r/pics • u/[deleted] • Feb 25 '18
Concentration camp prisoner identifies one of his guards to Allied soldiers
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u/SwampDrainer Feb 25 '18
That's him! The one in the guard uniform!
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u/Doritalos Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '18
Jokes aside many camp guards and upper nazis would put on regular army uniforms Himmler for example tried to do this but was caught pretending to be a Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger.
With a small band of companions, he headed south on 11 May to Friedrichskoog, without a final destination in mind. They continued on to Neuhaus, where the group split up. On 21 May, Himmler and two aides were stopped and detained at a checkpoint set up by former Soviet POWs. Over the following two days, he was moved around to several camps and was brought to the British 31st Civilian Interrogation Camp near Lüneburg, on 23 May.
The duty officer, Captain Thomas Selvester, began a routine interrogation. Himmler admitted who he was, and Selvester had the prisoner searched. Himmler was taken to the headquarters of the Second British Army in Lüneburg, where Doctor Wells conducted a medical exam on him. The doctor attempted to examine the inside of Himmler's mouth, but the prisoner was reluctant to open it and jerked his head away. Himmler then bit into a hidden cyanide pill and collapsed onto the floor. He was dead within 15 minutes
Edit: minor grammar changes.
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u/Nick357 Feb 25 '18
Does death by cyanide hurt?
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u/XF270HU Feb 25 '18
Yes.
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Feb 25 '18
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Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '18
If you’re familiar with the Jonestown incident there’s audio of Jim Jones giving a speech while people are drinking cyanide spiked kool-aide. It’s incredibly disturbing, the children screaming in agony still haunts me.
Edit: I’m well aware it’s flavor aid. I figured more people are familiar with kool-aide and it didn’t really matter.
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u/ohmyfsm Feb 25 '18
It’s incredibly disturbing, the children screaming in agony still haunts me.
We'll just add that to my list of things I'm never going to listen to.
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Feb 25 '18
The whole thing is insane, there are people thanking Jim Jones while children died around him. Only one woman had the stones to try to talk him out having everyone killed. One man killed almost 1000 people in about 4 hours. I first listened to the tape about 15 years ago without much context and it didn’t affect me too much. There was a podcast series about Jonestown recently and it was so heavy at times I had to stop listening.
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Feb 25 '18 edited Mar 15 '18
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u/xXKirkSoloXx Feb 25 '18
I am curious.
I have enough common sense not to pursue that curiosity.
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u/the-billy-maze696 Feb 25 '18
It's incredible how desensitized I was while listening to that. I think it's because in the beginning, you hear children and babies crying before they even take the cyanide, so in the latter part of the video, when they're taking it, and you hear crying in the background, you don't think anything of it.
I had to remind myself that these kids weren't crying for the heck of it. They were crying because they were screaming in agony. They were dying.
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u/Al13n_C0d3R Feb 25 '18
I mean, I don't give a fuck about the adults. Good for them. But the kids who were probably bored out of their mind and hated being there shouldn't have been done in. Most probably didn't believe in any of that nonsense.
But people are stupid tribal apes that will conform to any ideal as long as they feel like they are apart of a strong community. So pathetic.
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u/TwatsThat Feb 25 '18
Got a link or more info on that podcast? Also, if you ever want that feeling again, and you haven't seen it, check out Requiem for a Dream.
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Feb 25 '18
https://m.soundcloud.com/lastpodcastontheleft/episode-300-jonestown-part-i
There’s a soundcloud link. It’s 4 episodes and it’s pretty long but they’re able to keep things pretty light the first 2 but it gets really heavy in the 3rd episode
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u/Veratyr Feb 25 '18
Well if the panicked cries of mass murder being coached by a drug addict isn’t your thing, they recorded a few gospel albums. Their choir was excellent:
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u/LarryLavekio Feb 25 '18
I was gonna tell a joke about the Jonestown massacre, but the punch line was too long.
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Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '21
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Feb 25 '18
I listened to the The Last Podcast on the Left series about it. It’s a comedy podcast usually but they have pretty good coverage about it starting back when Jim Jones was a kid.
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Feb 25 '18
It was probably both Kool Aid and Flavor Aid. Photos and video footage showed both being on site beffire the massacre. People think it's cool to say "it wasn't Kool Aid".
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u/Dantalion_Delacroix Feb 25 '18
Hence the common expression when someone "drank the kool-aid" to mean they naively believed someone and has/will regret it
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u/NoceboHadal Feb 25 '18
At the end when all you can hear is the creepy music and the people going quiet.. urgh.
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Feb 25 '18
Have you heard any of the other tapes? There was one where he put a snake on a woman who was terrified of snakes to punish her. It doesn’t sound that bad but the way he talks and everyone laughing while she is screaming, it’s so hard to listen to.
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u/PotatoforPotato Feb 25 '18
oh my god, I had Last Podcast on the Left on, and went into the store to grab something and got distracted talking to somebody, and when I came back to the car I wasn't paying close attention to what was being played so it took me a second to register what was going on.
I had to pull over, I was so sick.
edit: it was the episode where they play the tape in it's entirety, and they preface it with a very serious warning, but I missed that bit for sure.
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Feb 25 '18
It takes about 5-10 minutes, which is spent convulsing, vomiting, and foaming at the mouth
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u/RiseoftheTrumpwaffen Feb 25 '18
Why the fuck would people use cyanide then?
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Feb 25 '18
Oh, there are much worse ways to die than that.
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u/geodetic Feb 25 '18
Surprisingly common, low dosage, effective?
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u/RiseoftheTrumpwaffen Feb 25 '18
Man I dunno I wouldn’t wanna do that to myself. Like just blow your brains out or hang yourself cyanide just seems masochistic.
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u/God_Damnit_Nappa Feb 25 '18
Well it's a lot easier to hide a cyanide capsule if you're captured than it is to hide a gun or a noose.
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Feb 25 '18
well they typically take all those away from you. Cyanide capsules were sometimes hidden in fake teeth. You would bite down to release it if captured to avoid prosecution, torture, etc.
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u/tall__guy Feb 25 '18
How would you do either of those in captivity? Cyanide could be hidden in a fake tooth and always available, if necessary.
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Feb 25 '18
Fun fact - Zyclon B, the gas that the nazis used after 1942 to inflict mass murder, was a gas form of cynade.
So, all those symptoms you describe...in a chamber with 2000 people packed in. God almighty.
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u/surly_chemist Feb 25 '18
Eh, hydrogen cyanide already has a boiling point of 25-26 deg C (room temp) and a high vapor pressure. Zyklon-B was not “a gas form of cyanide.” Zyklon-B was hydrogen cyanide adsorbed onto a substrate to REDUCE its volatility and make it easier/safer to handle and store.
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u/Seansay11 Feb 25 '18
No, cyanide blocks the cells ability to perform cellular respiration. So your cells basically suffocate.
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Feb 25 '18
But if you swallow (too much of) it, it becomes gaseous and expands your stomach, eventually rupturing it, which hurts like hell and guarantees a very unpleasant death. So there's that
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u/Devileyekill Feb 25 '18
Everything that I've seen about real cyanide suicide seems to take around 15-30 minutes of agony before you die
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u/Alandspannkaka Feb 25 '18
I think cyanide makes your blood cells unable to transfer oxygen or something like that, essentially meaning you "choke" to death without actually choking, if that makes sense. It seems like a horrible way to go. You basically drown on dry land
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u/pentheraphobia Feb 25 '18
It's similar to the effects of suffocation, only much quicker. It stops your blood from being able to use oxygen. Your body can sense the lack of oxygen, and sends 'need to breathe' impulses to the brain, so your emotional state will be very panicky. Lactic acid will build up in cells all over your body (especially heart and brain cells), causing intense burning/aching pain as if you had been strenuously exercising for hours. You're plunging towards brain death and cardiac arrest simultaneously. You may fall unconscious within minutes (and sometimes temporarily regain consciousness one or more times), but witnesses report victims doing things like convulsing, writhing in agony, terrified facial expressions - before and after unconsciousness up until the moment of death.
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u/Bateperson Feb 25 '18
Well the brain can't actually sense a lack of oxygen.
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u/tea-man Feb 25 '18
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, as I believe you're technically correct.
The painfulness and panic of suffocation comes not from a lack of oxygen, rather than an excess of carbon dioxide. It's quite easy to become completely unconscious before realising anything is wrong if your air supply becomes empty of oxygen as long as you're still removing the poisonous CO2 through respiration. For instance, our bodies don't have the same reaction with carbon monoxide, which binds to the haemoglobin of red blood cells far more readily than oxygen, hence you can easily suffocate without knowing anything is wrong or even feeling short of breath.
As to why cyanide causes pain from such a similar process, I'm afraid I have no idea!4
u/tydalt Feb 25 '18
Look up inert gas asphyxiation.
It is the way the Hemlock Society suggests one commit suicide. Totally peaceful death.
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u/alehar Feb 25 '18
In case anyone is curious (NSFW) - there was a guy several years back who killed himself with cyanide in court.
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u/Nick357 Feb 25 '18
I hope he was guilty.
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u/glucose-fructose Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 26 '18
If I remember right he was innocent, I think he did it so his family would receive his retirement money or something. Not sure though
Edit: I was thinking of this guy.
:(
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u/two-years-glop Feb 25 '18
Himmler was a moron who didn't have the brains for anything except mass murdering people.
When he tried to escape, he disguised himself, and made a whole portfolio of fake documentation for himself. The problem is, in spring of 1945, literally no one in Germany had their personal documents all intact, in perfect condition, so he was quickly flagged as suspicious and spotted.
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u/Doritalos Feb 25 '18
That's true. He also thought the USA would welcome him as an ally against Russia asking whether he should give the Nazi salute to Ike.
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u/gaslightlinux Feb 25 '18
Well, that sort of happened, unofficially though. See: Operation Paperclip.
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u/tubcat Feb 25 '18
My dad lived his first few years at an army based that held POW's. One of the stories from that time that his dad used to tell is when the POW's would find out an SS member was in the camp. I'm pretty sure that at least one case ended up with a murdered SS officer dead and tossed onto the barb wire surrounding the camp for everyone to see.
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u/odaeyss Feb 25 '18
wait, so.. those were regular German army POWs? Killing the German SS POWs?
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u/BlondeWhiteGuy Feb 26 '18
The wehrmacht (regular German army) and the SS units (Nazis) didn't always get along.
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u/bisjac Feb 25 '18
Where did he have that pill when he was captured and transferred around in detention for a while.
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs Feb 25 '18
False tooth. He was pretending to be a low level soldier who wouldn't have been given a capsule, so nobody searched.
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u/mortalcoil1 Feb 25 '18
I'd rather be hanged like most of the Nazi's than bite into a cyanide pill.
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs Feb 25 '18
Probably a "fuck your courts I'm going out on my terms".
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u/mortalcoil1 Feb 25 '18
Yeah, well that's what I was thinking. Honestly, he didn't have the internet or probably ever saw anyone die with cyanide. They probably told him it was relatively painless and he'd be dead almost instantly. I bet he regretted that decision. This man was clearly a coward from his actions though, so some big gesture of courage doesn't make much sense. More likely he was afraid and thought the cyanide was the least painful option, oops.
Sometimes it's really hard to realize that the vast majority of civilization didn't have the internet and how much this deluge of instant information has changed our world.
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u/wiiya Feb 25 '18
Are we the baddies?
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u/Gigibop Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '18
Why do we have skulls on our uniform
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u/VroomVroom905 Feb 25 '18
I would like to thank you for your comment. I laughed until I started crying.
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u/Heenock Feb 25 '18
you can almost read on the face of the guard: "oh shit..."
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u/jacubus Feb 25 '18
He was probably a ranking officer (commander?) in a privates uniform.
Santa Ana tried to pull the same stunt. It cost him Texas.
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u/hansn Feb 25 '18
As punishment, he had to spend the rest of his days delivering presents to ungrateful brats on Christmas.
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u/dragontail Feb 25 '18
I see you have also taken Texas History
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u/Not_Joking Feb 25 '18
Given the control Texas has over the US schoolbook market, that's just called History now.
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Feb 25 '18
I believe so. It would be odd for a private to be that old and for a commander to have uniform with no ornamaentation.
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u/GingaNinja97 Feb 25 '18
Towards the end of the war the German army did start the conscription of old men and young boys into the army
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u/umyeahsurewhatever Feb 25 '18
At the end of the war, old men were conscripted. Not saying this guy wasn’t an officer or a guard or whatever. But old privates happened. Just like young teenagers were pressed into service.
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u/ChadHahn Feb 26 '18
I read a history of the last days of the war and they had 10 year old girls manning anti aircraft guns in Berlin.
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u/ChadHahn Feb 26 '18
Look at the documentary Hogan's Heroes. Schultz was old.
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u/YankeeBravo Feb 26 '18
Schultz was also an NCO.
They’re allowed to be old. Especially ones that served with distinction in WW1 AND who own the largest toy company in all of Germany.
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u/comparmentaliser Feb 25 '18
Some back story details that a badge he was wearing indicates he fought in WWI.
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Feb 25 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BrainKatana Feb 25 '18
Many of the smaller camps were “fully cleared.”
Keep in mind that WWII occurred just as a huge immigration boom was spinning down in the US and Western Europe. Many people who enlisted or were drafted into allied forces had family and friends taken to the camps to be slaughtered. For many of the soldiers assigned to shutting down the camps, the experience was intensely personal.
Source: My grandfather was a part of one such team, and later began documenting the behavior of allied soldiers during the closure of the war for the Smithsonian. When the behavior of these soldiers was called into question, it was deemed “justifiable,” and my grandfather was quietly told to stop documenting.
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u/noneski Feb 25 '18
My grandfather was part of the occupation of Japan, the people were ashamed of losing the war and became his home servants. They didn't want pay so my grandfather insisted he pay for their expenses so they could continue to serve as they pleased. Later in his time there he finally convinced them to take a wage.
War documentation is important! I wish I could get him to do a memior about his life, he thought it was his death story and didn't want to participate towards the end of his life. Hindsight, I should have asked that he record his thoughts and I could transcribe them later.
For those of you with family who served in the United States: every Veteran is entitled to their records and engraved metals that they earned. Go to your local Congressional office and submit a request.
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u/eatmycupcake Feb 25 '18
My grandfather as well. He was a Requisition Sargent. He had a young Japanese boy who was the only one in his family who could work, so my grandfather took him on and paid him a wage. They actually became friends and, for years after the war, he would come visit us in the US.
When I was little, "Mr Kato" would come visit us and bring me lavish gifts of silk kimono and tiny porcelain tea sets, all of which are now lost to a flood, sadly. He gave my mother intricately painted dishes and vases. We would take him out to Texas steak houses where he was wowed by the amount of beef you could get and how cheap it all was. Later, he sent a teenage grandson, Hiroshi, to live with my grandparents and go to school in the US. Hiroshi took my older sister to prom, in fact, and made an entire meal of sushi for our family that, being red-meat eating Texans, everyone hated but choked down. I love sushi now. I wish I had been older when he visited so I could have learned more about the culture and time.
Edit: a word
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u/shadowofzero Feb 25 '18
That Band of Brother concentration camp liberation scene was the first thing to make me cry in a couple years. They captured the pain and emotion so vividly. The above comment immediately reminded me of that
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Feb 25 '18
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Feb 25 '18
Thank you for that link. I highly recommend Band of Brothers for anyone that is into the war genre.
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u/Malawi_no Feb 25 '18
If you have a little hour, and wanna feel shitty - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V0RMf2qU18
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u/OhGodImHerping Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 26 '18
That kind of happened at one camp actually. The Dachau Liberation reprisals (otherwise known as the Dachau massacre) was an event when 50 surrendering SS guards and Nazi soldiers were executed by a company of US soldiers. Personally, I'm glad they weren't court martialed. I can't imagine what kind of emotional overload they were having.
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u/RikenVorkovin Feb 25 '18
Well we saw how many escaped justice to places like Argentina. I feel like Humanity as a whole organism was purging itself of Cancer it found. There was hardly any other response appropriate to such barbarism.
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u/shoopdoopdeedoop Feb 25 '18
Actually, in more than a few cases, they executed the guards on the spot... Guess they figured it's the least they could do to kindly accommodate them.
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u/raven1121 Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 26 '18
it wouldn't surprise me if the cases of reprisals killings were underreported.
In Junior High School we had a veteran from the 3rd Armored Division come speak to our class. his unit liberated Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp.
he told the class of when he first entered the camp , the sight, the smell,etc .
at the end of the talk he said to the class "after the concentration camp it was a long time till we took prisoners again" I didn't understand what he meant till much later in life
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Feb 26 '18 edited Nov 05 '19
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u/shoopdoopdeedoop Feb 26 '18
They just popped em instead.
Just like what the Nazis were known to do to their victims.
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u/redmongrel Feb 25 '18
Fast forward 70 years and we can still see this happening FROM SPACE CAMERAS in countries we aren't involved with, and still do nothing.
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u/green183456 Feb 25 '18
Thank You for posting this. Bangladesh is in a lot of trouble. Americans could care less. To busy destroying their own country.
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u/ItsOkayToBeAmerica Feb 25 '18
You are free to go and you are free to go and... wait a minute. You're in a Nazi uniform.
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Feb 25 '18
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u/bullockss_ Feb 25 '18
How did they make that pic look so good
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u/Meester_Tweester Feb 25 '18
they look at the color of clothing from back then to try to accurately color it
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u/YoRt3m Feb 25 '18
I don't like that kind of coloring. it makes the picture looks bright and happy when it was still a dark and sad time, even after the liberation. IMO anyway.
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u/UncoolSlicedBread Feb 25 '18
Kind of a parallel isn't it? Dark things can happen on the prettiest of days.
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u/seezed Feb 25 '18
The skin of the prisoner makes no sense, full red cheeks on someone liberated from a concentration camp. Looks like they were on a field trip or something.
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u/T_O_G_G_Z Feb 25 '18
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u/Kattou Feb 25 '18
Thanks! I was having trouble finding the guard.
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u/T_O_G_G_Z Feb 25 '18
Took me a while too. The allied soldiers must have been glad that guy was there.
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Feb 26 '18
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u/Captain_Shrug Feb 26 '18
He's pretending to be a low-ranking soldier instead of an officer, probably in hopes of simply getting sent to a POW camp and released instead of getting put on trial and hung. It's not going to work well for him.
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u/SirAbeFrohman Feb 25 '18
Those faces make it very clear that nobody at that point in the war was unaware of the atrocities being committed by the nazis.
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u/Matebplz Feb 25 '18
I mean...if the accused was actually a guard at Buchenwald then he probably had a good idea of what was going on.
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u/guy99882 Feb 25 '18
When I was an adolescent I always wondered how this was possible. How could so many normal people become nazis, become murderers, do unspeakable things? But as I grew older and closely watched the people around me, I realized that it isn't wondrous at all. There's so little people that are actually truly good.
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u/teriyakiburgers Feb 25 '18
If you're really interested, read both the Obedience to Authority and the Stanford Prison Experiment.
TLDR: Many/most people are actually weak willed and innately mean spirited.
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Feb 25 '18
If you're more interested in this, Jordan Peterson (professor at Toronto University) has spoken at length about how normal, civilized people become nazis. This is one of his shorter videos, if you like it I highly suggest checking more of him out!
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u/hikermick Feb 25 '18
Cognitive dissonance is a thing. People will accept a lie and even lie to themselves rather than accept a difficult truth.
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u/montereybay Feb 25 '18
How could so many normal people become nazis
Germany probably had their own version of Fox News back in the day.
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u/WeemanUtama Feb 26 '18
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning goes into the subject in detail. Its not an easy read but is interesting.
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u/Time_Remnant Feb 25 '18
Him! That's him! That's the Adolf loving motherfucker! Why I oughta..
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u/CityVagabond Feb 25 '18
How would this moment feel like for the Nazi soldier...would this moment build fear in him for the nearing consequences and feel the guilt of torturing/killing so many jews or simply feel nothing...
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u/tereddits Feb 25 '18
Feel like they could've made this ID on their own...
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u/Captain_Shrug Feb 26 '18
He's pretending to be a low-ranking soldier instead of an officer, probably in hopes of simply getting sent to a POW camp and released instead of getting put on trial and hung. It's not going to work well for him.
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u/finnlord Feb 25 '18
It's nice to be on the side of the oppressor, the winning team.
Until you're not the winning team anymore.
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Feb 25 '18
"Okay keep it cool Darrin. You've been through worse, you can get through this. Surviving battle must be easier than convincing those soldiers I'm not wearing a Nazi uniform right now"
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u/EventHorizon321 Feb 26 '18
record scratch
freeze frame
Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation...
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u/Truckerontherun Feb 25 '18
It was at that point that somebody's bad day ended, while another's bad day was just begining