"Rain coming from a bright sky." Figuratively "something unexpected".

[intertribal]

via nebris at vintagephoto - from Auschwitz through the lens of the SS by the U.S. Holocaust Museum

Nazi officers and female auxiliaries (Helferinnen) run down a wooden bridge in Solahutte. Karl Hoecker is pictured in the center. The original caption reads: "Rain coming from a bright sky." Figuratively "something unexpected".

I find some of the discussion there (at vintagephoto) kind of interesting too.  I'm starting to think I should have a "Nazi" tag.  Ok, done.

Members of the SS Helferinnen (female auxiliaries) and SS Officer Karl Hoecker sit on a fence railing in Solahutte eating bowls of blueberries.  In the background is a man playing the accordion.  The original caption reads "Blaubeeren" (there are blueberries here).


SS Officer Karl Hoecker pets his dog Favorit.

 

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is the most depressing thing I've seen all week.

Honestly, it makes me want to bash my head against a wall until I lose consciousness. Next to my body, please find note abjuring membership in the human race.

This is the thing--cheerful, happy, people with pet dogs, smiles, and blueberries, could go along, somehow, with keeping other people locked up in starvation conditions, and then gas them to death.

If that won't turn your stomach, what will?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I can't fathom how people go around thinking in black and white and can't realize that Nazis were ordinary people just like them, and so is everybody else. Drove me nuts when we had to read this history book about Nazi Germany that was all about their "political religion" as if we were so morally superior and we had to study how such a despicable thing came to be. Newsflash: most people are not any better than Nazis--only their situation is better.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I had to lead that Hum conference. It went...interestingly. By which I mean that no one talked, and people did not understand what I was trying to say, and then we got on a tangent about American politics when the prof tried to convince me that Americans decided elections rationally based on who was the better candidate. On the other hand, a girl came up to me after class and said that was the first time she'd heard anthro used productively, and Nick liked my points and brought them up in his (next) conference, so people eventually understood me.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

"when the prof tried to convince me that Americans decided elections rationally based on who was the better candidate"

lol.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

dude, I know. I know.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

When you *do* recognize that fact that it's not black and white, it's extremely depressing. To realize/remember/be confronted with the fact that it wasn't monsters doing these things, but ordinary people, who loved their dogs and their friends. It means I myself might somehow find myself doing something equivalent... that's pretty depressing.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this, and I think I never looked at that as depressing. I actually feel like it makes the world make more sense, sort of in a "hate the sin, love the sinner" sense. I think putting people in concentration camps is depressing, but the fact that the people doing these depressing things are still recognizably human - and like us - just means that there is no Ultimate Source of Evil that we can exorcise through destruction. Fire-bombing Dresden and Tokyo depresses me too - maybe even more because we've written history to justify what we (the winners) do, and there is no catharsis involved.

Because if they're just like us that also explains why some Germans helped Jews; why Leni Riefenstahl still transformed cinema; why Knut Hamsun, a Nobel-winning writer from Norway, gave his prize to Hitler (he opposed British imperialism, and saw Nazi Germany as a force that would protect "native" Norway).

The fact that they're humans with human motivations means that those motivations can be addressed and they can be deterred. There's nothing supernatural going on; just people deciding to hurt other people for various reasons. Yes, it can happen again - and I would argue similar things have been done and are still being done - but it can also be understood, spotted, prevented, worked through.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes: I agree with what you say, and that's definitely a hopeful thing. If I were to clarify what I find depressing, I guess I'd say it's the scale of what we can do when we're deciding to hurt one another--and that we can decide to do those things with one part of our brains and yet still be loving, happy, friendly people with some other part of our brains.

And for sure, yes: firebombing Dresden and Tokyo is depressing in the same way. Also, throwing rocks at little girls who are coming to your school for an education--that's super depressing. How can you hug your own kid and then throw rocks at that one? But people do.

But, yeah, it's all part of life. At least we get to keep trying, all our life. You can make a bad decision--one you come to think of as bad--and then you can work to make amends, later, so long as you're alive. Or you can do some bad thing in one aspect of your life, but good things in other aspects. So yeah, that, I think, is very hopeful.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(and yes, I do agree that it really, really REALLY helps to realize that all people are human and in some ways like us, though in other ways uniquely themselves)