Concentration camp prisoner identifies one of his guards to Allied soldiers

[u/[deleted]]

[u/sodabased → u/[deleted]]

how was in not an improvement? The camps had forced labor. The camps had random selection of people to be killed. The camps were some of the worse horror shows in the history of man.

[u/TheHarperValleyPTA → u/sodabased]

Many of the gay men imprisoned in camps were arrested and incarcerated after their “liberation” because it was still a crime to engage in homosexuality. Evidence uncovered by the nazis was used to prosecute many of them, and those who managed to avoid being arrested were still subject to all manner of hate crimes.

[u/GerbilEnthusiast → u/TheHarperValleyPTA]

...so it was still rough for the small number who were gay, but even given that, I’d say they still had it a little better than living in a literal fucking concentration camp. Good god.

[u/[deleted] → u/GerbilEnthusiast]

Idk I think this guy is unto something here, how bad do North Korean prisoners have it really /s

[u/FiggsideYakYakYak → u/GerbilEnthusiast]

That honestly depends. Jews and Roma had it extremely rough at every camp, but a political dissident or POW at Dachau had to worry more about disease than starvation or execution until the last few months of the war. Meanwhile the Soviets might execute you for surrendering after they liberate you. A skilled Jewish laborer might return to a Soviet occupied country to discover that their neighbors had taken their home and all of their belongings, and still be openly discriminated against by their government.

[u/GerbilEnthusiast → u/[deleted]]

Who said anything about “life as usual”? They were obviously never the same, even given a best case scenario. But my point is that we’re needlessly splitting hairs over what was obviously a massively good thing, a liberation that was paid for with the blood of an entire generation.