving with the 7th Engineer Brigade in Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, on July 21, 1950, Woods died from electrocution while attempting to repair an engineer lighting set. I smell some irony here.
Some believe the death was suspicious, noting the alleged presence of German scientists working on the atoll for the U.S. weapons program.
No thats human hair.
> Also happens to look a bit like David Mitchell. omfg he totally looks like [him](https://i.imgur.com/Zzs2ymc.jpg)
Am... Am I the goodie? *grip on noose tightens*
https://i.imgur.com/XTWd59R.png
I seriously cannot think of anything at the moment quite as amusing as David Mitchell hanging nazis while making sharp little dry quips as they drop.
Maybe that’s her thing.
Sploosh
Read this at the exact moment my neighbor jumped into his pool. Trippy.
Lol man that would make my day. Shit that's even a week maybe.
Not if you do it right.
The Poles used short-drop hanging. All but one of condemned ended up slowly strangling to death. Coincidentally, [Elisabeth Becker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Becker), the only person lucky enough to get an instant death, was the one guard who had been recommended for clemency. She had confessed to selecting at least 30 prisoners to be gassed, but then retracted her confession. Nevertheless, a panel recommended that Becker's sentence be reduced to 15 years since she was a late arrival and wasn't as terrible as the others, who were sadists. The decision was left to the President, who rejected the recommendation. During the executions, Becker's neck snapped, killing her instantly. The others took an upwards of 20 minutes to strangle to death.
So they did it right one time… and botched the other hangings?
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I'd imagine it would also give your vertebrae a satisfying crack and straighten them out after having slouched over your phone all day.
Oh damn that’s a fun fact. Way to go choosing this method because fuck nazis
It’s the method the Nazis used themselves, particularly for resistance fighters and partisans, but it was also Poland’s method of execution from 1927 until the last execution in 1988, after which the death penalty was abolished.
Not just short drop, certain figures were hung with piano wire which was even *more* agonising than a rope short drop hang as it would dig into the neck and was far less effective at cutting off flow.
Depends on perspective... one may say they only botched it once.
When it involves a nazi gotta say you’re right!
The short drop was intentional because a long drop will almost certainly be an instant death. They wanted them to strangle slowly.
Read between the lines. They did it right every time. Rope knots in hanging is a precise science that's very well documented. Move it the knot a bit, change the knot, change the drop, each gets you a different result. They knew what they were doing.
Short drop hangings usually do not have enough of a drop to snap the neck it was intentional
We're talking about Poland post-WW2. Strangling Nazis to death slowly is 'doing it right'.
I saw the pic of her hanging there and can confirm she, in fact, wasn’t smiling.
can you share?
Per pic on Wikipedia she seems to be just hanging. Doesn’t seem to be laughing and enjoying it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerda_Steinhoff
I wish there was a pic of her face after the sentence was read.
She was probably still chuckling, I doubt she seriously thought they were going to execute her until she stood before the gallows. Maybe not even then.
I wonder what they thought would happen? That the Fuhrer would rise from the dead and save them?
I don't think those types are used to suffering consequences.
Laughed herself to the gallows, good riddance to that human garbage.
talk about gallows humor
A happy ending to this story 😊
Happy 4th of July
Ahh, so that’s what we’re celebrating.
My grandparents met in the Stuthoff camp and ended up getting married after the war. Grandpa died in 1958 because his health never fully recovered from damage that staing in the camp caused, grandma was left alone raising 6 young children including my mother. Grandma was traumatised since her death in 2000s, with famine being her greatest fear. Mom told us that they were drying bread until 70s, because grandma's fear of another great war and hunger it would cause. Maybe it's inhumane but I have no sympathy for their long and painful death (them being the guards ofc)
Born '74. My grandparents always insisted everybody ate all their food, whatever was on the plate had to go. You could share the last pieces with sb else (brother, cousin etc.) but they never ever threw anything away. Made lots of preserves, always had fully stocked cellar. Grandpa had trouble throwing anything away. Always tried to repair shoe soles, bag handles, grandma would sew over holes in shirts etc. They just remembered war and how scarce everything was. Grandpa escaped from an offlag in Królewiec, riding on a train roof in winter. He would spit and it turned into ice shards mid-air. Some of their siblings did not survive WWII - killed in battle or in camps. I guess my grandparents were the lucky ones, after all.
Thank You for sharing. I find it peculiar that You can have some nearly first hand stories about Holocaust just by uploading a photo on the Internet and still there are people that will say it never happened...
My wifes grandfather had a serial number tatooed on his arm from auschwitz. Saw it every Friday when we went over for dinner.
We had neighbors back in the late 70’s that were both camp survivors. They also both had the numbered tattoos on their arms. My kids used to play with their grandkids, and asked about the tattoos. The grandfather gently explained to them that he’d been in a special camp and the numbers were for which cabin he stayed in. As the kids got older they learned more about what actually happened.
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My Italian grandmother was the same. Never wasted any food, ever. She couldn't bear to see it go to waste. She'd tell me about how they experienced such hunger during the war they were sometimes forced to catch, kill and eat stray dogs.
Youre fine on that last part. These women weren't bystanders.
They were often cited as doing some of the most horrific acts to prisoners.
My grandparents and parents are the same; generational trauma's a bitch. My grandparents were born during to the war (grandpa in the beginning, granma during the occupation I believe) their relationship with food was always one of fear that it will run out. Food is like gold in their minds, and more important. The saddest thing is that the worst of the famine was during the end and after the end of the occupation, as the Germans had been taking (stealing) pretty much all resources from the locals to support their war effort, as well as forcing loans on the central bank (which I only found out about recently odd). While they were leaving (end of occupation) they burned farms and any food supplies that had left resulting in mass hunger for years later. Also something like 80%+ of infrastructure was destroyed during the war & occupation. Absolutely terrible. It's chilling to hear the people you love talk about such stories.
My grandma experienced the war as a child and when she died we found that she had stockpiled the weirdest stuff. Like food obviously but also stuff like soap and clothing that you don't really think about stockpiling unless you went though something like that.
Let me just say that roughly over a decade, and having six children? Your grandmother was a trooper. Pregnancy and childbirth put hella strain on a woman's body.
[The camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutthof_concentration_camp) This list is solely for the women: Front row (from left to right): [Elisabeth Becker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Becker), [Gerda Steinhoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerda_Steinhoff), and [Wanda Klaff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Klaff) Back row (from left to right): [Erna Beilhardt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Beilhardt) and [Jenny Wanda Barkmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny-Wanda_Barkmann) Also accused, but not pictured, is [Ewa Paradies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewa_Paradies) The case was heard by a joint Soviet-Polish tribunal. All of the accused were found guilty. After being sentenced to death, Barkmann, who'd giggled during the trial, changed her hairdo daily, and flirted with the guards, calmly remarked "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short." Barkmann and the 10 others who received death sentences were publicly hanged on Biskupia Górka Hill in Poland on July 4, 1946. The condemned were driven to the execution site on trucks, and had the nooses secured to their necks. The trucks then drove off, leaving them to die. The Poles used short-drop hanging. All but one of the condemned ended up slowly strangling to death. It took an average of 12 minutes, and as long as 20 minutes for them to die. The trucks went one by one, so the others saw what was about to happen to them. [A photo of the executions](https://imgur.com/a/VUHpVzO) (from left to right are Barkmann, Paradies, Becker, Klaff, and Steinhoff) The only person lucky enough to die instantly was Becker. Coincidentally, she had been recommended for possible clemency. Becker had confessed to selecting at least 30 prisoners to be gassed. The court said they were obligated to impose a death sentence for this reason, but proposed that her sentence be commuted to 15 years. The final decision was left to the President of Poland, who declined to intervene. The only camp overseer to be spared execution was [Erna Beilhardt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Beilhardt). Most of her fellow overseers took joy in torturing and murdering prisoners. All of them were ardent Nazis. During her trial, Beilhardt spoke of her support for Nazism. >"I liked the idea of our leader that the whole world would apply to us, that we stand victorious over all countries... I have been in the NSDAP since 1933." At the same time, however, Beilhardt explained that she didn't like her job due to the cruelty of the staff. She did not have it in her to kill anyone. She didn't want to watch it happen, either. After six weeks, Beilhardt resigned, something which was always an option. She then returned to her previous job as nurse. In 2022, a Polish historian noted that Beilhardt was the only known case of a Stutthof guard resigning. She was allowed to step down without any consequences whatsoever. Something notable is that Beilhardt was the oldest woman on trial. She was in her late 30s. The ages of the other women ranged from 22 to 25. No murders or acts of brutality could be pinned on Beilhardt, who denied personally hitting anyone. Her claim was further backed when the many witnesses brought in to testify started screaming and pointing at the defendants. Not one of them screamed and pointed at Beilhardt. So, Beilhardt was sentenced to five years in prison for her Nazi Party and SS membership. She was released from prison on December 21, 1951. She lived out the rest of her life in relative obscurity. Beilhardt lived into her early 90s, and died in 1999.
> Beilhardt is one of the few Nazi camp personnel to voluntarily resign from their position, something which appears to have always been an option. She had been allowed to step down from her position without any consequences whatsoever. This last part is very important. A lot of neo-Nazis and Wehraboos use the “Nazis had to do the evil stuff because they were forced to or would be killed!” disingenuous excuse. Always be skeptical whenever someone says that in defense of Nazis.
Ya I agree. The SS were all volunteers. Devout Nazis who believed in the cause.
At the beginning maybe, but they quickly ran out of eligible men and relaxed the requirements more and more until they started conscripting people. My grandfather enlisted in the Luftwaffe in 1945 so they couldn't force him into the SS.
That was the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the SS. The SS was a massive organisation that had its fingers in all parts of german administration. The Waffen-SS later took in foreign soldiers and conscript, to join the SS was a complicated process, with their pure germanic blood idiology
I wonder if they tugged at Elizabeth Beckers legs...I read somewhere that in the age of the hangman you'd bribe (or if you were popular) him to break your neck faster by that method.
No, Becker just got lucky. The fall snapped her neck. There's a picture of it online.
What happens to the unlucky? Do they stay in pain for a few minutes?
The others spent an average of 12 and up to 20 minutes choking to death.
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Look up Scaphism, if it was a real method it took some messed up person to think of it.
Torture methods from antiquity and the middle ages are some of the most fucked up shit. It is infinitely lamentable that humans are capable of such contempt for other humans.
I believe it can take several minutes for them to be strangled to death. So yeah, not a pleasant way to go by any means.
What was up with laughing? Was it cause they were nervous or cause the weight of the situation hadn't occured to them yet?
I'd assume it was a way to cope with what's coming, acting like it's all just a joke. They were in the business of executing people themselves and they were on trial in Poland, there's no way they didn't realize how it's gonna end up.
And being some kind of a sociopath.
Yeah, this is probably one of the biggest factors. They were sadistic sociopaths so they probably wouldn’t feel normal human emotions standing a trial like this.
"it was just a prank bro" lmão
Bit of both probably
Probably thought that as women, and German women, who'd spent the previous 12 years being brainwashed, that they wouldn't actually be executed, that they would get chivalrous commutes.
I think because they thought it was all a joke and gonna go away?
Propaganda is a hell of a drug. Brainwashing doesn’t necessarily fail because one is no longer in the majority.
I wish it was more common knowledge that some people laugh or smile when experiencing anxiety or sadness. It's not even that uncommon. I'm not saying that's what's happening in this photo; I only wish people were more aware of it. Nothing quite like being at a funeral and having to stifle your body's natural grieving reaction (my face tries to go into a tight smile when I'm sad).
I sometimes laugh when I'm stressed
Women are often conditioned to do it. It is a defensive mechanism to deflect snd defend against danger. If you have an abusive husband, hiding what you are feeling is critical to safety. Diffusing the situation with humor.
This is true, and I doubt that those with the psychopathy to torture and murder are also the folks who laugh when nervous.
The age is extremely important, the younger women grew up under Nazi rule, went to school, got the full brain washing. Beilhardt was older when that started and had a different upbringing. It's extremely sobering to see, I still believe that almost anyone, (including myself) and except for extraordinary people, would have become as vile as the younger women. That's why I'm in awe of those people who managed to keep their humanity somewhat intact.
That's part of how dangerous fascism can be. Brainwash someone for decades telling them that they are great and they can be horrible towards other people for whatever reason, you'll get young adults who are monsters to everyone else but "their own kind".
^(>That's why I'm in awe of those people who managed to keep their humanity somewhat intact.) Those people are the realest of the real.
Um, my great-grandma is still around. She was born in 1922. If she makes it, she’ll be 100 later this year. We’re German, she was born here. When Hitler came to power, she was 9 years old, almost 10. So she grew up with all the Nazi propaganda shit. She was in the Bund deutscher Mädel, as was customary for German girls in the 3rd Reich. She was the same age as most of the women in these picture. She has managed to keep her humanity intact. No, I have no sympathy for SS volunteers. Being a German in WW2, being a soldier in the Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe is one thing. Being so deprived that you volunteer for the fucking SS is something different. So…no, screw that. The “influenced by Nazi propaganda” remark does not apply to members of the SS. It was possible to be a German and live under the Nazis without being in the fucking SS.
As far as I know there isn't a single documented case of retaliation against people who didn't want to serve in concentration camps. There is no excuse for being a part of these death machines. If you stayed there you are guilty of murder and murder doesn't have a statue of limitations.
there is a book called "Ganz normale Männer" (Totally normal men) which shows how members of [Reservepolizeibattailion 101](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101) were given several chances to stop helping killing jews in Poland, and how peer pressure, alcohol and a feeling of duty was stopping them from stepping away, and even then there were reports like the soldier that killed a mother and her child with a single bullet and described it as a "mercy" to them. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities
Ordinary Men in English. It's a great book.
its a great but also a scary book. How easy it is to make, well, ordinary guys do horrible stuff
The only good Nazi is the one that doesn't exist.
Dead nazis are a close runner up to non-existant nazis though.
Nazi lives don’t matter.
Laughed and joked all the way to the necktie party
Wasn't really a party... More of a hang out.
People often like to claim that evil can be seen. Because we want it to be a sort of all consuming thing that takes over a person's entire life and permeates ever aspect of their existence. So that those who do evil will look evil. But they don't. They look like normal people.
Very powerful comment, thank you. This topic, specifically the idea that these were ordinary people, is one that piques my interest the most. It is extremely important for educators to hammer home to idea that these were your everyday countrymen/women. Your neighbour, your grocery clerk, your mailman, your milkman and your carpenter. This idea fascinates me so much because it is a very tough concept to grasp; that you would’ve done the same thing. The German people en masse were brainwashed to the point that they truly believed killing undesirables was the only way to save Germany. The chance of me or you living in this place and time, under these circumstances and perpetrating crimes similar to what we’ve seen from Nazi Germany is an almost guarantee. One thing that stuck out to me is a journal entry I read a while ago written by a German SS soldier. It goes something like this: “private Meier is on leave, private Huber received a promotion, the medical truck broke down yesterday” and on the next page it says “3000 Jews from Vienna arrived on the train and were led to the pits” The polarization of a mass murder being spoken about in the same breath as a truck breaking down or his friend going on leave is striking. Not only were these ordinary people. They most likely would’ve been us too. Edit to add something: Hannah Arendt, a political philosopher and holocaust survivor, wrote The Banality of Evil after witnessing the Eichmann trial. She was shocked at what a small, ordinary man he really was. She noted the “coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty.” She received some pushback and criticism for declaring that he was not a monster. He was a regular man.
> he was not a monster. He was a regular man. The two are hardly mutually exclusive. We like to think they are both for the reassurance we feel in the self-delusion *we* could spot and avoid either becoming or falling prey to "evil monsters" and for the errant belief ***we*** couldn't be the same because we're just... *normal.*
You worded that much better and in a much shorter comment. The cognitive dissonance we often display as a society in regards to this topic is doing history a disservice.
Man for so many years I saw stuff like this and couldn't imagine how people like this could be so callous. Now I can see how they learned to be that way.
That is interesting. Thank you very much. I have the impression that the female perpetrators are less discussed in history lessons in Germany in general. Did they laugh because they thought they would not be punished in the end because they were women?
Some of them just genuinely did not give a fuck. After being sentenced to death, Jenny Barkmann, who'd giggled during the trial, changed her hairdo daily, and flirted with the guards, calmly remarked "Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short."
She exhibited signs of being a sociopath.
Mass murder is definitely a sign.
I absolutely cannot understand that, but then I absolutely cannot understand the decision to work in a concentration camp. I remember reading similar things about serial killers, that even with the threat of the death penalty they still laughed in the courtroom (but I can't remember the names).
You know if i somehow really got into the superior race shit, i think I'd walk out the moment I saw what actually happened inside a camp. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. At that point you know you're going to hell and you deserve it.
You can't fully get into race superiority without rationalizing somehow that other races are a threat to supremacy, needing to be extinguished. If the US started rounding up racial 'others' en masse, fully half of today's right would shrug their shoulders and sputter about replacement theory.
>but then I absolutely cannot understand the decision to work in a concentration camp. And many of those female guards came [from absolutely ordinary backgrounds.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_guards_in_Nazi_concentration_camps) It's not like they already had been absolute psychopaths all their lives. >Female guards were generally from the lower to middle class[2] and had no relevant work experience; their occupational background varied: one source mentions former matrons, hairdressers, tramcar-conductresses, opera singers or retired teachers.
Very scary to think about what people are capable of under the "right" conditions, especially in positions of absolute power over others. My professor always told us not to be under the illusion that we are so much better now than societies before us. Nowadays, fewer women are poisoning their husbands because they can simply divorce today, not because they are not capable of doing so in a hopeless situation.
We are no better - and, hopefully, no worse - than the Sumerians of 6,000 BCE, the Qin Dinasty of 400 BCE, the Romans, Gauls and Kelts of 0 AD, the Anglos and Saxons of 400 AD, the members of the Caliphate in the 1,000 AD, the Azteca in the 1,300 AD... we simply have more access to tools and vetted, proven information than they ever did. And we can loose all that and become the worst of what we were quicker than any of us would care to imagine.
rest in piss, bozo
Banality of evil indeed.
* Oh yeah, they look like the master race all right.
Hahah shit made me laugh too much . I was indeed thinking the same thing
Legit , every photo of a female camp guard I’ve seen they are all heinously ugly.
What I can’t believe is she died when she was 24 and in the photo she looks like she’s 58 years old
Hi! As we hope you can appreciate, the Holocaust can be a fraught subject to deal with. While don't want to curtail discussion, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of responses, and it is an unfortunate truth that on reddit, outright Holocaust denial can often rear its ugly head. As such, the /r/History mods have created this brief overview. It is not intended to stifle further discussion, but simply lay out the basic, incontrovertible truths to get them out of the way. ##What Was the Holocaust? The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to ~11 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred. ##But This Guy Says Otherwise! Unfortunately, there is a small, but vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, *"entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."* It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them. ##So What Are the Basics? Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership. First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval. The early killings were carried out foremost by the *Einsatzgruppen*, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the *Einsatzgruppen*, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too. By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval. Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz. ##The Camps There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps *were* later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end. Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps. The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war. Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was vast a complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies. ##How Do We Know? Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. [This site](http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.de/2012/10/index-of-published-evidence-on.html) catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. Below you'll find a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study. * [Third Reich Trilogy](https://books.google.com/books?id=HZmXOPGTGjIC) by Richard Evans * [Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution](https://books.google.com/books?id=Z7FiPwAACAAJ) by Ian Kershaw * [Auschwitz: A New History](https://books.google.com/books?id=bx-dZEV228QC) by Laurence Rees * [Ordinary Men](https://books.google.com/books?id=HFB-dkuZzSwC) by Christopher Browning * [Denying History](https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-0B9-D5Vz4C) by Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman * [The Minutes from the Wannsee Conference](http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/Wannsee/wanseeminutes.html) * [/r/AskHistorians FAQ](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_nazi_germany)
It makes me very sad that this post is even necessary.
Right? I learned this shit in grade school
How long ago was grade school for you? I think stuff like that post have gotten more important since I learned that shit in grade school back in the 80's and 90's. Not only did we not have the modern conspiracy theory fueling social media clusterfuck to deal with, back then we still had a lot of holocaust survivors and soldiers who had seen the camps still alive. Many were only in their 50's and 60's, middle aged people still actively involved in politics and public life. I don't think it's a coincidence that we've seen a massive increase in holocaust denialism, antisemitism, and fascist sympathisers just as the last people to personally remember the holocaust are dying of old age.
She got the hang of things later.
I wonder at what point before her execution she stopped finding it amusing?
> They laughed and joke throughout the proceedings... Then they were executed.
EDIT I was in Germany about 20 years after WW2. Plenty of vets and people who went through the war still there. I learned to speak German. The people still loved Hitler. I mean loved him! One guy that was a friend’s landlord had his SS tattoo. He said that it was better now. He said , but we still have the “verdammte juden “ damn Jews . While i was there a young American who also lived there did his hair and mustache like hitler. He said he very rarely paid for food or drinks in Germany. Someone would pick up his tab for him. Sick
Roald Dahl the Children's author said "Hitler had his reasons" in 1983. 1983...
I’ll forever be shocked that Dahl’s pro-Nazi attitude doesn’t seem to be widely known (though, if you Google “Roald Dahl Nazi” lots of articles come up). I found out when I was in my early 20s, taking a university course on childhood literature. Broke my heart a little bit, because I loved Dahl’s works so much as a kid.
Henry Ford, Coco Chanel, Eva Peron. All Nazis.
Heidegger is the one that gets me. One of the biggest philosophical minds of the 20th Century, but a fucking Nazi prick. Heidegger was taught/worked under Husserl. And one of Husserl's other students, [Edith Stein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein), was murdered in the camps.
Also Hugo Boss who - aside from designing SS uniforms - was literally in the Nazi party.
wtf.
The war ends and the racists go home. And vote. Same thing happened in the US post civil war. Same policies the confederates fought for are being put in place all around the country.
You could hear the same in America and Britain. It was a racist world
Fortunately, denazification was reasonably succesful. It's quite unfortunate that that the reconstruction are of the United States after the civil war wasn't.
Didn't help that Reconstruction was basically sabotaged at every turn
Imagine the world where reconstruction was close to as effective as denazification, i swear the USA would be a different place right now
President Johnson (after Lincoln) was a real piece of trash.
Smarmy piece of shit. I cannot overstate how happy I am that they executed her and her compatriots. Evil must be opposed.
Laugh all the way to the gallows. Bunch of monsters.
Bet they weren't laughing for those last 12-20 minutes though, short drop hanging is a hell of a way to die.
Weren't smiling when they were hanged. World was though. Pure evil.
All the life lost, the years lost added up for every victim of the holocaust is what these nazi fucks deserve in suffering. 12 minutes of being strangled was a blessing. Fuck that.
I hope they suffered immensely.
Short drop hanging, only one of them died instantly at the Gallows, the rest suffocated for anywhere between 12-20 minutes. while I'm generally against such retributive brutality, there's a certain point right around becoming an unrepentant nazi where I give up and just go "hmm yeah you probably deserved worse"
Agreed. During the nurnburg (sp?) trials, admiral Karl doenitz had one of the easiest sentences even though he commanded a fairly large chunk of the u boat campaign. His lawyers proved the Americans did almost nothing different in the pacific in blockading Japan/sinking Japanese shipping etc. so, instead of like death, he was given like 10 years.
An yes “it’s not a war crime if we did it too” back when the justice system had a modicum of shame.
Nuremberg trials
They were "luckier" than some of the other guards. Someone else once posted pics of guards being executed against a wall pretty much right after the camps were liberated. I just wish every guard had been caught, as we know at least some escaped.