Nazi camp ashes to be buried

[Ripley]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/29/nazi.ashes.ap/index.html

ORANIENBURG, Germany (AP) -- The ashes of thousands of victims of the Nazis' Sachsenhausen concentration camp were to be buried Tuesday in a ceremony near the World War II camp.

A layer of ashes up to 1 1/2 meters (5 feet) thick was unearthed last year by archaeologists working on a concrete building constructed as a memorial near the camp's former crematorium.

Though impossible to establish the number or identity of the victims whose cremated remains were found, memorial officials have estimated that there were tens of thousands of bodies.

Some 200,000 people -- including political prisoners, captives from Poland, Soviet POWs as well as Jews -- were interned between 1936 and 1945 at Sachsenhausen, one of the first Nazi concentration camps in what became a sprawling network. Tens of thousands died there.

[Hoping4Change]

1. Ample Make This Bed

Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

-- Emily Dickinson


May all that is good and merciful grant the souls who lay there eternal peace.:cry:

[Ripley]

2. I got choked up reading it.

I am pretty disgusted that 5 feet of human ash gets bumped to the bottom of LBN because people would rather discuss TS or JF.

RIP to those thousands lost, if it could ever be.

[Hoping4Change]

7. Hopefully this story gets the attention it deserves.

Lines from Flanders Field by John McCrae also seem fitting for such a profoundly sad event.


We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,...


http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mccrae.html

[BikeWriter]

10. So recommend the post. I already did.

[DS1]

17. Issues with names involved, or at least singular persons always

get more attention. It's just the way people are. Bring up that old Stalin quote about one person a tragedy, a million a statistic.

Are we to debate every one of the Tsunami victims one by one? No.

WWII and what the Nazis did was horrific, yet unless there's a name that people can attach themselves to, this burial is just another event. If Anne Frank happened to be within these ashes, more would be made of it. If the fictional girl with the red hat in Schindler's List was in it, more would be made of it, which was the entire point of making one individual in the entire movie different from the rest. It gave people a focal point.

Same goes for this entire Schiavo mess, there are thousands of people around the world in similar predicaments, but Schiavo's story stuck, and now look where we are.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

5. self-delete

posted to wrong message.

[Merope215]

3. Wow

The sheer number of people murdered really boggles the mind. I am glad they're finally getting a ceremony and some recognition of where and how they died.

Thanks for posting this. How tragic.

[flygal]

4. I've been to Bergen Belsen and the graves are so massive

It's incomprehensible. It was a rainy day - it seemed so fitting. There were estimates of how many were burried in each mound - some had 1500 and there were several mounds. It also surprised me to learn that every German school kid is required to visit these camps. There were two bus loads when we were there and they were very respectful teenagers.

[IndyOp]

18. every German school kid is required to visit these camps...

This gives me hope -- perhaps this explains why the Germans were loudly opposed to the US attack on Iraq.

I remember watching the movie "Diary of Anne Frank" in junior high -- the whole school sat together and watched. I wonder if it is still being shown in schools today?

:cry:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

6. Heartbreaking...

Tragic and vile come next to my mind.

This is at least a small bit of recognition for these poor innocent victims.

Never forget the evils that man is capable of committing. :cry:

[gordianot]

8. What really disgusts me is the holocaust deniers, revisionist historians.

Who have recently seemed to proliferate and been given a voice in spite of all of the clear contrary evidence.

May they rest in peace, but given human nature and short memories I doubt that their rest will be peaceful.

[Fleshdancer]

19. They disgust me too. If there was ever a group of people that needed...

...to be handed a shovel and told to dig, it would be the deniers and revisionists and the time would be right now.

[Pithlet]

9. 5 feet thick...

:cry:

[malmapus]

13. I know, I sat here trying to really fathom that

all the people it must have taken to make that....

[salin]

11. May the time come soon

that humankind can not do this to others.

Hard to fathom - that many ahses... and that it was only unearthed so recently... some people knew that these remains existed.

:cry:

[bleedingheart]

12. I am rendered speechless by this ...

and to think there are people who deny it ever happened.

[Piperay]

14. It literally

breaks my heart. :cry:

[DearAbby]

15. Never forget the depraved depths humans can go...

That would be the honor to those that remain there...NEVER FORGET

[unsavedtrash]

16. "I Saw A Mountain"

"I Saw A Mountain"
I saw a mountain higher than Mt. Blanc
And more holy than the Mountain of Sinai
Not in a dream. It was real.
On this world this mountain stood,
Such a mountain I saw--of Jewish shoes in Majdanek.
Such a mountain--such a mountain I saw.
And suddenly, a strange thing happened…
The mountain moved…
And the thousands of shoes arranged themselves
By size--by pairs--and in rows--and moved.
Hear! Hear the march.
Hear the shuffle of shoes left behind--that which Remained.
From small, from large, from each and every one.
Make way for the rows--for the pairs--
For the generations—for the years.
The shoe army--it moves and moves.
"We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are the shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam,
And because we are only made of stuff and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.
We shoes--that used to go strolling in the market
Or with the bride and groom the chuppah
We shoes from simple Jews, from butchers and Carpenters
From crocheted booties of babies just beginning to walk and go
On happy occasions, weddings and even until the time
Of giving birth, to a dance, to exciting places in life…
Or quietly--to a funeral.
Unceasingly we go. We tramp.
The hangman never had the chance to snatch us into his
Sack of loot--now we go to him.
Let everyone hear the steps, which flow as tears,
The steps that measure out the judgment."
I saw a mountain
Higher than Mt. Blanc
And more holy then the Mountain of Sinai.
--by Moshe Shulstein

I don’t understand, I’ll never understand. How could the world let this happen? How could we let this happen? The barrack was FULL of shoes, they were surrounding me on both my sides, towering over me, each asking me these questions- Why me? How did the world stand by and let me die? Why did no one stop this? Why didn’t I stop this? They were of all shapes and sizes, all the same color but for a few that were red, each giving a hint of who had last worn them, who had been ordered to take them off amidst screams and barking dogs and beatings. A small lace up boot- maybe a young child, 5 or 6, who got them for his last birthday, a huge shoe, a daddy shoe, symbolizing a person who loved and cared and worked and died before his time. A shoe with a red heel, for a young woman who had fun with her life, who liked to be noticed… I noticed her shoe among thousands, because of that red heel.
--by Jocelyn Young

[DearAbby]

20. .

[AlienGirl]

21. kick to the top

:kick:

[psychopomp]

22. Deny deny obfuscate

It makes me wonder why some would try to rewrite this history.
too low

[onager]

23. These words come to mind for me...

"Don't celebrate...the world stood up and stopped the bastard this time, but the bitch that whelped him is still in heat."

Bertholt Brecht, commenting on Hitler's death and the end of World War II.

[WindRavenX]

24. oh christ

Just...fuckit. Words fail to describe how sick I feel reading that...there are 5 FEET of human remains...in ashen form...
;(

[Best_man23]

25. Never Again

Nazi victim:

They came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a communist;

They came for the socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist;

They came for the union leaders, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a union leader;

They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me ....


By Pastor Martin Niemöller

[onager]

26. Sachsenhausen, one of the "Forgotten Camps"

http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/SachsenhausenEng.html