BellaOnline Forums Education History The Holocaust - A poll

I am the decendant of Holocaust survivors. My paternal grandfather (from Poland) had been a leader in the underground Zionist organization that transported Jews from Romania to Uzbekistan. He met my grandmother when he produced the false documentation that allowed her as a nurse to accompany wounded soldiers out of Odessa, Romania. They were then placed in DP camps until they were able to emmigrate to America. My maternal grandmother grew up in Germany and even though her family's department store and life savings had been seized by the Germans. My maternal gradfather grew up in Palestine (now Israel) and also was able to aquire citizenship to the US. He then fought in the Burm Theater for the US Army. My great Aunt is a survivor of Auschwitz and I have met countless others who were kept in labor, concentration and extermination camps. I am prusuing graduate studies in Holocaust and Genocide studies to focus on the pedagogy of teaching the Holocasut. Thanks for starting this topic, its important to continue to speak about the atrocities. -Melissa

Melissa, just want t o welcome you to the forum, We hopt that you will enjoy your stay!
Rosie

We have a new Holocaust museum here in Richmond. I hope to get there one of these days. They staffed a table at an event recently and so I was able to meet several of the volunteers and employees.

I don't know a survivor of the Holocaust, but my father visited the Buchenwald concentration camp about one to two weeks after it was liberated. He told me that even though it had been cleaned up a lot in that short span of time there were still cart loads of bodies covered in lime to keep the down the smell of death. My father, nearly 85, gets very angry at anyone who tries to deny, minimize or rationalize the holocaust. He saw the aftermath of it firsthand and like so many veterans of WW II like him he will never forget it.

When I was a teenager, I lived in Turkey for 3 years. One of the advantages was the travel. Everything is very close and easy to get to. We went to Munich and visited Dachau. I agree with Craig58. All you have to do is visit and you will know it really happened. The thing to remember is that it wasn't just the Jews that were killed in these camps. The Jews were the largest portion, but also many Catholics were killed (i.e. Maximillian Kolbe), even the beloved John Paul II had to go underground to finish seminary. Gypsy were another large group that were killed in these camps. I can remember how quiet everything was around the camp. Birds didn't even sing around Dachau. There were a group of German students there the day we were there. By the end of the day, every one of them had broken into tears, the pain and anguish was quite evident on their faces. My mother could not go very far into the camp, she became so upset, and she is farm girl from Tennessee. My husband is German, his mother came to the US as a "war bride" after WWII. She has told me stories about the propaganda that was spread about the Death Camps. Incredible stuff.

Thank you for sharing. When people have the opportunity to travel, they learn so much. I grew up in a very ethnically mixed community and there were many Jewish people there who had experienced this first hand.