Obama condemns holocaust- predictably, National Review disagrees — Page 5

This conversation has become wrongly framed. It's not that we should be "grateful" to Nazi scientists.

It's that Operation Paperclip took scientists who were being used to devise ways to destroy people and had them devise ways to help people.

And to be clear, most of the Nazi doctors were tried and convicted at Nuremberg. The Nazi scientists were the ones given amnesty in Operation Paperclip.

Nazi doctors did things like submerge inmates in ice-cold water or give them nothing but salt water to drink, to see how long it would take them to die, or they would inflict gangrene on inmates so that they could test antibiotics. (Allied doctors were studying the same antibiotics under humane condition.)

Nazi scientists, on the other hand, were doing things like perfecting the electron microscope.

It's important to be clear about the distinctions. Nuremberg was for the war criminals; Operation Paperclip was for the science.


U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: NAZI MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

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Updated On: 2/5/13 at 03:34 PM

i had to read a book for school which was very interesting on this very subject...
The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford Security Studies)
Gordon Barrass

tells the story of Operation Paperclip and is pretty split down the middle on who was at fault.

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Also, don't forget Ira Levin's The Boys From Brazil. You get a spin-tingling plot, a fairly nuanced portrayal of good vs. evil, an Oscar or Laurence Olivier, a Golden Globe for Gregory Peck, and performances by James Mason, Uta Hagen, Rosemary Harris, John Rubinstein, Steve Guttenberg, Ann Meara, Denholm Elliott and Prunella Scales.

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The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.




NY Times: The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

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Updated On: 3/3/13 at 02:46 PM

Can you wrap your head around domestic violence?

only in the minds of those who want to deny the reality of human behaviors

Updated On: 3/3/13 at 07:02 AM

Yawper, you continue to misunderstand paljoey's position and now you insult him and all of us who feel likewise with that remark. It is about isolating the atrocities and holding them up to the world individually so that we can even more powerfully reinforce the idea that we as a culture cannot let this happen again.

Sure, you can play the depressed social scientist who smugly wishes to relate all negative aspects and actions of human behavior but I see zero productivity to that path. Nothing positive or worthwhile is to be gained from anything you have said in this thread.

Wholly False Equivalences Batman.

SMH.

What Pal Joey and Beedle said.

The Banality of Yawper.

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Recognizing reality does not pass moral judgments. Morals are social constructs, not events. Moral judgments about events create social stigma and/or perpetuation of violence aside from any "justice" meted out.






but some people enjoy being seen as victims...

Updated On: 3/3/13 at 07:03 PM

Yeah! How DARE people pass moral judgments on the Nazis? They weren't the first bad people.

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That the dead are the dead are the dead. And no one holds high ground.

Updated On: 3/3/13 at 10:27 PM

@ yawper: you actually agree with PJ's statements.
It is about isolating the atrocities and holding them up to the world individually so that we can even more powerfully reinforce the idea that we as a culture cannot let this happen again.

so much for your theory,

Not "so much for your theory. This IS the theory:

Rwanda should be held up separately, Kosovo should be held up separately, Darfur should be held up separately, Rwanda should be held up separatly Kosovo should be held up separately, a man who hits his wife should be held up separatly, a boy who slaughters an animal should be held up separately, Oscar Pistorius should be held up separately, Pick the atrocity of your choice, and document it and hold it up separately for the world to learn from.

so much for your theory

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