jolesch7
Andrea Junker 
Seems like a good day to remind everyone that Auschwitz — a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps — was not located in Nazi Germany either.
Jackie@Strandjunker it was located in Nazi occupied Poland
Thom, exceedingly pure@Strandjunker And since we're at it - the reason the nazis were so efficient at eradicating the Dutch Jewish community during the occupation of 40-45, is because The Netherlands had an incredibly efficient and detailed population register. The nazis immediately sought access to these registers after the invasion, and they received little to no pushback from Dutch officials.
...just in case someone reading this is not worried about Musk accessing demographic records.
GeraintLlanfrancheta
Szymon Sokół 🇵🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦@thomholwerda @Strandjunker I think most Americans are unable to connect the dots.
Eric Burger@thomholwerda @Strandjunker though The Netherlands had a very efficient registration it was only the combination of 'self- registration' of Jews (completing registration with their Jewish (grand-)parents info) AND citizen registration files that gave enough info to find families quick enough through matching these two in the register per municipality.
Doreen32128 ready to rumble!
Thomas Wouters@thomholwerda @Strandjunker While we (well, those of us here) are trying to learn from history, I feel it's worth pointing out the resistance to it as well, in particular events like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing
lord pthenq1"@Strandjunker Y ya que estamos, la razón por la que los nazis fueron tan eficientes en la erradicación de la comunidad judía holandesa durante la ocupación de 1940-1945 es porque Países Bajos contaba con un registro de población increíblemente eficiente y detallado. Los nazis buscaron acceder a estos registros inmediatamente después de la invasión, y recibieron poca o ninguna oposición de las autoridades holandesas.
...por si acaso alguien que lea esto no le preocupa que Musk acceda a los registros demográficos."
Paul@thomholwerda @Strandjunker And to add to this: the main reason for this incredibly efficient en accurate register of the Dutch people and their religious orientation was that the school financing system was partly based on it. So: more catholic children meant more financing from the government - by law - of catholic schools. Same for Jewish and jewish schools.
r-hold@thomholwerda @Strandjunker IBM gladly helped with the computing, ignoring a call for an international boycott of Nazi Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑🔥@rhold Tech bros aiding fascists is the real oldest profession.
Mïkê 💚 👑🐉🗡️🏳️⚧️@Strandjunker Neither were any of the death camps, for that matter. They wanted as few people to know what they were doing as possible.
Yora@mikelovesbikes @Strandjunker The Nazi leadership wanted to make it easier for their supporters to not have to think about the mass killing and put it out of their minds to sleep well at night.
Also to delay new spreading to other countries that might be further motivated to fight them in war.
@Strandjunker You don't do it at home where people can see it.
Mab_813And yet the nazis absolutely ALSO did it at home where people could see it - my grandmother lived 3 km from a concentration camp in Austria (Back in those days, most Austrians saw themselves as Germans, which has changed).
I get why US Americans are talking about this (as a comparison to the camp in El Salvador) but their insistence on "No extermination camps in Germany" is starting to get weird.
Simon Zerafa (Status: 
😊)cc @georgetakei
Ok, I said it was going to get worse soon but not quite this soon 🫤🤦♂️
craignicol@Strandjunker that's been a denialist talking point for years "can't be true, there weren't 6 million Jews in Germany in 1939" - conveniently omitting that war was declared in 1939 specifically because the Nazis didn't stay in Germany.
Tom Andraszek@Strandjunker - this is a bad take.
First, ICE is capable of running camps in the US, for example on military bases.
Second, Auschwitz and hundreds of other concentration camps and two death camps were located in Germany proper, the other in Greater Germany - see the map below. Auschwitz was part of Germany proper from 1939 to 1945.
Third, unlike El Salvador that has full control of the prison/camp on their territory, Polish government was in London and had no control over the camps.
el Celio 🇪🇺 🇺🇦I suppose, a good or bad take in a social media is measured by the amount of boosts rather than historical accuracy.
@elCelio @Strandjunker - I've seen this take used to shift blame for the Holocaust from Germany to Poland: "Germans would not allow it", "Poles wanted it", etc. Some recent surveys I think indicated that about half of Germans and half of Israelis believe that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust on par with Germany. This is not innocuous.
לָקס (לא לותור) لاكس🏴@tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker ok sorry I'm an Israeli and that's inaccurate. People put the blame on Nazi Poland, not poles. Everyone knows poles were under occupation. Besides Nazis and cooperators, no one thinks it's the poles' fault, exactly as much as no one thinks it's *all* the germans' fault.
People blame the Nazis, dot. Polish Nazis, German Nazis. Poland was responsible for the Holocaust, yes, when it was Nazi Poland, not the government-in-exile, obviously.
@tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker
But the point here is true, the worst prison, the worst human rights violation, is almost always outside of your territory.
"It could be a military base" that's literally what concentration and extermination camps *were*. People still realize at some point that you have trains entering, entering, entering, but not exiting, and at some point they'll forget their hate and only remember the humanity of the killed.
@tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker
Hiding the extermination camps isn't the point. People knew they existed to some extent. But placing them outside of your territory allows your core population to live in denial, and keep supporting you, or at least, hating you less than the alternative your propaganda portrays.
The extermination camps were deliberately built outside of Germany. In concentration camps, there were trains exiting—so it wasn't as big of a problem for the Nazis.
@tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker iirc the Nazis also set up fake, empty trains to make it look like some Jews *are* leaving the extermination camps.
But I don't have sources, and I don't remember where I got this last bit of information from, so take it with a grain of salt.
(Edited to replace Germans with Nazis, in Hebrew we have a short word that means "of then", but it doesn't have an equivalent in English)
@lax - sorry mate, but there was no such thing as Nazi Poland. Do you mean General Government? It was an area administered by Hans Frank - a German. The official language was German. Polish Jews wore a star of David with the German word Jude. The public announcements were in German and Polish and the low level administration was Polish, like Judenrat - Jews were governing the ghettos, but it was the German SS that was giving orders. As to what Nazi Germany planned there, see Generalplan Ost.
@tom_andraszek the Polish state government under Nazi rule. Poland is a nation-state, and thus, "Poland" is a country, a nation, a people, *and* a state. ארץ, אומה, עם, ומדינה.
The fact that Nazi Poland's government was headed by a German does not change that it was Poland nor that it was Nazi.
I have no idea why you care so much about this: there were Polish Nazis, and they cooperated with the Nazi government. Just like there were German Nazis who cooperated with their Nazi government.
@lax - oh my gosh, no. Would a Polish government, Nazi or not, kill 10 Poles for every German killed by partisans? Kill over two million of non-Jewish Poles, including 90 thousand in Auschwitz? Hungary had a Nazi, or Nazi-aligned government, Slovakia, Norway, Vichy France, Bulgaria, Romania, not Poland, not Czechia - these were incorporated into Germany. Polish government escaped in Sept 1939. The pre-war territory of Poland was ruled by Germany and the Soviet Union.
@tom_andraszek you're arguing about terms and ignoring what I say, again: "Poland" can also mean a country. Nazi Poland, Poland, the country, the *land*, during Nazi rule.
"Victorian England" wasn't a historical state. It's a time period + a country. Same for "Nazi Poland". God.
@lax - how can one blame the land for anything? The land as a geographical feature is just there. One cannot blame the Baltic Sea for the Holocaust. I'm not ignoring what you are saying. I don't understand you.
Poles were not in charge of running occupied Poland. It was not just Hans Frank, it was the whole German government. When the occupation started Germans killed thousands of Polish intelligentsia. They ruled through terror. "Nazi Poland" is an oxymoron for me.
@tom_andraszek this seriously does not feel like a constructive discussion.
I said no one blames the poles. You're just trying to find minor mistakes. In my argument. Even if my usage of the term "Nazi Poland" is wrong (which it is not), my point stands.
So please, let's end this.
@lax @tom_andraszek @Strandjunker
Dachau, Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, Floessenburg, Mathausen, where in Germany, not in territories occupied in WW2.
Dachau, Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, Floessenburg, Mathausen, where in Germany, not in territories occupied in WW2.
@elCelio @tom_andraszek @Strandjunker it's not an all or nothing situation. It's a the least the better one.
Billiglarper@lax @tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker
I think part of the point was to hide the scale of the killings.
As you say, it was easier if people could just tell themselves that folks just "got deported to another country" or were "put to hard labour".
But another part of the truth is that even after WWII, most Germans didn't want to face reality or act on it. The first German Auschwitz trial was in 1963, and the prosecutor who pushed it faced A LOT of hate.
@lax @tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker
I'm also not sure there's much point to debating the distinction.
- Yes, most of the larger extermination camps were moved to annexed countries.
- Yes, there were still large and numerous slave labor camps in Germany proper where people were worked to death
- A lot of smaller local places like Gestapo prisons had such a terrible rep with Germans that they were also known as concentration camps.
So yes, people did know. And not care enough.
@lax @tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker
Personally, I'm glad that people are seeing the workings of a fascist state that starts designating part of the populations as "others" who can be mistreated at will. Including deportation to concentration camps.
Imho pointing out the parallels to KZs (and Gulags) is a very visual and therefore powerful tool to get peoply to actually worry about what is going on.
@billiglarper - there is a point debating the distinction if you are Polish. It's one of those, "shopping while black", or "walking at night as a woman" things. You don't notice the different behaviour of others if you are not part of the target group. There are many people who think the camps were Polish and run by Poles, and Poland (the country) is responsible for the Holocaust, and unlike Germans who acknowledged their guilt, Poles didn't, so we like modern Germans, but we still hate Poles.
I'm sorry that it's your experience that some people take the term "Polish death camps" literal and blame Poles for the holocaust. (Not my experience in Germany and so far on Mastodon, though. Not surprised either.)
I also think your interjection that camps don't have to be "away from home" was a good point well illustrated by the map.
But no, I don't see Poles and Poland being the target group or topic in this thread. Nor did anybody in this thread shift blame onto Poles.
@billiglarper - "But no, I don't see Poles and Poland being the target group or topic in this thread. Nor did anybody in this thread shift blame onto Poles." - see the two screenshots, from this thread.
From the Auschwitz wiki:
The first mass transport of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 [...] By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer zone patrolled by the SS...
I don't think they contradict.
It was intended more as a warning. While totalitarian states might try to hide the scale and make it easier for people to lie to themselves, they might not have needed to bother. There are lots of examples of uncontested in-country concentration camps in history.
But even this is no certainty. History in the making is a very dynamic process. There's examples where totalitarian states got away with something, and other where they didn't.
Joseph Lord@tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker what I took,which I think was the intended take, is that the worst crimes were done outside borders where Germans couldn’t see them (and maybe as a threat/warning to the Poles). This draws a parallel with the current Trump transportation to slavery policy although the government of El Salvador is complicit in a way that is unlike the situation in occupied Poland.
@JosephLord - secrecy and deception was important to the SS to the very end: people were told that the trains would take them to work camps, and after arrival were told to undress to take a shower (when entering a gas chamber), but it was not why the death camps were built in occupied Poland.
They were built close to where the 3 million Polish Jews lived. Birkenau was close to Cracow, Majdanek - Lublin, Kulmhof - Łódź, Treblinka - Warsaw.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che%C5%82mno_extermination_camp
appfrosch@tom_andraszek @elCelio @Strandjunker Wasn’t aware of this-and if true, that’s really disgusting … Also shows that “never forget” is really in danger. Do you have links to those surveys so that I can educate myself some more?
@appfrosch - re Germany: this was an Ipsos gmbh poll of 2000 people conducted for the Pilecki Institute in 2024. Here is a link to an English language summary:
"Asked about responsibility for the Holocaust, 57% believed that Germans and collaborators from occupied nations were responsible to a similar extent. Only one third (34%) believed it was “mainly Germans” who were responsible and 9% that it was “only Germans”."
@appfrosch - re Israel: a 2024 poll of about 1000 people lead by Gisela Dachs from Hebrew University in Jerusalem:
"Asked whether “the Polish people [are] responsible for their Jewish neighbors being destroyed in the Holocaust,” 47% of Israelis replied: “Yes, exactly like the Germans,” and another 25% said “only partly.” Only 11% of Israelis surveyed said that the Polish nation was also a victim of the Holocaust, and another 18 gave no answer."
@tom_andraszek thank you 🙏
Jonathan McKeown@Strandjunker And that they built another 5 extermination camps in Poland (Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek).
How many more camps did Trump say El Salvador needed to build? [Edited to correct country]
Bssr4 (TЯ☭M₽ )
mrflash818@Strandjunker Yeow, hadn't thought about that, had to go look it up. Was/is in Poland! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
Juan Per¢ent,🇲🇽 🍉,🇻🇪@Strandjunker Everyone can also be reminded that many people were sent to Guantanamo Bay without due process. They were mostly Muslims so few people cared, but it created precedent and engendered also cruel soldiers who become cruel politicians like DeSantis and Hegset.
This is not really new, only closer to home for many.
This is not really new, only closer to home for many.
Jim Rogantini@dacig @Strandjunker About Guantanamo Bay: when I was on my foreign exchange at a US law school with other Swiss law students, we confronted US professors about this. They saw no problem in having an extra-territorial detention camp and granting no human rights to the accused whatsoever, arguing they were "simply terrorists who didn't deserve them". We were shocked to our bones!
@ji7ro @Strandjunker US law professors indifferent to people being stripped of rights and humanity. Shocked but not surprised.
Pseudonymous 
Never forget that Sobibor rose up and escaped.
Never forget that after Sobibor was overthrown the military knocked it down and planted trees to pretend it wasn't there.
Work in Progress 🌻@Strandjunker A good day to remind everyone that the Nazis that we are arming in Ukraine are the progeny of the Ukrainian Nazis that participated in the Holocaust.
Ukrainian guards outnumbered Nazi SS men 10-to-one at the Sobibor death camp, but they fell strictly under the Germans' authority, a Jewish survivor testified Wednesday at the trial of John Demjanjuk.
https://www.jpost.com/International/Ukrainians-guards-took-part-in-extermination
Paul SchoeYour post is a good reason to remind everybody that the people in #Ukraine are fighting for their #freedom. They do not want to be occupied and have their children kidnapped and distributed all over #Russia.
In addition, #Germany is a good example of how freedom can result in good education to ensure that what happened during World War II will not happen again.
What you are doing is simply expressing Russian propaganda.
MoglegYet despite their education they’re rabidly pro genocide in west Asia. It seems their reckoning with their own past is flawed.
There are honest exceptions but even suggesting genocide is bad will get the police to pay you an unhealthy amount of interest.
@paulschoe @unfinishedsymphony @Strandjunker I think European were trained,erm educated to view Nazism as the ultimate evil, making them blind to the injustices they - we- have perpetrated.
The recent row in France because of a journalist comparing nazi crimes in France to French colonial violence in Algeria comes to mind.
The Pan European silencing of Palestinian voices is appalling.
The racial component of standing up for Ukrainians but not for other oppressed people is glaring.
The recent row in France because of a journalist comparing nazi crimes in France to French colonial violence in Algeria comes to mind.
The Pan European silencing of Palestinian voices is appalling.
The racial component of standing up for Ukrainians but not for other oppressed people is glaring.