response 1 of 59:

Jul 15 07:12 UTC 2003

I guess that proves nurture not nature, huh.  Oh, and by the way, the
current queen of england (no, not boy george) is a kraut. As was the
supreme commander of all forces in opposition to the Nazis.  Something
in the 90% of all SS were "good Catholic boys" although I seems to
recall the majority of nazis were lutheran.  THe most highly decorated
USARMY unit during WW-II was japanese (442nd).  The Revolution in 1776
was financed by jews (wasn't a very good investment and many ended up
bankrupt). Lindberg was a supporter of american nazis.  The head of the
nazi party that marched on Skokie was a jewboy.  I seem to recall that
one of the primary nationalist leaders of the Argentine plot to
overthrow the nazi symathetic regime during the 1940s was an irishman
and I seem to recall he became president before Peron who was a NSDP
sympathizer and former military attache to Berlin - and a member of the
plot.

Yep, janc is a sweet and kindly person which seems to be rather rare no
matter how you try to correlate it with any particular orientation or
genetics but is rather common thankfully in the population of humans at
large.

response 3 of 59:

Jul 15 15:18 UTC 2003

Well, both my parents were German immigrants, so in many ways my nuture was
pretty German.  German was my first language, although I've lost most of it.
German ancestory isn't exactly a rarity in America.  Here in Michigan probably
a majority of people are of German extraction.

My father's family was as strongly anti-Nazi as it was safe to be, which isn't
very strongly.  My father's brother served in the German army.  My mother's
parents were Nazi party members, but I think were less antisemitic than my
father's family.  They lived in Jewish neighborhoods, had many close Jewish
friends, did business primarily with Jews.  My grandfather apparantly was
able to help save one Jewish friend from the camps.  Many of my great uncles
on that side of that family were German soldiers - nearly all died.  One
great uncle was in the SS.  He's the official black sheep of the family.
Whether because of the SS thing or some other reason I never heard, he was
cut off from the family.  I remember he sent a letter to my mom once - rather
a nice letter.  He was working as a janitor.  He said that he'd happily clean
toilets all day long so he'd have the money to buy food for his little dog.
A lonely old man.  He must have died by now, but I never heard about it.
I really don't know that much about what life was like for these people.
What stories I heard from my parents were far from complete.

There's been a lot of nastiness in history, and all of us have had ancestors
on the giving end and the receiving end.  Saints don't have a terribly good
track record as far as getting their children raise goes, so not many of us
are decended from saints.  I think you can find some bigotry in anyone's
family tree.  I have a lot of respect for my parents and grandparents.  If
any of them were still alive, they might have been a bit stunned by the fact
that my children are Jewish.  Or they might not have been.  Marriages between
Jews and non-Jews were pretty common in Germany before the war.  But I think
they'd have all set that aside easily enough.  Even the SS guy.  As far as
I know, they were people of their place and time, with many of the prejudices
that came from that, but they weren't hateful people.

But while they weren't hateful people, they were all part of the society that
perpetrated the Holocaust.  I think the formula for a Holocaust includes
(1) a society under severe stress where most people fear for their security,
(2) a society that is divided in everyone's into a "them" and an "us" where
the "them" are viewed with suspicion if not necessarily hatred, (3) a few
people who actually hate "them", and (4) a shortage of people who are
willing to risk their necks looking out for strangers.  I don't think my
ancestors participated in the Holocaust.  But like all Germans, they knew
that the Jews were being taken away, and they avoided thinking too hard about
what might be happening to them.

I think demonizing all Germans is a dangerous mistake.  If you pretend it
requires an nation of frothing maniacs to perpetrate a Holocaust, then it is
easy to be falsely secure that it can't happen here.  What should really
frighten people about Nazism is not that such nasty people can exist in the
world, but that people so little worse from us can commit such crimes against
humanity.

response 5 of 59:

Jul 15 15:46 UTC 2003

That was a wonderful post, Jan, especially the last paragraph.

response 7 of 59:

Jul 15 19:15 UTC 2003

Jan, that was incredibly well written.  I always love how you read that people
said after the Holocaust, "Never again", yet we've watched it happen over and
over again.

response 9 of 59:

Jul 16 00:35 UTC 2003

re:  "#3 (janc):  ...  Here in Michigan probably a majority of people 
are of German extraction."

According to the 2k US Census, 9.9M MI residents reported about 11M 
ancestries.  Of those, 2.04M reported German ancestry.  This was the 
most for any single country and about double the # reported for the 
runner-up country (Ireland).

response 11 of 59:

Jul 16 02:49 UTC 2003

So not nearly a majority, but lots.  (I suppose one could quibble about the
reliability of those statistics, but what would be the point?)  Still,
although America tends to emphasize it's English cultural heritage, other
nations actually contribute much more to America's genetic heritage.

I think the impulse to label people is human and unavoidable, but dangerous.
That was one thing that always seemed kind of odd to me about my parents. 
They were always noticing Jews.  If a person looked Jewish, or had a last
name that sounded Jewish, this was an occasion for a comment among themselves.
"Oh, he's Jewish."  There was a certain stereotype assoicated with that -
Jews were presumed to be smart and agressive.  There wasn't any hatrid in
this.  My parents best and closest livelong friends, the people who served
as defacto grandparents to me, were Jewish.  But somehow it always seemed
important to notice who is Jewish.  (This one didn't really get passed on
to me - generally the first time I notice that someone is Jewish is when
I bump into them at the Jewish Community Center.)

My impression is that this awareness of Jewishness is pretty common among
people who, like my parents, grew up in Nazi Germany.  When they were kids,
the fact that a person was Jewish was a very significant fact, meaning, among
other things, that the person was likely to disappear any minute now.  But
my guess is that this kind of thought was already common before the rise of
Nazism.  The early 20th century was actually a period when Jews were
increasingly being accepted in German society.  Restrictions on them were
being relaxed, more Jews were entering positions of power, intermarriage with
non-Jews was increasingly common.  I think most Germans were more accepting
of Jews than ever before (while the minority that clung to old prejudices were
more rabid than ever at seeing the advance of Jews).  But even if Jews were
being accepted, they were still being noticed.

I think this is the first ingrediate for a Holocaust.  The second is that the
people need to be seriously threatened.  Germany had first the loss of the
first world war, then the ruinous post-war economy where everything that
people owned became worthless, and then a whole new war, in which Germany was
once again squared off against the world.  People had serious reason to wonder
if they would be able to take care of themselves and their families.  I see
echos of this in my family.  My dad built his house with a hook up for a wood
stove, and there was a woodstove sitting in the basement all his life.  If
natural gas and electricity ever stopped flowing, my dad was ready to hook
up the wood stove.  My parents had an almost survivalist attitude.  They were
prepared for the day when our family would have to fend for itself, and take
care of itself in a hostile world.  That's the mind set they grew up with -
families and close friends stuck together and took care of each other, but
nobody was going far out on a limb for strangers.

Combine these two ingrediants.  We need to protect our loved ones in a world
of dangers.  There are some people who are (1) not like us, and (2) smart and
aggressive.  In a world of scarce resources, a smart and agressive stranger
can easily be considered a enemy.  They might get that last crust of bread
before you do.

I guess you need one more ingrediant - some politicians ready to exploit
that fear - but it's hard to imagine a human society lacking that ingrediant.
It's such an easy road to power.  The people are afraid.  Give them an 
unsympathetic enemy to focus their fear on.  Recruit the tiny contingent of
true haters to help stir things up.  Define anyone who defends the enemy as
an enemy.  Use and encourage people's fears to stir up a band of loyal
followers for yourself.

One should not exaggerate.  I think the great majority of Germans would never
have raised a hand to harm a Jew.  But neither did they raise a hand to
defend a Jew.  All Germans knew the Jews were being taken away.  I don't
know how many knew how much about what was happening to them, but they knew
it wasn't anything good.  You'd have had to be pretty heroic to try to do
something about it - you'd certainly be risking your own life to challenge
the Nazis.  Virtually no heros appeared.  Germany surrendered to fear and
prejudice, and millions of innocents died.

So, thinking about all this makes me suspicious of a few kinds of things.
Politicians who fear-monger, trying to make dangers seem worse than they
are instead of trying to calm fears (latest example, Bush Jr and gang).
People who go out of their way to emphasize differences and promote
stereotypes (latest example, hmmm, how about this item?).  I don't think
we are anywhere near the brink of a Holocaust, but I guess I inherited a
bit of my parent's paranoia.  Bad times can happen.  Preparing for it by
trying to defuse fear mongering and latent prejudice is more useful than
preparing for it with a wood stove in the basement.

This isn't really an answer to the question of the Holocaust.  I can't
even solve the puzzle of my grandparents, much less of all of Germany.
For instance, my mother grew up certain that her parents were patriotic
supporters of the Nazi party, and everything they did seemed to support
that.  But my grandmother told about how furious she was when she heard
of the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler - she thought the assasins
should have had the courage to stay with the bomb, to make sure it
was next to Hitler when it went off, to make sure he died, instead of
slinking away to try to save their own lives.  Was this a world where
people who passionately desired the death of their leaders nevertheless
acted as loyal supporters?  Why be so eager to condemn people who did
not enough when so many did nothing?  Or was that a modified memory
revised afterwards?  What was really going on in the heads of Germans?
I have only guesses.  I'll probably never know more.

response 13 of 59:

Jul 16 06:28 UTC 2003

I rented The Pianist recently. It really depicted the Nazis as incredible
sadists. The attitude of the new-Jewish German population didn't come
through as well, except that they ingratiated themselves to the Nazis when
they could. Perhaps they were frightened too. The thought that kept
occurring to me was the old saw about "power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely". How could they not know what they were doing was so
terribly wrong? And that there would be eventual retribution? 

I see shadows of this in what the US has been doing with some persons
those in *power* perceive as possible threats, no matter how remote. I
could see it getting much worse, and am hoping that the separations of
power we have institutionalized will avert worse.

response 15 of 59:

Jul 16 11:44 UTC 2003

STFU polytarp...you faggot bitch. YOU ARE A SISSY!
So get the shit off your nose and quit kissing ass.

response 17 of 59:

Jul 16 17:21 UTC 2003

I may be a sissy, but at least I don't have womanish prose.

response 19 of 59:

Jul 16 17:28 UTC 2003

NO way.  I see lots of disTINCLY male prose.  But yours, I'm afraid, A GIRL"S.

response 21 of 59:

Jul 17 03:48 UTC 2003

I noticed that the numbers of emigrees to Israel and Germany were odd numbers
like 18,762 while the number of emigrees to the US was quoted as 10,000.  I
suspect a quota is at work here.  Germany, like Israel, is willing to take
as many Jews as would like to come.  Most other countries are not.  Some of
these Russian Jews are not really all that Jewish either - because of the bans
on religion under Soviet rule, many have never learned Hebrew or Yiddish and
are pretty ignorant of the Jewish faith.  There is even some question about
whether some of them are Jewish at all - Russian law says you are Jewish if
your father was Jewish.  Hebrew law requires that the mother be Jewish.  (Some
Jewish organization actually asked the German government to refuse entry to
people who only had a Jewish father, not a Jewish mother.  The German
government politely declined to ever again get involved in determining who
is Jewish.)  Anyway, for many Russians who have Jewish heredity, but not an
overly strong sense of Jewish identity, Germany may look much more appealing
than Israel.  Safer at least.

Meanwhile, of course, there are lots of Arab immigrants in Germany too, making
the situation even a bit more interesting.

response 23 of 59:

Jul 17 13:19 UTC 2003

No - most of the emigrees have no connection to Germany.  No ancestors there,
don't speak the language, nothing.