Dorothee

Maybe it is because this year so many people from our village have died due to old age or because they were very sick - although not even May is over yet - or maybe it's because 8th of May already is the day when World War II ended in Europe.

Whatever the reason the priest mentioned last Sunday what a shame it was from his point of view that the number of people who regularly visited military cemeteries seemed to decrease rapidly. He thinks that the soldiers and forced laborers who rest there deserve all respect for their bravery during war - even though said war ended seven decades ago. Also he finds it shameful that donations to organisations that take care of these graves - like "Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge" - seem to decrease as well. Already the Bible says after all that a decent, religious person even has the duty to show some respect for the dead.He briefly mentioned that some of the people who were burried on these special cemeteries were unidentified to this day.

Who knows? Maybe even one of these brave Irish soldiers who didn't outlive the war lies there only to - even in death - be shunned by his compatriots and neglected by the Germans.

However that subject swas just a brief part of his Sunday-preach.

Considering that today on January 27th was the Sept-decennial of the liberation of the German concentration camp “Auschwitz-Birkenau” newspapers and news-shows already started reporting about the camp itself and about tragic individual fates of some of these former inmates on Sunday. I so would love to post them all, but that would take like forever and still wouldn't be enough to describe the horrors these people went through. Filip Müller's “Eyewitness-Auschwitz” is a book I highly recommend if you want to read a more detailed report. Also to tell you at least something there indeed were some eyewitnesses who used to be in the concentration camp "Buchenwald" and until this day haven't forgotten the kindness and gentleness with which they were treated by the English and Irish soldiers who liberated this camp. You would say that after the horrors of this war they should have been at least a little short-tempered or should have shown other signs of being traumatized, but in fact they weren't while dealing with these weakened and sick inmates.

I for my part however just want to talk about an article written by the German newspaper “Jüdische Allgemeine”. They say – and judging by what I heard some people say with my very ears I have no reason to think they are exaggerating – that many people born after 1945 don't see why we still pay “recompensation” to survivors of the concentration camps as by now most of them are already dead anyway, are going to die within the next few years or never managed to prove that they used to be concentration camp inmates and thus don't receive anything anyway. By the way this also is pretty much the reason why more and more people stop seeing any sense in money being used to find and sentence former national socialists – as the main-antagonists now are dead or too old to do any harm anyway.

Now this article says that while many former inmates and victims of persecution managed to make a new start – I even know famous authors, professors of history, musicians and natural scientists who before that were in "Auschwitz" – others never overcame the psychological or physical hardships they went through in there. These people either committed suicide or now are old and among the poorest of the countries they live in. Now you know that many non-Jewish elderly people also are very poor, but in most cases at least children and grandchildren are there to take care of them. Surviving Sinti, Roma and Jews however often outlived their relatives who were murdered by Germans and Austrians during or before World War II. After this loss they just had trouble bonding with anybody else and now are left alone without a family to take care of them.

Now that they are old they experience that even though they seemed to be healthy in their younger years, malnourishment, exposure, exhaustion and mistreatment in fact took their toll on the body – only it didn't show that much until now. They now face diseases that most elders don't have to go through.

To keep a long letter short: Yes, I think Germany still owes them. Hopefully Germany won't stop repaying these former concentration camp inmates until the last one has died – which as I hope won't be too soon. Some articles made it clear that the number of former inmates who come back on commemorate day has been decreasing rapidly for the past ten years as more and more people now are too weakened by old age to do this stressful journey. Thus maybe Germany should even think about increasing the amount of money these people are to receive. Just to help them make it through these hard last decades!

Actually I intended this blog to be about military stuff only, but...well, it's not like I ever swore to never post something like the following as a comment and after all you already got warned that by reading this blog you expose yourself to historical subjects - note the fact that I used the plural of "subject" already in the title.

So again I may be getting a little off the topic, but: 

>On Sunday “Tagesschau” said that even though according to the German BEG-Law §1 the relatives of someone who was persecuted and killed by the NS-regime actually have the right to receive some “recompensation” - and I just find it hard to speak of recompensation in a case that involves the murder of millions of innocents and the destruction of whole families - by Germany, for some reasons the relatives of people who were murdered due to being physically or mentally challenged are excluded from this. Germany does not recognize those who fell victim to the so-called “euthanasia” as persecuted by the NS-regime – which is nonsense as you can't say that someone who was killed for being physically disabled was not persecuted. However historians say that if they indeed finally did pay this “recompensation” to relatives of these poor men, women and children they would have to pay money to at least one eight of Germany's population. No, I seriously don't know why they wouldn't do so. The only idea I could come up with is that the national socialists usually cremated the bodies of these people immediately after their death and called a doctor to make a fake death certificate. For example I've heard of a case in which they murdered a mentally challenged girl and stated in her death certificate that she died due to having refused to eat or drink. Thus it should be very hard to decide who in fact was killed on purpose and who died due to an accident.

By the way during this report “Tagesschau” also showed national socialist propaganda videos and added an annotation into one corner that said that the allegedly mentally challenged people seen in these videos actually were played by healthy actors who were just told to act like completely repulsive and scary retards. Thus these videos don't really show that the people murdered by this regime really were like. In fact “Tagesschau” even interviewed the surviving relative of someone who most likely was murdered back then and she said that despite his mental disability he was a good musician and his social interaction was good enough to earn him a wife. Not that his murder would have been justified if he indeed had been like propaganda movies depicted mentally challenged people back then! I'm merely saying that the people murdered by this regime never were as disturbing as some may think who got influenced by certain propaganda film clips.

>On 1stof January the priest reminded us in church that January 27th- which is in exactly one week and just a couple of hours - will be the 70thanniversary of the liberation of the concentration- and extermination-camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Allied Forces which probably would have taken a bit more time and claimed a few more lives if it hadn't been for the support of the brave, but unrewarded Irish soldiers mentioned in this blog. He asked us to use this day to pray for the poor souls who did not make it. In fact coincidentally at about the same time “GEA” reported that special German units who were trained to find the last few remaining German war-criminals from World War II claim that Russia indeed has some files that could help clearing up at least a few of these cases, but Russia refuses to let anybody have an insight into them. As these files are about Germans who used to be considered as war-criminals, but who later were proven innocent by the Soviet Union, the Russians responsible for not handing out these papers state that there is no need to show these files to anyone. Obviously they ignore the fact that these so-called innocent men were “proven” innocent by a totalitarian regime decades before the technology we now have to find culprits was even invented. Thus there still is at least a chance that the gentlemen these files talk about are in fact criminals who deserve a sentence.

Last Sunday the news show “Tagesschau” did a live broadcast of the induction of a memorial for the brave US-American and Canadian military pilots who were shot down by German soldiers, got seriously wounded in the process and then were brought to the concentration camp Buchenwald were many of them died before Buchenwald finally was freed by the US-American army.

Anyway this memorial was inducted just one week ago, but according to "Tagesschau" already had hundreds of visitors including politicians from all over the world - also from Germany -, former prisoners of this camp and even some elder gentleman and former soldiers came all the way from North America to honor their fallen former comrades. Alas this report didn't mention these honorable Irish soldiers either.

Dear Sir,

First of all, please let me tell you, that I do appreciate your kind words regarding my blog and thus I also feel the need to apologize for not replying to your comment until now, but there were other affairs pressing.

I'm relieved to hear that you also liked the remark about my bunny, since I worried that this could look a bit out of place to some users, but I just had in mind that otherwise people could accuse me of not knowing the exact date and thus just choosing any random day.

In school and in the many history books I've got at home – one of which even dealing with Irish history – I never heard of this story either and my guess is that many historians just consider them as less important as Great Britain and the USA – two of the Allied Forces – already were very strong nations that even without the support of these Irish gentleman would have been good enough to beat Nazi-Germany. However I still stick to my thought that without these over 4.000 man the war probably would have taken longer and thus claimed a higher death toll. Thus you could say that many people alive today maybe owe them their lives and that's the reason why I find it shameful that these soldiers never really got the respect they deserved.

At last I should say that recent events proved that people just need a little imagination and courage to peacefully protest for what they think is right – in this case for a memorial in honor of these brave gentlemen. In my blog I encouraged people to write complaint- and petition-letters, because I think that this is the most effective way to give them their memorial, but as it seems there are multiple methods people could use for their protest. For example to urge our politicians to do more against the pollution of the sea a German animal-aid organization once started a competition in which people had to upload pictures, music-videos and even photos of self-made carvings that dealt with the subject “How important is the protection of wild dolphins to me?” on the organization's homepage. The famous human rights organisation “Amnesty International” reacted to the discrimination of Copts in Egypt by sending a huge number of self-made Cardboard-Nofretetes to remind the Egyptian government that under Queen Nofretete Egypt was a multicultural state where people got along even though not all of them worshipped the same god. As a reaction to the increasing violence against women in India a group of ladies once spontaneously started a pantomimic show that dealt with this subject in a public place. To get Morgan the orca out of the tank where she currently isn't treated too well as it seems a teacher once told his class to draw a huge picture that dealt with the question why they should release this poor young whale and when it was done, the teacher published this. Last but not least people from (almost) all over Europe recently started to protest against their countries neglecting asylum-seekers. In Zurich for example – or at least that's what I've heard – an increasing number of placards, stickers and graffiti-paintings that state solidarity with refugees appear in more and more public places and in some German cities it has become popular to hang out flags of those countries where most refugees come from as if to say “You want to get rid of these poor African refugees? Then you have to send me away as well!”

All these examples prove that there are many ways to realize your dreams be it political wishes or not.

I thank everyone who follows this pledge of mine and I wish you all the best, good luck, God's blessings and have a nice day.

Yours faithfully,

Doris Schlapansky (alias “Dorothee”)

P.S. Please, Sir, you must tell me when you finally created your own blog. Your English seems to be perfect and I'm sure that the topic you choose for your blog will be very interesting.

This is really interesting post and topic. I've never heard before about those Ireland soldiers and those protests. Thanks for improving my knowlegde about it. I'm very interested in history just in human aspects like these. I think there are many stories like that especially when it comes to our recent history. Your post is really inspirational for me and I think I should consider to start with my own English blog. Your remark about your lovely bunny and then how you remember the date is wonderfull.