I Can't Believe...

German Concentration Camps

 After watching the video on Germany in the 20^th century the two parts that stuck with me the most were the tales of the concentration camps and how many women were raped after World War II. Hearing about a man faking an illness and jumping out of a hospital window to avoid being captured was awe-inspiring; that he was able to hide for so long in the city he loved was amazing. I have never seen the concentration camps but from the descriptions I can only imagine how horrible they were. In elementary school our teachers start to teach us about history. In kindergarten we’re made to take part in a yearly thanksgiving play involving the “Indians” and “Settlers”. We’re led to believe these two groups were friends that helped one another to make a nice turkey dinner. But it’s not until later in our academic learning that we learn how the settlers brought dieses like small pox to the natives. The settlers took advantage of the native’s hospitality and knowledge. Without them the settlers would have died that first winter. Who knows? Maybe we wouldn’t have colonized in the “New World” and the natives wouldn’t have reservations but the entire land that makes up the United States and on. 

United States Japanese Internment Camps

History is a tricky thing, with Hitler came the concentration camps that held the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and more. We look upon Hitler in disgust because of his camps and mass genocide but the United States has made many such errors in judgment. Granted, never that large of a mass killing of a people. I mean we had internment camps; our paranoia brought on by a time of war brought us that much closer to the evils of Hitler’s time. Most people just fail to recognize how close the United States has come to such evils. But those evils didn’t end with Hitler’s life. 

Girls killed by soldiers

After World War II, women had to protect themselves from their victors such as Russia. In one of the interviews a man discusses his need to find his identity. For years he thought his father was a United States soldier and eventually he finds his mother and asks the identity of his birth father. In tears she reveals that her son’s father wasn’t American but a Russian soldier. That she had been brutally raped at the end of the war. Most times it was two or more male soldiers that would take turns pinning the woman and forcing themselves upon her. Many times a result of this was pregnancy, disease, injury or even death. In another interview a woman talks about how she wasn’t even safe holding a crying child in her arms. When I was younger I had the naïve notion that when a war ended so did the violence. I later came to realize that that is never the case. We will never escape war and it’s resulting scars. I just didn’t realize how bad it was for German women. I can’t even begin to imagine how they felt; a constant fear hanging over them like a shadow, always looking over my shoulder and triple checking that things were locked. I doubt anyone was unaffected, if you were untouched it was very possible that someone you knew or were related to were affected. Husbands returning from war to homes with children that weren’t theirs, did they lash out at their wives or sympathize? The actions of humans never cease to amaze me. How have we as a society not evolved? What is it that makes humans do such unspeakable things to one another? I really doubt that we’ll stop making mistakes anytime soon unfortunately.   

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