Something about WWII

[Vee]

I've always been very sensitive to human suffering, but there's something about the second world war that affects me more than other events.
When I was a teenager I read the Anne Frank Diary and later when I visited the house in Amsterdam, I cried all the way through and the house is empty. I saw the Schindler's List when it came out and I was in such shock I could never see it again, even though it's a fantastic movie and I tell everyone to watch it at least once in their lives. When I was in Poland some of my friends went to Auschwitz; I couldn't even think about it. There's no way I would have made it past the front gate without a panic attack.
More recently, I was reading a novel - beautiful story - from that period, but because the story happens in Morocco, I didn't connect the dots straight away and I was half way through the book when I realized it was about WWII. I finished it but it gave me anxiety.
Humans have been doing horrible things to each other since Cain murdered his brother, so I don't know what it is about WWII that triggers me, but I can't seem to find a way to deal with it, other than avoiding the subject, but I wouldn't call that a coping mechanism.
Do any of you have any similar issues? Not necessarily about the war, but something that makes you react so badly?

 

[Rival]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but abortion really gets to me. It's evil.

Titanic.

 

[SomeRandom]

My early high school history teacher despised Hitler and what he did. To the point where we could distract her in lessons by asking random questions about the Holocaust.
Whilst such a phenomenon does indeed perturb me, I think that experience caused me to have a dark fascination with the subject. My teacher never said anything that wasn’t age appropriate and she was beyond passionate about history. And that enthusiasm was rather infectious.
That said, yeah I love movies like Schindler’s List and A beautiful life etc. but I can’t watch them very often because holy hell lol

 

[ChristineM]

I used to have problems discussing WWII especially the Holocaust, murder of "lesser" races and atheists carried out by the Nazis.

When we move to France we invited a neighbouring couple for lunch to introduce ourselves. It turned out one of them was German who's father was a member of the SS. I couldn't avoid the topic any more. Since then we have had some really deep and often troubling conversations which have enlightened me to the (general) German feeling towards the attosoties of WWII.

 

[F1fan]

I think history is difficult for sensitive people. What the Nazis, and even the Japanese, did during WW2 is the bottom of what humans are capable of being.

Here is an episode of The Ascent of Man that assesses how humans developed their understanding of what we sense of our environment. It was written and produced in 1973 by Jacob Bronowski who was a scientist during WW2 and he was impacted by the Holocaust and the dropping on Japan. These events adjusted his outlook and this series was part of his contribution to humanity to help illuminate our history as a species.

This is the full episode:

This is how the episode concludes which is so moving:

 

[SomeRandom]

I used to have problems discussing WWII especially the Holocaust, murder of "lesser" races and atheists carried out by the Nazis.

When we move to France we invited a neighbouring couple for lunch to introduce ourselves. It turned out one of them was German who's father was a member of the SS. I couldn't avoid the topic any more. Since then we have had some really deep and often troubling conversations which have enlightened me to the (general) German feeling towards the attosoties of WWII.

Damn!

 

[ChristineM]

Damn!
View attachment 59990

It was, at first, now they have become valued friends

 

[SomeRandom]

It was, at first, now they have become valued friends

 

[F1fan]

I used to have problems discussing WWII especially the Holocaust, murder of "lesser" races and atheists carried out by the Nazis.

When we move to France we invited a neighbouring couple for lunch to introduce ourselves. It turned out one of them was German who's father was a member of the SS. I couldn't avoid the topic any more. Since then we have had some really deep and often troubling conversations which have enlightened me to the (general) German feeling towards the attosoties of WWII.

My dad was stationed in Augsberg from 1963 to 1965 for the US military. My parents moved into a doppelhaus and the neighbors were of course German, Kurt and Else. They didn't speak English but my mom learned German. Turned out Kurt had been in the German army, and was conscripted for an SS unit. It was late in the war and young boys were being conscripted to fill out the ranks of all units. Kurt wasn't indoctrinated or trained to the level of of SS units early in the war. He was just assigned to the unit and given orders.

The original SS members were highly trained and indoctrinated. They were members of the Nazi party. The irony was that later SS divisions were foreign conscripts, like the Wiking division which was mostly Scandanavian volunteers and conscripts.

 

[F1fan]

It was, at first, now they have become valued friends

Did you ever see the movie Walk on Water? Very moving film about a Mosad agent being sent to kill a Nazi war criminal and ends up befriending the guy's children.

Walk on Water (film) - Wikipedia

 

[kaninchen]

so I don't know what it is about WWII that triggers me

I think that, from a Western viewpoint, what happened in Europe in the years 1933-45 is particularly problematic.

Traditionally, it was always possible - and in the light of colonialism/manifest destiny etc totally hypocritical - to blame atrocities on perpetrators who were not 'like us' - "Well, it was the Turks/Russians/etc, etc, etc so what would you expect from people like that?"

What happened in Germany, however, was that one of the most - in some ways, the most - civilised and technologically advanced countries in the world went 'mad' and inflicted extremely well organised and, eventually, industrialised death on the continent.

In a sense, since then, what happened has presented both a "could/will something like that happen here?" and "is it possible that our diplomatic/military actions could be compared to those of the Reich?" problem.

That War destroyed all sorts of certainties and traditional values, we've been nervous ever since.

 

[RestlessSoul]

When I was a teenager, my dad subscribed to Purcell’s History of WWII - a six volume history which arrived in the form of weekly magazines which were collected and put in binders. I read all of it, and was particularly affected by subjects like the siege of Leningrad, the battle of Stalingrad, the Holocaust, the Blitz (which my mum lived through), the sacking of Nanking, the battle of Okinawa, and the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Learning about all that was extremely harrowing, and cast a dark shadow over my adolescence, but I’m glad I did. I was tempted recently to buy the collection on eBay, but decided once was enough; I know what humanity is capable of at our worst, but I don’t want to dwell on the darkness anymore.

Incidentally, anyone struggling to understand why Russia feels threatened by NATO’s eastward incursion into former Soviet territory could benefit from learning about the siege of Leningrad and the battle of Stalingrad.

 

[Estro Felino]

I can relate.
I will not watch movies about real events because the mere idea that certain atrocities did happen, makes me suffer.
I watched the series Chernobyl (except the 3rd episode, which I consider unwatchable) only once.
I will never watch it again. Because human suffering is unbearable to me.

 

[ChristineM]

Did you ever see the movie Walk on Water? Very moving film about a Mosad agent being sent to kill a Nazi war criminal and ends up befriending the guy's children.

Walk on Water (film) - Wikipedia

No, i don't watch many films, and none that could be upsetting,. Ok im a wimp

 

[F1fan]

No, i don't watch many films, and none that could be upsetting,. Ok im a wimp

It is an Israeli film that is surprisingly uplifting as it deals with hard subjects with a way to reconcile them.

 

[JustGeorge]

I can relate.
I will not watch movies about real events because the mere idea that certain atrocities did happen, makes me suffer.
I watched the series Chernobyl (except the 3rd episode, which I consider unwatchable) only once.
I will never watch it again. Because human suffering is unbearable to me.

I watch almost no movies, and this is one of the reasons...

It isn't war related, but I get anguished reading about gang crime. For the victims, and especially the perpetrators, who often are victims themselves. No one cares about them, they're just 'bad guys' to society, they get shipped off to prison, breaking up homes and families, and further exposing these young men to evils...

We had a neighbor who moved from Chicago to here, not realizing the gang problem was here, too. He wanted to get out of the gang life. He came here and stayed with family, and then "one day, someone from Chicago recognized me. And it was all over. "Now I'm back in this ****, and I can't get out, because if I don't do what I'm told, they'll come after me, and they'll come after my family." he told us in confidence. But, nobody cares for this marginalized portion of society... 'they' are the problem, we're told.

I never cared or realized until it came home to roost, and we were victims ourselves. We got away with our lives, but the men who assaulted us are either dead or in prison. They weren't so lucky. Who will mourn for them?

 

[Audie]

I've always been very sensitive to human suffering, but there's something about the second world war that affects me more than other events.
When I was a teenager I read the Anne Frank Diary and later when I visited the house in Amsterdam, I cried all the way through and the house is empty. I saw the Schindler's List when it came out and I was in such shock I could never see it again, even though it's a fantastic movie and I tell everyone to watch it at least once in their lives. When I was in Poland some of my friends went to Auschwitz; I couldn't even think about it. There's no way I would have made it past the front gate without a panic attack.
More recently, I was reading a novel - beautiful story - from that period, but because the story happens in Morocco, I didn't connect the dots straight away and I was half way through the book when I realized it was about WWII. I finished it but it gave me anxiety.
Humans have been doing horrible things to each other since Cain murdered his brother, so I don't know what it is about WWII that triggers me, but I can't seem to find a way to deal with it, other than avoiding the subject, but I wouldn't call that a coping mechanism.
Do any of you have any similar issues? Not necessarily about the war, but something that makes you react so badly?

My family was there when the Japanese declared all chinese women to be " prostitutes",
and free to all soldiers.

 

[PureX]

Do any of you have any similar issues? Not necessarily about the war, but something that makes you react so badly?

Many years ago I read a novel called, "The White Hotel" by M. D. Thomas. It was a weird and confusing book with multiple story-lines but the author was actually a poet, and so the writing was quite good, and it kept me following along.

Eventually one of the story arcs in the book came to the depiction of a scene in Poland, of the nazis forcing the Jews of the town onto trains supposedly to send them to work camps. And as part of the process they forced these Jews through a gauntlet of beatings and abuse where they were stripped and robbed of their clothes and possessions, and then instead of being put on the trains, they were marched past the trains, behind a hill in the rail-yard, and shot. And their bodies fell into big ditches that had been dug by heavy equipment, and then buried. (Some still alive.)

A female character in the book was a non-Jew that had married a Jewish man and had two children. As she was being shoved through the gauntlet she desperately tried to show the nazi soldiers her papers indicating that she was a non-Jewish Polish citizen and she eventually managed to get herself and her children pulled out of the line, though the soldiers didn't know what to do with them, and told them to sit on a small hill over to the side. As she sat there the shock of the shouting and beating began to wear off, and the realization of what was really happening in front of her began to set in. Hour after hour, through the afternoon, she watched old men, women, and children being punched and kicked while being stripped and robbed, then marched naked and confused and in shock to the mass graves, and then shot. All the while it was a beautiful spring day, with big puffy white clouds lazily floating by overhead. The whole world, and even the town, it seemed, oblivious to the abject horror going on before her. The whole thing, she noted, was a marvel of nazi psychological efficiency. Set up the keep the victims stunned and confused and compliant right up to the end.

Finally, it was getting dark and the ordeal was winding down, when some big-shot nazi officer showed up and asked why this woman and her kids were sitting on the hill, and a soldier explained to him that she was not a Jew and had the papers to prove it (though she was married to a Jew). And the nazi officer told the soldier to 'process' her, too, and scolded him for creating 'problems of inefficiency'. So after having watched hundreds of others murdered, she and her children were then forced through the line, stripped, robbed, and shot without the benefit of shock and confusion, or that spark of hope that somehow this isn't what it looks like that all the others before her had experienced just before they were killed.

But it was getting dark, and the soldiers operating the machine gun doing the killing all day had been drinking, and so the bullets missed one of the woman's children. A young girl of 11. Though she and the others all fell into the mass grave together. And when a nazi soldier came along with a pistol and shot into the pit at anyone that was still moving, or moaning, the girl laid very still on top of the warm, bleeding, writhing pile of dying bodies.

The soldiers then decided not to run the heavy equipment in the dark, to bury the remaining bodies, but to wait until morning. And after several hours had passed, and the girl heard no more moaning among the bodies, or talking among the soldiers above the pit, she crawled out, and walked away. Leaving her mother and brother behind in the pit, dead.

I am not a poet, or an especially good writer, but the author of "The White Hotel" was, and his ability to describe all of this in a way that really put the reader there, in the moment, was exceptional. And I will never forget it. It must be 30 years since I read that book, and still it gives me chills to think about it.

 

[Revoltingest]

My family was there when the Japanese declared all chinese women to be " prostitutes",
and free to all soldiers.

Japanese cannibalism (of Chinese) & medical
experimentation (on Chinese) sound like no
picnic either.

 

[Vee]

My family was there when the Japanese declared all chinese women to be " prostitutes",
and free to all soldiers.

That's horrible