drawing by marguerita| |
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries old tradition of local political independence. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners.
Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp system.
At this time, these early concentration camps were loosely organized under the control of the SA and the rival SS. Many were little more than barbed wire stockades know as 'wild' concentration camps, set up by local Gauleiters and SA leaders.
For Adolf Hitler, the goal of a legally established dictatorship was now within reach. On March 15, 1933, a cabinet meeting was held during which Hitler and Göring discussed how to obstruct what was left of the democratic process to get an Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag. This law would hand over the constitutional functions of the Reichstag to Hitler, including the power to make laws, control the budget and approve treaties with foreign governments.
The emergency decree signed by Hindenburg on February 28, after the Reichstag fire, made it easy for them to interfere with non-Nazi elected representatives of the people by simply arresting them.
As Hitler plotted to bring democracy to an end in Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels put together a brilliant public relations display at the official opening of the newly elected Reichstag.
On March 21, in the Garrison Church at Potsdam, the burial place of Frederick the Great, an elaborate ceremony took place designed to ease public concern over Hitler and his gangster-like new regime.
Hitler in the box by MargueritaI must congratulate Mr.Sarkozy for this initiative.
Being the only child of two Holocaust survivors,who are not alive anymore,both sides descendants of large and prominent Jewish families totally murdered by the Nazi,I am aware every moment of my life about the tragedy.
At this very moment I am facing an eviction,after years of struggling to have a roof over my head.
Who can I turn to?
In the home that would be mine,of my ancestors,strangers took possession.
My dignity challenged,no family to turn to.
My two sons,now realizing and feeling the exact agony that I have endured so far.
I am sorry that Simone Weil disagrees.
We must all come to realize that the rampant indifference to human suffering and disrespect to human life reached the lowest point through the horror of Hitler.
He opened the Pandora's box and since the world catapulted to the ongoing and increasing violence in the world all over.
The human race is in fact blase,and hypocrite mostly for being afraid to teach children about violence,thus condoning the repetition as Mr.Sarkozy mentioned.
Children need innocence as well as adults. And it is in childhood that one is able to learn which direction to chose later in life.The character of a child is there in observation.
As one should know,Hitler was indoctrinating the youth,thus the Hitler-Jugent,which many known German
personalities were too,like Gunther Grass and many politicians after the II War.
Fear to deal with historical truth is maybe the cause of so much unhappiness.
Thanks to technology we are now able to see faster,the immediate transparency of any manipulation of truth.It also enables us to learn the facts and bring all of humanity together to evaluate our threats.We should benefit from the speed of information to transmit messages of peace and harmony,and try with all our hearts to learn from the innumerous mistakes that occurred and still about.Invasions ,intimidation,Murder.
Why don't we all realize and learn about our limitations?
Not reading and learning History and Geography is exactly where the world is at fault.
One reads and hears constantly why is that all bad things happening,expecting to get answers.
Well it comes from individual efforts,one by one ,a consciousness of good and evil.
Ask yourself before hurting someone else,why should I?
And spend more time learning.It certainly gives one peace of mind and instruct oneself how to conduct himself or herself to to be able to change the world 's status quo.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hitler_youth.htm
PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust
“Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew,” Mr. Sarkozy said at the end of a dinner speech to France’s Jewish community on Wednesday night. He added that every French child should be “entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/world/europe/16france.html?hp
Photo: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast
