December 09, 2003

Amen. I'd runn like there was no tomorrow. Come to think of it, in that situation there is tomorrow or nothing...

Why would someone do that?

Overwhelming fear. Fear so totally incapacitating that you are incapable of running, incapable of doing anything other than what the men with guns tell you to do.

And I'll tell you what: If the result of my running off meant that my whole family got slaughtered, I'd take the bullet in the back of the head.

Guy, suppose that you family is in that line with you? I want to make enough noise that the guards shoot at ME, so that my family might get away.

Rob
Look at the weapons the next time you watch those films the subguns all have there bolts closed ie they cant fire untill the bolt is racked three guys could have jumped one and taken his weapon,also look at the striker on the bolt of the Mauser 98's the guards carried the striker is down not cocked the guard would have had to un sling the weapon work the bolt to get the weapon to fire.
Not knowing anything about guns can cost you your life and or your freedom

Its extremely easy for us to sit here and say what we would do in the same situation but untimately its unrealistic to imagine what it would be like to actually be in that situation.

People *choose* to die for a good reason, ie where their will to live has gone.

And as for those comments about checking whether the safety catch is on or off, sounds like youve been watching too much television mate - thats like me saying that I wouldnt let them put me in that position in the first place because I would have shot them all as they came through my front door to get me.

A-man, if my recollection of Stalinist Russia is correct, they separated the men from the women and the children from the adults, just like the Nazis did.

And (once again, IIRC) if you took off, your family got tortured.

Then slaughtered.

Not to mention that the families of the men around you would be tortured and killed, so more likely than not the instant you started to run you'd have five guys tackling you.

Now, were I a single man, I agree with you completely. There's no way on God's green earth I'd just walk up to the grave. Run like hell. If they capture you, fight (like you say) like a cornered rat.

"...thats like me saying that I wouldnt let them put me in that position in the first place because I would have shot them all as they came through my front door to get me."

Nickk, you would probably die defending your door. But you would also most certainly *not* be in the situation of going passively to that mass grave. You would also take one or two of the bad guys with you. I believe that is Acidman's point.

Much of it has to do with the mentality that comes from Europe -- the "sheeple" remark doesn't really apply to Americans.

The Jews have been through persecutions for centuries. Up until the Nazis, if they did as they were told and laid low, they survived. Even staring death in the face, they obeyed, because that was what they were taught to do.

The Soviet peasants had been through similar oppression. If you let the Tsar's men take what they wish, they'll leave us alive. If you do what the Soviet's tell you, you'll survive. You may be on the verge of starvation, but you and your family will live.

The ones who had the will to leave, to seek a different destiny, left Europe. They came here, mostly.

The Jews left in the Ghettos did rise up. They ended up being a critical factor in the overall war as the Nazis siphoned off soldiers bound for the front just to suppress the uprisings. It was too little, too late, but it did happen.

BTW, my wife is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. They were the ones who fled, because obedience wasn't totally ingrained.

J

I am not Jewish but I did live with a Jewish family in S.America as a foreign exchange student teacher and worked as a camp counselor in Beckett,Mass.My interest in the Jewish race led me to teach a unit every spring on the Holocaust.Here are some thoughts that I stirred in my students.
The Jewish Race were "Shedding Light on the Shadow" Evil is like a shadow-it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must "shed light on it" This is an example of a writing prompt after discussion I would give my students. I agree so much with Rob, why didn't they just fight back?The concept word and answer to that question was "Self-deception" I would then read "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne and ask. Is self-deception comfortable or uncomfortable?Support your conclusion & Is it possible to free yourself from your own self-deceptions? Explain.
Einstein said "The world is too dangerous to live in--not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who stand by and let them" Acceptance is another key word Read "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula LeGuin and ask yourself "Which, in your opinion, is worse--to know to do good and not do it or to do evil?Defend your answer" And lastly read "The Moon is Down" by John Steinbeck and think about this-
The following human condition is generally true: "We want what we do not have, we have what we do not want." What is the connection of that truth to freedom?
You might say that my human condition has set me on a constant search for the truth altho I should already accept what it truly is and just live with it.

I remember reading a story several years ago by a Holocaust survivor. Near the end, he was one still healthy enough in the camp to be chosen to carry the bodies to the ovens. One day, he and another prisoner were being led by a guard to a job, and he whispered to the other, "There is two of us, and one of him. If we attack him, we may not get away, but what are they going to do? Kill us? And at least we get one of them." And the other replied, "Be quiet! Don't make trouble!"

From various sources, obedience had been so hammered into most, they couldn't act.

Amen, Acidman. I honestly don't know what I would do in that situation--I think a lot would depend on the status of my family. But I like to think that I'd go down fighting, or at least defiant. You know, flip 'em the bird as they pull the trigger, that sort of thing.

The fight is on.

Too many spies .. you had no idea who would turn you in for favor... too many things to list as to why they did not rebel. I give the German Nazi's one thing ... they know how to run a camp. Hogan's Heroes does them no justice.

Run away to where and what? To have been subjected to what they lived through in those camps maybe death was preferable, no hope of anything. Just more pain and persecution. A quiet resignation perhaps.

Nobody can say what they would do in those situations until they have lived it.

I'm an American female veteran.

I would think I would choose to stand obediently in a line rather than risk they would grab my daughter and subject her to unimaginable torture.

I have read all of the books out there about the hostages from the Iranian idiots. It has more meaning for me because I served in that era, and because their isolation and torture was so horrific.

The keynote speaker at my college graduation was a young man who led the revolt in Tiananmen Square, at the ripe old age of 18. His whole family was imprisoned and tortured for decades because of that incident. He still is fighting for civil rights in China, but at what cost? You might run, you might get away, but can you live with the images of your grandmother's torture?

I don't know how anyone survives at the hands of madness whether it's one crazed idiot, or a government of many.

I do think it's a little misguided for you to say you'd stand up and fight back, sometimes death might have been their best option.

There's also a strange mentality among the "masses" Even at work, in our everyday ordinary lives. I've participated in dozens of meetings where the decision-makers and kiss-asses were clearly all marching down the wrong path. I even recall looking into the eyes of the powerful ones, pleading for them to do the right thing, and watching them fold for the sake of their own spineless self-serving interests. Not wanting to rock the boat.

If you ever solve this puzzle, you really will have a book to publish, I've been trying to figure it out for years.

There's absolutely no question in my mind where the democommies want us to be on this issue.

They've made themselves the party of the sheeple, and want to drag us kicking and screaming down the same UN sewer-hole.

Just as those people marched in quiet, orderly lines to their deaths, the donks want us to meekly submit to Kofi and his gang.

They fear their own consituients. They fear our guns and our righteous anger.

For too long now, we've allowed those assholes to balance our nation precariously on the brink, staring down into that abyss, while awaiting that bullet.

In my opinion, the populace of the European continent has been so conditioned by tens of centuries of being ruled, they're hard wired into abject obedience. The nanny states they live in now might not be as draconian as the tyrants of old, but they're every bit as evil in their smothering of independence, self-reliance and individual freedoms.

The donks want us to have that same manner of reliance on govenrment. And, that same level of robotic compliance.

We have what the Euroturds don't though. We're free and we're armed.

In an almost Darwinistic manner, those in Europe with survival in their genes are now fleeing that sewer in record numbers. Jews are leaving France at a pace exceeding the flight of Jewry from all of Europe in the 1930s.

I'll wager that many a firearm from all the way back to WWII is being dug-out from it's hiding place, oiled and made ready.

So, are mine.

Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX

Jim touches on a point that I had intended to make.

I think that we'd never let it get that far - that long before the concetration camps and death marches started happening, a fast, furious, and horrible revolt would occur that would make the Civil War look like a fucking picnic.

We're heading that way now. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a victim, someone who feels that they have been wronged and it's someone else's duty to right that wrong for them.

People suing McDonald's for being fat. Banning three wheeled ATVs. Tobacco extortion lawsuits. MI State affirmative action.

We are slowly but surely sliding headfirst into a "they owe me" mentality. Something doesn't go your way? The cards MUST be stacked against you.

Kid doesn't make the honor roll? Sue the school. Doesn't make the football team? Call a press conference and demand "no-cut" teams.

We're too busy sitting on our lard asses waiting for someone else to hand us the American Dream. Meanwhile, corporations are shipping our jobs overseas because they'll do it cheaper (who gives a flying fuck about better when there's cash to be made).

We're exporting the American dream, all the while sitting around whining about "they owe me".

And, best of all (sarcasm), we keep voting these sick, pandering fucks into office.

I voted for Bush. But watching him spend my son's (and grandson's) money with the Medicare vote buying scheme giveaway made me sick.

And I realized... Who am I going to vote for? Not "I want to destroy all evil capitalism" Dean, that's for damn sure (although he does have a good record on gun control...)

There's precious little difference between the "R"s and the "D"s. When the two finally merge, get ready for CW II.

And Jim, it's a good idea to have the guns at the ready. However, you have to make sure they haven't been confiscated first...

Maybe I live in an unusual area, but I find that people are becoming more independent rather than less. When I was a young woman, it was still accepted that you would go to work at a company and retire at same company, having put in your 30 or 40 or whatever. In my neighborhood, there are more and more people working for themselves (okay, maybe out of necessity) and enjoying the heck out of it. Some are independent contractors. Some sell stuff on E-Bay. Some are consultants, some write software. The retired sub driver works for a DoD company out of Washington DC and telecommutes. The retired JAG guy has his own DoD company (software). None of these jobs existed when I started out my working career. I find that exciting!

With your own company you have a lot more responsibility and a lot more decisions to make. I think that the young people growing up now may actually turn out to be more independent than my generation.

My name ain't Pollyanna and I know the problems that exist with throwaway marriages and kids and irresponsibility, but geez! I think the baby boomers from the 60s may have been the most irresponsible generation ever.

Oh, re the guys getting shot and thrown in a ditch.... (A) I think that overwhelming fear is incapacitating, and (B) The desire to protect one's family, even if it means meekly accepting one's death, doesn't necessarily indicate cowardice.

I just learned last night that there were some revolts and uprisings. There was a movie on HBO about an Auschwitz revolt and the prisoners managed to blow up half the crematoriums. It said it was based on a true story so I looked on the internet an low and behold, it's true.

Auschwitz revolt

There are other examples on that page also. I don't know why these stories aren't told.

I once got into some trouble at a job on this issue. The policy at that place was to give robbers and such anything they wanted and to offer no resistance. My reply of that I would do so unless I knew I was to die, then I was going to do my best to take them out/take them with me brought all sorts of heat down on me for a while. I stood my ground, and even managed to convert some members of the management team to my viewpoint. This was a surprise to me, this attitude, as the place I had worked in high school had a very different take: while they were in the store, they owned it. If they wanted custom cut steaks, they got them. The second they walked out the door, however, they were fair game and dead meat -- and we had the means to make it so. The other caveat was that if customers were in danger, do whatever was necessary to protect them. I dress up as a sheep, but I am not one.

In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will know the man.