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Deva
Dinosaur
279 Posts |
 Posted - 22 September 2006 : 3:31:14 PM
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I have read a little about Gulags and concentration camps. There is one, very sensitive, area which I think needs greater study.
In many instances, literally thousands of people were herded to their deaths by less than a dozen men: armed with sub-machine guns admittedly.
If asked, everyone would say that they would go down fighting, but in reality many millions did not. Why is this? Were people so broken by the journey that their spirits were shattered? I certainly do not believe that it was cowardice, so what was it?
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Parmenion
Homosapien
United Kingdom
14676 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 3:39:34 PM
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they had been cowed by brutality before they got to the camps, and a machine gun can kill alot of people...so who wants to be the first to die...also it was a long time before they knew what the camps were for. they just thought it was another prison for them
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE
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Deva
Dinosaur
279 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 3:44:51 PM
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I think that by about 1943, some people understood what was meant by being 'shipped out East'. I agree with your point about the brutality (also the starvation) en route.
I think that ...'so who wants to be first to die'.. is interesting. Were people so subjugated that surviving for another few minutes was all? |
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Parmenion
Homosapien
United Kingdom
14676 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 3:51:47 PM
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its basic instinct isnt it the need to live, but also in the carriges many of them died, by 1943 when they were transported they were barely alive when they arrived at the camps, and then they were treated even worse so there was not strength left to fight back
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE
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Deva
Dinosaur
279 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 3:59:20 PM
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Do you think it was more physical than psychological?
In Applebaum's 'Gulag' (won the Pulitzer a few years back), there is an interesting piece about the shame the Georgians feel as a nation because so many of them went to the Gulag with so little resistance. |
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Alex Scarrow
Ape
993 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 4:00:19 PM
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I think the answer is that there was enough doubt that death was imminent, that no one was prepared to risk certain death by tackling the guards.
For instance, in Germany the Nazis were very careful to maintain the pretense that the Jews were being relocated to a work camp, right up until the very, very last moment. For example in Dachau, as they were instructed to undress before the 'shower', they were told to carefully store their clothes in lockers to ensure that there would be no theft of personal items or confusion as to whose clothes were whose when they got dressed again after this shower. That's why the Jews walked compliantly to their deaths...there were enough seeds of hope sewn along the way.
Take 9/11....it was only when the certainty of an approaching death was made apparent to those poor passengers aboard flight 93, that they finally rose up as one against the hijackers.
I often wonder how I would react in a hostage situation....particularly for example, if I were abducted by militia down some Baghdad back street. Would I fight to the death then and there, knowing that if I was taken alive I'd almost certainly face a beheading later on? Or would I comply?...and let myself be taken in the vain hope...the slightest hope, that my release might be negotiated later on. |
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Parmenion
Homosapien
United Kingdom
14676 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 4:07:39 PM
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I think we all lean towards hope, i think i would wait and see, hope that i was saved, i think if it came to the camera going on and a bloke with a sword i would go down kickingscreaming and crying...but it depends, if the torture you, you might accept death easier than more torture.
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE
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Deva
Dinosaur
279 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 4:14:45 PM
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Flight 93 fought back, but that is very much the exception.
History is littered with occasions when whole groups of people have marched, flown or sailed to certain death at the hands of oppressors.
Maybe the will to live is the strongest urge we have...maybe we'd do anything for an extra few seconds of life? |
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Parmenion
Homosapien
United Kingdom
14676 Posts |
Posted - 22 September 2006 : 4:24:20 PM
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the will to live has seen people sever their own limbs if trapped by them.
there was a man in the USA trapped under a boulder a couple of years back...i think a brit. he cut his arm off with a leatherman penknife, it was that or starve..
the will to live works in strange ways it can create bouts of huge heroism of total submission in the hope some one else will save you.
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE
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Deva
Dinosaur
279 Posts |
Posted - 25 September 2006 : 11:41:36 AM
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I've just found this piece entitled "An Inquiry into the General Lack of Violent Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust." Despite the rather insensitive title, this is an interesting (and short) academic study.
http://www.a-human-right.com/jewsfight.html
It mentions that a key influencer was the belief in the mercy and humanity of others: a belief that was often unshakeable, irrespective of what people were actually seeing with their own eyes. |
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Ankhsy
Homosapien
United Kingdom
7861 Posts |
Posted - 25 September 2006 : 4:52:44 PM
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I think Humans are a naturally optimistic species and like to argue themselves out of potentially dangerous choices. Many Jews recotngised the imminent danger the Nazis brought and fled Germany while they were still able, but the vast majority just stuck their head in the sand and refused to accept that a 'civilised' nation would bring themselves to commit the atrocities that they did.
The Nazis only had to convince the Jewish leaders of their [false] intentions, and it was the Jewish leaders who convinced their people to follow meekly. At the start of the Jewish relocations, the Nazis did not have the manpower to enforce their will had the Jews chosen to resist. However, [I've read somewhere] a problem with the Germjan Jews was a fatalistic belief in Jewish victimhood and accepted anti-Semitism as an unchallangeable part of life, which led to non-resistence which the Nazis took advantage of. The lack of protest at their treatment from outside Germany also didn't help Jewish hopes for resistence, and so they [at least the vast majority] meekly marched to their deaths.
"It's hard to work in a group when you're omniscient."
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Broken spirits?
