this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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Nice People (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by TokenBoomer@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
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[–] Lupus 86 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Only tangentially related -

I once read a book by a Holocaust survivor where he said (paraphrased) that the really nice ones didn't survive the camps - the ones giving away part of their rations, the ones giving away their blankets to the sick, the ones standing up for their fellows, the ones trying to help the weaker, they were the first ones to be shot, or going into the gas chambers, or dying of hunger or disease. And those willing to be selfish were the ones more likely to survive.

Obviously no judgement or blame either way, in situations like these you'll have to do what's necessary but that point of view hit me really hard at the time "the really nice ones didn't survive the camps".

It made me truly realize the horror those camps represented, they didn't just take their belongings, or their lives, or their dignity - they robbed them of their humanity to the point where being nice to your fellow people would get you killed and that was a horrific aspect that never made it into my consciousness until I read that sentence " the really nice ones didn't survive the camps."

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 46 points 3 months ago (4 children)

In highschool my German teacher's first memory was her train that was headed to a concentration camp being attacked and they were able to run into the woods.

Her family had belonged to one of the Christian churches that originally didn't say anything but eventually spoke up against the Holocaust.

So the congregation was either killed or in the process of getting sent to the same camps they didn't speak out against first.

It's not enough to eventually do the right thing, you have to stand up for shit immediately, hesitate and it's too late. If everyone stands up at once, it's enough people.

People forget that less than half the people killed in the Holocaust was because they were Jewish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims

There were 6 million for being Jewish. And 11 million more for other reasons, which is really close to 1/3 than half.

Because when it started with Jewish people, not everybody stood up at once.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 19 points 3 months ago

my German teacher’s first memory was her train that was headed to a concentration camp being attacked and they were able to run into the woods.

Imagine what kind of news coverage we'd get if some local Antifa group did this for a bus full of deported migrants.

[–] bamfic@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

It started with communists. And unionists. And artists and gays. Jews were later on.

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Freemasons and Jehovah’s witnesses. Is this where the conspiracies against Freemasons comes from?

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Nah. They already existed much like the conspiracies about Judaism.

If there were conspiracies against a group, the Nazis went after them, because they had to keep finding a new group to blame when people's problems didn't disappear after the Nazis made their last target disappear.

Fascism needs a group to blame everything on, so they can never "win" they always have to have a boogeyman or else the people might blame the ones running the fascist government.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The same was said about the siege of Stalingrad. No "nice people" survived.

They were eaten.

[–] Rubisco@slrpnk.net 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And the Holodomor

Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did....

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

A pretty common theme during famines is killing spouses and children to put them out of their agony.

Late Victorian Holocausts covers a lot of less-known ones. Here's a free PDF.

RE: Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879

Richard later discovered human meat being sold openly in the streets and heard stories “of parents exchanging young children because they could not kill and eat their own.” Residents—who everywhere went armed with spears and swords for self-protection—also “dare not go to the coal-pits for coal, so necessary for warmth and cooking, for both mules and owners had disappeared, having been eaten.”49 (Richard, on the other hand, was struck by “the absence of the robbery of the rich” among so much death.)50 The other European witness to the catastrophe, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shanxi, confirmed Richard’s most disturbing observations in a letter to the procurator of the Lazarist Fathers (later quoted in The Times): “Previously, people had restricted themselves to cannibalizing the dead; now they are killing the living for food. The husband devours his wife, the parents eat their children or the children eat their parents: this is now the everyday news.”51

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I think you meant Leningrad, Stalingrad was never entire cut off.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Woops, correct!

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I thought that was an exaggeration, but no, it happened.

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's even crazier in the context of the city being shelled for over two years and half a million Nazis died failing to take the city.

Having to eat enough to have the strength to fend off the next assault, knowing that your family is eating eachother at home.

[–] BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And the fact the Soviets practiced a scorched-earth policy as they retreated back to Leningrad, burning their crops fields and such. It prevented the Nazis from eating it, but didn't leave the Soviets much either.

Just horrific all around. Weren't there stories about residents resorting to eating dirt after all the rats had either been killed or fled the city, but before cannibalism?

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

And the fact the Soviets practiced a scorched-earth policy as they retreated back to Leningrad

Scorched earth is more of a metaphor in this context, burning a field in winter is impractical. Rather it meant destroying livestock/infrastructure that couldn't be transported away from enemy lines, rails, power lines, mines, power plants, tractors, etc.

This probably didn't impact the famine inside the city as anything that could be transported into the city or further behind soviet lines was, and anything that couldn't would have been used by the nazis and certainly not given to the people in the city if it wasn't destroyed.

Weren’t there stories about residents resorting to eating dirt

This is common in other famines, it's probably accurate