The Holocaust in Italy

While Dorothy was clicking her heals in "The Wizard of Oz" and little girls across America were dazzled watching her at the cinema, there were other little girls across Europe who were looking at their worried parents who were discussing Hitler's speech about the great Aryan race. Millions of those little girls were murdered, twins were tortured, and tested like lab rats before being murdered. Mothers beaten naked, Father's forced to work and starve till their bones showed. Britain's "Daily Mail" reported that two days ago, a survey was conducted with young Germans between the ages of 18 to 30 regarding the Holocaust. The results were that one fifth did not know what it was. I wonder how the rest of the young people in the world would do on that quiz. My guess is that not too good. It is important to know, to remember, to get angry and never forget. Why? Eleven million people were murdered by other people (Nazi's) who got a stupid idea in their head that they were better, whiter, superior. Hitler got those ideas from Sweden where they had perfected genetic selection many years before. "Deadly Medicine" states that by the time the 1940's rolled around 45% of doctors in Germany were part of the Nazi movement willing to conduct tests on people deemed genetically inferior. The medical testing included having people tortured, amputated, tossed in the cold naked to die and see what the effects were. Children, especially twins were tested by Dr. Mengel. When one died the other was killed to see the effects. The book, "Children of the flames" documents the experience for some of these twins that survived.

Those ideas and behaviors of racial superiority still happen every single day across the world and the only way to combat the ideas is to be informed, and educated on the worth and value of each person and pass down that knowledge to children who also need to know about the sad and bad things that happened in history due to racism and ignorance.

Yesterday, Italy was remembering their involvement in the Holocaust. The leader then, Benito Mussolini, was a complete idiot and sided with Hitler handing over the people deemed a burden and shipping them to concentration camps. Most of them were killed. They have put pictures and expositions around main cities. I was feeling better from the flu and decided to brave it down to Verona's Piazza and see what they were showing. Here are my pictures.

Train cart that carried 50-80 people from Italy to concentration camps

Deportation areas 12 million deported, 11 million killed. How would Europe be different if Hitler had won the war?

What a prisoner (male) wore

View from inside the train...It made me wonder who looked through this. What did they think?

Grate at the bottom. What kind of air did they get?

Bodies, bodies, bodies...murdered.

Inside the train

Categories of the inferior

 Do you know anyone who would have made the killing list? Would you be on the list? I know many people that would fit in some of these categories, especially the looney ones.

1. Political criminals

2. Delinquents

3.Jews 

4. Homosexuals

5.Gypsies

6. The mentally and emotionally ill 

7. Jehovah's witnesses

The second window. 2 windows for 80 people

It's about as big as my bathroom

Those are someone's babies.

Where do you fit? Your friends? Relatives?

The cart in Verona

Italia on the top left

Getting in the cart

Why we should remember: to combat discrimination

It looks about as big as a Suburban SUV from the distance

The memorial in Verona

The Holocaust was recent. It wasn't ancient history that is difficult to totally decipher like say, the Spartans. My grandmother was alive during World War 2, yours too probably. Did your grandparents tell you anything about WW2? Mine did. Grandma was British, Jewish, and terrified. A house she was in got bombed, it took two days to dig the people out of the basement. She went to NY after the war and decided to erase her past. She changed her Jewish name, operated her Jewish nose (to look less Jewish in her opinion), and raised her children Catholic. She never forgot the hate of the Nazi's though. Grandma visited us when we were living in an American military base in Germany and refused to leave the base. She was terrified. Grandma didn't even come out the day I broke my arm, she just screamed for me to get in the house. She cried the day my uncle went to visit the concentration camps.

Forgetting the Holocaust, in my opinion, does exactly what the Nazi's wanted: it exterminates the victims. "Let's not talk about that. It makes me feel sad." means its ok, it's erased. It's not ok and not erased. The kids that were tested would want you to talk about it. The moms that were gassed with their babies in their arms would too. And if you don't know where to start to talk about it, join the club, 1/5 of young Germans don't either but we have Google to help us out, free museums and exhibitions to get educated. There is nothing that can erase 11 million burned tortured bodies of innocent people. I wish there were some loud mouthed people that had made their bosses and doctors uncomfortable by freaking out and speaking up then.

 Here are 5 everyday things that we benefit from thanks to slaves in the Holocaust: 

1. Hugo Boss: Made SS Nazi uniforms (NY Times: Hugo Boss)
2. Mercedes Benz made cremation ovens for the concentration camps and Volkswagen Beetle was named by Hitler (The Strait Dope)
 3. Need an aspirin? Grabbing a Bayer? Aspirin was invented by a Jew in Germany but tested in countless disturbing was on prisoners of concentration camps. (BBC)
4. Siemens company: Used Prisoners to build their own gas chambers that would be used to kill them and their families (BBC)
5. Chase Bank: Provided banking for the Nazi's and also froze all accounts of Jews (NY Times)

 And one extra for all my literary friends:

6. Random House Publishers: Published Nazi Propaganda (NY Observer)

This visit to Verona, walking in the dingy lit small cattle train, and thinking about the Holocaust has had me thinking if there are things, and I'm sure there are, that are happening every day that I can one day look back and wish I would have done something different instead of watching the TV or buying things I didn't need at the expense of people being used.

jotting ideas in my Moleskin organizer on the way home

I wonder if there are choices I make that destroy someones life or make it worse in another part of the world. One thing, for me, that I thought of were sweat shops that use child labor. Most of my clothes are made in China, India, Honduras and Thailand. I don't want to be one of those people who says " I didn't know" because today, with the Internet, I can find out anything about American companies that use children in poor countries to make my clothes. Maybe buying second hand is a good option to use good clothes and avoid purchasing outright from international distributors who pay the workers nothing and violate their human rights.

While I figure out how to make the world a better place by my everyday habits, I want to blog off with a memory for the following Concentration Camps and all the people who passed through their gates. May God have mercy on them all:

Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek

A rose on the cattle car