Digital reconstruction of Warsaw after the 1944 uprising

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

But how does one respond to violence like that which destroyed Warsaw if not with more violence?

"Turn the other cheek" is a fine Christian value but it usually just invites a second slap.

Break the slapping hand though and it slaps no more...

This is true, and it is a sad fact of life that violence like that will always continue, and the only way to contain it without submission is through violence. An eye for an eye making the whole world blind. We all wish for a day when all wars will end, but even our most destructive weapons cannot bring about peace on earth because they cannot change human nature.
We're better than we were a thousand years ago, but we've still got a long way to go.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by August

"Turn the other cheek" is a fine Christian value but it usually just invites a second slap.

Break the slapping hand though and it slaps no more...

Tell me about it. I got beat up in school because I was a pacifist and the beatings stopped when I broked someones glasses and a tooth. My dad thrashed me at home but not as much as I thrashed the other guy

[Penguin]

Very impressive and very good work fom a technical pov.
I find it especially impressive if you compare it with air footage of German cities in 1945, as for example the ones shot during the trolley missions, some pics can be seen here: http://thebigfoto.com/world-war-2-trolley-missions
This puts the whole thing into dimension. The damage done to Warsaw in 2 months looks at least equal if not more to the damage done by years of bomb raids to Cologne - one of the major cities with the most structural damage.

Originally Posted by Skybird

I have criticised the cult about the Auschwitz remembrance for the same reason. People sit and eat beside the entrance to the compound. And they will drink a coffee with milk and sugar while watching that digital video about Warsaw. And they will find it an exciting evening spend at the cinemas next time a warmovie is shown.

We are so fixiated on staring back into history that we miss to prevent new calamities being done in the present. WWII we could not have prevented, none of us, we all are too young. The genocide in Darfhur for example is something that takes place during our lives. That we could have tried to influence for the better. (Just an example).

I had a cola with ice during the clip, no coffee for me, thanks.
So who is the authority to tell how things should be remembered? Do the people who starved to death in the KLs gain something if you don't eat there? Are the people who impious?

Everyone who wants to remember can do it their own way. There might even be some people who think some silly stones in Berlin can help the memory - though I never met a single one.

Thinking about events from history does also not mean to have no awareness of today's atrocities. For example the Holocaust Museum in Washington has its own exhibition about Darfur and other contemporary genocides like Bosnia and Rwanda.

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Penguin

So who is the authority to tell how things should be remembered?

A good question. The cynical answer is: "the guy with the money." Unfortunate reality of memory organisations.

Thinking about events from history does also not mean to have no awareness of today's atrocities.

I would hope so. But the danger in history is getting too fixated to it. And another is the perspective getting smaller and smaller, while the illusion of knowing a lot gets bigger and bigger. Suddenly it's not history anymore: it's World War 2. Then it's not World War 2 anymore: it's one single event. And while I, as an aspiring historian, am all for studying one thing thorougly instead of being a walking Wikipedia, I'm still afraid it can in some cases create tunnel vision. I'm hardly immune to it myself.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Hottentot

A good question. The cynical answer is: "the guy with the money." Unfortunate reality of memory organisations.

[cyn mode]
Maybe one day we have a big rainbow colored apple statue standing in Auschwitz - the i-memorial
[/cyn mode]

However I wanted to put more an emphasis on the individual side of remembrance in my previous post. Just like people grief differently. For example some people may think it is distateful to pour a beer on a buddy's grave or come to a funeral in colorful clothes, while this is my thing to do.
Anyone has it's own way to deal with memories, there is nothing better or more serious, thus nothing to judge.

And just like grief is only real when it's done voluntary, a top-down remembrance works only to a certain point and this is what makes some people fed up with "remembrance culture".
People can stand on a memorial site in fancy clothes with empty heads, thinking about J-Lo's ass while another person may just watch a little clip in the net and has some thoughts about the past and/or gets interested in it.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Penguin

I had a cola with ice during the clip, no coffee for me, thanks.
So who is the authority to tell how things should be remembered? Do the people who starved to death in the KLs gain something if you don't eat there? Are the people who impious?

For you too, the recommendation to read Broder's "Vergeßt Auschwitz". If a former Polish Jew says he is sick and tired of the cult in which remembrance becomes almost celebrated in form of a collective obsession today, then this really is - at least it is interesting.

And regarding the eating habits: lunching beside the gas chamber maybe has something to do with taste and piety - or the lack of it. And the latter once again would illustrate that it is not so much real-felt honesty in this form of "rememberance", but again: that it is just a collective obligation to act as if that were an honest need of oneself, while in reality one is just playing theatre.

If I would ever go to Israel again and enter this time formally, I would refuse to make that mandatory fix on the tourist list - I would not visit Yad Vashem. Because for my generation and me personally, there is no link to it that would mean anything to me. And I sometimes cannot escape the feeling that Israel is abusing it a bit when foreign politicians and presidents always get led there, because that visit always puts any visitor on the defensive, and every official visit ends with the guest confessing to be on the moral defence indeed. But i refuse to accept responsibility for somethign that happened a quarter of a century before my birth, and my mum not born by the end of the war, and my father being a 1 year old baby. If i would go to Yad Vashem, I therefor would do it only because "they" expect it from me, and I would only do a showact when pretending to be impressed. Is that the purpose of it?

We send truckloads of schoolclasses to Auschwitz, and expect them to show the right moral reaction as if they could feel any link between their lives and a history that ended over two generations before they got born. That is phoney in itself, and that is unfair towards these young ones we send there. Better send them to the monument for the victims of 9/11, for they have lived at that time and saw the pictures on TV and are effected by the events following it.

How little all the holocaust memorials mean to many people in the West you can see in the growing hostility towards Jewish people again, and the desinterest being shown in the security interests of Israel and the nuclear threats announced by Iran. We care oh so much for the past holocaust. But it seems we care not as much for the planning of the next one. We expect them tom ignore their historic experience, and to sit still and put when terror strikes hit them, and to not react when their people get assassinated and missiles get fired into civilian areas. All the time while saiyng we consider oruselves friends of Israel, and that the third Reich as bad and that the holocaust was abd and that somrething like the holocaust should not repeat. Well, possible that in the future we will have another holocaust to rememeber. That will be nice, because we already got plenty of practice in crying crocodiles tears . After the next holocaust we can do the rememberance really professionally, you know, basing on 70 years of experience in running remembrances. Oh happy days!

And what I finally do not like is that tourism business that has emerged around these things, the holocaust tourism, and the tourism industry that makes quite some good cash and runs a marketing campaign as if it were about selling tickets for Disneyland and sells postcards and souvenirs. There is a remembrance industry and a history industry as well. The Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland falls into that category as well. Maybe that is the reason why they are liked by only a small minority of Jews in Germany. Under 10%, was the last number I read.

No, you are wrong, Penguin, the format of such "remembrances" is not totally arbitrary and a question of just individual taste. Some things and manners just do not go. If these unfitting manners nevertheless exist, then this is an indication that the remembrance is already just a dead cult, a ritualised relic anyway. And then piety for the dead would command that maybe you better skip the whole show alltogether. The idiotic monument in Berlin, the socalled Stelenfeld, is the result of such a misled hollow corpus of dead rememberance.

I once saw a series of five photos, showing parcours-runners racing over that field, jumping from one stone to the next. To them, it was just an obstacle course, and they were young. I liked the sight, it was a triumph of vivid energy over petrification and dead ritual. I think Broder would have liked it, too. He does not stop to tell people that they really must not pass on eating in the museum restaurant at Auschwitz - they serve some spectacular good diners , he says. He says "Flatten Auschwitz!". I say "Flatten the Stelenfeld".

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Penguin

Maybe one day we have a big rainbow colored apple statue standing in Auschwitz - the i-memorial

Sponsors do already exist. As joke as that may have been, one day it can become reality (at least in smaller scale.)

The fact stands that even running Auschwitz museum costs something. I'm not intimate on who funds it (probably the state), but still in the end there is the guy with the money. And if the guy with the money says "no more money", there is little we can do, except for finding another guy with the money.

As a sidenote, this is why I'm often opposed to the popular "save every single historical object and site" mentality occasionally seen in the public discourse at least in Funland. It's so wonderfully easy to say "save it" and blame the project workers for being inefficient when you don't need to worry about any realities yourself. Money being only one of them.

However I wanted to put more an emphasis on the individual side of remembrance in my previous post. Just like people grief differently.

I know, I just can't help my background.

I'm looking at this from the society's memory rather. Past becomes history only once people accept it's history: it's taught in schools, it's seen in museums, it's written in books etc. There is always the official memory. Then there are like bazillion things in the past that could also have become history, but end up as alternative theories and statements instead.

Museums such as Auschwitz are part of the official memory: people go there and after the visit they share an experience, a view of the past. It thus becomes history. But it's still history first written by someone who has studied the past. Again, I'm not familiar with the museum, but I reckon they also have lots of stuff and information that isn't visible to the public. That's how it usually works.

How each individual wants to experience the history is not my business: each to his own. But when it comes to remembrance, it's difficult to avoid history unless you actually lived the past. Thus it's still, to some extent, the guy with the money who decides how we remember things: the guy with the money decides what we are given to remember in the first place.

And regarding the eating habits: lunching beside the gas chamber maybe has something to do with taste and piety - or the lack of it. And the latter once again would illustrate that it is not so much real-felt honesty in this form of "rememberance", but again: that it is just a collective obligation to act as if that were an honest need of oneself, while in reality one is just playing theatre.

What a pile of crap,
Or alternately in the world of Sky how dare they put toilets in the museum, its outrageous people take a piss at auchwitz birkenhau museum.
look at this cheeky bugger
http://pl.auschwitz.org/m/images/sto...1_august1d.jpg
he is drinking in the grounds, that is strictly forbidden that visitors or staff shall eat or drink outside the designated areas. I bet he needed to urinate after that drink as well, its outrageous I tell ya.
Those inconsiderate people doing the two day study tours should definately be banned from having any refreshment or relief facilities not only inside the museum but even beyond the 10m buffer zone round it as a sign of how serious they are doing their studies
Heartless bastards expecting to be able to eat, why don't they show some respect eh?

Are the people who impious?

Thats brilliant Penguin, that is what I call a memorial celebration.

[August]

WW2 was the most significant event in living history. Not until all those who lived through it die off will it even begin to fade into human memory. Skybird might pine for a change of subject but I'd say that Germany has at least another 20 years before that happens.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by August

WW2 was the most significant event in living history. Not until all those who lived through it die off will it even begin to fade into human memory. Skybird might pine for a change of subject but I'd say that Germany has at least another 20 years before that happens.

I hope it never does. One doesn't have to have a personal connection to an event to recognize it's significance in shaping the world we live in. We study history because it's a study of us - of human nature, of human motivations, of the triumphs and failings of us as a race. It's a mirror. We may not always like what we see in the mirror, but things like the Holocaust memorials and the bins full of personal effects that were taken from prisoners, videos like the one I linked to...those sort of things paint a very clear picture of the historical event and bring it home in a tangible way.

Skybird can call it fetishization or a ritualized relic, but that's awful close to dismissing history and sweeping it under the rug to be forgotten. And you know what they say about people who forget history.

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

And you know what they say about people who forget history.

They have to take the exam again instead of being out there partying with their fellow students?

[August]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I hope it never does. One doesn't have to have a personal connection to an event to recognize it's significance in shaping the world we live in. We study history because it's a study of us - of human nature, of human motivations, of the triumphs and failings of us as a race. It's a mirror. We may not always like what we see in the mirror, but things like the Holocaust memorials and the bins full of personal effects that were taken from prisoners, videos like the one I linked to...those sort of things paint a very clear picture of the historical event and bring it home in a tangible way.

Skybird can call it fetishization or a ritualized relic, but that's awful close to dismissing history and sweeping it under the rug to be forgotten. And you know what they say about people who forget history.

I agree.

"Fade" wasn't the best choice of words for me to use. What I meant was that after it passes from living memory WW2 would be take it's place among the many other significant human events throughout history. To be studied and remembered a lot less passionately when it's not ones own grandpa and grandma sporting inmate tattoos on their arms.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Tell me about it. I got beat up in school because I was a pacifist and the beatings stopped when I broked someones glasses and a tooth. My dad thrashed me at home but not as much as I thrashed the other guy

I thought you might find this old song interesting. It's about that very thing.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Skybird can call it fetishization or a ritualized relic, but that's awful close to dismissing history and sweeping it under the rug to be forgotten. And you know what they say about people who forget history.

What I say is that a remembrance that has petrified in mandatorey cult as a colelctive duty necessarily lacks the needed life in it that makes it a remambrance in fact instead of just a ritualised ceremony. And what I say is that if things have detoriated to this stage, it is better to skip the thing alltogether than to celebrate a Micky Mouse jubilee and making good cash from the tourists.

It is phoney to expect the young ones to feel about these things as if they were linked to them in any way. By that we expect them to serve as containers of other people'S memories - people of a generation that is almost gone by now.

What I say is it is more important to watch out for the holocaust under preparation right now, than to endlessly cry crocodiles tears over past things long ago that cnanot be changed anymore. So in fact I say exactly the opposite of what you imply that I meant. It is en vogue these days to say "I am a friend of Israel" and "I feel pity for the holocaust", while at the same time demanding the Israelis to act stuopid and sucidal and actively helping and assisting their most dangerous enemies. Obviously, all that pathetic rememberance show has gone terribly wroing somewehre.

What I say is that when rememberance has turned into a profit-oriented business branch, this is an indication for it having taken a wrong turn sometime earlier. And I do not even touch upon the issue of opportunistic self-victimization in order to squeeze out some more golden talers from the tourists and the Germans, too. It's not nice and politically uncorrect to say that so openly, I know. But it is true, and I do not care for PC. PC has poisended our time and world already too much.

The way we have turned rememberance into a dead, hollow ritual, a collective obligation to show pretended emotions that are not honest or are about things that the individual must not feel morally responsible for, is preventing the learning-from-history that you imply to be a desirable goal. Just pretending to feel affected, cannot replace intellectual understanding of historic facts and processes. And as long as people claim to be depressed when walking at Auschwitz while at the same time they feel desintersted for the crimes and massacres happening right now in our modern present, as long as people care much for things long ago than for the distaters of the present that could be effected by acting over them now, as long as this is so I call this dead cult a hollow shell only, and an excercise in pathetic emotions and a display of a seriously distorted sense for reality, and a derranged hierarchy of priorities. If living people are allowed to suffer while long since dead people get mourned over, then I call that cyncial.

What I say is that a remembrance that has petrified in mandatorey cult as a colelctive duty necessarily lacks the needed life in it that makes it a remambrance in fact instead of just a ritualised ceremony.

There is nothing mandatory about it.
Just because you clearly have a problem with Germanys legacy it doesn't mean anything really in reality.
And since you are one who goes all mein kampf on the fields of peoples religion and questions of eugenics and democracy and culture perhaps it is you who needs to reflect more on the past holocausts and possible future ones as you are a perfect example of someone forgetting history and repeating the same old made up crap they spouted in the 30s on the road which led to Auchwitz