Auschwitz / Birkenau is falling apart. Who should help?

  • Thread starter Thread starter 2towers
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I missed his relic tour and I was not able to make the train trip to his shrine when I was in Poland. The best I could do was take a holy card of him and when I got to the death cell stick my hand through the bars when the guide wasn’t looking and touch it to the inside wall. It’s on the mantel across from me right now.

St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Edith Stein, Pray for us.
 
I’ve been to both of these places. Birkenau is pretty much a ruin in the middle of the country anyway. There is not much to preserve left except the entrance building where people got off the train and were taken off to their doom for the most part.

Auschwitz is much smaller and there have been preservation efforts going on there for years because while it was in better shape than Birkenau and some others (because it had been built years before as an Army barracks and was therefore not a hasty construction), it has been decaying. It is a HUGE tourist draw. They get thousands of people going through there, most of whom bus in from Krakow. I hate to sound mercenary, but in addition to the historic aspect, Poland makes a lot of money from the tourists. Not so much at the camp itself (though there are some restaurants and souvenir stands, which is a little creepy as they sell toys and sweaters and stuff, not just books and postcards of the camp) but from people staying in Krakow, spending money there, and hiring a tour guide or tour bus to take them out to see Auschwitz. I predict if they decided to get rid of most of the camps, they’d still want to keep at least the small Auschwitz I with the famous Arbeit Macht Frei sign.
 
Last edited:
Crusader144 said:
It seems that you are confusing nationalistic opposition with religion in some cases.
Click to expand...
Like I said, i visited and i had this extensively explained to me by the Polish tour guides and a priest.

I did not say people were killed because they were Catholic. They were killed because they were smart and educated and the Germans did not want opposition to their regime. I clearly stated that people’s religion did not matter but that many of the people killed were Catholic because a lot of Polish people are Catholic. I am therefore not sure why you are making this big argument to me against something I did not say.
 
Crusader144 said:
The word of a well-informed Catholic bishop is good enough for me. As for the genocides and injustices (and their denouncements): Fake ecumenism has replaced Trad Catholic morality long ago.
Click to expand...
What is this? Did you actually post a Holocaust denial video in this thread? Flagging it. Give me a break.
 
I am being a Catholic, first and foremost. Couldnt care less about “holocaust denial”. Not when it is used as hammer, to shatter the faith.
 
Last edited:
I don’t wish to pass judgement on whether the structures should be preserved. That is something the curators and historians and kin of the victims need to decide. I’ve never been to Auschwitz but I have been to Yad Vashem. A pretty horrifying experience.

But that said, some former concentration camps have already been bulldozed and the land built on. I have a relative in Germany who lives in a little town called Leonberg. I never knew there had been a concentration camp there until one day I saw a marker stone and I read the inscription. How would you feel living or working in a place like that? In this case maybe it is not so well known and people don’tthink much about it. But Auschwitz? Every child knows what that is. This alone is a reason against removing such sites. Even if all falls into decay, the site will remain.
 
Last edited:
Bishop Williamson, the Holocaust denier you posted, is a radical traditionalist (edited because he claims he’s not a sedevecantist) who has been excommunicated TWICE and has gone beyond even being normal SSPX and become part of the SSPX Resistance.

His behavior is not being a good Catholic. It is reprehensible to most of us Catholics and appalling to most of the world at large. If you think “being a Catholic” is being like him, then I will pray for you, because that is just sad.

en.wikipedia.org

Richard Williamson (bishop) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Last edited:
Cirdan_XII said:
But that said, some former concentration camps have already been bulldozed and the land built on. I have a relative in Germany who lives in a little town called Leonberg. I never knew there had been a concentration camp there until one day I saw a marker stone and I read the inscription. How would you feel living or working in a place like that? In this case maybe it is not so well known and people don’tthink much about it. But Auschwitz? Every child knows what that is. This alone is a reason against removing such sites. Even if all falls into decay, the site will remain.
Click to expand...
It is important to distinguish between concentration camps and death camps. All the death camps were located in Soviet liberated Poland. The camps in German territory were just concentration camps (this isn’t to say conditions were not bad). They are what the British used agains the Boers or the US against Japanese calling them ‘internment camps’. The guilt for concentration camps is much more widely shared.
 
Be careful not to cut yourself on all that sedevecantist edge…
 
I have no love for many modernists, but I don’t think his level of disobedience as being a badge of honor in any religious capacity what so ever.
 
Last edited:
It’s not all that much different than walking through various cities in that part of the world and every block or so there’s a memorial to people who were killed during the war on that corner or in that spot. People were just freaking killed all over the place in Poland. There’s nothing like wandering around the tourist square and then going home and reading up on how the Dirlewanger brigade raped women and made them run naked through the place where people are having a nice beer garden and outdoor music today and then publicly hung them. And this wasn’t even 100 years ago. And then you walk out of your hotel to go to the convenience store and the Warsaw ghetto entrance is literally across the street, you pass it to go buy your Coke and potato chips.

Yet people still live there and go about their business.
 
Sadly there are lots of reminder. As for modern reminders of the world wars occasionally a French farmer dies after discovering an unexplored ordinance.

When I visited the coliseum in Rome my main throught was of the immensity of the building. Lots of people were killed there, including Christian martyrs, but to be honest that wasn’t my first thought when visiting, though remembrance was part of my experience.
 
Crusader144 said:
Not defrocked but excommunicated. But from the Novus Ordo, it is a badge of honor.
Click to expand...
No doubt Martin Luther thought the same way.

And it was not from the “Novus Ordo”, but from the Catholic Church, but I guess once on starts being an historical revisionist it is hard to stop. My first thought was that it should be plowed under and a more permanent memorial built. Now, I agree it should be left as is as long a possible. I seems we still have a long way to go when someone like Bishop Williamson can still inspire “crusaders”.
 
Last edited:
Maybe they should charge a visitor fee, or have a local tax. I’m sure they draw massive numbers of tourists.
 
A structure for such evil should be allowed to crumble back into the earth from whence it came. Close off delapidated areas and continue to leave the structure intact as a reminder that such an evil must never be committed again. Leave it to the elements
 
I think there already is a fee. Furthemore, tourists bring in a lot of money and tour operators, tour guides, hotels, restaurants, shops etc in the area do quite well off it. The wider area is quite desolate and boring and if it wasn’t for Ausschwitz, I think they wouldn’t get any tourists at all. Maybe the businesses who benefit can in some way contribute to the upkeep?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top