Holocaust Denial

[The Grand Nudger]

Leaders of the free world, LP, leaders - not rulers.  We were, for a time.  A very, very short time, lol.

[CatholicDefender]

Check out this video, shown to all American solders stationed in Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5QCGqDYGo.

It was a briefing on the rise and fall of Hitler, World War 2, etc. It details Hitler's war crimes and calls him a fiend for invading so many countries and killing so many civilians. It basically states that the German people were complicit in hitler's aggression.

Yet in the whole 15 minutes, it never mentions the persecution of Jews, the gas chambers or the dead of the holocaust.

I think the reason why not is due to the anti-semitism of many Americans back then and the horrific, graphic nature of the genocide.

In the post war years, there were countless movies about World War 2 and it's battles, only a handful of which have stood the test of time.

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) were the only two films up until the 1970s to even hint at the Holocaust. Perhaps because at that point it was just an awful current event that all knew of but no one wanted depicted.

[Crossless2.0]

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) were the only two films up until the 1970s to even hint at the Holocaust. Perhaps because at that point it was just an awful current event that all knew of but no one wanted depicted.

There were some others. The Pawnbroker was an excellent film.

[Rev. Rye]

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) were the only two films up until the 1970s to even hint at the Holocaust. Perhaps because at that point it was just an awful current event that all knew of but no one wanted depicted.

There were some others. The Pawnbroker was an excellent film.

As I mentioned before, there were quite a few films dealing with the Holocaust before the 1970s. And there were even more films dealing with the Holocaust as a crucial plot point coming out of Hollywood than those two. Do I really have to show that re-upload of The Stranger, which dealt with the camps, and showed footage shot during the liberation and filmed the whole movie while the bodies were barely cold?






And, of course, even a couple other Hollywood films pre-1970 made reference to it, even in passing, like The Caine Mutiny, where, amidst his Reason You Suck Speech to the main cast, Jose Ferrer briefly mentions that the Nazis made (or were making, since it was set during the war) Jews into bars of soap (which actually happened, but on a much smaller scale than previously supposed):






And then there's also a scene in Cast a Giant Shadow where Kirk Douglas helps to liberate Dachau. And, naturally, the reason there weren't more was, as CD AND I have said, the subject matter was just too disturbing.

Also, Rommel was forced to kill himself because he was implicated in the July 20 plot to kill Hitler in 1944. It was a choice between dying an honorable death and being disgraced in the eyes of the German people, partly due to his popularity and partly because of his VERY complicated relationship with Hitler. Whether or not he was actually involved (or even knew about it) is really up in the air, but it seems he was a bit less enamored of Hitler and his policies than many others in the Wehrmacht. And thanks to this, he is one of the only famous figures of the Nazi era who still commands a degree of respect in Germany.

[Crossless2.0]

*Adds The Stranger to his must-watch list*

[Rev. Rye]

*Adds The Stranger to his must-watch list*

I know; it's not exactly up to the par of Citizen Kane, but it's certainly an excellent film in its own right, and the fact that Orson Welles managed to create a film about the Holocaust while the news was fresh in everyone's mind (and mere months after the liberation of the camps) and still create an excellent picture is nothing short of incredible. And, if you're familiar with Orson Welles' history as a director, the fact that making it went without a hitch (except for the removal of 32 pages' worth of script and the fact that they couldn't set it in his old hometown like he wanted) is utterly miraculous.

[CatholicDefender]

Don't mean to nitpick, but I think "Giant Casts a shadow" featured the liberation of Dachau, the main camp liberated by American forces. Auswitz was liberated by the Soviets.

It seems now that Aushwitz is the only camp discussed and the only one there seem to be survivors from anymore.

Perhaps because it is the largest and most horrific one that people survived. I read somewhere that there were only about 10-20 people each who survived Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka.

Funny thing, my family and I have some direct experience with Holocaust survivors.

My father grew up in Milwaukee in the 60s and 70s, and even before it started being a subject in schools he was friends with Jewish kids who lost family members and the holocaust, and a number of them were missing a half set of grandparents or had no grandparents at all.

It was also common knowledge (Im not sure how) that people in his suburbs a little bit older than my grandparents were in the concentration camps.

When I was a child, there used to be a nice old man and his wife that lived close to the park my family would go to. My mother was quite friendly with him. I only learned later that he was a German Jew whose family had to flee Vienna after Kristallnacht (when he was around 9 or 10 or so.)

My mother still tells the story that shortly after 9/11 she talked with him and he said that 9/11 felt to him like Kristallnacht in a much reduced sense. He said that like Kristallnacht, the attack on the twin towers felt to him a new chapter in history and that there was no going back to what it had been at this point.

He moved away some years ago and I never did learn what became of him.

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, it's been like forever since I saw Cast a Giant Shadow, so I think it makes sense that I misremembered which camp Mickey Marcus liberated (even though I should have fact-checked the real Mickey Marcus' own Wikipedia article to see which camp it was.)

[CatholicDefender]

Okay, it's been like forever since I saw Cast a Giant Shadow, so I think it makes sense that I misremembered which camp Mickey Marcus liberated (even though I should have fact-checked the real Mickey Marcus' own Wikipedia article to see which camp it was.)

I think before the Iron Curtain fell Dachau was the main concentration camp people would see. 

Both my parents saw it in the early 80s, before they met each other.

[dyresand]

I am somewhat disheartened by the apparent rise of Holocaust denial on the internet and elsewhere.

It seems holocaust denial and anti-semitism are one and the same.

Do you know any ways or info I can throw at those deniers to get them to STFU?!

I would think the biggest argument would be the near dissapearence of Judaism in Europe (i.e, all the traditional strong centers of Jewish culture in Germany and Eastern Europe are pretty much all gone!)

Any ideas?

the denial-ism is more of a internet meme at this point. It's the internet memes happen they get overused and eventually die off. 
that and people say that stuff for  a reaction you fell for the damn bait bro they want to get a reaction out of you.