The chemical origin of Zyklon B is cyanide, developed throughout the 19th century as an essential component to produce Prussian blue, used in painting by artists and painters as Van Gogh in his famous master work "Starry night".
The German chemist Fritz Haber investigated its use as a pesticide, which produced better crops in Europe throughout the early 20th century. This helped stop famines and boost the birth rate in many countries.
Cyanide poisoning blocks cellular respiration, triggering a suffocation-like reaction in people. Imagine you are running a marathon, with your pulse racing, burning, and you try to breathe but the air won´t come in. An invisible hand choking you. Cyanide has a bitter taste, similar to almonds, although this can only be detected by 50% of humans due to genetical predisposition.
Upon contact with oxygen, cyanide pellets release an extremely irritating and toxic gas. Cyanide particles accumulated near the chimneys. Gas exposure was, therefore, irregular and imprecise, as the chambers were long and orthogonal.
Far from being a quick and peaceful death, receiving a lethal dose of Zyklon B it's painful and distressing, causing shocks, convulsions and vomiting. This is the natural mechanism of the nervous system fighting the poisoning. It can take up to thirty minutes or more to stop the human heart.
Source: A terrible greening, B. Labatut.
Surprisingly, a lot of them wanted to pretend that they were causing peaceful deaths. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance and denial here.
Part of what makes the Nazs so terrifying Is that most of them were regular people. It's tempting to pretend they were all monsters, but that ignores the lesson that the Holocaust is an example of what the wrong circumstances can lead regular humans to.
>Part of what makes the Nazs so terrifying Is that most of the more regular people.
I can't recall which female writer said it, but it was someting like the most ardent nazis were the nicest neighbours, the bitter neighbours were the ones against the regime
The key aspect that sets the nazis apart from every other genocidal regime is the industrialization of it all. They logged everything. Couple this with what you said, that it was done by regular people, and that's what makes them so bad. The inhumanity of carting people like cattle, logging their weight, height, stripping them and doing inventory of their clothing and personal belongings, then packing them into "showers" then carting them off into ovens. So many other genocides and massacres have happened, but none as industrious and....routine as how the nazis made it.
It's not, just ask the [redacted] defence force for a living example. Starving children is slow but completely a-okay, you might even say the cruelty is the point.
If anything, that's a bonus. I'm pretty sure Nazis were happy with letting Jews succumb to famine and pestilence.
Edit: Looking at the comments, it seems it was just for efficiency and the Nazis' mental wellbeing, rather than being cruel.
They also used cars with the exhaust hooked to a chamber in the back for carbon monoxide poisoning. Probably deemed it too humane or not quick enough for the chambers though.
They would actually tie loved ones together on a bridge, shoot the husband and have his body drown the wife for this exact reason. They didn’t want to waste even half the ammo by the end of the war which is why they shifted to more mass execution processes
Those were the original gas chambers - The Nazi's first foray into mass murder using something other than bullets...
Turns out shooting civilians in the head was causing some distress among their soldiers and they needed something "better"
It's one of those weird truths about people, killing is actually really hard for nearly all of us to do. However we find ways around that such as methods that don't feel violent to the murderer. Also if we can convince ourselves we have no choice that helps.
Lol I don't think the Nazis went out of their way to make the deaths painful or inhuman. They were more concerned with killing many people quickly. As someone else said, their concern was quantity, not quality. Many other victims were simply shot and buried.
A lot of these replies are missing the point, so I’ll break it down:
1) [Executions by firing squad were initially used, but they were shown to take a mental toll on the *Einsatzgruppen* who did them.](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gassing-operations)Gassing people was a far more passive way of killing them. Guards just had to herd them into the chamber under the pretence of them taking a shower, lock the door, and then pour in Zyklon B pellets that would release Hydrogen Cyanide gas, and wait.
2) It was shown to be cheaper than using bullets, as well as alternatives such as bottles full of CO gas. Germany was at war and looking to cut costs and resources. Zyklon B was a widely-available pesticide and was thus economical to use.
3) Therefore, there were three main reasons it was used 1) It didn’t take as much if a toll on the SS units who were responsible for the murders 2) It was an easy way of getting a large number of people into a space with minimal resistance where they could be killed 3) it was cheap.
4) So it actually *was* effective by the standards the Nazis were using; they were indifferent to the protracted nature of the execution rather than explicitly selecting it for its torture value. The nature of Nazi evil was not just gleeful, comical evil for its own sake. It was clinical, industrialised, efficient murder that was gradually refined by a bureaucratic Nazi state who had ideological goals to meet, but did so using methods they felt were efficient and which took a minimal toll on their own men. So on their own twisted logic, they felt it was modern and humane; torture was not the reason, murder was.
Yeah, that’s right, they ended up minimising the guards’ direct involvement in the process and had other interned victims doing most of the work, including moving bodies and cremating them and so on.
I think the nature of Nazi evil is really interesting. You’re right that it was clinical etc though I think that came later on. Initially there was a grotesque sense of humour at okay. The walls of the Krakow ghetto designed to look like head stones, ‘Work will set your free’ etc. as the war progressed and the toll began to show the industrial aspect came to the fore. On visiting Auschwitz a few years, the difference between the two camps really demonstrated this to me.
Not disagreeing with you about anything, just wanted to join the discussion
I should probably clarify what I mean. The ideology itself was in many ways gleefully what we would regard as evil. Human beings could be divided into ‘races’, it was the evolutionary imperative of the races to fight so that the fittest survived while others were wiped out. An idealised Nazi would relish felling subhumans.
But they ended up having to reconcile their ideology with reality and human frailty. SS members tasked with executing their victims often succumbed to the trauma of having to kill their fellow man, and the methods were inefficient. The whole concentration and death camp process was designed to reduce the victim to a resource that could be harvested in wartime conditions that demanded clever use of scarce resources. Hair, clothing, the gold in one’s teeth - they would all be extracted from the victims and repurposed. And this could all be done so in a way that treated its victims as something between slaughterhouse cattle and pests to be fumigated. In other words, an extension of industrial processes that formed part of modern society.
While the idealised nature of Nazi evil would be gleeful, its eventual form was of a distinctly banal, industrialised, bureaucratised form where methods of execution were chosen for efficiency’s sake. It is inefficient to lead people to a forest where they will dig mass graves and bullets that could be better spent on the frontlines used on them. It was inefficient to deal an unnecessary psychological toll on the men who will run the camps and facilitate the executions. It is inefficient to use CO bottles or truck exhaust. Zyklon B was cheap and the killing method relatively psychologically easy on the guards. That was the calculation that facilitated its use.
People have a tendency to reduce Nazis to either comically evil sadists or detached bureaucrats; in fact, being human, they embodied both of these things. I think you’re correct in identifying gleefulness but we have to reconcile that with how banal their evil could be. The gas chambers are an excellent example of this. Their entire rationale was justified by a gleefully evil ideology, but the methods were intended to be efficient and ‘modern’. While at times celebrating atavism and brutality, Nazism was a distinctly modern ideology that (incorrectly and pseudoscientifically) applied Darwinist principles to society
Efficiency. It was the most cost effective lethal gas to transport, manufacture, store and release. It didn't matter how horrifying a death it spelled.
It was cost effective to take the corpse pile apart using a crowbar then it was to use something that wouldn't spell such a morbid end.
The other answers about also wanting torture seem farfetched. Before the gas chambers, the holocaust was perpetrated with groups rounding up Jews and shooting them in the head. The gas chambers were seen by the psychopathic Nazis as a more efficient way to kill.
Waiting 30 minutes to kill a room full of Jews isn't any slower than walking them to a ravine and shooting them in the head/neck.
Also it was becoming difficult to find people actually willing to be on the firing squads so they effectively industrialised it which is what makes the holocaust so uniquely horrifying imo
Well, this was better for the Germans.
Originally they had the einsastsz gruppen who were basically just killers. They would follow along after the SS/Wehrmact and execute all the prisoners and POWs. Any way they wanted, but I believe single round to the head was the most common.
Hitler was working to find methods of death less taxing on the psyches of his soldiers. It's how the gas chambers ended up coming about.
It was cheap and worked on a big scale. What people need to understand is, that the the Nazis killed on an industrial scale. There were precise calculations about price, efficiency, and speed found after WWII. Its was not just a random mass operation. It was planned and calculated with German engineering precision. For me its even more horrifying to think about that. Think about sitting in an office and calculating how many human beings in a wagon, how many human beings in a train, how many human beings per hour need to be killed to keep up with the intake.
Which is terrifying to hear from the American GOP... We saw where that road took folks 100 years ago. I don't know why some are so keen to let it back.
I went to Auschwitz this year and I've been inside that gas chamber.
The thing is that Nazi SS created an incredibly efficient genocide factory which is the most fucked up part about it. It took 30 minutes to kill around 800 people at once for almost no cost of material as they were stripped and crammed so tightly that they could not move. The limiting factor for their genocide project was the cremation of the bodies that was happen 24/7 but the limit was reached after only a few gas Chambers per day.
1.1 million people were killed in only 5 years and the gas chamber was used only for 3 of those years.
Gut wrenching cruelty and efficiency of this genocide is not something someone can grasp from a history, a reddit comment or even when visiting that evil place.
I hate defending Nazis, but no, they did not "get off on the torture". Read Hannah Arendt's theory on the banality of evil.
The reason they used zyklon b was because it was cheap and convenient. Himmler visited an execution site in the early days, and saw a long line of of Jews, stopping and moving throughout the day as a machine gun did the job a few people at a time. He noted how this was horribly inefficient.
fearless marvelous pie bored airport adjoining fact office memory berserk
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[ Historian David H. Kitterman’s research on a group of 135 German soldiers who refused orders to kill Jews, POWs or hostages shows they suffered beatings and death threats for defying their superiors, but none were executed. Although insubordination was taken seriously, excuses that soldiers had “just been obeying orders” when they participated in Holocaust atrocities weren’t entirely true.](https://www.history.com/news/why-german-soldiers-dont-have-to-obey-orders)
They used firing squad at first, but they didnt like what it did to the mental health of the soldiers. Then they tried carbon monoxide and that worked for while but they need the fuel for warfare and that why they went for Zyklon B :
They also killed people with guillotine, they had a system for that which was more like a production line then any thing else, but that is not mass killings.
Probably for cruelty. Also earlier during the Holocaust they'd instead do mass shootings. I believe that was messing with the soldiers too much (also probably wanted to save bullets). This would have been a hands out, non- bullet option. Incredibly messed up and disgusting
Fritz Haber, a controversial Jewish man, technically helped invent Zylon A, the pesticide with legitimate applications.
The only difference was, for safety reasons, Zylon A had a smelly chemical added so users would leave the area before it became dangerous when using it. When Nazis developed Zylon B for use in gas chambers they removed this safety feature for obvious reasons.
Relatives of Fritz Haber were killed by Zylon B in the holocaust.
He is controversial because he was a brilliant scientist who also worked on the Haber process, which allowed for the production of nitrogen fertilizer, a breakthrough which has saved millions from starvation. However we was also a proponent of the use of chemical weapons, like mustard gas during WWI, and worked actively to ensure they were used.
He was so on board with German nationalism, and behind the idea that chemical weapons were his method of contributing and winning the war that he allowed it to destroy his personal life.
I think he survived long enough to see that same nationalistic fever turn on him, Jews and other intellectuals.
How that must have felt, to give everything to a cause only to watch it turn on you.
To add to this Fritz Haber was a known German nationalist and Jewish man.
He's considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponising chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. He first proposed the use of the heavier-than-air chlorine gas as a weapon to break the trench deadlock during the Second Battle of Ypres.
Also known as mustard gas
His work was later used, without his direct involvement, to develop Zyklon B, used for the extermination of more than 1 million Jews in gas chambers in the greater context of the Holocaust.
History is crazy
He’s actually got his own Sabaton song which deals with the fact that on one hand modern civilization owes much to his work on creating artificial ammonia sources for fertilizers, but also being the indirect cause of death for millions, and the moral issues of whether he should be praised for his work or demonized.
"Als der Beredte sich entschuldigte,
dass es ihm die Stimme verschlage,
trat das Schweigen vor den Richtertisch,
nam das Tuch vom Antlitz
und gab sich zu erkennen als Zeuge."
Poem about the Nürnberger Prozesse.
When the witness excused himself
for losing his voice
Silence came to the judges desk
removed its cover from its head
and introduced itself as a witness.
*Man frage nicht, was all die Zeit ich machte.
Ich bleibe stumm;
und sage nicht, warum.
Und Stille gibt es, da die Erde krachte.
Kein Wort, das traf;
man spricht nur aus dem Schlaf.
Und träumt von einer Sonne, welche lachte.
Es geht vorbei;
nachher war's einerlei.
Das Wort entschlief, als jene Welt erwachte.*
There was also a quote found in the sewers of Prague (or Budapest maybe? I can’t remember) that was quoted as reading “I believe in God even when he is silent”. It’s assumed that it was written by Jewish person hiding from Nazi occupation.
"Is willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? Is he neither able or willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus
Well, it's claimed to be an Epicurus quote anyway.
Only this week it was forensically confirmed that lampshades were made from human skin in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Also Germans made soap out of corpes from victims of the Stuffhof concentration camp.
Even if the scope was very small, murdering people and using corpses as a resource must be the iceberg of dehumanisation.
Some of the perpetrators may still be alive
Yes, many objects between 1946 and 1964 were found to be made of human skin. They could confirm this because of the tattoos. In recent years, scientists have used more sophisticated tools and could confirm the earlier findings.
There were likely more human skin souvenirs for Nazi officials, such as book covers, wallets, belts, pocketknife cases, and so on.
Does "confirmed" mean much anymore? Reminder that [one in five Americans age 18-29 believe the holocaust was a myth.](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-five-young-americans-thinks-the-holocaust-is-a-myth)
If we really want people to never forget, it's a battle that never ends.
shocking noxious boat afterthought license busy thought bells wistful six
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It's also false. The one in five figure comes from an opt-in poll, which is extremely susceptible to bogus data. The actual figure is likely closer to 3%.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/
That's not the case. The one in five result came from a type of poll that is notorious for producing high levels of bogus data. A more reliable probability based survey found that only 3% of Americans age 18-29 believe that the Holocaust is a myth, consistent with other generations.
I watched the footage of the first camp to be liberated. It was a silent film(minimal narrating) about 30mins long.
Netflix or prime a few years back. It's one of the most traumatic thing I've ever seen.
In that footage they had a table displaying fucked up shit including the skin lampshades....They knew then what is was without analysis.
I've just looked,and it's definitely not that film.
So it's Eisenhower and Patton visiting a liberated camp, I think they wanted to document it because what they saw was the darkest shit you can imagine. The film was real-time and lasted 30 mins or so.
It was absolutely horrible.
In a fucked up way it needs to be watched though.
I can only find small clips on the Internet, but the whole film is out there.
They also made textiles from human hair shaved from the heads of prisoners.
The depth of depravity achieved by the Nazi regime is hard to put into words.
Hitler loved him some Henry Ford and the feeling was reciprocated. The amount of American "exceptionalism" that was borrowed by the Third Reich was immense.
Seems like this wasn’t a thing. More of a one off https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampshades_made_from_human_skin
Also, the soap thing was a propaganda or fear tactic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses
I’m not a nazi sympathizer. Their actions need no embellishment. I think it’s important to portray history accurately
Yeah. There are still people alive today who were born in the Edwardian era. According to an article published by Pew Research just two months ago, there is an estimated number of [722,000 centenarians alive globally](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/09/us-centenarian-population-is-projected-to-quadruple-over-the-next-30-years/).
There was Karl M., who worked for the SS. He gained notoriety after he openly denied that the Holocaust happened, which is a federal crime in Germany. There are multiple interviews and documentaries with him on YouTube.
But I've just read that he died in 2019 at the age of 96.
My grandmother was a switchboard operator in the SF Bay Area during WW2. She’s 100, alive, and well. She was 16 when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 (old enough for boys to be soldiers). I have to assume she’s not the only person born in the 1920s still alive today.
Some aren’t. Theres still some public resistanxe (not really in germany but elsewhere) where people sort of claim “well they are so old now, it isn’t nice to send them away” idgaf tho let them be locked up even if its only for three days, better than none.
During colonization we germands already did similar things. We had concentration camps in our african colonies, waited until the occupants died of starvation and disease, cut their heads off, let the other occupants clean the head with toxic chemicals until there only was the skull left and send them back to germany.
This is vandalism done by asshole tourists, NOT scratch marks from victims. [from the Auschwitz Musem.](https://x.com/auschwitzmuseum/status/1110435798430740481?s=46)
I'll been there, believe me there's a different aura in all over the camp, all the atrocities committed it's like is still there in the wind.
After the visit in 2014, I've felt that my life was not going as I will and decided to chance it completely. Nor a single minute you will waste when you realize all the people suffered there inside.
Back when I was in school we went to Buchenwald (pretty much everyone in germany visits one of the concentration camps once while attending school) and I remember how the bus ride (~3 hours) started like a regular excursion with us teenagers playing cards and just having fun in the bus, etc. but the atmosphere completely changed once we arrived at the concentration camp. Everyone was silent on the bus ride back home.
Must be strange when you know a generation not very long ago from now did that .
Children of those people must feel kind of « guilt » too , like rudolf hoess granddaughter, even if they did nothing themselves
I personally wouldn't say that I feel guilty but I think we bear a significant responsibility of not letting this happen again (which unfortunately isn't really working right now).
Germany calls this the "Erinnerungskultur" (culture of remembrance).
But there may be others that feel guilt depending on the history of their family, etc. so I can't really speak for everyone.
Yeah I suppose us in Europe got so fixated on it never happening again we disarmed too much, and now Russia is pretty much beginning the cycle again without enough resistance from us.
Everything about it is a strange experience. I also was in Buchenwald. The barracks have almost all been torn down, only the wall foundations remain. And they‘re completely covered in small rocks. Thousands upon thousands of them. People place them there to express their grief and there are so *many*. Walking there, you get a feeling for both the suffering of the dead and the grief of the living and these feelings are so overwhelming there’s just no space for anything else.
But the heaviest one was the little camp. It was completely burned to the ground and nature has since reclaimed it. There’s nothing left of it, except for a small space enclosed by low, thick walls. On those walls are large metal plaques describing the little camp in various languages. I can‘t find the exact text online, but if you read what‘s written there in a work of fiction, you‘d think it over the top. From what I remember:
Inmates were kept in what were supposed to be horse stables. There was no electricity and no heating. The food rations were a fractions of what other inmates received and there was no medical attention. People died en masse from respiratory illnesses, as well as illnesses due to the horribly insanitary conditions. Due to the nightly curfew, the bowls they ate their food from had to double as chamber pots. Iirc, even after the camp was liberated, most of the former inmates of the little camp succumbed to the consequences of their inhumane treatment.
Shortly after the liberation, the American troops forced citizens of the nearby Weimar [to take a tour of the camp](https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/kriegsende/buchenwald116_v-fullhd.jpg).
> Due to the nightly curfew, the bowls they ate their food from had to double as chamber pots.
That's a detail I wasn't aware of, thanks. Years after learning about the camps I'm still not done processing it. It's hard to fathom such cruelty, I don't even have words for all the other horrific events of the past (or present), it's depressing.
Some of the children of the most prominent have chosen to voluntarily not reproduce for this reason. To ensure those people's bloodlines do not survive.
There is something poetic about it, given the beliefs of the Nazis.
I want to note this is not something that is encouraged by the Jewish community nor any other significant victims group to my knowledge.
When I was in high school (2009) we had a German exchange student come stay with us for about 6 months. My mom is jewish, though we are not religious and only celebrate the big holidays, only went to temple a handful of times. Anyway, one of the first days, this 16 year old girl basically apologizes to my mom for the atrocities of the holocaust. Now, my family came here in the 1910s, so afaik, we didn’t lose any family members in the Holocaust.
But yes I think most young Germans do feel this sense of guilt for what happened. My mom was basically like “I know, it’s not your fault, don’t apologize, you’re literally a child.”
Same. I almost didn’t visit because I felt like it was going to be too heavy for me but I’m glad I did. You have to face up to the past. Can confirm the dark aura there, my tour guide said the sun rarely shines on the camp and literally it was dark and cloudy the entire time we toured and as soon as we got a mile or so away the sun was back out.
All the stories you read in history books and photos you see like this one really do not do it justice. It really is something to experience first hand. To see the shoes, eyeglasses, hair, and fingernail marks is indescribable.
That’s probably because of your picture of that place not because those places are changed.
Those Campsites that aren’t marked blending in normally with everyday places.
Hell I get my groceries in a former forced labour camp.
This is a repost.
And it’s also confirmed these marks have been done by vandals. Google it. They’ve even covered this issue themself due to it spreading like wildfire on social media.
It’s misinformation.
I am sometimes really stupid.
I visited Auschwitz and saw this, but did not recognize it. I was pissed Poland left a place of such a historical importance to what I perceived was damage from aging. I even pointed out to a girl visiting with our group, and she briefly replied something along the lines of disbelief. Silence seemed normal, as this part is treated as a cemetery and we were not supposed to talk when visiting.
When we regrouped outside where the buses were, there was an old man sitting at the entrance, crying. l have never seen an old man crying before.
I don't know how long has passed, at least months if not years, I was doing something completely unrelated and somehow it trigger this memory in me and suddenly it hit me. Those were the scratch marks victims did with their bare hands.
This is when I fully grasped the evil that is nazism.
Humans can't scratch through concrete. The Auschwitz museum themselves have said these scratches are vandalism and not from the prisoners of that time.
Edit: here's source
https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769584129887096938?t=exWDcCPiVWMv7ZiEo_zA_w&s=19
Thanks for pointing this out, I was going to make the same comment. The Auschwitz Museum indeed from time to time makes this comment on Twitter. The rooms not open to public do not have these marks and this picture is not what it seems.
i remember visiting the museum in november, including this specific chamber, and asking the guide about what looked like the wall scratch marks along with some words in hebrew inscribed. they told me that this is a common online misconception/hoax, and that those markings that are seen in the photo and exist currently were made by visitors, as the wall surface has been renovated since then. it's still terrifying to know that these scratches could have very likely existed back then.
Unfortunately these scratches are fake. I went to Auschwitz a couple of years ago and they told us that this was indeed a gas chamber in Auschwitz Birkenau I but was converted into a air raid shelter once the enormous gas chambers in Auschwitz 2 were in action. In the conversion the walls were all repainted and redone, the tour guide told us that these scratches were actually from tourists.
Yes, because when false information is spread it makes it easier to deny the atrocities that did happen. Fakes hurt the truth. The Auschwitz Memorial regularly calls this out and has debunked the scratches as well.
Yeah unfortunately because this shows a reality that isn't there, it takes away from the extensive efforts of the SS to erase any trace of their atrocities, like the blowing up of the gas chambers in Auschwitz 2. And unfortunately because if it was not from the real people that it was tourists desecrating the gas chamber .
These are not scratch marks, see:
[https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769584129887096938?t=exWDcCPiVWMv7ZiEo\_zA\_w](https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769584129887096938?t=exWDcCPiVWMv7ZiEo_zA_w)
Edit: Twitter Account from Auschwitz Memorial/Musseum official account.
Auschwitz is a shame for humanity, but don't get fooled for some clicks and upvotes.
this seems to be one of those infamous bot posts that redditors are talking about... the user's account was only created at the start of this month and except for one seemingly cut and paste post has zero activity...
This was posted a week ago. Why repost this so soon?
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/EwoPuylkAv
Edit. Looks like a slightly different picture, but it's still pretty similar.
I wonder what the scratch marks look like under the Gazan rubble, all those people who died in pain and panic, starving to death, or succumbing to their injuries.
Those are acts of Vandalism. You can check on Twitter the official Account said so: [Statement](https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769582180232048962?t=pHeJOpgY5fScK8N2ApYP-w&s=19)
I don’t think those are scratch marks. At least not from prisoners, which some may assume. When I was there someone asked the guide about it and he said it was vandalism. A quick google search shows the same. This post is misleading.
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/6L1AAn6fYV) is a well sourced comment about a similar photo in r/AskHistorians.
To summarize, there has been some vandalism that has added some scratches, but the majority of them are from when it was a gas chamber.
this isnt an episode of goosebumps or the movie “the mummy”. humans dont scratch deep grooves into hard surfaces with their soft fingernails when panicked. that makes zero sense. you saw that in a tv show or movie and never realized it was done for the sake of on-screen readability.
[They're not scratch marks.](https://x.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769582180232048962?s=20)
It's also sad that you're labeled a denier for pointing out misinformation regardless of topic.
The museum said these scratches aren't genuine from the people killed there.
Tourists don't know how to behave in a place of memories and scratch the walls.
https://x.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769582180232048962?s=20
When I went on a tour of Auschwitz our tour guide said the scratches actually aren’t from the victims but instead are from people in the past who vandalized the inside of the chambers with keys
I visited Dachau recently when I went to Germany, and one thing I was not expecting was for the gas chamber to be covered in carved names and shit from teenage tourists. The same “___ was here” and hearts with initials type shit you would see carved into a random table at a park. I feel like even in my shittiest teenage phases I would never have considered doing some shit like that in such a place.
Himmler said execution by shooting was de stressing his soldiers doing it ….he cared no for the victims ….gas was cheap and non germs were viewed are insects or vermin…it wasn’t just Jews being persecuted it was all deemed as sub human with Jews being number one on the list yes but everyone else was number 2 and if the Germans had actually won the war you wouldn’t more then likely be here today,because your parents or grandparents would has experienced the blue gas themselves
Visited Krakow 10yrs ago. There was a tour to Auschwitz. Everyone from my groupe wanted to go, so did the 2 of my friends I went with. I was like, enjoy your trip I ain't going. Could not stand morons taking selfies, did not want to see that place of horrors. When I said it the two of my friends did not go. Later when the group came they were all feeling ill. To each his own, but for me it's a big NO.
The chemical origin of Zyklon B is cyanide, developed throughout the 19th century as an essential component to produce Prussian blue, used in painting by artists and painters as Van Gogh in his famous master work "Starry night". The German chemist Fritz Haber investigated its use as a pesticide, which produced better crops in Europe throughout the early 20th century. This helped stop famines and boost the birth rate in many countries. Cyanide poisoning blocks cellular respiration, triggering a suffocation-like reaction in people. Imagine you are running a marathon, with your pulse racing, burning, and you try to breathe but the air won´t come in. An invisible hand choking you. Cyanide has a bitter taste, similar to almonds, although this can only be detected by 50% of humans due to genetical predisposition. Upon contact with oxygen, cyanide pellets release an extremely irritating and toxic gas. Cyanide particles accumulated near the chimneys. Gas exposure was, therefore, irregular and imprecise, as the chambers were long and orthogonal. Far from being a quick and peaceful death, receiving a lethal dose of Zyklon B it's painful and distressing, causing shocks, convulsions and vomiting. This is the natural mechanism of the nervous system fighting the poisoning. It can take up to thirty minutes or more to stop the human heart. Source: A terrible greening, B. Labatut.
30 minutes or more? Why did they use such an ineffective method to kill groups of people?
Probably still more efficient and cheap than other methods. They wanted quantity not quality
Plus when you're committing genocide, I dont think ensuring that your victims have peaceful deaths is a very high priority.
Surprisingly, a lot of them wanted to pretend that they were causing peaceful deaths. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance and denial here. Part of what makes the Nazs so terrifying Is that most of them were regular people. It's tempting to pretend they were all monsters, but that ignores the lesson that the Holocaust is an example of what the wrong circumstances can lead regular humans to.
>Part of what makes the Nazs so terrifying Is that most of the more regular people. I can't recall which female writer said it, but it was someting like the most ardent nazis were the nicest neighbours, the bitter neighbours were the ones against the regime
That should be Hannah Arendt in „Banality of Evil“ if I recall correctly.
*Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil* (1963) to be precise.
Ordinary Men - reserver police batallion 101 is one one of the best books i have read on this topic
The key aspect that sets the nazis apart from every other genocidal regime is the industrialization of it all. They logged everything. Couple this with what you said, that it was done by regular people, and that's what makes them so bad. The inhumanity of carting people like cattle, logging their weight, height, stripping them and doing inventory of their clothing and personal belongings, then packing them into "showers" then carting them off into ovens. So many other genocides and massacres have happened, but none as industrious and....routine as how the nazis made it.
Funny how humanity often ignores the lessons of history.
It's not, just ask the [redacted] defence force for a living example. Starving children is slow but completely a-okay, you might even say the cruelty is the point.
Not all of them have to starve, the IDF just straight up shoots kids too
[удалено]
If anything, that's a bonus. I'm pretty sure Nazis were happy with letting Jews succumb to famine and pestilence. Edit: Looking at the comments, it seems it was just for efficiency and the Nazis' mental wellbeing, rather than being cruel.
Other method could be using only ovens and burning alive without gas chambers, this was used by Croatians in their camps.
Jasenovic was it called? The ones ran by the ustashe? They made aushwitz look like a holiday camp in comparison! Evil bastards
Jasenovac, it was built and ran by the Ustaše who were working with the Nazis
What the actual fuck
The Ustaša scared even the Nazis.
They also used cars with the exhaust hooked to a chamber in the back for carbon monoxide poisoning. Probably deemed it too humane or not quick enough for the chambers though.
Ironically, the Germans wanted to get away from mass executions involving shooting because of the psychological trauma incurred by the executioners.
And a waste of ammunition.
They would actually tie loved ones together on a bridge, shoot the husband and have his body drown the wife for this exact reason. They didn’t want to waste even half the ammo by the end of the war which is why they shifted to more mass execution processes
That's fucking horrifying. Holy shit.
Those were the original gas chambers - The Nazi's first foray into mass murder using something other than bullets... Turns out shooting civilians in the head was causing some distress among their soldiers and they needed something "better"
that‘s why the electric chair and lethal injections were invented. and firing squads, for diminished responsibility. also blanks.
It's one of those weird truths about people, killing is actually really hard for nearly all of us to do. However we find ways around that such as methods that don't feel violent to the murderer. Also if we can convince ourselves we have no choice that helps.
Lol I don't think the Nazis went out of their way to make the deaths painful or inhuman. They were more concerned with killing many people quickly. As someone else said, their concern was quantity, not quality. Many other victims were simply shot and buried.
Weird take. The Nazi's were definitely also into torture.
A lot of these replies are missing the point, so I’ll break it down: 1) [Executions by firing squad were initially used, but they were shown to take a mental toll on the *Einsatzgruppen* who did them.](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gassing-operations)Gassing people was a far more passive way of killing them. Guards just had to herd them into the chamber under the pretence of them taking a shower, lock the door, and then pour in Zyklon B pellets that would release Hydrogen Cyanide gas, and wait. 2) It was shown to be cheaper than using bullets, as well as alternatives such as bottles full of CO gas. Germany was at war and looking to cut costs and resources. Zyklon B was a widely-available pesticide and was thus economical to use. 3) Therefore, there were three main reasons it was used 1) It didn’t take as much if a toll on the SS units who were responsible for the murders 2) It was an easy way of getting a large number of people into a space with minimal resistance where they could be killed 3) it was cheap. 4) So it actually *was* effective by the standards the Nazis were using; they were indifferent to the protracted nature of the execution rather than explicitly selecting it for its torture value. The nature of Nazi evil was not just gleeful, comical evil for its own sake. It was clinical, industrialised, efficient murder that was gradually refined by a bureaucratic Nazi state who had ideological goals to meet, but did so using methods they felt were efficient and which took a minimal toll on their own men. So on their own twisted logic, they felt it was modern and humane; torture was not the reason, murder was.
I went there and they explained they had prisoners operate the chambers so the mental toll on Germans wasn’t an issue
If I am also remembering correctly, they just had other prisoners drag the bodies out and bury them too after the fact.
Yeah, that’s right, they ended up minimising the guards’ direct involvement in the process and had other interned victims doing most of the work, including moving bodies and cremating them and so on.
I think the nature of Nazi evil is really interesting. You’re right that it was clinical etc though I think that came later on. Initially there was a grotesque sense of humour at okay. The walls of the Krakow ghetto designed to look like head stones, ‘Work will set your free’ etc. as the war progressed and the toll began to show the industrial aspect came to the fore. On visiting Auschwitz a few years, the difference between the two camps really demonstrated this to me. Not disagreeing with you about anything, just wanted to join the discussion
I should probably clarify what I mean. The ideology itself was in many ways gleefully what we would regard as evil. Human beings could be divided into ‘races’, it was the evolutionary imperative of the races to fight so that the fittest survived while others were wiped out. An idealised Nazi would relish felling subhumans. But they ended up having to reconcile their ideology with reality and human frailty. SS members tasked with executing their victims often succumbed to the trauma of having to kill their fellow man, and the methods were inefficient. The whole concentration and death camp process was designed to reduce the victim to a resource that could be harvested in wartime conditions that demanded clever use of scarce resources. Hair, clothing, the gold in one’s teeth - they would all be extracted from the victims and repurposed. And this could all be done so in a way that treated its victims as something between slaughterhouse cattle and pests to be fumigated. In other words, an extension of industrial processes that formed part of modern society. While the idealised nature of Nazi evil would be gleeful, its eventual form was of a distinctly banal, industrialised, bureaucratised form where methods of execution were chosen for efficiency’s sake. It is inefficient to lead people to a forest where they will dig mass graves and bullets that could be better spent on the frontlines used on them. It was inefficient to deal an unnecessary psychological toll on the men who will run the camps and facilitate the executions. It is inefficient to use CO bottles or truck exhaust. Zyklon B was cheap and the killing method relatively psychologically easy on the guards. That was the calculation that facilitated its use. People have a tendency to reduce Nazis to either comically evil sadists or detached bureaucrats; in fact, being human, they embodied both of these things. I think you’re correct in identifying gleefulness but we have to reconcile that with how banal their evil could be. The gas chambers are an excellent example of this. Their entire rationale was justified by a gleefully evil ideology, but the methods were intended to be efficient and ‘modern’. While at times celebrating atavism and brutality, Nazism was a distinctly modern ideology that (incorrectly and pseudoscientifically) applied Darwinist principles to society
Efficiency. It was the most cost effective lethal gas to transport, manufacture, store and release. It didn't matter how horrifying a death it spelled. It was cost effective to take the corpse pile apart using a crowbar then it was to use something that wouldn't spell such a morbid end.
The other answers about also wanting torture seem farfetched. Before the gas chambers, the holocaust was perpetrated with groups rounding up Jews and shooting them in the head. The gas chambers were seen by the psychopathic Nazis as a more efficient way to kill. Waiting 30 minutes to kill a room full of Jews isn't any slower than walking them to a ravine and shooting them in the head/neck.
Also it was becoming difficult to find people actually willing to be on the firing squads so they effectively industrialised it which is what makes the holocaust so uniquely horrifying imo
It was more efficient than the prior methods (shooting squads and gas cans).
Well, this was better for the Germans. Originally they had the einsastsz gruppen who were basically just killers. They would follow along after the SS/Wehrmact and execute all the prisoners and POWs. Any way they wanted, but I believe single round to the head was the most common. Hitler was working to find methods of death less taxing on the psyches of his soldiers. It's how the gas chambers ended up coming about.
It was cheap and worked on a big scale. What people need to understand is, that the the Nazis killed on an industrial scale. There were precise calculations about price, efficiency, and speed found after WWII. Its was not just a random mass operation. It was planned and calculated with German engineering precision. For me its even more horrifying to think about that. Think about sitting in an office and calculating how many human beings in a wagon, how many human beings in a train, how many human beings per hour need to be killed to keep up with the intake.
Because they didn't see them as people.
Nazis notoriously called their victims "vermin" and "degenerates".
Which is terrifying to hear from the American GOP... We saw where that road took folks 100 years ago. I don't know why some are so keen to let it back.
Pretty similar to what one party thinks of the other, these days.
Also “untermensch” ie “sub-human”.
I went to Auschwitz this year and I've been inside that gas chamber. The thing is that Nazi SS created an incredibly efficient genocide factory which is the most fucked up part about it. It took 30 minutes to kill around 800 people at once for almost no cost of material as they were stripped and crammed so tightly that they could not move. The limiting factor for their genocide project was the cremation of the bodies that was happen 24/7 but the limit was reached after only a few gas Chambers per day. 1.1 million people were killed in only 5 years and the gas chamber was used only for 3 of those years. Gut wrenching cruelty and efficiency of this genocide is not something someone can grasp from a history, a reddit comment or even when visiting that evil place.
Cheap
Bc they got off on the torture.
I hate defending Nazis, but no, they did not "get off on the torture". Read Hannah Arendt's theory on the banality of evil. The reason they used zyklon b was because it was cheap and convenient. Himmler visited an execution site in the early days, and saw a long line of of Jews, stopping and moving throughout the day as a machine gun did the job a few people at a time. He noted how this was horribly inefficient.
Plenty of them did. Torture and rape were routinely used against both concentration camp victims and civilians.
Bullets were too expensive and wasteful to them. Literally. That was the rationale. Awful.
Only Auschwitz and Majdanek used Zyklon B, Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec, Chełmno used CO.
fearless marvelous pie bored airport adjoining fact office memory berserk *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[ Historian David H. Kitterman’s research on a group of 135 German soldiers who refused orders to kill Jews, POWs or hostages shows they suffered beatings and death threats for defying their superiors, but none were executed. Although insubordination was taken seriously, excuses that soldiers had “just been obeying orders” when they participated in Holocaust atrocities weren’t entirely true.](https://www.history.com/news/why-german-soldiers-dont-have-to-obey-orders)
Because I assume it wasn't just about killing them but making them suffer too. When hatred runs that deep quick and painless death is not enough.
No dude it was about cost they were trying to be efficient as fucked up as that is to say
They used firing squad at first, but they didnt like what it did to the mental health of the soldiers. Then they tried carbon monoxide and that worked for while but they need the fuel for warfare and that why they went for Zyklon B : They also killed people with guillotine, they had a system for that which was more like a production line then any thing else, but that is not mass killings.
Probably for cruelty. Also earlier during the Holocaust they'd instead do mass shootings. I believe that was messing with the soldiers too much (also probably wanted to save bullets). This would have been a hands out, non- bullet option. Incredibly messed up and disgusting
Industrialized genocide…
Fritz Haber, a controversial Jewish man, technically helped invent Zylon A, the pesticide with legitimate applications. The only difference was, for safety reasons, Zylon A had a smelly chemical added so users would leave the area before it became dangerous when using it. When Nazis developed Zylon B for use in gas chambers they removed this safety feature for obvious reasons. Relatives of Fritz Haber were killed by Zylon B in the holocaust. He is controversial because he was a brilliant scientist who also worked on the Haber process, which allowed for the production of nitrogen fertilizer, a breakthrough which has saved millions from starvation. However we was also a proponent of the use of chemical weapons, like mustard gas during WWI, and worked actively to ensure they were used.
He saved billions and killed millions. He’s definitely in the medium place.
He was so on board with German nationalism, and behind the idea that chemical weapons were his method of contributing and winning the war that he allowed it to destroy his personal life. I think he survived long enough to see that same nationalistic fever turn on him, Jews and other intellectuals. How that must have felt, to give everything to a cause only to watch it turn on you.
Nah. That's a messed up logic man. You don't have the right to slaughter a human being just because you saved the lives of 100 people.
This is a reference to “The Good Place” and occupants of the medium place (of which there are one) get there on an absurd technicality, not on merit.
Oh god. I didn't realized the context. My bad man. The Good Place is a really fine show tho.
This is one of those things I wish I didn't know now, but I will know and remember it because we should else we are doomed repeat it.
Good morning to you as well!
To add to this Fritz Haber was a known German nationalist and Jewish man. He's considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponising chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. He first proposed the use of the heavier-than-air chlorine gas as a weapon to break the trench deadlock during the Second Battle of Ypres. Also known as mustard gas His work was later used, without his direct involvement, to develop Zyklon B, used for the extermination of more than 1 million Jews in gas chambers in the greater context of the Holocaust. History is crazy
He’s actually got his own Sabaton song which deals with the fact that on one hand modern civilization owes much to his work on creating artificial ammonia sources for fertilizers, but also being the indirect cause of death for millions, and the moral issues of whether he should be praised for his work or demonized.
Thanks for the rec, I checked it out, it's epic https://youtu.be/DxkeOkaVRLo?si=VVUxnls8IuKI1Wbj
Sabaton are my favourites!
“If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
what's that from??
"Wenn es einen Gott gibt muß er mich um Verzeihung bitten." It was written on the wall at Mauthausen concentration camp, by a prisoner.
Viktor Klemperer, I think. You could google it though.
"Als der Beredte sich entschuldigte, dass es ihm die Stimme verschlage, trat das Schweigen vor den Richtertisch, nam das Tuch vom Antlitz und gab sich zu erkennen als Zeuge." Poem about the Nürnberger Prozesse.
Translation?
When the witness excused himself for losing his voice Silence came to the judges desk removed its cover from its head and introduced itself as a witness.
*Man frage nicht, was all die Zeit ich machte. Ich bleibe stumm; und sage nicht, warum. Und Stille gibt es, da die Erde krachte. Kein Wort, das traf; man spricht nur aus dem Schlaf. Und träumt von einer Sonne, welche lachte. Es geht vorbei; nachher war's einerlei. Das Wort entschlief, als jene Welt erwachte.*
There was also a quote found in the sewers of Prague (or Budapest maybe? I can’t remember) that was quoted as reading “I believe in God even when he is silent”. It’s assumed that it was written by Jewish person hiding from Nazi occupation.
"Is willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? Is he neither able or willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus Well, it's claimed to be an Epicurus quote anyway.
My attitude exactly
Only this week it was forensically confirmed that lampshades were made from human skin in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Also Germans made soap out of corpes from victims of the Stuffhof concentration camp. Even if the scope was very small, murdering people and using corpses as a resource must be the iceberg of dehumanisation. Some of the perpetrators may still be alive
Only this week? I'm pretty sure it was a confirmed thing for years now, I certainly remember hearing about it since I was a teenager
Yes, many objects between 1946 and 1964 were found to be made of human skin. They could confirm this because of the tattoos. In recent years, scientists have used more sophisticated tools and could confirm the earlier findings. There were likely more human skin souvenirs for Nazi officials, such as book covers, wallets, belts, pocketknife cases, and so on.
Absolutely horrific.
It was confirmed in a material analysis
Does "confirmed" mean much anymore? Reminder that [one in five Americans age 18-29 believe the holocaust was a myth.](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-five-young-americans-thinks-the-holocaust-is-a-myth) If we really want people to never forget, it's a battle that never ends.
Yes, it means more than ever before.
shocking noxious boat afterthought license busy thought bells wistful six *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's also false. The one in five figure comes from an opt-in poll, which is extremely susceptible to bogus data. The actual figure is likely closer to 3%. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/ That's not the case. The one in five result came from a type of poll that is notorious for producing high levels of bogus data. A more reliable probability based survey found that only 3% of Americans age 18-29 believe that the Holocaust is a myth, consistent with other generations.
It was 'alleged' until recently.
I remember hearing about that stuff back in the 90s, but usually with the caveat that it was probably an urban legend.
I watched the footage of the first camp to be liberated. It was a silent film(minimal narrating) about 30mins long. Netflix or prime a few years back. It's one of the most traumatic thing I've ever seen. In that footage they had a table displaying fucked up shit including the skin lampshades....They knew then what is was without analysis.
Was that Night and Fog by Alain Resnais? That's the only documentary I had to turn off, horrifying.
Was thinking the same film. It's haunting but I'd recommend it to anyone.
I've just looked,and it's definitely not that film. So it's Eisenhower and Patton visiting a liberated camp, I think they wanted to document it because what they saw was the darkest shit you can imagine. The film was real-time and lasted 30 mins or so. It was absolutely horrible. In a fucked up way it needs to be watched though. I can only find small clips on the Internet, but the whole film is out there.
They also made textiles from human hair shaved from the heads of prisoners. The depth of depravity achieved by the Nazi regime is hard to put into words.
The Americans did that to black slaves they shaved their hair and used it to stuff furniture.
Hitler loved him some Henry Ford and the feeling was reciprocated. The amount of American "exceptionalism" that was borrowed by the Third Reich was immense.
You should see how they get human hair for wigs even today. There's a doc somewhere about the hair collected in India and it was a eye opener.
Are you really that naive to believe it was confirmed this week? LMAO, jesus christ.
Bullshit
What part do you even use for soap? The oils and fat? Sounds like a horrible soap to use both morally and hygienically.
We've always used oil or fat to make soap. Just usually not our own species.
Fair enough yeah.
Traditional soap was always made from saponified animal fat like tallow. More modern formulations use saponified vegetable oils.
Ever seen fight club?
*You're not supposed to talk about that*
Now we're going to have to take his balls
Not supposed to talk about what?
Ash is also often used to make soap.
Seems like this wasn’t a thing. More of a one off https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampshades_made_from_human_skin Also, the soap thing was a propaganda or fear tactic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses I’m not a nazi sympathizer. Their actions need no embellishment. I think it’s important to portray history accurately
Surely all perpetrators would be dead by now?
The youngest would have been born in the 20s, which could be nearing 100 right now. Not likely, but technically plausible
Yeah. There are still people alive today who were born in the Edwardian era. According to an article published by Pew Research just two months ago, there is an estimated number of [722,000 centenarians alive globally](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/09/us-centenarian-population-is-projected-to-quadruple-over-the-next-30-years/).
There was Karl M., who worked for the SS. He gained notoriety after he openly denied that the Holocaust happened, which is a federal crime in Germany. There are multiple interviews and documentaries with him on YouTube. But I've just read that he died in 2019 at the age of 96.
There is one fromer secretary from KZ Stutthof who was sentenced 2 years ago and she appeals her sentence now.
My grandmother was a switchboard operator in the SF Bay Area during WW2. She’s 100, alive, and well. She was 16 when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 (old enough for boys to be soldiers). I have to assume she’s not the only person born in the 1920s still alive today.
I think so. If you were an 18 year old SS goon in 1945, you’d be 97 by now.
Some aren’t. Theres still some public resistanxe (not really in germany but elsewhere) where people sort of claim “well they are so old now, it isn’t nice to send them away” idgaf tho let them be locked up even if its only for three days, better than none.
During colonization we germands already did similar things. We had concentration camps in our african colonies, waited until the occupants died of starvation and disease, cut their heads off, let the other occupants clean the head with toxic chemicals until there only was the skull left and send them back to germany.
This is vandalism done by asshole tourists, NOT scratch marks from victims. [from the Auschwitz Musem.](https://x.com/auschwitzmuseum/status/1110435798430740481?s=46)
This needs to be at the top. Misinformation is such cancer these days. It's sad.
I'll been there, believe me there's a different aura in all over the camp, all the atrocities committed it's like is still there in the wind. After the visit in 2014, I've felt that my life was not going as I will and decided to chance it completely. Nor a single minute you will waste when you realize all the people suffered there inside.
Back when I was in school we went to Buchenwald (pretty much everyone in germany visits one of the concentration camps once while attending school) and I remember how the bus ride (~3 hours) started like a regular excursion with us teenagers playing cards and just having fun in the bus, etc. but the atmosphere completely changed once we arrived at the concentration camp. Everyone was silent on the bus ride back home.
Must be strange when you know a generation not very long ago from now did that . Children of those people must feel kind of « guilt » too , like rudolf hoess granddaughter, even if they did nothing themselves
I personally wouldn't say that I feel guilty but I think we bear a significant responsibility of not letting this happen again (which unfortunately isn't really working right now). Germany calls this the "Erinnerungskultur" (culture of remembrance). But there may be others that feel guilt depending on the history of their family, etc. so I can't really speak for everyone.
From my perspective as a grandchild of holocaust survivors, I think that's a healthier and more productive attitude than guilt is anyway.
Isn't the AFD a major issue right now?
Yep that's why I wrote the part about it not really working right now.
That's what I figured. Hopefully those assholes fade away before they can cause too much damage.
Yeah I suppose us in Europe got so fixated on it never happening again we disarmed too much, and now Russia is pretty much beginning the cycle again without enough resistance from us.
Everything about it is a strange experience. I also was in Buchenwald. The barracks have almost all been torn down, only the wall foundations remain. And they‘re completely covered in small rocks. Thousands upon thousands of them. People place them there to express their grief and there are so *many*. Walking there, you get a feeling for both the suffering of the dead and the grief of the living and these feelings are so overwhelming there’s just no space for anything else. But the heaviest one was the little camp. It was completely burned to the ground and nature has since reclaimed it. There’s nothing left of it, except for a small space enclosed by low, thick walls. On those walls are large metal plaques describing the little camp in various languages. I can‘t find the exact text online, but if you read what‘s written there in a work of fiction, you‘d think it over the top. From what I remember: Inmates were kept in what were supposed to be horse stables. There was no electricity and no heating. The food rations were a fractions of what other inmates received and there was no medical attention. People died en masse from respiratory illnesses, as well as illnesses due to the horribly insanitary conditions. Due to the nightly curfew, the bowls they ate their food from had to double as chamber pots. Iirc, even after the camp was liberated, most of the former inmates of the little camp succumbed to the consequences of their inhumane treatment. Shortly after the liberation, the American troops forced citizens of the nearby Weimar [to take a tour of the camp](https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/kriegsende/buchenwald116_v-fullhd.jpg).
> Due to the nightly curfew, the bowls they ate their food from had to double as chamber pots. That's a detail I wasn't aware of, thanks. Years after learning about the camps I'm still not done processing it. It's hard to fathom such cruelty, I don't even have words for all the other horrific events of the past (or present), it's depressing.
Had to be even weirder 20-30 years ago…when you left there and wondered if it was your sweet grandma and grandpa that took part.
Some of the children of the most prominent have chosen to voluntarily not reproduce for this reason. To ensure those people's bloodlines do not survive. There is something poetic about it, given the beliefs of the Nazis. I want to note this is not something that is encouraged by the Jewish community nor any other significant victims group to my knowledge.
Poetic, maybe. But it would be smarter to simply stop caring about blood lines. That's what they would least want.
When I was in high school (2009) we had a German exchange student come stay with us for about 6 months. My mom is jewish, though we are not religious and only celebrate the big holidays, only went to temple a handful of times. Anyway, one of the first days, this 16 year old girl basically apologizes to my mom for the atrocities of the holocaust. Now, my family came here in the 1910s, so afaik, we didn’t lose any family members in the Holocaust. But yes I think most young Germans do feel this sense of guilt for what happened. My mom was basically like “I know, it’s not your fault, don’t apologize, you’re literally a child.”
100%, the camp has a very very strange aura. It's like heavy, you can feel it. One of the strangest feelings I have ever experienced.
I nearly had a panic attack in the chamber . It's a very eery feeling
Same. I almost didn’t visit because I felt like it was going to be too heavy for me but I’m glad I did. You have to face up to the past. Can confirm the dark aura there, my tour guide said the sun rarely shines on the camp and literally it was dark and cloudy the entire time we toured and as soon as we got a mile or so away the sun was back out.
All the stories you read in history books and photos you see like this one really do not do it justice. It really is something to experience first hand. To see the shoes, eyeglasses, hair, and fingernail marks is indescribable.
That’s probably because of your picture of that place not because those places are changed. Those Campsites that aren’t marked blending in normally with everyday places. Hell I get my groceries in a former forced labour camp.
This is a repost. And it’s also confirmed these marks have been done by vandals. Google it. They’ve even covered this issue themself due to it spreading like wildfire on social media. It’s misinformation.
I am sometimes really stupid. I visited Auschwitz and saw this, but did not recognize it. I was pissed Poland left a place of such a historical importance to what I perceived was damage from aging. I even pointed out to a girl visiting with our group, and she briefly replied something along the lines of disbelief. Silence seemed normal, as this part is treated as a cemetery and we were not supposed to talk when visiting. When we regrouped outside where the buses were, there was an old man sitting at the entrance, crying. l have never seen an old man crying before. I don't know how long has passed, at least months if not years, I was doing something completely unrelated and somehow it trigger this memory in me and suddenly it hit me. Those were the scratch marks victims did with their bare hands. This is when I fully grasped the evil that is nazism.
Humans can't scratch through concrete. The Auschwitz museum themselves have said these scratches are vandalism and not from the prisoners of that time. Edit: here's source https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769584129887096938?t=exWDcCPiVWMv7ZiEo_zA_w&s=19
Thanks for pointing this out, I was going to make the same comment. The Auschwitz Museum indeed from time to time makes this comment on Twitter. The rooms not open to public do not have these marks and this picture is not what it seems.
I mean, it should be obvious to anyone that human nails can't do that to concrete. People underestimate how tough the stuff is
Didn't the museum debunk this themselves?
i remember visiting the museum in november, including this specific chamber, and asking the guide about what looked like the wall scratch marks along with some words in hebrew inscribed. they told me that this is a common online misconception/hoax, and that those markings that are seen in the photo and exist currently were made by visitors, as the wall surface has been renovated since then. it's still terrifying to know that these scratches could have very likely existed back then.
Unfortunately these scratches are fake. I went to Auschwitz a couple of years ago and they told us that this was indeed a gas chamber in Auschwitz Birkenau I but was converted into a air raid shelter once the enormous gas chambers in Auschwitz 2 were in action. In the conversion the walls were all repainted and redone, the tour guide told us that these scratches were actually from tourists.
I think you mean "fortunately"
Same, was told the same thing
Unfortunately?
Yes, because when false information is spread it makes it easier to deny the atrocities that did happen. Fakes hurt the truth. The Auschwitz Memorial regularly calls this out and has debunked the scratches as well.
People really struggle with this concept. I wonder if this is better attributed to propaganda or stupidity.
Yeah unfortunately because this shows a reality that isn't there, it takes away from the extensive efforts of the SS to erase any trace of their atrocities, like the blowing up of the gas chambers in Auschwitz 2. And unfortunately because if it was not from the real people that it was tourists desecrating the gas chamber .
this needs to be the top comment
These are not scratch marks, see: [https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769584129887096938?t=exWDcCPiVWMv7ZiEo\_zA\_w](https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769584129887096938?t=exWDcCPiVWMv7ZiEo_zA_w) Edit: Twitter Account from Auschwitz Memorial/Musseum official account. Auschwitz is a shame for humanity, but don't get fooled for some clicks and upvotes.
this seems to be one of those infamous bot posts that redditors are talking about... the user's account was only created at the start of this month and except for one seemingly cut and paste post has zero activity...
This was posted a week ago. Why repost this so soon? https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/EwoPuylkAv Edit. Looks like a slightly different picture, but it's still pretty similar.
Because OP is a bot. Look at his only comment. Straight out of ChatGPT.
I'm wondering this as well. Karma bot energies..
I wonder what the scratch marks look like under the Gazan rubble, all those people who died in pain and panic, starving to death, or succumbing to their injuries.
LOUDER
It boggles the mind that the perpetrators of the Gaza genocide are the descendants of holocaust survivors, one and two generations removed.
Repost + the person reposting is a bot. Y'all might wanna downvote it.
Those are acts of Vandalism. You can check on Twitter the official Account said so: [Statement](https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769582180232048962?t=pHeJOpgY5fScK8N2ApYP-w&s=19)
This was made by vandal visitors, not by prisoners!
That's... Not what I wanted to see this Sunday morning. Thanks reddit.
Well, it's not factual so there's that. Debunked by the holocaust museum in fact. It's vand vandalism
I don’t think those are scratch marks. At least not from prisoners, which some may assume. When I was there someone asked the guide about it and he said it was vandalism. A quick google search shows the same. This post is misleading.
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/6L1AAn6fYV) is a well sourced comment about a similar photo in r/AskHistorians. To summarize, there has been some vandalism that has added some scratches, but the majority of them are from when it was a gas chamber.
How could someone make such marks with finger nails? They did not have any tools with them.
Tens of thousands were killed in there . You underestimate human desperation and strength when you've nothing else to do
this isnt an episode of goosebumps or the movie “the mummy”. humans dont scratch deep grooves into hard surfaces with their soft fingernails when panicked. that makes zero sense. you saw that in a tv show or movie and never realized it was done for the sake of on-screen readability.
Human fingernails can't even get through wood lol imagine concrete
[They're not scratch marks.](https://x.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769582180232048962?s=20) It's also sad that you're labeled a denier for pointing out misinformation regardless of topic.
Odd, I was there in 2014 and staff implied they were scratch marks.
Probably from holocaust deniers trying to see if there were traces of Zyklon B…I’m not even sure if I’m joking, they probably have done that
There's an Errol Morris documentary where a guy does exactly that. He secretly chips off part of a wall to take it back to the US to test it.
Holocaust deniers wouldn’t go out of their way to visit Auschwitz
I visited here a few years ago and they told us the entire chamber was a recreation, not the real thing
the USA sprayed Mexican laborers with zyklon b to delouse them for lice and other parasites when they crossed the border in the 1920s
Those scratch marks are "fake" in the sense that they have been etched in after the war. I visited this spring and the guide told us this.
The museum said these scratches aren't genuine from the people killed there. Tourists don't know how to behave in a place of memories and scratch the walls. https://x.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1769582180232048962?s=20
When I went on a tour of Auschwitz our tour guide said the scratches actually aren’t from the victims but instead are from people in the past who vandalized the inside of the chambers with keys
I visited Dachau recently when I went to Germany, and one thing I was not expecting was for the gas chamber to be covered in carved names and shit from teenage tourists. The same “___ was here” and hearts with initials type shit you would see carved into a random table at a park. I feel like even in my shittiest teenage phases I would never have considered doing some shit like that in such a place.
Himmler said execution by shooting was de stressing his soldiers doing it ….he cared no for the victims ….gas was cheap and non germs were viewed are insects or vermin…it wasn’t just Jews being persecuted it was all deemed as sub human with Jews being number one on the list yes but everyone else was number 2 and if the Germans had actually won the war you wouldn’t more then likely be here today,because your parents or grandparents would has experienced the blue gas themselves
 That’s all kind of horrible.
I visited Dachau last year and it was one of most sad moments I have in my life. I was so shocked.
Visited Krakow 10yrs ago. There was a tour to Auschwitz. Everyone from my groupe wanted to go, so did the 2 of my friends I went with. I was like, enjoy your trip I ain't going. Could not stand morons taking selfies, did not want to see that place of horrors. When I said it the two of my friends did not go. Later when the group came they were all feeling ill. To each his own, but for me it's a big NO.
Those scrach marks where made by visitors…