@@leonvukic6534 they were democratically chosen, and most didn't care one way or the other, if you are not part of ''our group' then we don't care if you exist or not.
In Australia a Jewish man told of hiding in a closet with his family when he was a boy as German soldiers searched the building. A young soldier opened the closet door, saw them, shut the door and walked out of the room. Nothing happened. He probably told his comrades the room was clear. Later the family was able to get away.
My grandfather was an officer in the German Army and he also saved an 18 year old Jewish boy from the SS. That boy now a man living in Israel finally found my grandfather and contacted him in 1969 and paid his ticket to visit him in Israel that boy he saved wanted his family to meet the man who saved his life. I have a picture of my grandfather sitting with him and his family in Israel.
What a wonderful man your grandfather was, you should be very proud. What people need to remember is that there were other men like your grandfather. Many Germans didn’t agree on what was happening. They were horrified by the pain and suffering, the dehumanising and cruel treatment given to the Jewish people. Many German soldiers/officers went out of their way to help and save jews when they could, knowing that if they were caught, it would be catastrophic. Whilst we should never forget what happened in WW2, the evil that took place and the millions of lives lost, complete families wiped out, innocent people starved and tortured, we should also remember that there were a few roses among the thorns.
I met an elderly French Jewish woman in New Jersey who told me she had come home from the market in Paris shortly after German occupation to learn from the neighbors that her husband and in-laws had been arrested by the French police and that the police were looking for her. She left with what little money she could find in the house and just the clothes she was wearing and headed for the free zone. Along the way she connected with French citizens who fed her and gave her shelter and in some cases served as a guide. Many close calls. But in the free zone she was taken in by a Catholic family that supplied her with false identity papers and helped her to pass as a Catholic by teaching her every prayer and seeing that she never missed mass or confession. She survived the entire war in France, even after the Germans and Italians occupied the free zone in 1942. I wish we heard more of the stories like these, because it took great courage for citizens to help.
thats wishful thinking. it makes a better story but the mother acted & spoke all german so there was no clue of their jewishness. so i couldnt guess either way.
@@aanon5716 The Yiddish accent of the father may have been enough to give him a clue, along with the fact he clearly didn't have papers. I think we need him to have known, because it means there is humanity in the world. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't. Or perhaps he knew and convinced himself he didn't in order to avoid doing the "right thing" for a German to do at the time, hand them over to their butchers.
I think you are probably right. Many people fail to realize that not all Officers in the military were Nazi's and many did not agree with how the Jews were being handled. He took a chance and we will never know if he paid the consequences down the line or if he survived the war at all.
@Alden Buyer the officer wasnt stupid. he knew those were fleeing jews but either took pity on them or appreciated the conversation he had with the mother. He knew they would be killed if he gave them away so he told the soldier to GTFO. Not all people were nazis or supported the holocaust. there are many stories of that
Can you imagine if that German officer (probably dead by now) knew that his act of kindness has now been watched by at least 1 million people? He thought what he did was good at the moment, not for fame, money or popularity.
I am among those who believe the German officer knew your family was Jewish. He was unhappy that he had to leave his family, and he missed them. He had your family in front of him and was probably moved to prevent your family from being broken up. I think that is an act God will remember.
@@rakovsky3901 no it was a serious majority , you will be surprised how a small number of wicked idiots can mesmerize and intimidate a large population of mainly good people I live in South Africa I see it all the time
My (French) girlfriend's grandfather was a very young german soldier who was forced to join the army and do all the instruction. He, along with his camarades, went to one of the famous Hitler's speech in front of thousands of people. He didn't understood many things about politics (he was too young for that), but got absolutely fascinated by Hitler's speech, he says that he had a magnetic way to talk, that brang prople into a shared madness. Soon after he was sent to occuped France, to join the forces that had to "mantain order". At the beginning he was convinced about all the german propaganda, but slowly started to realize that things were different, and got interested in the local population. He started to learn French, to have French friends, etc. At the end of the war, as the US Army was approaching the village he was in, he recived the order to fight them, "until the end" (dying if necessary). As he was not convinced anymore of all the German propaganda, he wanted to protect the French people, and didn't want to fight against the French's interests, he was hidden in a farm by a French farmer, until the hostilities ended. Then all the villageois declared to the Americans that he was considered as one of them, so he could avoid to be deported or imprisoned. He refused to return to Germany and stayed in France, where he met her wife and had children, one of his grandaughters is my French girlfriend. So no, not all Germans were nazis. Lots of them didn't even know what were they doing.
You're right on that last bit. I saw a video on RUclips a few days ago where a guy who served in the German army during WW2 was giving an interview. In the video, he explained that the German populace was told that the people going to the camps were wife beaters and murders and that the aim of the camps was to reahabilitare them. So yeah very few people actually knew what was really going on.
Viktor Frank mentioned something similar in his magnum opus “Man’s Search for Meaning,” regarding an SS Officer at the concentration camp he was in, who used to buy medical supplies for the inmates from his own paycheck, and that in a poetical justice turn of events, the inmates vouched for him when he was arrested by the Allies.
When the nsdap got elected, it was obey or die. Some brave germans did god things in secrets. This story, your story, no bullets fly. These are the ones i know. Theres probably more that went untold. If these stories saw daylight during ww2 it would have been a death sentence
When my mother worked at a nursing home she had a coworker who cared for a woman who survived the Holocaust. She told my mother's coworker that a German solider had found her starving to death and took her to a civilians' house, insisting they feed her even when they protested they only had pork to offer. Even all those decades later she said it was: "The best meal I've ever eaten."
During WW11 my uncle was wounded in France but still was mobile. He was trying to limp to a MASH unit on the other side of a field using his rifle as assistance. There standing in the field was a German soldier who immediately began shooting. He shot everywhere except at my uncle! Uncle Raymond made to the other side looked at the German, who saluted my uncle. Brings tears to my eyes whenever I tell this story.
I suspect the mother being smart enough to chat with the German officer made the family connect with the officer into that one chain of humanity which saved them. The officer related to the mother as a fellow human and this act saved them all. I also suspect the German officer not being so thrilled with the fighting sort of knew what he was doing and beneath the surface wanted to save these people. Beautiful story.
That was my thoughts as well. Her parents seemed to be the ones to have saved them, when they extended a nonverbal plea for help he met them there. It sounds like he was quite a family man and put high value on that relationship so seeing them all together as a family helped him feel that human connection
My thought is, It may have helped tremendously that the Mother spoke fluent German and the Dad who interpersed with Yiddish remained quiet. Learning a 2nd language has opened fresh opportunities and given me favor with others in unexpected ways. It's a big plus but as you pointed out, the human connection element is undeniably what turned the situation around to their favor.
I know an old German woman who was a young girl in ww2. They lived on a farm in eastern Germany. By the time the Russians came in, they were out of food because the German soldiers had taken it to feed the army. She told me that 2 Russian soldiers would keep coming by and bringing them food, which she says saved their lives. She says they were sent by God to save them from starving.
When my grandpa was shot down over the French/German border in enemy territory farmers hid him and his remaining crew in a farm. Not every German was a bad person then.
Of course not... but many, MANY were bad. Whether inherently or by brainwash. The evidence lies in the 10’s of millions of dead bodies. However, today... I’d say most Germans are mostly good, decent humans.
Of course the officer knew. And of course he knew what the father was doing. But in his heart he made that decision to cover for them. What a beautiful person that officer is, putting his own ass on the line for a stranger's family. Bless his heart.
Yes. There were a lot of good Germans in the Wehrmacht who didn’t buy into that nonsense radical ideology of Hitler. I’ve heard interviews of many German ww2 Veterans say with their own mouths “I didn’t dislike or even hate Jewish people. I was more committed to protecting my country from Bolshevism & communism and that sort of thing.” And that I can totally relate.
@@wanderinglunatic6522 Oh you want a timestamp? How about that one?: 3:13 So you're telling me a German officer wouldn't notice her mother's (probably quite heavy) Yiddish accent and everyone else being basically mute? That's a bit of a stretch wouldn't you say? Also, back in those times a passport really meant something. You wouldn't just lose it without realizing rather soon, unless you wanted to (which was the case as it was a Polish passport, see 4:56 and 5:02 "he had another id that had a 'jew' ['Jud(e)'] number on it").
@@wanderinglunatic6522 well if you sit there with a lot of people and the man especially in 1945 didn't say 1 word it's kinda suspicious. also what the guy above me wrote is clearly obvious that he knew
I posted this on another thread but feel it appropriate to post here... ...My mother's family lived in the former Republic of Macedonia (northern Greece) during the German occupation. Dedo owned two houses, one they lived in and the other was a vacant rental. When the Germans came to town, they knocked on my mother's family's door and said that a German officer would be quartered in the rental house. Soon after, a Waffen SS captain arrives and is greeted by Dedo. Every night this captain came over to share his care packages from home with mom's family. He ate dinner with mom's family every night and shared his schnapps with Dedo; and they talked until bed time. One day, mom and her cousin were out visiting others on the other side of town when they realized it was after 6 o'clock curfew. They ran towards home trying to stay out of site by taking side roads and running through yards. They were approached by two drunk Italians who began to assault the two girls. Just then, this SS Captain comes rolling up out of nowhere and gets out of his car. He recognized my mother and saved her and her cousin from a sure sexual assault! He took the two young girls into his car and drove them home, safely, after curfew!
I know it was a different war but my mother said her uncles (both WWI veterans) said that at night, their company commander would meet the German company commander in a nearby farmhouse for a game of chess, then go back to their respective lines to try and kill each other the next day.
Great story! Just a small correction: if you meant the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (which is now named North Macedonia): it was a different country from Greece. But of course there is another area, part of Greece, which is also called Macedonia.
What most people don't get is that the Nazi party and the German army are or were two different things. Also many Germans were required or forced to join the Nazi party.
If Hitler wanted an army of Nazis he wouldn’t have liquidated all of the highest ranking brown shirts (a Nazi paramilitary group of fanatics) to ensure he had the support of the actual German army
I'm a Croat and my grandfather and uncle joined Croatian Nazi "Ustase" because it was the only way to sign to a university at the time. Most of my family were and are teachers/professors. They both later died fighting on Axis side.
@Lang Hansen You do know that you had to join the Nazi Party in order to keep your grocerie store running? You had to join the Nazi party if you wanted to keep your normal life going
My father was a B-17 pilot and was shot down over Germany. Five of the crew were killed and the other five, including my father, were able to bail out. My father was wounded and when he landed, the local farmers were angry and were beating him and threatening to kill him when a German patrol looking for the survivors saved him. On the other hand, my father's bombardier was also captured, but the German civilians took him to the local beer hall to await the Army to take him into custody. He still had his survival kit which was supposed to have Deutsche Marks, so he offered to buy everyone a beer while they waited and they all drank a couple of beers. The Army arrived and the bombardier went to pay for the beers but in his survival kit were French Francs instead. The German soldiers took him away without paying. True story. I was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam. War is hell and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but you would be surprised how many humorous things happen. For example, one night in my platoon defensive position, a Marine who had just joined my platoon that day crawled up to my position and quietly reported that he had seen someone observing our position from behind a tree. Thinking it was more likely just first day nerves, I told him to go back to his position and keep an eye on the individual. An hour later he crawls up to my position and tells me the man is still there. So, I grab my starlight scope and I crawl back to his position and get in his foxhole. Starlight scopes were first generation in those days and the images were just fuzzy green blobs, but it did look like there was someone behind a tree to our front. Not wanting to give away our position with rifle fire, I told the Marine to throw a grenade and when the individual ran, I'd shoot him. I heard the Marine pull the pin on the grenade and he threw it. Then he whispered very low, "Sir, I dropped it." I had just enough time to think "inside or outside" the foxhole when it detonated about a foot above my head and three feet to my right. I could feel the dirt raining down on us, but I only had a loud ringing in my ears. I couldn't hear what he was saying. The next morning, I checked the tree. There was an old rotten limb on it that from a distance looked like it could be someone looking around it to our position. The Marine and I had a good laugh, only I still couldn't hear much. So, for a week or so, every time my company commander called on the radio to talk to me, my radio operator (LCpl "JJ" Jones) would tell the company commander that I wasn't available. My CO would then relate the information to JJ and afterward JJ would shout it loud enough that I could hear. I'd then tell JJ how to respond and he would call the company and tell them my response. You see, I didn't want to leave my platoon. After a week or so, my hearing returned--mostly. Even today I have some high frequency hearing loss and will probably need a hearing aid later. I still chuckle about that incident. There were many other humorous things that happened that year, but most were "black" humor that people who have never been in combat could likely understand as being funny. I wish I had written them all down at the time. It would have made a great series of short vignettes about the aspects of war that never make the history books. My apologies for the long post. Some times memories just come flooding back.
Very near the end of the war, my uncle was in a group captured by Germans. They marched them a ways then put them up against a wall. Right at that time an observation plane began circling overhead. They took them away from the wall and marched them on to a prison camp where they spent just a couple of weeks before being liberated. As an example of dark humor, my father was a Marine in the Pacific. As an island was being bombarded or he was waiting for his turn to land, they cracked up when a body came floating by the ship with its bare butt up mooning them.
No apology needed. Great stories are very much appreciated. It gives others an understanding of what happened, and how the world was seen before, under and after. I have never been to war, but I understand why you will find that funny. Humour is the opposite of crying. It is a greatly used tactic to combat the problems we can not fix.
Someone I knew was in the resistance in Germany when a young woman. One day her task was to smuggle radio parts into a POW camp, so they could have news of what was happening in the world outside. The parts were hidden in an orange, so as to also give them some vitamin c. She approached the fence & passed the orange through but at that moment a guard came patrolling outside the fence & caught her. The guard was followed by an officer leading a patrol. The guard pulled her close to him & gave her a long & passionate kiss, so her face was hidden from the patrol. When the patrol had passed he called to the officer, "Sorry sir. My girlfriend came to visit me". Then he whispered to her, "Go now & never come back here again". She walked away from the camp & no-one stopped her.
My grand-grand mothers brothers were killed by Russians and Germans. But another German soldier helped her. She was allways saying we have to love all human beings because we all are human no matter from which country.
Thank You German officer who ever you were for saving that family! He knew what he was doing. There actually were a few good ones at that dark time in human history. Thank you for sharing her story.
My mother was drafted into the German army. She was enlisted due to her experience working in factories since age 14. During the war she worked in factories loading munitions at first. Later aircraft factories. When the factories were bombed to hell by the allies, they sent her home. There was nothing for her to do. In 1951 she came to America by ship to Elise Island, New York and later became a citizen. Taught herself English and worked in various jobs. In the 80s, she got a letter from the German government, stating that she was never discharged from the German army and they owed her back pay for 40+ years. They sent Her 250 Marks, later Euros until the day she died... I often wonder if she was the longest enlisted German soldier in history. I've been meaning to tell the stories she told me in a series on RUclips as I think they deserve to be told and remembered.
get the mobile app and you can record youtube videos at the press of a button. they upload automatically. it's very easy, just hit the little video camera icon.
That is nice to hear. If it means anything to you: My great-grandpa also didn't hate the Americans. When he was a war prisoner in the US he became friends with his guard.
My grandmother was in the league of German girls (BDM) and sent to land farm service with other girls to help bring the harvest in. They worked with Polish POWs who had a camp nearby. One day a guy named Jan was missing and stayed at the barracks because he was sick. Since lunch was only served in the field, she felt she had to leave some sandwiches for him by a window. Someone reported her and she was called into the local nazi Gau leader’s office to explain herself as it was considered uncouth for a German woman to be seen near Poles. She told him that sick people who work for us should’t go hungry and this was dishonorable. He let her go with a warning.
I think their character was transformed by their catastrophic defeat, and the half-century split of their country, and the extinguishing and discrediting of German nationalist and Prussian militarist ideology, as well as the Nazi deprogramming. They were forced to learn humility; not by choice, but forced to. And now indeed they're remarkably enlightened.
@@dreamer2260 we took the best from Prussia tho and if we where to switch to a Military conflict ill would believe that we could get that Militarism Back there's a reason we are seen as Timely efficient and obedient
@@dreamer2260 l don’t think so. I think it was the fact that the allies stand behind and actually helped rebuild instead of kicking them while they were down like in ww1. Hitler only came into power because the German people had nothing left to lose and were ready to do anything to improve their conditions.
Vermacht(German Army) and Naxi Party were 2 different things. A lot of Officers in 1944 even tried to assasinate Hitler and stage the coup(Operation Valkyrie) but they made few critical mistakes and failed. The real bastards were SS.
A lot of the Wehrmacht didn't care much for the Nazis. Some did early on but then, like Field Marshal Rommel, lost faith. It was a bitter, terrible thing. Pray that we aren't next.
I went to Dachau a few years ago, a truly depressing place. One of the guides explained how different camps operated. Some were death camps (ie Treblinka) where you weren't coming out once you got sent there. Some were work camps, some were re-education camps. He said that work camps often operated next important factories, and the inmates would made to work as slave labour in them, often alongside German civilian paid workers. It was common for the German civilians to bring in food and leave it hidden in areas of the factory, to be picked up the camp inmates later.
My grandmother (a Catholic Slav from Slovenia) who was about 16 when she was taken to Dresden, was forced to work as a housekeeper. My great grandmother as well.
More than 32 years ago, I talked with a Jew who had been in a Nazi concentration camp with his wife. He said that a German soldier tossed him a loaf of bread one day. Some of the German soldiers were OK.
back in ww2 in German camps for POW there was one side for Russians and another for Americans and Russians didn't get feed much they ate bowl of soup a day unlike Americans who were give good amount of food And then some Americans toss some food for a Russian every day from the gates secretly then a German solider found out what they were doing and never reported it. Eventually when the Germans found out the secret they took that German and beheaded him/ Respect to that German solider
@@gay.mer9328 Actually I feel that last story is a little bit strange and I have trouble believing it. But it really happened quite a lot that people got killed for being nice, normal people. At a museum in Peiting near Munich there's one room for people from that small town who were killed in the last night before the US army arrived. One of them had gotten warned that he should not go home and he said "but I didn't do anything" and went home. His crime was having been active in the communist party before 1933 (like many people from this little workers town) and from time to time giving chickens from his backyard farm to starving Russian prisoners of war.
My grandmom said to me that in 1942 one german was felt in love with her,, but she did not wish to have relationship with him. He was polite. She died in 2001. It was in one city in Serbia.
Tell that to the politicians and the sensitive thin skinned politically correct individuals that think it is their way or no way. They call others fascist and then behave the way of a fascist. Hypocritical bastards. The complications and variety of living requires a wider view of what it takes to exist. No one should feel inferior to another, but should strive to improve themselves for their own sake and that of their family. The reality of the world is there are those differences. However, one's belief should not be to the point of fanatical (both foreign and domestic) that imposes on another's well being. Yet it does, thus the phrase: "Si vis pacem, para bellum".
I believe that if it is a german officer we are talking about, they knew. They always knew. Some would probably play for them a bit before busting them, some will save them and thank god we got the “save them” one
I remember being a child and trying to hide in bed with my mother when Nazi soldiers were raiding our village. Two soldiers burst into the bedroom and rippid off the quilt. They began to maul my mother, then a German Officer stepped into the room, (this was in the Alsace and we could speak German) and said, "Feldwebel, arrest these pigs, they are not fit to be German soldiers. Find them unpleasant duties until I decide to have them shot." The Officer replaced the quilt and said, "No harm will come to you." Indeed we both survived the war. I often wondered about Nazis and German soldiers.
Is it true that if a German did not join the Nazi Party he was shot? I heard this a while ago. It makes sense that there would be an undercurrent of resentment among some at this forced coercion and that even some kindly souls were trapped into being Nazis. Of course we know many of them went about being a Nazi with great enjoyment!
@@Linda-vx4fn The Nazis took over with 43% of the votes (lots of them where forced to vote that way)...................... So you can clearly see that more then half of Germany was aginst Hitler when he took over. This rate is likely to be considered lower because of the War and other Stuff the Germans had to go trough. In other words yes you would likely being shot if you did not do your part back then.
I as a german never heard of that. The highest known membership number of the NSDAP was 10.174.581 and no one had to be in that party, except some Jobs. But many people were killed because they didn't wanted to go to war. I think at the end of the war even parents, who didn't wanted their kids to fight or old men who didn't wanted to fight were hung.
In 1943 or 1944 my mother was in a train from The Hague to Friesland, to spend some time in a village there. A British plane spotted the train and started shooting at it, so all the passengers jumped out and hid. My mom, who was 1w or 13 years old, just froze. A German soldier saw her sitting still in the train, climbed back in, grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the train and into safety. Like someone else commented: not all Germans were nazis.
I have a client,a very old Polish lady,who tells me tales of life under German occupation occasionally.The Germans took over her mother's farm, and one day her mother was selling eggs in the town when a German policeman whispered to her "Don't come back here tomorrow.Disappear.Your name is on a list for the concentration camp."So she goes back to her German farm manager and makes up a story that she has to go south to help a sick relative.She realizes that she has to go immediately with her family that night.The German manager is too helpful and offers her a horse and cart to take them to the station early the next morning,but of course she can't do that;so with the help of the resistance she goes overland on the backroads in the snow in a cart and crosses the river in a small boat dodging the ice floes which is very dangerous especially in the pitch darkness with her children.The family wasn't Jewish but the deceased father 20 years before had arranged a successful plebiscite which resulted in the return of some local East Prussian land to Poland...and the Germans had put him on a [death?] list.THeir farm backed onto the German border and as soon as the Germans took over Poland they came knocking on the door for him...but he had died a couple of years before.I suppose they decided to take their revenge on his widow?Who knows.She also had a long story about what happened to her mother in laws family under Russian occupation which was much worse at least in her case.An epic story that one which I will not go into here,except it shows the brutality of the Soviet system contrasted with the kindness of ordinary Russians.
Do you think it was worse because her mother in laws family didnt have the fortune of being warned. I cant imagine it would be better if she had been caught and her entire family was on a death list
I'm glad this person told the story, as her being a holocaust Survivor, you know the story is factual.. she has no reason to give credit to a German officer- but she did..
my grandparents fled Germany to Canada in the onset of ww2....my grandmother was a matriarch to so many immigrants coming to canada from all over europe.she gave them food,blankets a place to stay ,found them work or family as well as raising 5 kids and the rest of her family.i miss her,she persevered for 96 years.....
I used to live down the street from a German fellow who was a young boy in Germany during the war and after the war lived in East Germany. In his house were large pictures of his ancestors and photographs of relatives and some were in German uniforms and there were medals given to his family for various things. I was struck by how well read he was. He knew European history forwards and backwards from ancient Rome to everything in between.
I spoke to an old woman who was a passenger on the infamous SS St. Louis and she told me that a German customs officer met her mother incognito and stamped all of their bags and possessions, so they wouldn't be checked or deprived of anything when they went to embark. People did what they could but you risked not only your job but also your life, and the safety of your family if you were caught.
My great grandfather fought in ww2. The was in the first wave on Dday. He said everything was done on a whim nothing went to plan. Anyways he said after the landing he drank any and all alchohol he could find. When him and his boys were fight german just outside a place called vernon a little distance from Paris He ran out of booze. One of the locals who joined the fight told him about a store held up by german full of wine. My ggrandfather and two of his company took off in the night to find this place. Hell broke out after being spotted and forced an attack. They made it to this store and found 6 germans drunk as hell laughing and talking . He said they stormed the store yelling at the german to get on the ground. They all started laughing and said in english. " web lost the war when it started ether join us for a drink or kill us and get it over with" He said the fighting outside the town was intense but at that moment it all went away and they drank and played cards all night. The next afternoon the all woke up to Canadian and british around them yelling at the german to get down. They stood up fast and defended the germans. The bad news is one of them was SS and was taken away. Later found out he was executed but asshole soldiers with a grudge. He said this SS guy was sweet and tried everything in his power the use his rank and status to save people. Talked about fake papers to jew and helping people escape Germany. He was kicked to the front line because we was under suspicion about being a sympathizer. The german he was with hated what germany stood for they hated fighting. It was ether serve or die and your family's died. The choice is simple. I dint know about you people but if someone came to me and said I'll kill everybody you love unless you do 1-2-3 I'd probably have done it.... As bad and horrible as that sounds it's the fact of life. I'd do unthinkable shit to save my kids. But I'd also do the same things to save others kids. Sorry I dont know alot of the details and some may be off but that's what I remember of his story. RIP John s McDonald
Back in the early '70s I was living in Scotland. A friend of mine shared my flat. Her parents were Polish, she was born in Scotland. Her first name was Nikka and her last name started with L. She was working on a PhD. She told me a story about how her mother escaped the gas chamber. Her mother was waiting to go into Auschwitz. The camp commander was walking around looking at the women. He pointed to my friends mother and told one of the guards to send her up to his house. He wanted her as a maid. Her father was a Polish cavalry officer. She grew up in Perth. I wish I could find her.
Your friend, "Nikka L.," from the early 1970s was working on a Ph.D. in Scotland. If you know the name of the university where she was enrolled in doctoral studies, then contact them since they should have a record of her.
People often forget a big majority of Germans were NOT nazis ,quite a lot actually hated their doctarine but if they showed any dissent they would end up in a camp
My grandfather was stopped in their hometown in eastern Poland by a Bolshevik officer soon after the invasion. My grandfather was a math professor conscripted as an officer once the war broke out. The two of them were alone at the time. The Bolshevik officer told my grandfather to go to the German side. My grandfather listened to him and changed direction. The Bolshevik told him “go with God”. Soon after, the Katyn massacre of Polish officers happened. My grandfather spent the entire war in a German POW camp and survived. He always felt that man knew what was planned and saved his life.
My father was 101st Airborne during WW2 and sometimes he cried. Especially when he drank with my Uncle who was in Pearl Harbor. They were great men and sometimes the hell of war wouldn't leave them be. Thank goodness for the compassionate human beings in the world.
Thank you Ma'am for telling your story! I'm glad that German officer had at least some kind of humanity about him. We could all learn a lot from times and people such as this.
My mother was not a Jew (although she would come to marry one), but a young American traveling through Germany in 1939 when a German soldier, who had befriended her, told her one day she should leave immediately, to not even return to the hostel where she had been staying. No sooner had she gotten out but Hitler slammed the border shut. That soldier could very well have saved my mother's life.
Here is a big secret because no one heart about it. I was skeptic my self until the Christmas party I gave in littleton Co. when the president of the bank of Denver brought his friend along from San Francisco. My parents where also here from Germany 1979. My father and the other San Francisco guy did not speak to each other, but where hostile toward each until my father sat that he never faught in the War because he was a prisoner of War in California. My father told him his name, Stoevesand and this guy recognized him being rowed a shore at the San Francisco bay by him. I happened to look outside when they left and my father and this man hugged each other and both cried tears from remembering that ordeal.
My dad was in the rescue missions from the concentration camps. He said as soon as you entered the surrounding towns you could smell the odor of burned human bodies. A smell he said he would never forget. I wish he had met some German people who had tried to help those in the camps because right up until he died he never forgave them for what they knew or what they did. It is a pity that he never got to read good stories like these because I believe it would have given him more peace during his life.
not surprised he wouldn't forget the scent of burning human flesh... I smelled someone cooking heroin (tar) and I fucking smell it randomly at time. Fucking pisses me off ik what heroin being cooked smells like!
It is late in the day, almost time for bed, and this story made my day complete. I go to bed with my hope reinforced in the essential decency and dignity of all human beings. Thank you.
✔ As it SHOULD be, but sadly as it mostly has NOT been , and will go on NOT being. There were and are and will be evil forces that pull forth that beastly trace from the depths of humanity of their subjects ,and let that evil manipulate the lives of masses.
My uncle told me on Christmas the shots fired at each other were over each others heads..and just after midnight the fire fight stopped..and 2 people from either side would meet in the middle and exchange gifts..
I understand that Christmas truces (unofficial) were common in WWI. The soldiers would meet in no man's land, exchange greetings and some gifts and sing carols.
My uncle Arvid and his family were Latvian when Germany invaded. They had always been kind to and fed a local boy who "was not quite right" and who was bullied by the local kids and shunned from his family. Years later, during the occupation, my uncle and his brother were picked up and put on a train for a concentration camp. The Nazis put a lot of criminally insane men in charge of the prisons. When my uncle and his brother arrived at the prison for intake, amazingly it was this kid from their town who recognized them and obviously remembered the family kindness. He told the two young men to go out this door. They did. They had no idea where they were. My uncle went one way and made his way to Canada and had a successful and loving life. He never saw nor heard from his brother again, who went the other way. Always be kind. You never know who you are helping.
There's a story my grandma told me when the Nazis occupied Italy. Some soldiers took great affection towards her younger brother who was 14 at the time because he'd help them with odd jobs and when bombs it the village my grandma's house was hit killing her mum and 9 year old sister on impact but her brother was badly wounded. Some soldiers wanted to get help for the boy but never came back because they most likely were killed by bombs as well.
In my younger years in southern Chile I met a couple of German veterans (both of them turned into a catholic priests), they were 17 or so when they were called to serve. Of course hey were just young guys, they had absolutely nothing to do with Nazi party or anything. They were both injured and ended the war in hospitals. Like this old lady said, most of the Germans were perfectly decent people.
A casual conversation between the mom and the senior officer built a bridge. Maybe the family reminded him of the family he was leaving behind and also realizing through conversation.. "we're really not that much different. we are all humans."
How does this story cause 100 people to vote THUMBS DOWN???? This poor woman was a small child and she and her family do owe their lives to this Officer.
Recently I have been watching quite a few videos pre and post WW II. All of them showed Americans , Britishers etc. as very brave, nice and decent people and Germans as demons. Thanks for uploading this video which shows that even among Germans there were nice and decent people.
Allies did some atrocities too, Nuclear bombing Japan, raping and pillaging in France, Italy and Germany. That's war tho. Except for the 2 bombs that for me are almost as bad as extermination camps. I mean, the target was mostly civilians, old people, women and children. The responsability tho is also to attribute to american government and generals more than to single soldiers. When we talk about rape, murder and looting civilians it's the other way around.
Please dont get carried away by these few stories that can be made into romanticized feature films to make ones heart bleed at the kindness of the Germans!! For every one rare decent German there were thousands of diabolical Germans both in uniform and civilians. That's how millions of jews and others were murdered by Hitler with the support of the German people. Take a good look at the thronging masses of human waste applauding Hitler during his speeches! That will give you a clear indication how many were decent, gentle compassionate folks!
They say you should never judge a book by its cover. Nor a person by the uniform worn. You just have to read on before making your decision. Sometimes it comes too late to be of help… but sometimes a gem is found, like here.
This world can be cruel and evil sometimes, but each and every one of us can play a very small part to make it a better place. It all adds up eventually.
My Dad fought in WW2 and was severely wounded a couple of months after D-Day. He was shipped back to England on a cot and was placed next to the former mayor of Munich who was travelling with a valet. The mayor ordered a glass of water and when it was delivered he indicated it was for my Dad. They got to talking and apparently, the Germans knew they were losing the war and really wanted to end it.
See the Wehrmacht wasn't as strict as the SS, some soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht didn't care for or were even against the ideas of killing and harming Jewish people and would help them out in any way possible.
I met a Holocaust survivor a few years back and every time I think back to the stories he told my class, I get chills. It’s so incredibly difficult to imagine that this was something that actually happened and there was a large group of people who were just okay with doing these things to people
It scares me that there are people that "thumbs down" something like this. Makes me wonder what got them to this video, and what they would consider worthy of "thumbs up"
The German officer probably knew. Why ? Because thís nice lady told, that her father didn´t speak to the officer because he was afraid because of his Yiddish mixing into German. But he had to talk to the passport controler and that was probably the moment when the officer knew, they were jews. You cannot completely hide your native language
Well he would most likely mix up his language because the nature of the first was conversational where he would likely have a slip up if he got too comfortable. Ths second he didnt have a choice and he was very much on guard and cautious. He was smart about not even risking it initially, and was composed when he did have to speak
@@TheFamousMockingbird People in America have different accents that they notice about each other- Pennsylvania, New York, Midwest, Deep South, etc. The same is true for Germany and Poland. So it's realistic to think that she had a slight Yiddish or Polish accent even if she spoke German "perfectly" in terms of perfect grammar, and the same is more true about her husband. Conceivably he could have avoided saying hardly anything except "I don't know where it is," etc., but even a few sentences as long as that can give away an accent. And then not only is there the accent issue, but consider that A. He initially presented documents instead of a passport when normally people present both, B. The documents presented were off/wrong, C. he couldn't find his passport. The practical reality is that the officer should have known that there could have been a document problem. The upshot of all this is that he probably wanted to help them just like he wanted to help them with the cold, and he at least knew that something could have been wrong with their papers but he was not happy about the war situation anyway as he complained about it.
I grew up in Lincoln Heights in Los Angeles California and when I was a young boy there were many holocaust survivors in my neighborhood. One gentleman who was married to my mom’s friend was named Harry Winkler, and I remember how he use to talk to us kids about the Nazis. He would always make it a point to show us his tattoo that he had on his arm that the Nazis gave him. Even to this day I still remember the stories like he didn’t want us kids to forget about what happened.
Remember though, people were not politely asked to join. Join or your whole family will be imprisoned. No where to hide, but to go along. Even so, people found a way to be good rather than evil.
if anyone is 'too afraid' to do the right thing then they aren't a good person, no good people in the soviets, no good in the US forces, no good in the french... don't look up ww2 if you want to talk about 'good'
I had an older Filipino American friend who was saved in the Philippines by a Japanese Lieutenant. My friend was is a line of Filipino men who were to be killed by the Japanese. For reasons known only to God the Lieutenant pulled my friend out of the line. Thereafter my friend loved Japanese because one saved his life.
I'm American by birth but many of my ancestors came from Germany. I liked the anecdote - because I can believe that while many Germans felt caught up in the horrors of WW2 not all of them were Nazi party members. I'd like to think that this German officer knew what he was doing and by at least moving along the fellow who wanted to check papers, he was doing his small part to do something right. Whether that's fantasy on my part I'll never know - but I'm thankful to know yet another family made it out.
Same here. I’m pretty much of German descent from both parents and I remember seeing an episode of Justice League set during World War II in which the Justice League helps out a German civilian who tells one of them “Not all Germans are bad.” This was very true. There were many small German resistance groups who fought against the Nazis including the White Rose group. In fact I saw a film years ago, set in a slightly alternate World War II in which American soldiers teamed up with members of a German resistance group in order to destroy blueprints for a nuclear weapon. I wish I could remember the name of the film but it was a fun film.
@@mirandagoldstine8548 My ancestors came from Germany, and my impression is that the bad Germans are truly bad, and can be extremely cruel and heartless toward minorities, Physically disabled Germans were put in camps, and some persecuted by their own families. Good Germans who risked everything to help minorities and the disabled had to be very.good and very brave indeed.
I believe you, I am a disabled vet 1970 , and a friend of mine introduced me to the lady he knew that he did work for on her apts. She has passed away several years ago , this is the first time I have ever mentioned this . The three of us went to lunch, right after we sat down my friend excused himself and left us there her and I. I didn't know her , we were just interduced . She was Czech, 92 yrs . She said to me , " Perry saz you are a Vet and go to the VA HOSPITAL" . I was surprised he mentioned. I remember I said that I didn't talk to much about it. . From this point forward it was like 10,000 volts was shorted out on me ear to ear . She said , the same thing with her, that her friends get angry when she sez that When Dr. Mengelia died she cried. . I instantly said .. You mean YOU DIDN'T CRY...! she fired back. I DID CRY. and in no uncertain terms. I said , I am sorry if I sound rude , you have got to explain. I never ate lunch. She said he was the angel of death , but not for me. I will tell you. She was 23 at the beginning of the war and pregnant, she was a nurse when they were sent to Auszvites. (sp) . Time stopped I listen to and got to ask questions that I had always wondered. The lady of this video, has a similar story. I spent 3 hrs at least , I have never been so .... I am a combat vet , U S Army Infantry. I can't do her ordeal Justice. I learned alot , her forgiveness, and her journey , from then to present. I remember back , I swore to god that if I got through the year ...... I could hack anything.
I think I was in 8th grade one of our teachers had a friend come in who was a holocaust survivor. This was back in 98/99 and I still remember her talk like it was yesterday. I fear that as we lose that connection to history society will start to forget the lessons.
Even if you wanted to help a family like that in that predicament there is a fear that one of the other passengers might snitch on you. So it is a brave thing to do.
I have read Anne Frank's unedited diary. I wish they had been saved. The people in the attic would talk about the first thing they wanted to do or eat when the War was over. So sad they were caught and murdered. Except Otto Frank. He was a soldier in WW1 and given special consideration. It's a tragic true story, but made me appreciate HOW delicate human lives really are. This story shows that not all the German people were heartless.
Things is that the German officer would be well aware what "I can't find my passport" during a check meant at this stage of the war. He saved the family deliberately
Just remember, not all Germans were nazis and the nazis weren't all German.
Yes
but most were nazis, most were killers or supported them, these few doesn´t change the history, but just add a little fresh wind.
sebastian G. Most people weren’t nazis. It was follow us or die. You had no choice.
@@leonvukic6534 they were democratically chosen, and most didn't care one way or the other, if you are not part of ''our group' then we don't care if you exist or not.
in fact hitler wasnt german
In Australia a Jewish man told of hiding in a closet with his family when he was a boy as German soldiers searched the building. A young soldier opened the closet door, saw them, shut the door and walked out of the room. Nothing happened. He probably told his comrades the room was clear. Later the family was able to get away.
You see some have 👍good.
Sometimes the best you can do to great evil is sabotaging it from within
A real hero
I’m guessing you mean Austria
And if another from the search party found them, he could have faced grave consequences.
Salute to humanity.
My grandfather was an officer in the German Army and he also saved an 18 year old Jewish boy from the SS. That boy now a man living in Israel finally found my grandfather and contacted him in 1969 and paid his ticket to visit him in Israel that boy he saved wanted his family to meet the man who saved his life. I have a picture of my grandfather sitting with him and his family in Israel.
That's beautiful!!
That gave me goosebumps ❤️
would you share the picture? would love to see it
What a wonderful man your grandfather was, you should be very proud.
What people need to remember is that there were other men like your grandfather. Many Germans didn’t agree on what was happening. They were horrified by the pain and suffering, the dehumanising and cruel treatment given to the Jewish people. Many German soldiers/officers went out of their way to help and save jews when they could, knowing that if they were caught, it would be catastrophic.
Whilst we should never forget what happened in WW2, the evil that took place and the millions of lives lost, complete families wiped out, innocent people starved and tortured, we should also remember that there were a few roses among the thorns.
Cool story.
She died the same year this was uploaded, in 2011.
RIP Lili
Aw man, that's a bummer. She looked very healthy in this. But that's life, I guess. It may end at any time.
Awwww, that’s so sad to learn she passed away R.I.P.
OwnedByAGrey Thank you,She was a very talented lady and I’m glad she told us her story .
brother yes, I was thinking how well she looked too.
Just heard this story and that’s really sad, RIP.
Really interesting story.
I met an elderly French Jewish woman in New Jersey who told me she had come home from the market in Paris shortly after German occupation to learn from the neighbors that her husband and in-laws had been arrested by the French police and that the police were looking for her. She left with what little money she could find in the house and just the clothes she was wearing and headed for the free zone. Along the way she connected with French citizens who fed her and gave her shelter and in some cases served as a guide. Many close calls. But in the free zone she was taken in by a Catholic family that supplied her with false identity papers and helped her to pass as a Catholic by teaching her every prayer and seeing that she never missed mass or confession. She survived the entire war in France, even after the Germans and Italians occupied the free zone in 1942. I wish we heard more of the stories like these, because it took great courage for citizens to help.
Thank you for the empathy.
Please look up Marian Domanski and how he survived as a 13 year old orphan in Poland passing himself off as catholic.
The German officer totally knew....great story
Absolutely
thats wishful thinking. it makes a better story but the mother acted & spoke all german so there was no clue of their jewishness. so i couldnt guess either way.
@@aanon5716 The Yiddish accent of the father may have been enough to give him a clue, along with the fact he clearly didn't have papers. I think we need him to have known, because it means there is humanity in the world. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't. Or perhaps he knew and convinced himself he didn't in order to avoid doing the "right thing" for a German to do at the time, hand them over to their butchers.
I think you are probably right. Many people fail to realize that not all Officers in the military were Nazi's and many did not agree with how the Jews were being handled. He took a chance and we will never know if he paid the consequences down the line or if he survived the war at all.
@Alden Buyer the officer wasnt stupid. he knew those were fleeing jews but either took pity on them or appreciated the conversation he had with the mother. He knew they would be killed if he gave them away so he told the soldier to GTFO.
Not all people were nazis or supported the holocaust. there are many stories of that
Can you imagine if that German officer (probably dead by now) knew that his act of kindness has now been watched by at least 1 million people? He thought what he did was good at the moment, not for fame, money or popularity.
I am among those who believe the German officer knew your family was Jewish. He was unhappy that he had to leave his family, and he missed them. He had your family in front of him and was probably moved to prevent your family from being broken up. I think that is an act God will remember.
Right. Probably there was a serious minority of German soldiers not happy about the war and secretly not in agreement with the policies.
@@rakovsky3901 no it was a serious majority , you will be surprised how a small number of wicked idiots can mesmerize and intimidate a large population of mainly good people
I live in South Africa I see it all the time
@@travelsouthafrica5048 No not really, there was huge chunks that were members only for political reasons for their careers.
My (French) girlfriend's grandfather was a very young german soldier who was forced to join the army and do all the instruction. He, along with his camarades, went to one of the famous Hitler's speech in front of thousands of people. He didn't understood many things about politics (he was too young for that), but got absolutely fascinated by Hitler's speech, he says that he had a magnetic way to talk, that brang prople into a shared madness.
Soon after he was sent to occuped France, to join the forces that had to "mantain order". At the beginning he was convinced about all the german propaganda, but slowly started to realize that things were different, and got interested in the local population. He started to learn French, to have French friends, etc. At the end of the war, as the US Army was approaching the village he was in, he recived the order to fight them, "until the end" (dying if necessary). As he was not convinced anymore of all the German propaganda, he wanted to protect the French people, and didn't want to fight against the French's interests, he was hidden in a farm by a French farmer, until the hostilities ended. Then all the villageois declared to the Americans that he was considered as one of them, so he could avoid to be deported or imprisoned.
He refused to return to Germany and stayed in France, where he met her wife and had children, one of his grandaughters is my French girlfriend.
So no, not all Germans were nazis. Lots of them didn't even know what were they doing.
Absolutely beautiful story. Thank you for sharing.
You're right on that last bit. I saw a video on RUclips a few days ago where a guy who served in the German army during WW2 was giving an interview. In the video, he explained that the German populace was told that the people going to the camps were wife beaters and murders and that the aim of the camps was to reahabilitare them. So yeah very few people actually knew what was really going on.
Some were killed by other Germans for not being Nazis
Viktor Frank mentioned something similar in his magnum opus “Man’s Search for Meaning,” regarding an SS Officer at the concentration camp he was in, who used to buy medical supplies for the inmates from his own paycheck, and that in a poetical justice turn of events, the inmates vouched for him when he was arrested by the Allies.
Victor ? From Generation War ?
Viktor Frankl
That officer even collected warm clothes from the village nearby for the prisoners during the harsh winters as well...
He was called Hans Münch
When the nsdap got elected, it was obey or die. Some brave germans did god things in secrets. This story, your story, no bullets fly. These are the ones i know. Theres probably more that went untold. If these stories saw daylight during ww2 it would have been a death sentence
When my mother worked at a nursing home she had a coworker who cared for a woman who survived the Holocaust. She told my mother's coworker that a German solider had found her starving to death and took her to a civilians' house, insisting they feed her even when they protested they only had pork to offer. Even all those decades later she said it was: "The best meal I've ever eaten."
During WW11 my uncle was wounded in France but still was mobile. He was trying to limp to a MASH unit on the other side of a field using his rifle as assistance. There standing in the field was a German soldier who immediately began shooting. He shot everywhere except at my uncle! Uncle Raymond made to the other side looked at the German, who saluted my uncle. Brings tears to my eyes whenever I tell this story.
Very respectable but you accidentally wrote ww11
@@PuuroLehmahe’s from the future. He’s telling us there will be another 9 world wars
Love that story! So many good things were never written down.
That’s shocking.
I suspect the mother being smart enough to chat with the German officer made the family connect with the officer into that one chain of humanity which saved them. The officer related to the mother as a fellow human and this act saved them all. I also suspect the German officer not being so thrilled with the fighting sort of knew what he was doing and beneath the surface wanted to save these people. Beautiful story.
That was my thoughts as well. Her parents seemed to be the ones to have saved them, when they extended a nonverbal plea for help he met them there. It sounds like he was quite a family man and put high value on that relationship so seeing them all together as a family helped him feel that human connection
He was very conscious of what he did, i am sure.
A miracle
My thought is, It may have helped tremendously that the Mother spoke fluent German and the Dad who interpersed with Yiddish remained quiet.
Learning a 2nd language has opened fresh opportunities and given me favor with others in unexpected ways. It's a big plus but as you pointed out, the human connection element is undeniably what turned the situation around to their favor.
Very wise woman saved her family..beautiful story
I know an old German woman who was a young girl in ww2. They lived on a farm in eastern Germany. By the time the Russians came in, they were out of food because the German soldiers had taken it to feed the army. She told me that 2 Russian soldiers would keep coming by and bringing them food, which she says saved their lives. She says they were sent by God to save them from starving.
And what did she give them?
It's a touching and valuable story but what kind of god would let 40 million people die and then decide to spare this family.
@@andreasrademacher5715 what’s your point? And no, I am not being sarcastic, I’m curious.
@@andreasrademacher5715 best left unanswered.
@@hybridwafer The one that loved us enough to give us free will
When my grandpa was shot down over the French/German border in enemy territory farmers hid him and his remaining crew in a farm. Not every German was a bad person then.
Of course not... but many, MANY were bad. Whether inherently or by brainwash. The evidence lies in the 10’s of millions of dead bodies. However, today... I’d say most Germans are mostly good, decent humans.
Yea like the movie jojo rabbit
i am pretty sure 80% were pro nazis.
@@cobijing You say that? You do not know much about Germany in those times. That's the problem.
Just to say, there's nothing bad in helding and reporting an enemy soldier to the authorities to take him POW, it's the normal thing to do
Of course the officer knew. And of course he knew what the father was doing. But in his heart he made that decision to cover for them. What a beautiful person that officer is, putting his own ass on the line for a stranger's family. Bless his heart.
Yes. There were a lot of good Germans in the Wehrmacht who didn’t buy into that nonsense radical ideology of Hitler. I’ve heard interviews of many German ww2 Veterans say with their own mouths “I didn’t dislike or even hate Jewish people. I was more committed to protecting my country from Bolshevism & communism and that sort of thing.” And that I can totally relate.
@@rsdc2695 I guess there was little risk in this situation. he was higher ranked than the soldier, his word against this ones, he'd always win.
Nonsense.
At no point in her dialogue did she indicated that the German Officer knew they were Jewish.
Wishful thinking at best.
@@wanderinglunatic6522 Oh you want a timestamp? How about that one?: 3:13
So you're telling me a German officer wouldn't notice her mother's (probably quite heavy) Yiddish accent and everyone else being basically mute? That's a bit of a stretch wouldn't you say? Also, back in those times a passport really meant something. You wouldn't just lose it without realizing rather soon, unless you wanted to (which was the case as it was a Polish passport, see 4:56 and 5:02 "he had another id that had a 'jew' ['Jud(e)'] number on it").
@@wanderinglunatic6522 well if you sit there with a lot of people and the man especially in 1945 didn't say 1 word it's kinda suspicious. also what the guy above me wrote is clearly obvious that he knew
I posted this on another thread but feel it appropriate to post here... ...My mother's family lived in the former Republic of Macedonia (northern Greece) during the German occupation. Dedo owned two houses, one they lived in and the other was a vacant rental. When the Germans came to town, they knocked on my mother's family's door and said that a German officer would be quartered in the rental house. Soon after, a Waffen SS captain arrives and is greeted by Dedo. Every night this captain came over to share his care packages from home with mom's family. He ate dinner with mom's family every night and shared his schnapps with Dedo; and they talked until bed time. One day, mom and her cousin were out visiting others on the other side of town when they realized it was after 6 o'clock curfew. They ran towards home trying to stay out of site by taking side roads and running through yards. They were approached by two drunk Italians who began to assault the two girls. Just then, this SS Captain comes rolling up out of nowhere and gets out of his car. He recognized my mother and saved her and her cousin from a sure sexual assault! He took the two young girls into his car and drove them home, safely, after curfew!
I know it was a different war but my mother said her uncles (both WWI veterans) said that at night, their company commander would meet the German company commander in a nearby farmhouse for a game of chess, then go back to their respective lines to try and kill each other the next day.
@@drdr76 that is how perverse we humans are.
Great story! Just a small correction: if you meant the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (which is now named North Macedonia): it was a different country from Greece. But of course there is another area, part of Greece, which is also called Macedonia.
For a Waffen SS that’s impressive. They were the most dedicated of all Nazis.
Nice
What most people don't get is that the Nazi party and the German army are or were two different things. Also many Germans were required or forced to join the Nazi party.
Hello Zoes Dada. Only the SS Schutzstaffel was required. The regular military was not expected to be political.
Zoes Dada nonsense apologists excuses for a nations betrayal of fundamental human values.
If Hitler wanted an army of Nazis he wouldn’t have liquidated all of the highest ranking brown shirts (a Nazi paramilitary group of fanatics) to ensure he had the support of the actual German army
I'm a Croat and my grandfather and uncle joined Croatian Nazi "Ustase" because it was the only way to sign to a university at the time. Most of my family were and are teachers/professors. They both later died fighting on Axis side.
@Lang Hansen You do know that you had to join the Nazi Party in order to keep your grocerie store running? You had to join the Nazi party if you wanted to keep your normal life going
My father was a B-17 pilot and was shot down over Germany. Five of the crew were killed and the other five, including my father, were able to bail out. My father was wounded and when he landed, the local farmers were angry and were beating him and threatening to kill him when a German patrol looking for the survivors saved him.
On the other hand, my father's bombardier was also captured, but the German civilians took him to the local beer hall to await the Army to take him into custody. He still had his survival kit which was supposed to have Deutsche Marks, so he offered to buy everyone a beer while they waited and they all drank a couple of beers. The Army arrived and the bombardier went to pay for the beers but in his survival kit were French Francs instead. The German soldiers took him away without paying. True story.
I was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam. War is hell and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but you would be surprised how many humorous things happen.
For example, one night in my platoon defensive position, a Marine who had just joined my platoon that day crawled up to my position and quietly reported that he had seen someone observing our position from behind a tree. Thinking it was more likely just first day nerves, I told him to go back to his position and keep an eye on the individual. An hour later he crawls up to my position and tells me the man is still there. So, I grab my starlight scope and I crawl back to his position and get in his foxhole. Starlight scopes were first generation in those days and the images were just fuzzy green blobs, but it did look like there was someone behind a tree to our front.
Not wanting to give away our position with rifle fire, I told the Marine to throw a grenade and when the individual ran, I'd shoot him.
I heard the Marine pull the pin on the grenade and he threw it. Then he whispered very low, "Sir, I dropped it." I had just enough time to think "inside or outside" the foxhole when it detonated about a foot above my head and three feet to my right. I could feel the dirt raining down on us, but I only had a loud ringing in my ears. I couldn't hear what he was saying.
The next morning, I checked the tree. There was an old rotten limb on it that from a distance looked like it could be someone looking around it to our position. The Marine and I had a good laugh, only I still couldn't hear much.
So, for a week or so, every time my company commander called on the radio to talk to me, my radio operator (LCpl "JJ" Jones) would tell the company commander that I wasn't available. My CO would then relate the information to JJ and afterward JJ would shout it loud enough that I could hear. I'd then tell JJ how to respond and he would call the company and tell them my response. You see, I didn't want to leave my platoon. After a week or so, my hearing returned--mostly. Even today I have some high frequency hearing loss and will probably need a hearing aid later.
I still chuckle about that incident. There were many other humorous things that happened that year, but most were "black" humor that people who have never been in combat could likely understand as being funny. I wish I had written them all down at the time. It would have made a great series of short vignettes about the aspects of war that never make the history books.
My apologies for the long post. Some times memories just come flooding back.
Thanks for sharing the great stories. They are really interesting and enjoyed reading them. Glad you posted them.
Very near the end of the war, my uncle was in a group captured by Germans. They marched them a ways then put them up against a wall. Right at that time an observation plane began circling overhead. They took them away from the wall and marched them on to a prison camp where they spent just a couple of weeks before being liberated.
As an example of dark humor, my father was a Marine in the Pacific. As an island was being bombarded or he was waiting for his turn to land, they cracked up when a body came floating by the ship with its bare butt up mooning them.
No apology needed. Great stories are very much appreciated. It gives others an understanding of what happened, and how the world was seen before, under and after.
I have never been to war, but I understand why you will find that funny. Humour is the opposite of crying. It is a greatly used tactic to combat the problems we can not fix.
Dont apologize....I love hearing veterans of different wars tell there stories.Thank you for your service
great post, i would love to read more stories!
Someone I knew was in the resistance in Germany when a young woman. One day her task was to smuggle radio parts into a POW camp, so they could have news of what was happening in the world outside. The parts were hidden in an orange, so as to also give them some vitamin c. She approached the fence & passed the orange through but at that moment a guard came patrolling outside the fence & caught her. The guard was followed by an officer leading a patrol. The guard pulled her close to him & gave her a long & passionate kiss, so her face was hidden from the patrol. When the patrol had passed he called to the officer, "Sorry sir. My girlfriend came to visit me". Then he whispered to her, "Go now & never come back here again". She walked away from the camp & no-one stopped her.
A lot of the German army was very much against what Hitler and his SS were doing
@Viper Art imitates life.
Sarah Strong 6
That's absolutely amazing
Nice to see acts of humanity found During the most hellacious of times.
There is no irony. That man knew he was saving your life. Great story.
My grand-grand mothers brothers were killed by Russians and Germans. But another German soldier helped her. She was allways saying we have to love all human beings because we all are human no matter from which country.
Thank You German officer who ever you were for saving that family! He knew what he was doing. There actually were a few good ones at that dark time in human history. Thank you for sharing her story.
Oskar schindler was one of many Germans who helped his Jews and others escape or hid them away from the Nazi guards.
My mother was drafted into the German army. She was enlisted due to her experience working in factories since age 14. During the war she worked in factories loading munitions at first. Later aircraft factories. When the factories were bombed to hell by the allies, they sent her home. There was nothing for her to do. In 1951 she came to America by ship to Elise Island, New York and later became a citizen. Taught herself English and worked in various jobs. In the 80s, she got a letter from the German government, stating that she was never discharged from the German army and they owed her back pay for 40+ years. They sent Her 250 Marks, later Euros until the day she died... I often wonder if she was the longest enlisted German soldier in history.
I've been meaning to tell the stories she told me in a series on RUclips as I think they deserve to be told and remembered.
That would be extremely interesting!
Please do, tell her stories. 🙂 🙏
Wow that's very cool it isn't very often that anyone or entity owns up to owing someone back pay!
get the mobile app and you can record youtube videos at the press of a button. they upload automatically. it's very easy, just hit the little video camera icon.
My gramps was an American soldier and fought through Europe. He met many Germans he liked and said the only ones he didnt like were the SS.
That is nice to hear. If it means anything to you: My great-grandpa also didn't hate the Americans. When he was a war prisoner in the US he became friends with his guard.
most of the ss were fanatics like trumpists nowadays... so no wonder your grand pa didnt liked them
my grandfather also had a story about a german soldier who handed him, his side arm and requested to be taken prisoner
My grandmother was in the league of German girls (BDM) and sent to land farm service with other girls to help bring the harvest in. They worked with Polish POWs who had a camp nearby. One day a guy named Jan was missing and stayed at the barracks because he was sick. Since lunch was only served in the field, she felt she had to leave some sandwiches for him by a window. Someone reported her and she was called into the local nazi Gau leader’s office to explain herself as it was considered uncouth for a German woman to be seen near Poles. She told him that sick people who work for us should’t go hungry and this was dishonorable. He let her go with a warning.
I think you can tell what the true character of the German people was by the country they became after the war.
And before.
I think their character was transformed by their catastrophic defeat, and the half-century split of their country, and the extinguishing and discrediting of German nationalist and Prussian militarist ideology, as well as the Nazi deprogramming. They were forced to learn humility; not by choice, but forced to. And now indeed they're remarkably enlightened.
@@dreamer2260 we took the best from Prussia tho and if we where to switch to a Military conflict ill would believe that we could get that Militarism Back there's a reason we are seen as Timely efficient and obedient
a country that aided the us in destroying countries like russia and socialist leaning nations?
@@dreamer2260 l don’t think so. I think it was the fact that the allies stand behind and actually helped rebuild instead of kicking them while they were down like in ww1. Hitler only came into power because the German people had nothing left to lose and were ready to do anything to improve their conditions.
So glad she survived to tell her story !
I’m glad she did because apparently, she died the same year
Hwl
I'm pretty sure that officer knew what was going on and knew he was saving your lives. They were not all rabid Nazis
Vermacht(German Army) and Naxi Party were 2 different things. A lot of Officers in 1944 even tried to assasinate Hitler and stage the coup(Operation Valkyrie) but they made few critical mistakes and failed. The real bastards were SS.
@@nerijusvilcinskas7851 yesss, they, the SS were the most horrific!
A lot of the Wehrmacht didn't care much for the Nazis. Some did early on but then, like Field Marshal Rommel, lost faith. It was a bitter, terrible thing. Pray that we aren't next.
i'm pretty sure he did..
@@nerijusvilcinskas7851 They really actually did an assassaination attempt but Hitlers desk was too sturdy so unfortunately the bomb didn't kill him
Salute to that German Officer
@@elenadonets4089 every nation killed someone
I went to Dachau a few years ago, a truly depressing place. One of the guides explained how different camps operated. Some were death camps (ie Treblinka) where you weren't coming out once you got sent there. Some were work camps, some were re-education camps. He said that work camps often operated next important factories, and the inmates would made to work as slave labour in them, often alongside German civilian paid workers. It was common for the German civilians to bring in food and leave it hidden in areas of the factory, to be picked up the camp inmates later.
I didn't know that. Doesn't surprise me though. People are people, even in extraordinary times.
My grandmother (a Catholic Slav from Slovenia) who was about 16 when she was taken to Dresden, was forced to work as a housekeeper. My great grandmother as well.
I had no clue about the German civilians. I knew about the slave labor but I never knew that part before.
More than 32 years ago, I talked with a Jew who had been in a Nazi concentration camp with his wife. He said that a German soldier tossed him a loaf of bread one day. Some of the German soldiers were OK.
Yes, but they needed to hide
back in ww2 in German camps for POW there was one side for Russians and another for Americans and Russians didn't get feed much they ate bowl of soup a day unlike Americans who were give good amount of food
And then some Americans toss some food for a Russian every day from the gates secretly
then a German solider found out what they were doing and never reported it.
Eventually when the Germans found out the secret they took that German and beheaded him/
Respect to that German solider
@@stung39 Probably the SS who beheaded him, they were absolutely brutal.
@@gay.mer9328 Actually I feel that last story is a little bit strange and I have trouble believing it. But it really happened quite a lot that people got killed for being nice, normal people. At a museum in Peiting near Munich there's one room for people from that small town who were killed in the last night before the US army arrived. One of them had gotten warned that he should not go home and he said "but I didn't do anything" and went home. His crime was having been active in the communist party before 1933 (like many people from this little workers town) and from time to time giving chickens from his backyard farm to starving Russian prisoners of war.
He missed his family and nothing was going to make him separate this family ..its called humanity
My grandmom said to me that in 1942 one german was felt in love with her,, but she did not wish to have relationship with him. He was polite. She died in 2001. It was in one city in Serbia.
Life is full of gray, nothing is ever black or white.
LIFE IS COLORFUL NOT JUST GRAY, BUT IF YOU 'RE KIND ENOUGH THEN YOU'REON THE WHITE SIDE. SO HOW ABOUT YOU?
Rubbish. There is black, white, and grey. We start black, and we work our way up to the light. Most of us get stuck in grey.
Tell that to the politicians and the sensitive thin skinned politically correct individuals that think it is their way or no way. They call others fascist and then behave the way of a fascist. Hypocritical bastards. The complications and variety of living requires a wider view of what it takes to exist. No one should feel inferior to another, but should strive to improve themselves for their own sake and that of their family. The reality of the world is there are those differences. However, one's belief should not be to the point of fanatical (both foreign and domestic) that imposes on another's well being. Yet it does, thus the phrase: "Si vis pacem, para bellum".
I'm white
Roy G Biv.
The German officer knew what he has to do.
I believe that if it is a german officer we are talking about, they knew. They always knew. Some would probably play for them a bit before busting them, some will save them and thank god we got the “save them” one
I remember being a child and trying to hide in bed with my mother when Nazi soldiers were raiding our village. Two soldiers burst into the bedroom and rippid off the quilt. They began to maul my mother, then a German Officer stepped into the room, (this was in the Alsace and we could speak German) and said, "Feldwebel, arrest these pigs, they are not fit to be German soldiers. Find them unpleasant duties until I decide to have them shot."
The Officer replaced the quilt and said, "No harm will come to you."
Indeed we both survived the war. I often wondered about Nazis and German soldiers.
people from the alsace were seen as ethnically german by the nazis
Is it true that if a German did not join the Nazi Party he was shot? I heard this a while ago. It makes sense that there would be an undercurrent of resentment among some at this forced coercion and that even some kindly souls were trapped into being Nazis. Of course we know many of them went about being a Nazi with great enjoyment!
@@Linda-vx4fn The Nazis took over with 43% of the votes (lots of them where forced to vote that way)...................... So you can clearly see that more then half of Germany was aginst Hitler when he took over. This rate is likely to be considered lower because of the War and other Stuff the Germans had to go trough. In other words yes you would likely being shot if you did not do your part back then.
31,000 German Military Men were sentenced to Death for disobeying orders.
I as a german never heard of that. The highest known membership number of the NSDAP was 10.174.581 and no one had to be in that party, except some Jobs.
But many people were killed because they didn't wanted to go to war. I think at the end of the war even parents, who didn't wanted their kids to fight or old men who didn't wanted to fight were hung.
In 1943 or 1944 my mother was in a train from The Hague to Friesland, to spend some time in a village there. A British plane spotted the train and started shooting at it, so all the passengers jumped out and hid. My mom, who was 1w or 13 years old, just froze. A German soldier saw her sitting still in the train, climbed back in, grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the train and into safety. Like someone else commented: not all Germans were nazis.
Hope we have the same kind of courage as this German officer when the time comes for us to take a stand.
Absolutely.
Thank you and god bless you for showing that not every German was evil.
I have a client,a very old Polish lady,who tells me tales of life under German occupation occasionally.The Germans took over her mother's farm, and one day her mother was selling eggs in the town when a German policeman whispered to her "Don't come back here tomorrow.Disappear.Your name is on a list for the concentration camp."So she goes back to her German farm manager and makes up a story that she has to go south to help a sick relative.She realizes that she has to go immediately with her family that night.The German manager is too helpful and offers her a horse and cart to take them to the station early the next morning,but of course she can't do that;so with the help of the resistance she goes overland on the backroads in the snow in a cart and crosses the river in a small boat dodging the ice floes which is very dangerous especially in the pitch darkness with her children.The family wasn't Jewish but the deceased father 20 years before had arranged a successful plebiscite which resulted in the return of some local East Prussian land to Poland...and the Germans had put him on a [death?] list.THeir farm backed onto the German border and as soon as the Germans took over Poland they came knocking on the door for him...but he had died a couple of years before.I suppose they decided to take their revenge on his widow?Who knows.She also had a long story about what happened to her mother in laws family under Russian occupation which was much worse at least in her case.An epic story that one which I will not go into here,except it shows the brutality of the Soviet system contrasted with the kindness of ordinary Russians.
Do you think it was worse because her mother in laws family didnt have the fortune of being warned. I cant imagine it would be better if she had been caught and her entire family was on a death list
You should get her to write it down. I know people that help you publish books on your own. my email is forkrismmitchellcollege at gmail dot com
Kris Mitchell G-d bless you! 🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍
Thanks for sharing, Marc.
I do believe that is the truest definition of An Officer and a Gentleman I have ever heard
The panic that poor father must have felt for those few minutes.
I'm glad this person told the story, as her being a holocaust Survivor, you know the story is factual.. she has no reason to give credit to a German officer- but she did..
my grandparents fled Germany to Canada in the onset of ww2....my grandmother was a matriarch to so many
immigrants coming to canada from all over europe.she gave them food,blankets a place to stay ,found them
work or family as well as raising 5 kids and the rest of her family.i miss her,she persevered for 96 years.....
I used to live down the street from a German fellow who was a young boy in Germany during the war and after the war lived in East Germany. In his house were large pictures of his ancestors and photographs of relatives and some were in German uniforms and there were medals given to his family for various things. I was struck by how well read he was. He knew European history forwards and backwards from ancient Rome to everything in between.
I spoke to an old woman who was a passenger on the infamous SS St. Louis and she told me that a German customs officer met her mother incognito and stamped all of their bags and possessions, so they wouldn't be checked or deprived of anything when they went to embark. People did what they could but you risked not only your job but also your life, and the safety of your family if you were caught.
My great grandfather fought in ww2.
The was in the first wave on Dday.
He said everything was done on a whim nothing went to plan.
Anyways he said after the landing he drank any and all alchohol he could find.
When him and his boys were fight german just outside a place called vernon a little distance from Paris
He ran out of booze. One of the locals who joined the fight told him about a store held up by german full of wine.
My ggrandfather and two of his company took off in the night to find this place. Hell broke out after being spotted and forced an attack.
They made it to this store and found 6 germans drunk as hell laughing and talking . He said they stormed the store yelling at the german to get on the ground.
They all started laughing and said in english.
" web lost the war when it started ether join us for a drink or kill us and get it over with"
He said the fighting outside the town was intense but at that moment it all went away and they drank and played cards all night.
The next afternoon the all woke up to Canadian and british around them yelling at the german to get down.
They stood up fast and defended the germans.
The bad news is one of them was SS and was taken away. Later found out he was executed but asshole soldiers with a grudge.
He said this SS guy was sweet and tried everything in his power the use his rank and status to save people. Talked about fake papers to jew and helping people escape Germany. He was kicked to the front line because we was under suspicion about being a sympathizer.
The german he was with hated what germany stood for they hated fighting. It was ether serve or die and your family's died. The choice is simple.
I dint know about you people but if someone came to me and said I'll kill everybody you love unless you do 1-2-3 I'd probably have done it....
As bad and horrible as that sounds it's the fact of life. I'd do unthinkable shit to save my kids. But I'd also do the same things to save others kids.
Sorry I dont know alot of the details and some may be off but that's what I remember of his story.
RIP John s McDonald
Back in the early '70s I was living in Scotland. A friend of mine shared my flat. Her parents were Polish, she was born in Scotland. Her first name was Nikka and her last name started with L. She was working on a PhD. She told me a story about how her mother escaped the gas chamber. Her mother was waiting to go into Auschwitz. The camp commander was walking around looking at the women. He pointed to my friends mother and told one of the guards to send her up to his house. He wanted her as a maid. Her father was a Polish cavalry officer. She grew up in Perth. I wish I could find her.
"Maid" - nice description...
@@andreasrademacher5715 Still better than a horrible death, right? I've never even had to consider which would be worse before :(
Your friend, "Nikka L.," from the early 1970s was working on a Ph.D. in Scotland. If you know the name of the university where she was enrolled in doctoral studies, then contact them since they should have a record of her.
People often forget a big majority of Germans were NOT nazis ,quite a lot actually hated their doctarine but if they showed any dissent they would end up in a camp
My grandfather was stopped in their hometown in eastern Poland by a Bolshevik officer soon after the invasion. My grandfather was a math professor conscripted as an officer once the war broke out. The two of them were alone at the time. The Bolshevik officer told my grandfather to go to the German side. My grandfather listened to him and changed direction. The Bolshevik told him “go with God”. Soon after, the Katyn massacre of Polish officers happened. My grandfather spent the entire war in a German POW camp and survived. He always felt that man knew what was planned and saved his life.
My father was 101st Airborne during WW2 and sometimes he cried. Especially when he drank with my Uncle who was in Pearl Harbor. They were great men and sometimes the hell of war wouldn't leave them be. Thank goodness for the compassionate human beings in the world.
Thank you Ma'am for telling your story! I'm glad that German officer had at least some kind of humanity about him. We could all learn a lot from times and people such as this.
My mother was not a Jew (although she would come to marry one), but a young American traveling through Germany in 1939 when a German soldier, who had befriended her, told her one day she should leave immediately, to not even return to the hostel where she had been staying. No sooner had she gotten out but Hitler slammed the border shut. That soldier could very well have saved my mother's life.
Here is a big secret because no one heart about it. I was skeptic my self until the Christmas party I gave in littleton Co. when the president of the bank of Denver brought his friend along from San Francisco. My parents where also here from Germany 1979. My father and the other San Francisco guy did not speak to each other, but where hostile toward each until my father sat that he never faught in the War because he was a prisoner of War in California. My father told him his name, Stoevesand and this guy recognized him being rowed a shore at the San Francisco bay by him. I happened to look outside when they left and my father and this man hugged each other and both cried tears from remembering that ordeal.
that is what I call closing a cycle! God put them in the same place in the same time. I would think happy story!
Thank you for telling that story.
The young soldier's absolute obedience and loyalty to the Officer.
Very good he saved them.
My dad was in the rescue missions from the concentration camps. He said as soon as you entered the surrounding towns you could smell the odor of burned human bodies.
A smell he said he would never forget.
I wish he had met some German people who had tried to help those in the camps because right up until he died he never forgave them for what they knew or what they did.
It is a pity that he never got to read good stories like these because I believe it would have given him more peace during his life.
Debra Walker can you email me your father’s testimony pls. Thank you
not surprised he wouldn't forget the scent of burning human flesh... I smelled someone cooking heroin (tar) and I fucking smell it randomly at time. Fucking pisses me off ik what heroin being cooked smells like!
Soldiers who liberated these camps carried that with them for the rest of their lives. One can understand how your father felt.
It is late in the day, almost time for bed, and this story made my day complete. I go to bed with my hope reinforced in the essential decency and dignity of all human beings. Thank you.
Kindness changes everything!
2 Years later...I hope you are well. Take care...from a German in Canada🍁
@@sonjagatto9981 Wise words. Kindness is everything. As a teacher I know kind words inspire. I witnessed this time and time again.
What a story. The line between life and death becoming so narrow at that one point in time and in that one place.
These stories from history are just priceless gems to be remembered always.
A lovely intelligent woman, a great story about humanity being as it should...
✔ As it SHOULD be, but sadly as it mostly has NOT been , and will go on NOT being. There were and are and will be evil forces that pull forth that beastly trace from the depths of humanity of their subjects ,and let that evil manipulate the lives of masses.
My uncle told me on Christmas the shots fired at each other were over each others heads..and just after midnight the fire fight stopped..and 2 people from either side would meet in the middle and exchange gifts..
yes thats true
I understand that Christmas truces (unofficial) were common in WWI. The soldiers would meet in no man's land, exchange greetings and some gifts and sing carols.
My uncle Arvid and his family were Latvian when Germany invaded. They had always been kind to and fed a local boy who "was not quite right" and who was bullied by the local kids and shunned from his family. Years later, during the occupation, my uncle and his brother were picked up and put on a train for a concentration camp. The Nazis put a lot of criminally insane men in charge of the prisons. When my uncle and his brother arrived at the prison for intake, amazingly it was this kid from their town who recognized them and obviously remembered the family kindness. He told the two young men to go out this door. They did. They had no idea where they were. My uncle went one way and made his way to Canada and had a successful and loving life. He never saw nor heard from his brother again, who went the other way. Always be kind. You never know who you are helping.
And this shows the power of education. The officer had a rapport with her mother thanks to get knowledge... So he acted civilized.
There's a story my grandma told me when the Nazis occupied Italy. Some soldiers took great affection towards her younger brother who was 14 at the time because he'd help them with odd jobs and when bombs it the village my grandma's house was hit killing her mum and 9 year old sister on impact but her brother was badly wounded. Some soldiers wanted to get help for the boy but never came back because they most likely were killed by bombs as well.
Every medal has two sides, thank you for telling the story 🙏🏼
t's the rich man's war
But it's the poor man's blood
We are brothers let us not be misled God bless all soldiers
And bless those civilians who can't run away from war, either. If there's war, everybody suffers.
as it is with all wars. Old men start wars, young men die in them
Exactly!
ALL soldiers? The Waffen SS too? Are you right in your mind?
@@valdanfa1076 Just what I was thinking. Many rich men fought in WWII, and died, too.
In my younger years in southern Chile I met a couple of German veterans (both of them turned into a catholic priests), they were 17 or so when they were called to serve. Of course hey were just young guys, they had absolutely nothing to do with Nazi party or anything. They were both injured and ended the war in hospitals. Like this old lady said, most of the Germans were perfectly decent people.
Which part of the south?
Temuco?
Its very unlikely they were just ordinary grunts if they had to escape to Chile afterwards. You believed their cover up story.
Ahem. The Germans fleeing to Chile or Argentina after the war were NOT really the "good" type of Germans!
The war criminals fled to South America.
A casual conversation between the mom and the senior officer built a bridge. Maybe the family reminded him of the family he was leaving behind and also realizing through conversation.. "we're really not that much different. we are all humans."
She doesn't look that old, good for her.
May the rest of her days be blessed.🙏
How does this story cause 100 people to vote THUMBS DOWN???? This poor woman was a small child and she and her family do owe their lives to this Officer.
Horrifying times told with so much dignity. Thank you.
Recently I have been watching quite a few videos pre and post WW II. All of them showed Americans , Britishers etc. as very brave, nice and decent people and Germans as demons. Thanks for uploading this video which shows that even among Germans there were nice and decent people.
Allies did some atrocities too, Nuclear bombing Japan, raping and pillaging in France, Italy and Germany.
That's war tho. Except for the 2 bombs that for me are almost as bad as extermination camps.
I mean, the target was mostly civilians, old people, women and children. The responsability tho is also to attribute to american government and generals more than to single soldiers.
When we talk about rape, murder and looting civilians it's the other way around.
Please dont get carried away by these few stories that can be made into romanticized feature films to make ones heart bleed at the kindness of the Germans!!
For every one rare decent German there were thousands of diabolical Germans both in uniform and civilians. That's how millions of jews and others were murdered by Hitler with the support of the German people.
Take a good look at the thronging masses of human waste applauding Hitler during his speeches!
That will give you a clear indication how many were decent, gentle compassionate folks!
They say you should never judge a book by its cover. Nor a person by the uniform worn. You just have to read on before making your decision. Sometimes it comes too late to be of help… but sometimes a gem is found, like here.
This world can be cruel and evil sometimes, but each and every one of us can play a very small part to make it a better place. It all adds up eventually.
My Dad fought in WW2 and was severely wounded a couple of months after D-Day. He was shipped back to England on a cot and was placed next to the former mayor of Munich who
was travelling with a valet. The mayor ordered a glass of water and when it was delivered he indicated it was for my Dad. They got to talking and apparently, the Germans knew they were losing the war and really wanted to end it.
See the Wehrmacht wasn't as strict as the SS, some soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht didn't care for or were even against the ideas of killing and harming Jewish people and would help them out in any way possible.
the Wehrmacht and the SS shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath.
@@peterobbo7512 You must not confuse Waffen SS and "Einsatzgruppen" or the SS in the camps.
bless you, bless your family and bless all that brave people who risked their lives to secure the lives of others
Exactly how one person can make a difference. Never believe that you are powerless.
I met a Holocaust survivor a few years back and every time I think back to the stories he told my class, I get chills. It’s so incredibly difficult to imagine that this was something that actually happened and there was a large group of people who were just okay with doing these things to people
Beautiful story..
Everyone has a story, but some can never tell it.
That´s war.
why would anybody thumb down this story, it shows the humanity of a German soldier, they wern't all monsters
It scares me that there are people that "thumbs down" something like this. Makes me wonder what got them to this video, and what they would consider worthy of "thumbs up"
The German officer probably knew. Why ? Because thís nice lady told, that her father didn´t speak to the officer because he was afraid because of his Yiddish mixing into German. But he had to talk to the passport controler and that was probably the moment when the officer knew, they were jews. You cannot completely hide your native language
Well he would most likely mix up his language because the nature of the first was conversational where he would likely have a slip up if he got too comfortable. Ths second he didnt have a choice and he was very much on guard and cautious. He was smart about not even risking it initially, and was composed when he did have to speak
@@TheFamousMockingbird People in America have different accents that they notice about each other- Pennsylvania, New York, Midwest, Deep South, etc. The same is true for Germany and Poland.
So it's realistic to think that she had a slight Yiddish or Polish accent even if she spoke German "perfectly" in terms of perfect grammar, and the same is more true about her husband. Conceivably he could have avoided saying hardly anything except "I don't know where it is," etc., but even a few sentences as long as that can give away an accent.
And then not only is there the accent issue, but consider that A. He initially presented documents instead of a passport when normally people present both, B. The documents presented were off/wrong, C. he couldn't find his passport. The practical reality is that the officer should have known that there could have been a document problem.
The upshot of all this is that he probably wanted to help them just like he wanted to help them with the cold, and he at least knew that something could have been wrong with their papers but he was not happy about the war situation anyway as he complained about it.
I grew up in Lincoln Heights in Los Angeles California and when I was a young boy there were many holocaust survivors in my neighborhood. One gentleman who was married to my mom’s friend was named Harry Winkler, and I remember how he use to talk to us kids about the Nazis. He would always make it a point to show us his tattoo that he had on his arm that the Nazis gave him. Even to this day I still remember the stories like he didn’t want us kids to forget about what happened.
That Officer knew. The conversation with the mother made it personal to him.
there are more good people out there but the irony is that the good people are scared to break the rules even though the rules are not right
Remember though, people were not politely asked to join. Join or your whole family will be imprisoned. No where to hide, but to go along. Even so, people found a way to be good rather than evil.
That was especially true of Germany in the 30's. Well said.
if anyone is 'too afraid' to do the right thing then they aren't a good person, no good people in the soviets, no good in the US forces, no good in the french... don't look up ww2 if you want to talk about 'good'
I guess this officer knew pretty well what was going on and acted correctly
I had an older Filipino American friend who was saved in the Philippines by a Japanese Lieutenant. My friend was is a line of Filipino men who were to be killed by the Japanese. For reasons known only to God the Lieutenant pulled my friend out of the line. Thereafter my friend loved Japanese because one saved his life.
I'm American by birth but many of my ancestors came from Germany. I liked the anecdote - because I can believe that while many Germans felt caught up in the horrors of WW2 not all of them were Nazi party members. I'd like to think that this German officer knew what he was doing and by at least moving along the fellow who wanted to check papers, he was doing his small part to do something right. Whether that's fantasy on my part I'll never know - but I'm thankful to know yet another family made it out.
Same here. I’m pretty much of German descent from both parents and I remember seeing an episode of Justice League set during World War II in which the Justice League helps out a German civilian who tells one of them “Not all Germans are bad.” This was very true. There were many small German resistance groups who fought against the Nazis including the White Rose group. In fact I saw a film years ago, set in a slightly alternate World War II in which American soldiers teamed up with members of a German resistance group in order to destroy blueprints for a nuclear weapon. I wish I could remember the name of the film but it was a fun film.
@@mirandagoldstine8548 My ancestors came from Germany, and my impression is that the bad Germans are truly bad, and can be extremely cruel and heartless toward minorities, Physically disabled Germans were put in camps, and some persecuted by their own families. Good Germans who risked everything to help minorities and the disabled had to be very.good and very brave indeed.
I always get the chills listening to these stories. Thank you for telling it. We must never forget.
I believe you, I am a disabled vet 1970 , and a friend of mine introduced me to the lady he knew that he did work for on her apts.
She has passed away several years ago , this is the first time I have ever mentioned this . The three of us went to lunch, right after we sat down my friend excused himself and left us there her and I.
I didn't know her , we were just interduced .
She was Czech, 92 yrs .
She said to me , " Perry saz you are a Vet and go to the VA HOSPITAL" .
I was surprised he mentioned. I remember I said that I didn't talk to much about it. .
From this point forward it was like 10,000 volts was shorted out on me ear to ear .
She said , the same thing with her, that her friends get angry when she sez that
When Dr. Mengelia died she cried. . I instantly said ..
You mean YOU DIDN'T CRY...! she fired back. I DID CRY. and in no uncertain terms.
I said , I am sorry if I sound rude , you have got to explain.
I never ate lunch. She said he was the angel of death , but not for me. I will tell you.
She was 23 at the beginning of the war and pregnant, she was a nurse when they were sent to Auszvites. (sp) . Time stopped I listen to and got to ask questions that I had always wondered.
The lady of this video, has a similar story.
I spent 3 hrs at least , I have never been so .... I am a combat vet , U S Army Infantry. I can't do her ordeal Justice.
I learned alot , her forgiveness, and her journey , from then to present.
I remember back , I swore to god that if I got through the year ...... I could hack anything.
I think I was in 8th grade one of our teachers had a friend come in who was a holocaust survivor. This was back in 98/99 and I still remember her talk like it was yesterday. I fear that as we lose that connection to history society will start to forget the lessons.
Of course he knew. Just as many had dark and evil hearts, there were lots who were decent people. :)
I think their lives were saved by her smart and resourceful mother😏
Even if you wanted to help a family like that in that predicament there is a fear that one of the other passengers might snitch on you. So it is a brave thing to do.
the german officer knew that what their people were doing was wrong.
How i wish there were more like this German officer...😒
There were just dont hear much about them because history is generally written by the victors
HISTORY- HIS STORY
There waa plenty even generals. It was the SS who didn't care
There are far more nice and respectable people in this world versus the abhorrent individuals that history focuses on.
Thy were many many. But they had to behave very secretly, because they would have been executed as well as the jewish people they were helping.
You can also apply your wish to other warring nations. For example view "Russian veteran recall their crimes" here in YT.
I have read Anne Frank's unedited diary. I wish they had been saved. The people in the attic would talk about the first thing they wanted to do or eat when the War was over. So sad they were caught and murdered. Except Otto Frank. He was a soldier in WW1 and given special consideration. It's a tragic true story, but made me appreciate HOW delicate human lives really are. This story shows that not all the German people were heartless.
Things is that the German officer would be well aware what "I can't find my passport" during a check meant at this stage of the war. He saved the family deliberately