Deniers?

[ladyringo]

So, I have been back on a kick with studying the Holocaust. I go through phases with this and have watched some interesting documentaries on Netflix and such. I am curious though and there hasn't been much information on this. Mostly I have heard a little bit about it, saw someone on my facebook post a video about the swimming pools and grocery

Comments

[hitchkitty]

Some of it, I think, comes from a reluctance to believe that anyone would willingly commit such atrocities. Certainly, it offends the sensibilities to think of someone hauling people to the ovens, then shrug it off as "just following orders".

[ladyringo]

In the documentary I was watching the officers interviewed were not repentant. They felt they were doing the right thing, that they were helping to save their country. And 60 years later, even after the body count and the war crimes and all that- they still believed it.

[hitchkitty]

Oh, I'm sure it helps them sleep at night, to tell themselves that the things they did were necessary to preserve the Fatherland. "Deutschland über alles" doesn't necessarily mean "Germany shall conquer all"; it can also mean "Germany, above all other concerns".

(And lest anyone think this attitude is unique to WWII Germany, I have two words for you: Guantánamo Bay.)

ranty, but certainly not at you :)

[circuit_four]

Sense has nothing to do with human belief systems. :)

When I was in high school, I was on a mailing list that called itself "psychoceramics" -- a joking term for the study of crackpots, get it? :D So I got to see some of the weirdest extremes of human faith: Brazilian UFO cults, New Age pyramid schemes, Flat Earthers, people who believed the dinosaurs were agents of Satan, people who were sure this time they'd invented a perpetual motion machine, just all the craziest damn stuff

Re: ranty, but certainly not at you :)

[ladyringo]

Fair enough. Thank you for the good explanation! :D

Re: ranty, but certainly not at you :)

[ladyringo]

PS: one of my supervisors at work believes that dinosaurs are not real. That their bones were placed there by Satan in order to make folks question their faith. o_O;;

Re: ranty, but certainly not at you :)

[hitchkitty]

...placed there by Satan in order to make folks question their faith.

Yeah, I've encountered that one before. To me, it says something disturbing about the faith of such people. Reminds me of a comment from All in the Family:
"Religion is somethin' ya believe, that nobody in their right mind would believe!"