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- Xref: sparky alt.revisionism:868 soc.history:10498
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!mala.bc.ca!oneb!kmcvay
- Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
- Subject: LEST WE FORGET: The Destruction of Hope...
- Message-ID: <1993Jan03.130103.2986@oneb.almanac.bc.ca>
- From: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken Mcvay)
- Date: Sun, 03 Jan 93 13:01:03 GMT
- Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
- Followup-To: alt.revisionism
- Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
- Keywords: Fenelon,Birkenau,Capo
- Lines: 54
-
- Fania Fenelon relates a conversation between herself and Ewa (a Polish
- friend and fellow prisoner with Fania at Birkenau); the discussion began
- when Ewa, troubled by a fellow Pole's monstrous behavior, approached Fania
- to let her know that all Poles were not to be judged by the behavior of a
- few. This leads to a discussion about the Polish kapos, and why they
- behave the way they do. I thought the thoughts expressed were worth
- saving...
-
- "They're pretty tough physically, and you need to be, in their job. The SS
- know it and get the message across. Some of these women have been here
- since 1942. When a young girl is flung into this atrocious atmosphere, here
- instinct orders her to react. She learns very quickly that you have to
- please the Nazis in order to survive, and that to do that you have to act
- like they do - it's only then that they trust you. That's the only
- guarantee of survival one can have here. It's true for people like [kapos].
- They've ended up thinking like Nazis, feeling that they too are a master
- race. The Nazis obliterate all traces of humanity in the internees, they
- appeal to the lowest instincts, set prisoners against each other, arouse
- all possible forms of savagery, crush the weak, protect those who become
- monstrous like themselves - and that's how they attain one of the aims of
- National Socialism; the destruction of human dignity. And of course with
- some underprivileged people born in a socially impoverished milieu, where
- there's no education of any kind, the ground is already prepared; all you
- need to do is alternately beat them and reward them for them to become
- torturers in their turn." <1>
-
- <1> ---------------------------------------------------------------
- Excerpted from......"PLAYING FOR TIME", Fania Fenelon with Marcelle
- Routier. Athenium, New York, 1977. ISBN 0-689-10796-X, pp. 133-134
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- A recent copy of our Almanac Holocaust files may be obtained via anonymous
- ftp from menora.weizmann.ac.il, as /pub/texts/lest.we.forget/oneb-txt.tar.Z
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-
- Individual files are now available via listserv. Send your request to:
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-
- For individual files, use the 'get' command, and the archive flag
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-
- Example: get holocaust <filename>
- get holocaust b-cpu.faq
- get holocaust irving.canada
-
- For a file list, try "index holocaust"
-
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