Look at the job titles from clicking around. You'll see nothing but things like "farmer", "bank clerk", "shop keeper", "businessman" after translating.
Food for thought, that you don't have to be the one pulling a trigger to be complicit in atrocities.
There's also a lot of people missing description though. Obviously, "professional sociopath" wasn't a job description they would have put in there, although it was probably quite characteristic for many of those "careers". I think they recycled a lot of criminals. The SS in general, while having started as a weird "aryan" elite group in the 30s, became a mercenary organization with divisions from all parts of the world later in the war. There were even muslim SS members.
From my reading on the subject, many Germans did. Some of them were intimidated into silence on the matter, while others acted in support of the genocide directly or indirectly.
Many Germans - whether or majority is up for debate - supported the Holocaust as they understood and/or admitted it to themselves at the time.
As an aside, your grammar is incorrect in your comment. I mean absolutely no offense by this and I'm hesitant to point it out, but if it were me I would want to be corrected. "had took" should be "had taken".
Imagine you're living in Detroit in the 1970s. All around you, people are vilifying the Japanese car makers for ruining their livelihoods. Nobody would dare buy a Toyota or Honda, for fear of finding it burned out and being labelled a traitor. You might know that American manufacturing is inefficient, you might know that Japanese cars are of higher quality, you might know that your community is doomed, you might suspect that everyone around you knows it, but are you going to voice those concerns?
Multiply that by a hundred and you've got Nazi Germany. The country was humiliated and impoverished after the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar crisis and the Great Depression. Hitler promised food, jobs and pride, and he delivered on those promises. The Jews were just convenient scapegoat.
You might disagree with all sorts of things being done by the Nazis, but you can also see that Herr Schmidt next door has a job, that the children in the street have shoes, that people have a sense of hope and purposefulness. Kraft durch Freude gave you your first beach holiday, they put on plays at the town hall, they're teaching your daughter ballet. When the war is won, you'll get the brand new car you've been saving for, you'll have a beautiful new home in the suburbs, your son will be the first in your family to go to university.
Would you speak out, or would you turn a blind eye? Would you resist, or would you just go with the flow?
If you visit Dachau, you might be surprised to learn that the camp is right in middle of the town.
When I visited, there was a story about some locals taking a peek over the wall and were apprehended. They were put in the camp for a month or so (going by memory now). After they came out, they refused to talk about it and told everyone else to stay away.
This was before the extermination of the Jews began though - maybe around 1935.
There's a great movie that's worth a watch if you are interested in this history. It's a fictionalized ( and likely highly dramatized ) version of a real meeting[0] that took place between the SS leaders and German governmental types at the midway point of the War to discuss the "final solution" for the Jews.
But it does illustrate how regular men whether through self-interest, fear, bullying, or expediency will let themselves be talked into, or rationalize themselves into some truly horrific things by fanatical types.
People could think anything they want, but if they let those "we are taking things too far" opinions be known to others, they'd be removed from any position of government power at the very least.
The motivation behind publishing this database is interesting. It's a response to the western media using the term "Polish Death Camps", which enrages polish public. Personally I didn't think it was a big issue until I saw Obama use that term.
Not sure why this was flagged as it's a historical page, and in that sense no different from, say, the Atlas Obscura pages that make it to the HN front page from time to time.
Wow. After a quick glance at the database, it seems like many of the guys working at the KZ had little to no education.
Many of the ones where there are photos look like they have some kind of mental handicap. I wonder whether some of the people who worked there were also taken advantage of.
Keep in mind that that's true for almost the entire population in the 30s and 40s. Large quantities of the population had no better education than primary school plus job training. In the 1950s, only 5% of Germans had Abitur (which is 13 years of school and required for studying), in the 70s it was still only 10%. Most likely even less in the other countries (Hungary, Romania) where many of the garrison workers came from.
I don't get this. The link is titled The “Auschwitz concentration camp personnel” database, but it just appears to be a page that basically gives an opinion towards the holocaust that, to me, is somewhat obvious.
After clicking through a few links you can find it, it's tough because the content is repeated in several languages rather than via the commonly used "language switcher" UI we're all used to.
Under the "SS KL Auschwitz Garrison" link in the navbar, at the bottom of the page, there is a link to another site which seems to have a list of members of the SS garrison.
Great documentary about Treblinka, the death camp in which one-third of the killings occurred. It's not talked about very often, so it's refreshing to get an in-depth look:
[+] [-] bbarn|9 years ago|reply
Food for thought, that you don't have to be the one pulling a trigger to be complicit in atrocities.
[+] [-] elcapitan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffef|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|9 years ago|reply
Many Germans - whether or majority is up for debate - supported the Holocaust as they understood and/or admitted it to themselves at the time.
As an aside, your grammar is incorrect in your comment. I mean absolutely no offense by this and I'm hesitant to point it out, but if it were me I would want to be corrected. "had took" should be "had taken".
[+] [-] jdietrich|9 years ago|reply
Multiply that by a hundred and you've got Nazi Germany. The country was humiliated and impoverished after the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar crisis and the Great Depression. Hitler promised food, jobs and pride, and he delivered on those promises. The Jews were just convenient scapegoat.
You might disagree with all sorts of things being done by the Nazis, but you can also see that Herr Schmidt next door has a job, that the children in the street have shoes, that people have a sense of hope and purposefulness. Kraft durch Freude gave you your first beach holiday, they put on plays at the town hall, they're teaching your daughter ballet. When the war is won, you'll get the brand new car you've been saving for, you'll have a beautiful new home in the suburbs, your son will be the first in your family to go to university.
Would you speak out, or would you turn a blind eye? Would you resist, or would you just go with the flow?
[+] [-] vermontdevil|9 years ago|reply
When I visited, there was a story about some locals taking a peek over the wall and were apprehended. They were put in the camp for a month or so (going by memory now). After they came out, they refused to talk about it and told everyone else to stay away.
This was before the extermination of the Jews began though - maybe around 1935.
[+] [-] dtien|9 years ago|reply
But it does illustrate how regular men whether through self-interest, fear, bullying, or expediency will let themselves be talked into, or rationalize themselves into some truly horrific things by fanatical types.
I believe I caught it on Netflix or HBO[1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(2001_film)
[+] [-] knz|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_resistance_to_Nazism
[+] [-] xyzzy4|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donquichotte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elcapitan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|9 years ago|reply
Where's the database?
[+] [-] bbarn|9 years ago|reply
After clicking through a few links you can find it, it's tough because the content is repeated in several languages rather than via the commonly used "language switcher" UI we're all used to.
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|9 years ago|reply
Direct link: http://pamiec.pl/pa/form/60,Zaloga-SS-KL-Auschwitz.html
Here's a document in English that appears to outline the project: http://truthaboutcamps.eu/th/zaloga-ss-kl-auschwitz/document...
[+] [-] splawn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owlee|9 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFq--lStmgs