Researchers uncover details of the Nazis' killing of Soviet Jews

[IndianaGreen]

Researchers uncover details of the Nazis' killing of Soviet Jews

By Ofri Ilani

In August 1941, German sailor Reinhard Wiener saw something he was unlikely to forget. Stationed in Latvia, Wiener was walking with a fellow serviceman toward the beach, when a soldier came running toward them. "He said we shouldn't go on because a horrible thing was happening on the beach," Wiener recalled. "We asked what was going on, and he said yes, they're shooting Jews down there."

Wiener recounted the story in an interview in 1981, published on a new Yad Vashem Holocaust museum Web site documenting the annihilation of the Jews in the Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Trained as a cameraman, Wiener carried a Kodak 8mm camera that day.

"I decided to go on anyway, so I could document it," he said. Wiener reached a line of soldiers standing along a trench. A truck full of people soon arrived. "The guards shouted something I didn't understand and the people in the truck started jumping out. I saw they were wearing yellow badges."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079395.html

[rockymountaindem]

1. I was never under the impression that anybody was "tricked" to go to the pits or strip naked

I figured they just did that because people with rifles and machine guns showed up and started bossing them around.

[Gregorian]

2. I read this last night and had to come back. This has far greater implications than may first seem.

I've spent some time looking at G20 photos, and the security and police situation there. How different can that be from the picture painted in this article. This is the final nightmare scenario where humans are unleashed, or forced, to act out aggression against one another. The frightening thing that this article points out is that these are no monsters. These are the barbers and butchers and bankers. These are neighbors and even friends. The implications are more than a little disturbing. What it tells me is that we're never far from a situation like that. We have to be vigilant. Which we are not. Bush, McCain/palin, could have led right down that path. Or maybe not. But who knows?